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Reflex AI 1

There is something about the mental image of 20 six and seven year old kids shot to death, some as many as 14 times, by an American citizen using perfectly legal and licensed weapons, that causes people to demand that SOMETHING must be done about the level of gun violence in our country. Others say that ANY restriction of guns is an attack on the 2nd Amendment. This isn’t meant to be a diatribe on gun violence or ultra-powerful lobbyists or what I think we need to do or anything else. It is more about the history of the second amendment. There is a, which details and summarizes things rather well and saves you from doing too much exhaustive research of your own. One thing, I think the title “The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery ” is misleading, and would be more accurate to say that because slavery was so important to southern states, which also feared abolitionists from the north, the second amendment was crafted to ensure that the state militias of the south couldn’t be disbanded or absorbed into Federal service, and also that Federal laws would not deprive local militias of weapons. What does the Second Amendment actually SAY? A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. There are some important things behind this amazingly short statement: - Right to Bear Arms: The amendment is crafted in a way that makes it perfectly clear that citizens are allowed to own guns, and the government may not take away that right. This has been reaffirmed several times including the landmark District of Columbia v. Heller overturning of the Washington D.C. handgun ban. - ‘Well regulated militia’: in the 18th century militias were widespread in the south used as ‘slave patrols’. The article notes “slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias.” More on the ‘militia’ concept in a bit. - The word ‘State’: when we think of the word ‘state’ we use it fairly interchangeably with ‘country’. Hillary Clinton is ‘Secretary of State’, for example. But the framers of the Constitution was keenly aware of the difference – delineation of power between federal and state control was a key point of contention during the drafting and ratification process. In fact, Madison originally used ‘country’, but “(Patrick) Henry, (George) Mason and others wanted southern states to preserve their slave-patrol militias independent of the federal government. So Madison changed the word “country” to the word “state,” and redrafted the Second Amendment into today’s form” The idea of a militia is very different now than it was in 1776, when all weaponry was handmade and a group of citizens would be more or less identically outfitted as the ‘army’ or ‘militia’ of the city or state. In another blog, the author looks at a modern interpretation of gun ownership in the context of a potential modern militia, with Supreme Court Justice Scalia saying: “the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.” But in that same opinion, Scalia brushed aside claims that the Second Amendment guarantees citizens the means to armed revolution. He concluded that technology has rendered that part of the amendment an archaic artifact, because “a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large” and that “no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks.” If you look at what I said earlier, it might seem a bit paranoid that the southern states were so worried about their militia … but given that abolition was desired by many northern politicians and slaves serving in Washington’s army were granted freedom – perhaps they were not far off base. Does the fundamentals of HOW the amendment came about change anything? No … it is just interesting. One of the hardest things for me to understand is that in an age where reliable information is readily available, misinformation abounds. We hear every day in the gun debate how ‘Hitler took the guns’ (untrue), ‘Stalin took the guns’ (also untrue), ‘Reagan supported assault weapons ban’ (true), and also how the constitution is either immutable or outdated. It only takes a little time and effort to realize that the Supreme Court has pretty solidly said that personal gun ownership is a right granted by the Bill of Rights – but also that it is NOT an absolute right and may be restricted so that ownership reflects reasonable standards. A little (accurate) knowledge can be a powerful thing.

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http://geardiary.com/2013/01/17/interesting-history-lesson-on-the-2nd-amendment-and-slavery/

2013-05-19T19:37:10Z

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en

Thanksgiving stands as one of the most American of holidays, an autumnal ritual fixed in the imagination as honoring the piety and perseverance of the nation’s earliest arrivals during colonial days.... Students will use literature to gain insight into the lives of the Wampanoag people and their participation in the first Thanksgiving celebration. Students will present information on different aspects of the Wampanoag lifestyle. chart paper for KWL chart children’s literature on the Wampanoag (see suggested books in this lesson) paper for each group pencils and markers

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http://gilderlehrman.org/category/coverage-events/first-thanksgiving

2013-05-19T19:52:45Z

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Idaho became the forty-third state to enter the Union. Wyoming entered the Union as the forty-fourth state. The Forest Reserve Act authorized the president to set aside “forest reserves” from public domain lands to be managed by the Department of the Interior. “Forest reserves” later became National Forests. In Scenic, Washington, the Great Northern Railway, which crossed the Cascades and reached Seattle, was completed. The Newlands Reclamation Act was passed, funding irrigation projects in the arid lands of the West. The act also created the Reclamation Service to oversee irrigation efforts. Utah became a state and reinstated woman suffrage, which had been lost in 1887. In Tacoma, Washington, the mayor and police department led a riot to drive Chinese from the city. An anti-Chinese riot in Seattle drove most Chinese from the city. Joseph K. Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois, received a patent for barbed wire. Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor exposed the federal government’s harsh and duplicitous treatment of American Indians in the West.

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http://gilderlehrman.org/category/eras-and-sub-eras/rise-industrial-america-1877-1900/development-west?page=2

2013-05-19T19:23:11Z

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en

Anyone who sees the Hollywood thriller “Contagion” may be a little on edge. In the film an unknown pathogen moves from Hong Kong to Chicago before globetrotting in a ruthless killing spree. The medical community struggles to contain it and find a cure as the world panics, falling into chaos. Could an epidemic like “Contagion” really happen? “Not only could it happen it already has,” said Maryn McKenna, a journalist and author specializing in infectious disease and public health. The author of Superbug, a book about drug-resistant staph, led a discussion at Northwestern University about “Contagion” and how the government handles health outbreaks. She said the film parallels the spread of the Nipah virus that swept Malaysia in 1999, which spread from bats to pigs to humans. Handshaking, kissing and dice-rolling all play a role in spreading the virus documented in the film. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention try to get a handle on the health panic, a blogger pushes a holistic cure. “All of this, remarkably, is a realistic scenario,” McKenna said. H5N1 bird flu was predicted to be like the disease in “Contagion.” Bird flu has a mortality rate that can reach 90 to 100 percent, often within 48 hours, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The autism and MMR vaccine scare caused many parents to hold off on vaccinating their kids and opt for a more holistic approach to medicine. This shift in practice led to an outbreak of measles. The film paralleled many of these moments in infectious disease history. Screenwriters even threw in a couple public health jokes: They made the Minnesota Department of Health look like idiots even though they’re one of the country’s top health departments. To create “Contagion”, actors went to the CDC to learn about public health outbreaks. Actual scientists also vetted the science in the film. “The only thing that’s wrong is it’s really too positive,” McKenna said. “We’re not in as good of shape as the government says we are.” “Contagion” happens over a period of a few months, when in reality it takes at least nine months to get a vaccine. McKenna said the government needs additional people and technology to move forward in preventing public health outbreaks. Most flu vaccines still use 50-year-old technology. When the CDC gets budget cuts, the cuts trickle down to state and local health departments. If a department isn’t testing for a disease during an outbreak because they can’t afford to, then there’s no way to determine where the disease has gone. McKenna said new diseases emerge almost every year. Just last week researchers discovered a new Ebola-like virus, Lloviu virus, in bats from northern Spain. The U.S. health care system received an overall performance score of 64 out of 100 for 2010 in a report released Tuesday by the Commonwealth Fund. The failing grade, says McKenna, speaks to larger gaps in preparedness.

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http://globalhealthportal.northwestern.edu/blog/tag/world-health-organization/

2013-05-19T19:28:25Z

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School Traffic Control Plans The traffic control plan at Mason Elementary School in Georgia includes improvements to the signing as well as crosswalk and pavement markings. A comprehensive traffic control plan can help create a balanced roadway environment to accommodate the needs of all modes of transportation, be it by foot, bicycle or motor vehicle. A traffic control plan is a map of a school campus and the adjacent street system marked with proposed engineering improvements to increase the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians. Putting It Into Practice: Traffic Control Plan Park Elementary School, Marin County, CA Schools in two communities in Marin County, California developed comprehensive traffic control plans to increase the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians traveling to school. Park Elementary, Marin County, CA. The schools mapped typical routes that students used to walk and bicycle to school and proposed safety improvements along those routes. The schools used this analysis to apply for and receive funding to complete suggested improvements. One map proposed a new signing and striping plan for a local elementary school. It lays out proposed signing and pavement marking measures, taking into account many streets surrounding the school. The traffic control improvements in Marin County, in conjunction with SRTS encouragement activities, have led to an increase in the number of students walking and bicycling to school, as well as an increase in carpooling. For more information about this story visit the 2004 PedSafe Guide "Safe Routes to School Program” Marin County, CA, case study.

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http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/engineering/school_traffic_control_plans.cfm

2013-05-19T19:22:52Z

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en

Minimal complete definition: splitFraction or floor There are probably more laws, but some laws are (fromInteger.fst.splitFraction) a + (snd.splitFraction) a === a ceiling (toRational x) === ceiling x :: Integer truncate (toRational x) === truncate x :: Integer floor (toRational x) === floor x :: Integer If there wouldn't be Real.C a and ToInteger.C b constraints, we could also use this class for splitting ratios of polynomials. As an aside, let me note the similarities between splitFraction x and x divMod 1 (if that were defined). In particular, it might make sense to unify the rounding modes somehow. IEEEFloat-specific calls are removed here (cf. Prelude.RealFloat) so probably nobody will actually use this default definition. New function fraction doesn't return the integer part of the number. This also removes a type ambiguity if the integer part is not needed. The new methods fraction and splitFraction differ from Prelude.properFraction semantics. They always round to floor. This means that the fraction is always non-negative and is always smaller than 1. This is more useful in practice and can be generalised to more than real numbers. Since every T denominator type supports divMod, every T can provide fraction and splitFraction, e.g. fractions of polynomials. However the ''integral'' part would not be of type class C. Can there be a separate class for fraction, splitFraction, floor and ceiling since they do not need reals and their ordering?

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http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/numeric-prelude/0.1.2/doc/html/Algebra-RealField.html

2013-05-19T19:22:45Z

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Scientific investigations into the essence of matter All the information we have about the world we live in is conveyed to us by our five senses. The world we know consists of what our eye sees, our hand feels, our nose smells, our tongue tastes, and our ears hear. We never think that the "external" world can be other than what our senses present to us, since we've been depending on only those senses since the day we were born. However, modern scientific research in many different fields points to a wholly different understanding, creating serious doubt about our senses and the world we perceive with them. This approach's starting point is the notion that any "external world" is only a response created in our brain by electrical signals. The red hue of an apple, the hardness of wood, your mother, father, your family, and everything that you own—your house, your job,—and even the lines of this article, are composed of electrical signals only. In this picture, we see someone who feels himself skiing on the mountains, whereas there is really neither skis nor snow. This illusion is artificially created. Thanks to present technological developments, it's possible to have realistic experiences without the need for an "external world" or "matter." The incredible advancement in virtual reality technology has come up with some especially convincing proofs. To put it simply, virtual reality is the projection of computer-generated three-dimensional images that appear to be real with the aid of some devices. This technology, with its diverse range of applications, is known as "virtual reality," "virtual world," or "virtual environment." Its most important feature is that by the use of some purposely constructed devices, it misleads the person experiencing it into believing the experience to be real. In recent years, the word "immersive'' has begun to be used in front of the term "virtual reality," reflecting the way that witnesses are literally immersed in the experience. The rationale of any virtual reality system is based on our five human senses. For instance, when the user puts on a special glove, devices inside transmit signals to the fingertips. When these signals are relayed to and interpreted by the brain, the user experiences the sensation of touching a silk fabric or ornate vase, complete with all of its surface details—without any such thing actually existing in the environment. One of virtual reality's foremost applications is in medicine. Michigan University has developed a technology that trains assistant practitioners—in particular, the personnel of emergency wards—to learn their skills in a virtual reality lab, in which environment is created by projecting the details of an operating room onto the floor, walls, and ceiling of a room. The "picture" is completed by projecting an operating table, complete with the patient to be operated on, onto the center of the room. The surgeons-to-be put on their 3-D glasses and begin their "virtual" operation. And anyone viewing the images reflected on the 3-D glasses cannot distinguish a real operating room from this virtual one. Do We Live in a Holographic Universe? New Scientist is one of the best-known science magazines. Its March 27, 2002 cover story was written by scientist J.R. Minkel, titled "Hollow Universe." "Why we all live in a hologram" the cover headline reported. To sum up the article, we perceive the world as a single bundle of light. Therefore, it would be a mistake to consider matter as the absolute truth by relying on our perceptions. Admits Minkel: You're holding a magazine. It feels solid; it seems to have some kind of independent existence in space. Ditto the objects around you—perhaps a cup of coffee, a computer. They all seem real and out there somewhere. But it's all an illusion. Minkel's article states that some scientists call this idea the "theory of everything," and that scientists consider this theory the first step towards explaining the nature of the universe. This magazine article explains scientifically that we perceive the universe as an illusion in our brains and that, therefore, we are not interacting with matter itself. Perceptions Lost to the Senses, Recovered with Artificial Signals In its March 11, 2002 issue, Time magazine published an article entitled "The Body Electric," revealing an important scientific development. The article reported that scientists melded computer chips with patients' nervous systems to treat permanent damage to their senses. With their newly developed systems, researchers in the USA, Europe and Japan aimed to give sight to the blind and help paralyzed patients recover. They have already achieved partial success with this new system by planting electrodes into the relevant areas of the body, and silicon chips were used to connect artificial limbs with living tissue. Following an accident, a Danish patient by the name of Brian Holgersen was paralyzed from the neck down, except for very limited movement in his shoulders, left arm and left hand. As is known, such paralysis is caused by damage to the spinal cord in the neck and back. The nerves are damaged or blocked, disabling neural traffic between brain and muscles, and cutting off communication between the nerves that transmit signals back and forth from the body to the brain. With this patient, the aim was to bridge his spinal cord's damaged area with an implant, letting signals from the brain bring back a little movement to the arms and legs. They used a system designed to recover basic functions of the left hand, like grasping, holding and releasing objects. In an operation, eight small coin-sized flexible cuff electrodes were implanted into the muscles responsible for those movements in the patient's upper left arm, forearm and shoulder. Later, ultrathin wires connected these electrodes to a stimulator—a kind of pacemaker for the nervous system— implanted in his chest. The stimulator was in turn linked to a position-sensing unit attached to Holgersen's right shoulder—over which he retains some motor control. Now, when the patient wants to pick up a glass, he moves his right shoulder upward. This movement sends an electrical signal from the position sensor, worn under his clothing, to the stimulator in his chest, which amplifies it and passes it along to appropriate muscles in his arm and hand. They contract in response, and his left hand closes. When he wants to release the glass, he moves his right shoulder downward, and his left hand opens. The University of Louvain in Brussels used a similar application of technology in relation to eyesight. A patient's rod and cone cells had degenerated, causing the retina to become insensitive to light. Consequently, she became blind. An electrode implanted around her right optic nerve enabled her to regain partial sight. In this patient's case, the electrode was connected to a stimulator placed inside a cavity in the skull. A video camera, worn on a cap, transmitted the images to the stimulator in the form of radio signals, bypassing the damaged rod and cone cells, and delivered the electric signals directly to the optic nerve. The brain's visual cortex reassembled these signals to form an image. The patient's experience is comparable to watching a miniature stadium billboard, but the quality is nevertheless sufficient to prove that this system is viable. This system is called a "Microsystem-based Visual Prosthesis," a device permanently implanted into the patient's head. But to make it all work, the patient needs to go to a specially designated room in the University of Louvain and wear what looks like a badly damaged bathing cap. The bathing cap is made of plastic with a standard video camera installed on its front. The more pixels there are to form an image on the screen, the greater the number of electrical stimulations; therefore, the greater the resolution quality of the image. The same article referred to an interesting show by a performance artist who made use of the same technology: During one 1998 performance, Stelarc wired himself up directly to the Internet. His body was dotted with electrodes—on his deltoids, biceps, flexors, hamstrings and calf muscles—that delivered gentle electric shocks, just enough to nudge the muscles into involuntary contractions. The electrodes were connected to a computer, which was in turn linked via the Internet to computers in Paris, Helsinki and Amsterdam. By pressing various parts of a rendering of a human body on a touch screen, participants at all three sites could make Stelarc do whatever they wished. These technologies, provided that they can be sufficiently reduced in size and placed inside the body, will pave the way for radically new developments in medicine. These developments demonstrate another important fact: The external world is a copied image that we watch in our minds… The New Scientist's April 27, 2002 issue with its cover story, "Hollow Universe" and headline, "Why we all live in a hologram." The Time article showed practical examples of how we can create perceptions like sight or touch by artificially created impulses. The most obvious proof is that a blind person was able to see. Despite the patient's eye not being functional, she could see by means of artificially created signals. "The Body Electric," an article in Time magazine's March 11, 2002 issue, contained evidence proving that the external world is a copied image in our mind. Can the Virtual Worlds of Some Films Be Duplicated in the Real World? In "Life is a sim and then you're deleted," an article published in the July 27, 2002 issue of New Scientist magazine, Michael Brooks states that we might well be living in a virtual world not unlike the one in the film Matrix: "No need to wait for Matrix 2 to come out. You could already be living in a giant computer simulation... Of course you thought The Matrix was fiction. But only because you were meant to." Author Brooks supports his views by quoting philosopher Nick Bostrom of Yale University, who believes that Hollywood movies come much closer to reality than we realize. He calculates, too, that there is some probability that we are living in a simulated or virtual world as some movies depict. The scientific fact, much better understood in recent years, that we are not interacting with matter itself, causes people to reflect more deeply. This situation, the frequent inspiration for movies, points out that virtual environments recreate reality so realistically that people can be fooled by these illusionary images. Materialism, Like Every Other False Philosophy, Has Been Destroyed The philosophy of materialism has existed throughout history. Its adherents relied on the supposedly absolute existence of matter while denying God, Who has created them from nothing and also created for them the universe they live in. But the clear evidence leaves no room for discussion. Consequently, matter disappears—on which they based their lives and thoughts, pride and denial. By their own research, strangely enough, materialist scientists discovered that everything they see is not matter itself, but in reality a copy or image formed in the brain. And thus, they themselves brought down their materialist beliefs. The twenty-first century is a turning point in history, in which this reality will spread among all peoples, and materialism will be wiped from the face of the Earth. Some, under the influence of the materialist philosophy, who believed that matter is absolute, now have come to realize that they themselves are illusions, that the only absolute being is God, Whose Being encompasses all there is. This reality is revealed in one of the verses: God bears witness that there is no god but Him, as do the angels and the people of knowledge, upholding justice. There is no god but Him, the Almighty, the All-Wise. (Qur'an, 3: 18)

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http://harunyahya.com/en/works/3430/Scientific-investigations-into-the-essence-of-matter

2013-05-19T19:12:55Z

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The skin is your largest organ and an important defender against invaders. It is constantly bombarded and usually fends off trouble quite successfully. Sometimes, however, an allergen gets the best of your skin, causing a reaction. Symptoms can include a rash or hives, or swelling, itching, and cracking of the skin. Our hands, arms, neck, and face come in contact with so many substances every day that they are the most common sites for an allergic skin reaction, but no part of your anatomy is immune. A skin reaction that is the result of contact with an allergen is called allergic contact dermatitis. (By contrast, a skin reaction caused by contact with a substance that is harsh or caustic is called irritant contact dermatitis and does not involve allergies or the immune system.) Itches happen when skin is irritated. The ordinary reaction to an itch is to scratch. What follows after can be a mess. The more you scratch, the more you damage your skin and the nerves just below the surface of the skin. The skin and nerves become increasingly inflamed, which only results in more itching. The best way to stop an itch is to practice self-control. This article will explore skin allergies in-depth and the reactions they cause. See the next page to get started. This information is solely for informational purposes. IT IS NOT INTENDED TO PROVIDE MEDICAL ADVICE. Neither the Editors of Consumer Guide (R), Publications International, Ltd., the author nor publisher take responsibility for any possible consequences from any treatment, procedure, exercise, dietary modification, action or application of medication which results from reading or following the information contained in this information. The publication of this information does not constitute the practice of medicine, and this information does not replace the advice of your physician or other health care provider. Before undertaking any course of treatment, the reader must seek the advice of their physician or other health care provider.

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http://health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care/problems/medical/skin-allergies-ga.htm

2013-05-19T19:51:27Z

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Your food shall be your medicine - Hippocrates. Diet plays a vital role in the maintenance of good health and in the prevention and cure of disease. In the words of Sir Robert McCarrison, one of the best known nutritionists , " The right kind of food is the most important single factor in the promotion of health ; and the wrong kind of food is the most important single factor in the promotion of disease. " The human body builds up and maintains healthy cells, tissues, glands and organs only with the help of various nutrients. The body cannot perform any of its functions, be they metabolic, hormonal, mental, physical or chemical, without specific nutrients. The food which provides these nutrients is, thus, one of the most essential factors in building and maintaining health. The other essential factors is that , these nutrients must also be appropriately utilised by the body. Nutrition, which depends on food, is also of utmost importance in the cure of disease. The primary cause of disease is a weakened organism or lowered resistance in the body, arising from the adoption of a faulty nutritional pattern. There is an elaborate healing mechanism within the body but it can perform its function only if it is abundantly supplied with all the essential nutritional factors. It is believed that at least 45 chemical components and elements are needed by human cells. An adequate diet must contain each of these 45 substances, called essential nutrients. Two of these nutrients are oxygen and water. The other 43 are classified into five main groups,namely, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals, and vitamins. All 45 of these nutrients are vitally important and they work together. Therefore, the absence of any of them will result in disease and eventually in death. Research has shown that almost all diseases can be attributed, directly or indirectly, to an undersupply of various nutrients. These deficiencies occur due to various factors, such as, the intense processing and refining of foods, the time lag between the harvesting and consumption of vegetables and fruits, the chemicals used in bleaching, flavoring, coloring and preserving foods and the chemical fertilizers, fungicides, insecticides and sprays used for treating the soil. Vitamin losses also occur due to the storage, paring and grating of vegetables, from soaking in water and from the heat of cooking. One of the fundamental principles of nature cure is that most diseases have the same basic underlying cause, namely, the steady accumulation in the system of waste materials through years of wrong food habits. Apart from nutritional deficiencies, other factors contributing to this are a faulty nutritional pattern, constant overeating, excessive consumption of proteins and the body’s inability to properly digest them and sluggish metabolism. As wrong food habits is the most potent cause of disease, a healthy and balanced diet alone can prevent further accumulation of toxic waste matter in the system, purify the blood and allow all bodily structures to work at a high level of efficiency. Research shows that diseases produced by combinations of deficiencies can be corrected when all the nutrients are supplied, provided irreparable damage has not been done. A well-balanced and correct diet is thus of utmost importance for the maintenance of good health and the healing of diseases. Such a diet, obviously should be made up of foods which, in combination, would supply all the essential nutrients. It has been found that a diet which contains liberal quantities of seeds, nuts and grains, vegetables and fruits would provide adequate amounts of all the essential nutrients. These foods have, therefore, been aptly called basic food groups and a diet containing these food groups as an optimum diet for vigour and vitality. This diet has been named the Airole Diet after its exponent, Dr. Paavo O. Airole, the internationally famous nutritionist and naturopathic physician. It is briefly described in the following lines : Seeds, nuts and grains : These are the most important and the most potent of all foods and contain all the important nutrients needed for human growth. They contain the germ, the reproductive power which is of vital importance for the lives of human beings and their health. Millet, wheat, oats, barley, brown rice, beans and peas are all highly valuable in building health. Wheat, mung beans, alfalfa seeds and soya beans make excellent sprouts. Sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds , almonds, peanuts and soya beans contain proteins of high biological value. Seeds, nuts and grains are also excellent natural sources of essential unsaturated fatty acids necessary for health. They are also good sources of lecithin and most of the B vitamins. They are the best natural sources of vitamin C, which is perhaps the most important vitamin for the preservation of health and prevention of premature ageing. Besides, they are rich sources of minerals and supply the necessary bulk in the diet. They also contain anxones, the natural substances that play an important role in the re-juvenation of cells and prevention of premature ageing. Sprouted seeds are a good source of vitamin C and A. All seeds and nuts should ideally be eaten raw but those which can be sprouted, should be consumed in that form to derive maximum nutritional value. Some grains such as rice, wheat, millet, rye and barley can be cooked in the form of cereals and bread. They are an extremely rich source of minerals, enzymes and vitamins. However, faulty cooking and prolonged careless storage, destroy these valuable nutrients. Most of the vegetables are, therefore, best consumed in their natural raw state in the form of salads. There are different kinds of vegetables. They may be edible roots, stems, leaves, fruits and seeds. Each group contributes to the diet in its own way. Fleshy roots have high energy value and are a good source of vitamin B. Seeds are relatively high in carbohydrates and proteins and the yellow ones are rich in Vitamin A. Leaves, stems and fruits are excellent sources of minerals, vitamins, water and roughage. To prevent loss of nutrients in vegetables, it would be advisable to steam or boil vegetables in their juices on a slow fire and the water or cooking liquid should not be drained off. No vegetable should be peeled unless it is so old that the peel is tough and unpalatable. In most root vegetables, the largest amount of minerals is directly under the skin and these are lost if the vegetables are peeled. Soaking of vegetables should also be avoided if taste and nutritive value are to be preserved. An intake of about 280 grams of vegetables per day per person is considered essential for the maintenance of good health. Of this, leafy vegetables should constitute 40 per cent, roots and tubers 30 per cent and the other vegetables like brinjals, ladies fingers and cauliflower 30 per cent. Like vegetables, fruits are an excellent source of minerals, vitamins and enzymes. They are easily digested and exercise a cleansing effect on the blood and digestive tract. They are highly alkaline and contain a high percentage of water and a low percentage of proteins and fats. Their organic acid and high sugar contents have immediate refreshing effects. Apart from seasonal fresh fruits, dry fruits, such as raisins, prunes and figs are also beneficial. Fruits are at their best when eaten in the raw and ripe state. Much of their nutritional value in terms of salts and carbohydrates is lost in cooking. They are most beneficial when taken as a separate meal by themselves, preferably for breakfast. If fruits are eaten with regular food, they should form a fairly large part of the meal. Fruits, however, make better combination with milk than with meals. It is also desirable to take one kind of fruit at a time. For the maintenance of good health, at least one pound of uncooked fruits should form part of the daily diet. In case of sickness, it will be advisable to take fruits in the form of juices. However, juices should be drunk immediately after their extraction as they begin to decompose quickly and turn into harmful substances. Each food group should roughly form the bulk of one of the three principal meals. Fruits can be taken in the morning for breakfast ;seeds, nuts and cereals for lunch and vegetables for dinner. This order can, however, be interchanged to suit one’s requirements. About 75 to 80 per cent of the diet should consist of foods in their natural uncooked sate, because cooking destroys much of the nutritional value of most foods. Sprouting is an excellent way of consuming seeds, beans and grains in their raw form as in the process of sprouting the nutritional value is multiplied. New vitamins are created and the protein quality is improved. Foods should be eaten only in their natural form, that is whole, unprocessed, unrefined and preferably grown organically, without chemical fertilisers and sprays. Organically grown fruits and vegetables contain more enzymes and have greater health-building and disease-preventing potential. The three basic health-building foods mentioned above should be supplemented with certain special foods such as milk, vegetable oils and honey. Milk is an excellent food. It is considered as ‘Nature’s most nearly perfect food.’ According to Charak, the great author of the Indian system of medicines, milk increases strength, improves memory, revitalizes the body, maintains strength and promotes long life. The best way to take milk is in its soured form - that is, yoghurt and cottage cheese. Soured milk is superior to sweet milk as it is in a predigested form and more easily assimilated. Milk helps to prevent intestinal putrefaction and constipation. High quality unrefined vegetable oils should be added to the diet. They are rich in unsaturated fatty acids, vitamin C and F and lecithin. The average daily amount should not exceed two tablespoons. Honey too, is an ideal food. It helps increase calcium retention in the system, prevents anaemia besides being beneficial in kidney and liver disorders, colds,poor circulation and complexion problems. It is one of Nature’s energy-giving food. It is easily digested and assimilated. A diet of the three basic food groups, supplemented with the special foods mentioned above, will ensure a complete and adequate supply of all the vital nutrients needed for health, vitality and prevention of disease. It is not necessary to include animal protein like egg, fish or meat in this basic diet, as animal protein, especially meat, always has a detrimental effect on the healing processes. A high animal protein is harmful to health and may cause many of our most common ailments. Daily menu : Based on what has been stated above, the daily menu of a health-building and vitalising diet should be on the following lines : Upon arising : A glass of lukewarm water with half a freshly squeezed lemon and a spoonful of honey, or a glass of freshly squeezed juice of any available seasonable fruit such as apple, pineapple, orange, mosambi or grapes. Breakfast : Fresh fruits such as apple, orange, banana, grapes or any available seasonable fruits, a cup of unpasturised milk and a handful of raw nuts such as almonds, cashewnuts and peanuts. Lunch : A bowl of freshly prepared steamed vegetables such as carrot, cabbage, cauliflower, potatoes, squash or beans, using sea salt, vegetable oil, or butter for seasoning, one or two whole wheat chappatis and a glass of butter-milk. Mid-afternoon : A glass of fresh fruit or vegetable juice or coconut water or sugar cane juice. Dinner : A large bowl of fresh salad made up of vegetables like tomatoes, carrot, beet, onion, etc., with lemon juice dressing, any available sprouts such as alfalfa seed or mung beans along with one tablespoon of fresh butter, and cottage cheese or a glass of butter-milk. Bed-time snacks : A glass of fresh milk or one apple. The above menu is a general outline around which an individual diet can be built. It can be modified and changed to adapt to specific requirements and conditions. The menu for lunch and dinner is interchangeable. Water should not be taken with meals, but half an hour before or an hour after meals. Milk, butter-milk and vegetable soups can be taken with meals. Diseases can be overcome by sensible natural dietetic treatment. Disease is actually a self-initiated effort of the body to throw off the accumulations of waste materials which are interfering with its functioning. Since most conditions of ill-health are systemic in their origin and have the same underlying causes, the basic treatment is likewise the same. In the beginning of the dietetic treatment, the patient should undergo a short cleansing juice fast so that the body may throw off all the accumulated toxins and wastes. In this regimen, the person should take the juice of a fresh orange or any other juicy fruit diluted in the proportion of 50 : 50 with water. Alternatively, vegetable juices such as carrot, cucumber, beet and spinach may be taken. Each day, while fasting, the bowels should be cleansed with a warm water enema. In certain conditions, the patient may adopt an exclusive fruit diet for a few days in the beginning of the treatment instead of juice fasting. In this regimen, three meals a day of fresh juicy fruits such as oranges, grapes, grapefruits, apples, pineapples,peaches and pears may be taken at five-hourly intervals. After the short juice fast or the all-fruit diet as the case may be, the patient may gradually embark upon a well-balanced diet of three basic food groups, namely seeds, nuts and grains, vegetables and fruits as already outlined. Further , juice fasts or periods on the all-fruit diet may be undertaken at intervals of two or three months depending on the progress being made.

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The fire which claimed the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee stunned the nation and rocked the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The disaster had the potential to bring a permanent halt to American efforts in space exploration. Rather than bury its head in the sand, NASA launched a full-scale investigation of the fire, and voluntarily put the entire Apollo program, including its administration, policies and procedures under the scrutiny of a review board. Based on the board's findings, NASA rolled up its sleeves and went to work to resolve the problems that had been identified. A successful failure is a mission which fails to reach its objectives and yet still achieves an element of success. Apollo I never left the launch pad. However, the information gained from this fatal mission paved the way for a totally redesigned Apollo spacecraft, eleven Apollo space flights and six lunar landings. Although Grissom, White and Chaffee never walked on the moon, their sacrifice helped to make it possible for us collectively to take "one giant leap for mankind". (1) It is crucial to remember the hard lessons learned from Apollo I and eulogies are part of that remembering. Yet, Grissom, White and Chaffee may be honored best by continuing the work they began. Each of them believed that reaching the moon was not meant to be an end but a beginning. Thirty years ago, Grissom considered manned missions to Mars and crews assembling, living and working on space stations as realistic follow-ups to a lunar landing. While he recognized the place of ever-improving technology, White was emphatic about the need for manned missions: "You'll never satisfy man's curiosity unless a man goes himself." (2) Only weeks before he died, Gus Grissom wrote the following: "There will be risks, as there are in any experimental program, and sooner or later, we're going to run head-on into the law of averages and lose somebody. I hope this never happens, and... perhaps it never will, but if it does, I hope the American people won't think it's too high a price to pay for our space program." (3) We can honor Grissom, White and Chaffee only if we follow in their footsteps and peacefully continue to explore space. Our future work in space is bound to include other successful failures. Yet Apollo I has taught us that we can never really fail as long as we doggedly persist in our efforts. The greatest lesson we can learn from Grissom, White and Chaffee is that failure is impossible for those who refuse to abandon their goals. Ultimately, the most fitting tribute to the crew of Apollo I is for us to continue doing that for which they gave their lives. As we expand our boundaries further into space, beyond this tiny sphere in the vast universe which we call earth, we honor Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. 1. Andrew Chaikin, A Man On The Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts (New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1995), p. 209. 2. Life, June 18, 1965, p. 39. 3. Virgil Grissom, Gemini: A Personal Account of Man's Venture Into Space (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1968), p. 184. Go to other detailed biographies of Apollo 204 Crew Roger Chaffee biography Gus Grissom biography Ed White biography Updated August 4, 2006 Steve Garber, NASA History Web Curator For further information E-mail [email protected]

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Finding out that you have HIV can be scary and overwhelming. This can be especially true if you are a young person. If you feel overwhelmed, try to remember that you can get help and that you will not feel this way forever--the scary feelings will get better with time. There are some things that you should know about HIV that may ease some of the stress or confusion you are feeling: |HIV does not equal death: having HIV does not mean that you are going to die. | |It does not automatically mean that you have AIDS.| HIV is the virus that causes AIDS, and yes, left untreated, it can lead to death. This is why it is so important to get medical care if you find out you have HIV. Do not be afraid to seek a doctor or other health care provider--he or she can help you to stay well and, hopefully, not get sick. Treatments for HIV are not perfect, and are not available to everyone around the world, but they can be very effective for many people. A doctor or other health care provider can explain the best options for you and help you to stay well. If you have HIV, it is important to know that you could give the virus to others by having unprotected sex or sharing needles (or, if you have a child, by breast-feeding). This is true even if you are feeling perfectly fine, and even if you are taking HIV medications or your virus is "undetectable." Using condoms and clean needles can prevent spreading HIV to other people. It can also protect you from getting infected with other strains of HIV or other diseases. Remember the most important things you can do right now are: |Start seeing a doctor or other health care provider.|

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When we have a head cold, our brain works overtime to make sure our sense of smell is just as sharp when our stuffed nose clears up. “It also implies that deprivation has a significant impact on the brain, rather than on the nose itself,” says lead author Keng Nei Wu, a graduate student in neuroscience at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “More knowledge about how the system reacts to short-term deprivation may provide new insights into how to deal with this problem in a chronic context.” Full story at Futurity. More research news from top universities. Photo credit: Fotolia

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- Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building - http://inhabitat.com - New Graphene Lithium-Air Batteries Increase Energy Density and Decrease Costs Posted By Brit Liggett On November 29, 2011 @ 12:52 pm In green technology,Green Transportation,Renewable Energy | 1 Comment In a not so distant future the concept of electric vehicle range anxiety may completely disappear thanks to research by laboratories across the nation. Technology took a step closer to that future today with the invention of a new type of Lithium-Air batteries made from graphene bubbles that have an energy density so high they could take an electric vehicle 300 miles between charges. In addition to the extended battery life, the batteries are made without precious metals like platinum, which greatly reduces production cost. In order to create the graphene bubbles the researchers mixed graphene — a form of carbon — with a binding agent. They then released the solution into water and mixed it to create tiny bubbles, and the graphene and the binding agent formed hard shells around the water bubbles. When the bubbles were popped, graphene shells about 10 times smaller than the width of a human hair were left behind. The resulting structures can store 15,000 milliamp hours per gram of graphene – a much higher energy density than is possible with other materials. However a few obstacles stand in the way of bringing this technology to the market. For one, the batteries perform best in an oxygen-only environment – the moisture in ambient air interferes with the reaction and diminishes the battery capacity. In addition, the technology is not fully rechargeable yet – something the researchers are working hard to remedy. “This hierarchical structure of self-assembled graphene sheets is an ideal design not only for lithium-air batteries but also for many other potential energy applications,” said Dr. Jie Xiao, a leader of the study at PNNL. To top it all off, the lithium-air batteries with graphene bubbles are lighter in weight than current batteries. Less weight, less cost and more energy sounds like the future to us. Via PhysOrg Article printed from Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building: http://inhabitat.com URL to article: http://inhabitat.com/new-graphene-lithium-air-batteries-increase-energy-density-and-decrease-costs/ URLs in this post: Tweet: http://twitter.com/share Share on Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/share Email: mailto:?subject=http://inhabitat.com/new-graphene-lithium-air-batteries-increase-energy-density-and-decrease-costs/ range anxiety may completely disappear thanks to research by laboratories across the nation. Technology took a step closer to that future today with the invention of a new type of Lithium-Air batteries made from graphene bubbles: http://inhabitat.com/index.php?s=range+anxiety energy density: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density graphene: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene milliamp hours: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampere fully rechargeable: http://inhabitat.com/index.php?s=electric+vehicle+charging+station PhysOrg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-energy-storage-lithium-air-batteries.html Copyright © 2011 Inhabitat Local - New York. All rights reserved.

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Boo Chapple, an artist, has made audio speakers out of pieces of cow femur. To do this, she exploits the same property that puts crystals in watches and ceramics in microphones, which is an intrinsic part of bone structure. Find out why your entire skeleton is wired for sound. An Australian artist decided to make an audio art exhibit that could have been part of the set of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. All around the exhibit, television sets showed footage of things that make low-frequency noises; cows. Instead of being hooked up to speakers, the televisions were hooked up to bones. Put a stethoscope to the bone, and it would allow you to hear a song about cows and vibrations. The bones weren't being vibrated. They were merely being zapped with electricity. The bones themselves transformed the zapping into sound, via a physical property known as piezoelectricity. Piezo means "push" in Greek. When piezoelectric materials get pushed out of shape slightly, they create an electrical charge. And when a charge goes through them, they slightly change their shape. In watches, piezoelectric quartz crystals are used to keep the time, since they oscillate a precise number of times each time they get zapped. In microphones, including the ones in telephones, they translate vibrational sound into an electric charge that can travel through wires. Why do bones have piezoelectric properties? It probably helps with healing them, scientists say. Piezoelectricity seems to be part of the collagen that keeps bones from being brittle and breakable. The more stress that a bone receives at a certain point, the more it builds up. Piezoelectric signals from areas that feel a lot of impacts during the day could cause the body to build up, or heal, that area of the bone. Whatever the reason, it appears that our entire skeletal system is a natural transducer, meaning a material or device that changes energy from one form to another. And our bones are electric-mechanical transducers, which is why they can be wired for sound, as they are in Chapple's art exhibit. Every compression of bones causes electric signals to pound through the body, and every electric shock to the system literally rattles the bones. Image: Science Gallery

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Brrr. The coldest days of winter are upon us, prompting me to wonder: “How did people in days of yore keep warm?” Today we can turn up the heat with the merest flick of a switch, but during the 18th and 19th centuries people had to make do in draughty and leaky houses with their high ceilings, ill-fitting windows, and lack of central plumbing and heating. Planning and a great deal of effort went into gathering fuel and maintaining fires in open fire places. Much of the heat escaped up chimneys and draughts were always a problem. Without the aid of room screens and fireplace screens, a person could feel both hot and cold at once standing in front of a fire. The upper crust might have had more resources to purchase good quality fuels and hire more people laboring on their behalf, but many a fashionable regency woman wearing a thin muslin gown covered by only a Norwich shawl would catch a deadly cold or pneumonia from wearing such inadequate covering. This phenomenon was so common in the early part of the 19th century that it was termed “the muslin disease.” - Rakehell. Travel in winter was not easy. Carriages and conveyances were unheated, and many people sat outside exposed to the elements. A footwarmer and fur blanket over layered winter clothing helped to stave off the cold for those who could afford such luxuries, but most people had to bundle up and deal with the weather as it came. Writing to her husband John in 1798, Abigail Adams describes winter travel conditions in the colonies, which were not unlike those on most roads in England at the time: We came five and thirty miles to this Place. From New York our poor Horses have waded and dragged the Carriage through Snow banks and Mud, till I have dreaded their failure. They have Supported the fatigue however a mervaille and even Sloan as lean as a lath has brought along Frank in the Saddle very well. We have yet five and thirty miles to Phyladelphia. I took a ride in the Sleigh yesterday afternoon towards Milton. The whole Earth looks like mid winter, and the Snow is 4 and 5 foot deep, in Banks driven together and consoladated so that it will lie at the Sides of the Road till next March or April. At Plimouth and Hingham there was very little, not much at Weymouth but the nearer you advance towards Boston the deeper it is. If it had fallen level it would have made excellent travelling.- 25 November Bundling up in layers of wool, fur, cotton, and linen was the first line of defense. The following passage of people entering an inn describes how they removed their outer wear when traveling: Meanwhile passengers are busy taking off coats one two and three in succession those were the days of bona fide great coats, nowadays become lessened and merely overcoats.Chins appear out of their many wrappages of silk, and fur caps are bundled into pockets. Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore A Picturesque History of the Coaching Age … By Charles George Harper People wore layered clothing made of wool, flannel, or fur. Typical winter outerwear included hooded capes, great coats, scarves, cloaks, shawls, scarves, muffs, gloves, mittens, thick socks, stockings, long wraps, caps, hats, and ear mufs. Sitting in open sleighs, carts, and carriages, people would tuck comforters, quilts, or blankets around them, and bring umbrellas to protect them from freezing rain. Fur sets and fur trimming made of beaver, fox, bear, and marten were common. Seal skin coats prevented wind and rain from penetrating to the skin, and swans down muffs kept delicate hands warm and protected. A foot warmer heated with coal would complete the traveling ensemble. It must be added that people were more accustomed to the ambient temperatures than we are today. When I lived for six weeks in New Zealand in winter in a house without central heat, I quickly became accustomed to the cooler temperatures. (In fact, I now keep my house much cooler than I did before that protracted visit, a fact I quite often forget when guests come over.) To return to yesteryear, layered clothing was the key to keeping warm. All but the most fashionable regency women would have worn several petticoats (even 4 or 5), stockings and/or socks, leather boots or shoes, a dress over a chemise, a thick shawl, fingerless mittens, and the ubiquitous cap as they went about their housewively duties. Outdoors, they would have added jackets, scarves, kid gloves, and a hat over their caps to keep warm. Gentlemen wore drawers and sometimes a girdle known as a stomacher, woolen waistcoasts over muslin or linen shirts, and a coat to complete the indoor ensembles. Their cravats and high shirt points protected necks, tall leather boots protected feet, leather gloves, beaver hats, and multi-caped greatcoats completed the outdoor ensemble. Fuel came in the form of firewood, coal, or dried dung, depending on what a family could afford or was most easily available. Chopping wood took effort and was time consuming, and firewood needed to be seasoned to burn most effectively. The scarcity of firewood in deforested regions would force individuals to go far afield to search for logs and kindling. F. L. Hartwell, a civil war soldier, wrote vividly about a soldier’s attempt to keep warm when camped out in mid-winter: We have been very cold for the past 2 1/2 days as we had a snow & sleet storm from the northeast. we could not keep warm or even comfortable in beed [sic]or out as we could not all get around our fire at once, we have to go a mile from Camp to get wood to burn & green pine at that. How would you like that to burn at home well we have to go 2 times apiece in cold days making each 4 miles travel each day to keep us warm and cook by. - To My Beloved Wife and Boy at Home, p60. (Spelling and underline – the author’s) Charles Crowe’s recollections in his Peninsular Journal (1812,1813, 1814) were as follows: We reached Friera [Ferreirra do Zezere ?], after a tedious march, for we strongly suspected that our guide wilfully led us a circuitous route. Here we found a strong contrast to our last quarters, empty houses divested of everything, even of door and window frames, and our men had very comfortless lodgings. Some Officers had joined us from the rear, and we here mustered seven, all of whom repaired to a large mansion near the town. The owner fled to Coimbra when the French took possession of the country, leaving an old gardner in charge. This man very kindly brought a large quantity of wood for me to burn, for, excepting the kitchen, mine was the only room possessing a fire place. I soon made a good fire and resolved to spend a comfortable evening in writing home, and drying my little wardrobe. But I was soon found out, and five of our comrades came to spend the evening with me, and were so well pleased with so agreeable a companion, to wit, the fire, that they stayed late, and left me with a small store of fuel for the night, which was very cold, the room large, and my blanket damp. My great coat was my only covering, a deal form was my pallet, and my writing case served for bolster and pillow. For most households, the kitchen with its large open hearth and constantly burning stoves became the focal point for both family and servants in the evening. It was not unusual for master and mistress of the house to sit in the kitchen with the servants – the women sewing and the men reading – as they sat by the only source of heat and light at night. The above illustration of a Dutch interior in a small house is reminiscent of family scenes all over Northern Europe, with the family gathered in one room, along with the family’s pets. The two gentleman in the Cruikshank illustrations below seem to live in rented rooms. One has placed his table/desk near the fireplace, in which a boiling kettle is steaming (no doubt to add to Cruickhank’s satire on jealousy). The sick man sits in front of an open grate in a high-backed chair, which kept the heat from escaping. Coal fires were common in the city, where soot and smoke helped to create the pollution and fogs for which London was so famously known during the industrial revolution. American Louis Simond, visiting London in 1810, remarked that ‘the smoke of fossil coals forms an atmosphere, perceivable for many miles’. Marianne, writing to Willoughby on a winter’s day in London would have needed to light a candle even at midday in order to see her pen and paper clearly. – How Clean Was Jane Austen’s London? The wealthy could afford to have rooms heated when and where they liked, and whether it was cold outside or not. In this photograph, Mr. Woodhouse in the A&E version of Emma is seen sitting by a fire expressly laid out for him in the drawing room at Donwell Abbey as the rest of the party picked strawberries. Such extravagance for one individual would have been impossible for a majority of the people at that time. As the 18th century progressed, fireplaces became more efficient. Rumford fireplaces, common from 1796 – 1850, were designed to carry away more smoke and reflect more heat. In Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland was disappointed to note the brand-new Rumford stove that General Tilney had installed along with other modern improvements. Next week, Keeping Warm in the Regency Era, Part Two. Top photograph: Surrey landscape

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What might head a list of the defining characteristics of the human species? While our view of ourselves could hardly avoid highlighting our accomplishments in engineering, art, medicine, space travel and the like, in a more dispassionate assessment agriculture would probably displace all other contenders for top billing. Most of the other achievements of humankind have followed from this one. Almost without exception, all people on earth today are sustained by agriculture. With a minute number of exceptions, no other species is a farmer. Essentially all of the arable land in the world is under cultivation. Yet agriculture began just a few thousand years ago, long after the appearance of anatomically modern humans. Given the rate and the scope of this revolution in human biology, it is quite extraordinary that there is no generally accepted model accounting for the origin of agriculture. Indeed, an increasing array of arguments over recent years has suggested that agriculture, far from being a natural and upward step, in fact led commonly to a lower quality of life. Hunter-gatherers typically do less work for the same amount of food, are healthier, and are less prone to famine than primitive farmers (Lee & DeVore 1968, Cohen 1977, 1989). A biological assessment of what has been called the puzzle of agriculture might phrase it in simple ethological terms: why was this behaviour (agriculture) reinforced (and hence selected for) if it was not offering adaptive rewards surpassing those accruing to hunter-gathering or foraging economies? This paradox is responsible for a profusion of models of the origin of agriculture. 'Few topics in prehistory', noted Hayden (1990) 'have engendered as much discussion and resulted in so few satisfying answers as the attempt to explain why hunter/gatherers began to cultivate plants and raise animals. Climatic change, population pressure, sedentism, resource concentration from desertification, girls' hormones, land ownership, geniuses, rituals, scheduling conflicts, random genetic kicks, natural selection, broad spectrum adaptation and multicausal retreats from explanation have all been proffered to explain domestication. All have major flaws ... the data do not accord well with any one of these models.' Recent discoveries of potentially psychoactive substances in certain agricultural products -- cereals and milk -- suggest an additional perspective on the adoption of agriculture and the behavioural changes ('civilisation') that followed it. In this paper we review the evidence for the drug-like properties of these foods, and then show how they can help to solve the biological puzzle just described. The emergence of agriculture and civilisation in the Neolithic The transition to agriculture From about 10,000 years ago, groups of people in several areas around the world began to abandon the foraging lifestyle that had been successful, universal and largely unchanged for millennia (Lee & DeVore 1968). They began to gather, then cultivate and settle around, patches of cereal grasses and to domesticate animals for meat, labour, skins and other materials, and milk. Farming, based predominantly on wheat and barley, first appeared in the Middle East, and spread quickly to western Asia, Egypt and Europe. The earliest civilisations all relied primarily on cereal agriculture. Cultivation of fruit trees began three thousand years later, again in the MiddleEast, and vegetables and other crops followed (Zohari 1986). Cultivation of rice began in Asia about 7000 years ago (Stark 1986). To this day, for most people, two-thirds of protein and calorie intake is cereal-derived. (In the west, in the twentieth century, cereal consumption has decreased slightly in favour of meat, sugar, fats and so on.) The respective contributions of each cereal to current total world production are: wheat (28 per cent), corn/maize (27 per cent), rice (25 per cent), barley (10 per cent), others (10 per cent) (Pedersen et al. 1989). The change in the diet due to agriculture The modern human diet is very different from that of closely related primates and, almost certainly, early hominids (Gordon 1987). Though there is controversy over what humans ate before the development of agriculture, the diet certainly did not include cereals and milk in appreciable quantities. The storage pits and processing tools necessary for significant consumption of cereals did not appear until the Neolithic (Washburn & Lancaster 1968). Dairy products were not available in quantity before the domestication of animals. The early hominid diet (from about four million years ago), evolving as it did from that of primate ancestors, consisted primarily of fruits, nuts and other vegetable matter, and some meat -- items that could be foraged for and eaten with little or no processing. Comparisons of primate and fossil-hominid anatomy, and of the types and distribution of plants eaten raw by modern chimpanzees, baboons and humans (Peters & O'Brien 1981, Kay 1985), as well as microscope analysis of wear patterns on fossil teeth (Walker 1981, Peuch et al.1983) suggest that australopithecines were 'mainly frugivorous omnivores with a dietary pattern similar to that of modern chimpanzees' (Susman 1987:171). The diet of pre-agricultural but anatomically modern humans (from 30,000 years ago) diversified somewhat, but still consisted of meat, fruits, nuts, legumes, edible roots and tubers, with consumption of cereal seeds only increasing towards the end of the Pleistocene (e.g. Constantini 1989 and subsequent chapters in Harris and Hillman 1989). The rise of civilisation Within a few thousand years of the adoption of cereal agriculture, the old hunter-gatherer style of social organisation began to decline. Large, hierarchically organised societies appeared, centred around villages and then cities. With the rise of civilisation and the state came socioeconomic classes, job specialisation, governments and armies. The size of populations living as coordinated units rose dramatically above pre-agricultural norms. While hunter-gatherers lived in egalitarian, autonomous bands of about 20 closely related persons, with at most a tribal level of organisation above that, early agricultural villages had 50 to 200 inhabitants, and early cities 10,000 or more. People 'had to learn to curb deep-rooted forces which worked for increasing conflict and violence in large groups' (Pfeiffer 1977:438). Agriculture and civilisation meant the end of foraging -- a subsistence method with shortterm goals and rewards -- and the beginning (for most) of regular arduous work, oriented to future payoffs and the demands of superiors. 'With the coming of large communities, families no longer cultivated the land for themselves and their immediate needs alone, but for strangers and for the future. They worked all day instead of a few hours a day, as hunter-gatherers had done. There were schedules, quotas, overseers, and punishments for slacking off' (Pfeiffer 1977:21). Explaining the origins of agriculture and civilisation The phenomena of human agriculture and civilisation are ethologically interesting, because (1) virtually no other species lives this way, and (2) humans did not live this way until relatively recently. Why was this way of life adopted, and why has it become dominant in the human species? Problems explaining agriculture Until recent decades, the transition to farming was seen as an inherently progressive one: people learnt that planting seeds caused crops to grow, and this new improved food source led to larger populations, sedentary farm and town life, more leisure time and so to specialisation, writing, technological advances and civilisation. It is now clear that agriculture was adopted despite certain disadvantages of that lifestyle (e.g. Flannery 1973, Henry 1989). There is a substantial literature (e.g. Reed 1977), not only on how agriculture began, but why. Palaeopathological and comparative studies show that health deteriorated in populations that adopted cereal agriculture, returning to pre-agricultural levels only in modem times. This is in part attributable to the spread of infection in crowded cities, but is largely due to a decline in dietary quality that accompanied intensive cereal farming (Cohen 1989). People in many parts of the world remained hunter-gatherers until quite recently; though they were quite aware of the existence and methods of agriculture, they declined to undertake it (Lee & DeVore 1968, Harris 1977). Cohen (1977:141) summarised the problem by asking: 'If agriculture provides neither better diet, nor greater dietary reliability, nor greater ease, but conversely appears to provide a poorer diet, less reliably, with greater labor costs, why does anyone become a farmer?' Many explanations have been offered, usually centred around a particular factor that forced the adoption of agriculture, such as environmental or population pressure (for reviews see Rindos 1984, Pryor 1986, Redding 1988, Blumler & Byrne 1991). Each of these models has been criticised extensively, and there is at this time no generally accepted explanation of the origin of agriculture. Problems explaining civilisation A similar problem is posed by the post-agricultural appearance, all over the world, of cities and states, and again there is a large literature devoted to explaining it (e.g. Claessen & Skalnik 1978). The major behavioural changes made in adopting the civilised lifestyle beg explanation. Bledsoe (1987:136) summarised the situation thus: 'There has never been and there is not now agreement on the nature and significance of the rise of civilisation. The questions posed by the problem are simple, yet fundamental. How did civilisation come about? What animus impelled man to forego the independence, intimacies, and invariability of tribal existence for the much larger and more impersonal political complexity we call the state? What forces fused to initiate the mutation that slowly transformed nomadic societies into populous cities with ethnic mixtures, stratified societies, diversified economies and unique cultural forms? Was the advent of civilisation the inevitable result of social evolution and natural laws of progress or was man the designer of his own destiny? Have technological innovations been the motivating force or was it some intangible factor such as religion or intellectual advancement?' To a very good approximation, every civilisation that came into being had cereal agriculture as its subsistence base, and wherever cereals were cultivated, civilisation appeared. Some hypotheses have linked the two. For example, Wittfogel's (1957) 'hydraulic theory' postulated that irrigation was needed for agriculture, and the state was in turn needed to organise irrigation. But not all civilisations used irrigation, and other possible factors (e.g. river valley placement, warfare, trade, technology, religion, and ecological and population pressure) have not led to a universally accepted model. Pharmacological properties of cereals and milk Recent research into the pharmacology of food presents a new perspective on these problems. Exorphins: opioid substances in food Prompted by a possible link between diet and mental illness, several researchers in the late 1970s began investigating the occurrence of drug-like substances in some common foodstuffs. Dohan (1966, 1984) and Dohan et al. (1973, 1983) found that symptoms of schizophrenia were relieved somewhat when patients were fed a diet free of cereals and milk. He also found that people with coeliac disease -- those who are unable to eat wheat gluten because of higher than normal permeability of the gut -- were statistically likely to suffer also from schizophrenia. Research in some Pacific communities showed that schizophrenia became prevalent in these populations only after they became 'partially westernised and consumed wheat, barley beer, and rice' (Dohan 1984). Groups led by Zioudrou (1979) and Brantl (1979) found opioid activity in wheat, maize and barley (exorphins), and bovine and human milk (casomorphin), as well as stimulatory activity in these proteins, and in oats, rye and soy. Cereal exorphin is much stronger than bovine casomorphin, which in turn is stronger than human casomorphin. Mycroft et al. (1982, 1987) found an analogue of MIF-1, a naturally occurring dopaminergic peptide, in wheat and milk. It occurs in no other exogenous protein. (In subsequent sections we use the term exorphin to cover exorphins, casomorphin, and the MIF-1 analogue. Though opioid and dopaminergic substances work in different ways, they are both 'rewarding', and thus more or less equivalent for our purposes.) Since then, researchers have measured the potency of exorphins, showing them to be comparable to morphine and enkephalin (Heubner et al. 1984), determined their amino acid sequences (Fukudome &Yoshikawa 1992), and shown that they are absorbed from the intestine (Svedburg et al.1985) and can produce effects such as analgesia and reduction of anxiety which are usually associated with poppy-derived opioids (Greksch et al.1981, Panksepp et al.1984). Mycroft et al. estimated that 150 mg of the MIF-1 analogue could be produced by normal daily intake of cereals and milk, noting that such quantities are orally active, and half this amount 'has induced mood alterations in clinically depressed subjects' (Mycroft et al. 1982:895). (For detailed reviews see Gardner 1985 and Paroli 1988.) Most common drugs of addiction are either opioid (e.g heroin and morphine) or dopaminergic (e.g. cocaine and amphetamine), and work by activating reward centres in the brain. Hence we may ask, do these findings mean that cereals and milk are chemically rewarding? Are humans somehow 'addicted' to these foods? Problems in interpreting these findings Discussion of the possible behavioural effects of exorphins, in normal dietary amounts, has been cautious. Interpretations of their significance have been of two types: where a pathological effect is proposed (usually by cereal researchers, and related to Dohan's findings, though see also Ramabadran & Bansinath 1988), and where a natural function is proposed (by milk researchers, who suggest that casomorphin may help in mother-infant bonding or otherwise regulate infant development). We believe that there can be no natural function for ingestion of exorphins by adult humans. It may be that a desire to find a natural function has impeded interpretation (as well as causing attention to focus on milk, where a natural function is more plausible) . It is unlikely that humans are adapted to a large intake of cereal exorphin, because the modern dominance of cereals in the diet is simply too new. If exorphin is found in cow's milk, then it may have a natural function for cows; similarly, exorphins in human milk may have a function for infants. But whether this is so or not, adult humans do not naturally drink milk of any kind, so any natural function could not apply to them. Our sympathies therefore lie with the pathological interpretation of exorphins, whereby substances found in cereals and milk are seen as modern dietary abnormalities which may cause schizophrenia, coeliac disease or whatever. But these are serious diseases found in a minority. Can exorphins be having an effect on humankind at large? Other evidence for 'drug-like' effects of these foods Research into food allergy has shown that normal quantities of some foods can have pharmacological, including behavioural, effects. Many people develop intolerances to particular foods. Various foods are implicated, and a variety of symptoms is produced. (The term 'intolerance' rather than allergy is often used, as in many cases the immune system may not be involved (Egger 1988:159). Some intolerance symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, epilepsy, hyperactivity, and schizophrenic episodes involve brain function (Egger 1988, Scadding & Brostoff 1988). Radcliffe (1982, quoted in 1987:808) listed the foods at fault, in descending order of frequency, in a trial involving 50 people: wheat (more than 70 per cent of subjects reacted in some way to it), milk (60 per cent), egg (35 per cent), corn, cheese, potato, coffee, rice, yeast, chocolate, tea, citrus, oats, pork, plaice, cane, and beef (10 per cent). This is virtually a list of foods that have become common in the diet following the adoption of agriculture, in order of prevalence. The symptoms most commonly alleviated by treatment were mood change (>50 per cent) followed by headache, musculoskeletal and respiratory ailments. One of the most striking phenomena in these studies is that patients often exhibit cravings, addiction and withdrawal symptoms with regard to these foods (Egger 1988:170, citing Randolph 1978; see also Radcliffe 1987:808-10, 814, Kroker 1987:856, 864, Sprague & Milam 1987:949, 953, Wraith 1987:489, 491). Brostoff and Gamlin (1989:103) estimated that 50 per cent of intolerance patients crave the foods that cause them problems, and experience withdrawal symptoms when excluding those foods from their diet. Withdrawal symptoms are similar to those associated with drug addictions (Radcliffe 1987:808). The possibility that exorphins are involved has been noted (Bell 1987:715), and Brostoff and Gamlin conclude (1989:230): '... the results so far suggest that they might influence our mood. There is certainly no question of anyone getting 'high' on a glass of milk or a slice of bread - the amounts involved are too small for that - but these foods might induce a sense of comfort and wellbeing, as food-intolerant patients often say they do. There are also other hormone-like peptides in partial digests of food, which might have other effects on the body.' There is no possibility that craving these foods has anything to do with the popular notion of the body telling the brain what it needs for nutritional purposes. These foods were not significant in the human diet before agriculture, and large quantities of them cannot be necessary for nutrition. In fact, the standard way to treat food intolerance is to remove the offending items from the patient's diet. A suggested interpretation of exorphin research But what are the effects of these foods on normal people? Though exorphins cannot have a naturally selected physiological function in humans, this does not mean that they have no effect. Food intolerance research suggests that cereals and milk, in normal dietary quantities, are capable of affecting behaviour in many people. And if severe behavioural effects in schizophrenics and coeliacs can be caused by higher than normal absorption of peptides, then more subtle effects, which may not even be regarded as abnormal, could be produced in people generally. The evidence presented so far suggests the following interpretation. The ingestion of cereals and milk, in normal modern dietary amounts by normal humans, activates reward centres in the brain. Foods that were common in the diet before agriculture (fruits and so on) do not have this pharmacological property. The effects of exorphins are qualitatively the same as those produced by other opioid and / or dopaminergic drugs, that is, reward, motivation, reduction of anxiety, a sense of wellbeing, and perhaps even addiction. Though the effects of a typical meal are quantitatively less than those of doses of those drugs, most modern humans experience them several times a day, every day of their adult lives. Hypothesis: exorphins and the origin of agriculture and civilisation When this scenario of human dietary practices is viewed in the light of the problem of the origin of agriculture described earlier, it suggests an hypothesis that combines the results of these lines of enquiry. Exorphin researchers, perhaps lacking a long-term historical perspective, have generally not investigated the possibility that these foods really are drug-like, and have instead searched without success for exorphin's natural function. The adoption of cereal agriculture and the subsequent rise of civilisation have not been satisfactorily explained, because the behavioural changes underlying them have no obvious adaptive basis. These unsolved and until-now unrelated problems may in fact solve each other. The answer, we suggest, is this: cereals and dairy foods are not natural human foods, but rather are preferred because they contain exorphins. This chemical reward was the incentive for the adoption of cereal agriculture in the Neolithic. Regular self-administration of these substances facilitated the behavioural changes that led to the subsequent appearance of civilisation. This is the sequence of events that we envisage. Climatic change at the end of the last glacial period led to an increase in the size and concentration of patches of wild cereals in certain areas (Wright 1977). The large quantities of cereals newly available provided an incentive to try to make a meal of them. People who succeeded in eating sizeable amounts of cereal seeds discovered the rewarding properties of the exorphins contained in them. Processing methods such as grinding and cooking were developed to make cereals more edible. The more palatable they could be made, the more they were consumed, and the more important the exorphin reward became for more people. At first, patches of wild cereals were protected and harvested. Later, land was cleared and seeds were planted and tended, to increase quantity and reliability of supply. Exorphins attracted people to settle around cereal patches, abandoning their nomadic lifestyle, and allowed them to display tolerance instead of aggression as population densities rose in these new conditions. Though it was, we suggest, the presence of exorphins that caused cereals (and not an alternative already prevalent in the diet) to be the major early cultigens, this does not mean that cereals are 'just drugs'. They have been staples for thousands of years, and clearly have nutritional value. However, treating cereals as 'just food' leads to difficulties in explaining why anyone bothered to cultivate them. The fact that overall health declined when they were incorporated into the diet suggests that their rapid, almost total replacement of other foods was due more to chemical reward than to nutritional reasons. It is noteworthy that the extent to which early groups became civilised correlates with the type of agriculture they practised. That is, major civilisations (in south-west Asia, Europe, India, and east and parts of South-East Asia; central and parts of north and south America; Egypt, Ethiopia and parts of tropical and west Africa) stemmed from groups which practised cereal, particularly wheat, agriculture (Bender 1975:12, Adams 1987:201, Thatcher 1987:212). (The rarer nomadic civilisations were based on dairy farming.) Groups which practised vegeculture (of fruits, tubers etc.), or no agriculture (in tropical and south Africa, north and central Asia, Australia, New Guinea and the Pacific, and much of north and south America) did not become civilised to the same extent. Thus major civilisations have in common that their populations were frequent ingesters of exorphins. We propose that large, hierarchical states were a natural consequence among such populations. Civilisation arose because reliable, on-demand availability of dietary opioids to individuals changed their behaviour, reducing aggression, and allowed them to become tolerant of sedentary life in crowded groups, to perform regular work, and to be more easily subjugated by rulers. Two socioeconomic classes emerged where before there had been only one (Johnson & Earle 1987:270), thus establishing a pattern which has been prevalent since that time. The natural diet and genetic change Some nutritionists deny the notion of a pre-agricultural natural human diet on the basis that humans are omnivorous, or have adapted to agricultural foods (e.g. Garn & Leonard 1989; for the contrary view see for example Eaton & Konner 1985). An omnivore, however, is simply an animal that eats both meat and plants: it can still be quite specialised in its preferences (chimpanzees are an appropriate example). A degree of omnivory in early humans might have preadapted them to some of the nutrients contained in cereals, but not to exorphins, which are unique to cereals. The differential rates of lactase deficiency, coeliac disease and favism (the inability to metabolise fava beans) among modern racial groups are usually explained as the result of varying genetic adaptation to post-agricultural diets (Simopoulos 1990:27-9), and this could be thought of as implying some adaptation to exorphins as well. We argue that little or no such adaptation has occurred, for two reasons: first, allergy research indicates that these foods still cause abnormal reactions in many people, and that susceptibility is variable within as well as between populations, indicating that differential adaptation is not the only factor involved. Second, the function of the adaptations mentioned is to enable humans to digest those foods, and if they are adaptations, they arose because they conferred a survival advantage. But would susceptibility to the rewarding effects of exorphins lead to lower, or higher, reproductive success? One would expect in general that an animal with a supply of drugs would behave less adaptively and so lower its chances of survival. But our model shows how the widespread exorphin ingestion in humans has led to increased population. And once civilisation was the norm, non-susceptibility to exorphins would have meant not fitting in with society. Thus, though there may be adaptation to the nutritional content of cereals, there will be little or none to exorphins. In any case, while contemporary humans may enjoy the benefits of some adaptation to agricultural diets, those who actually made the change ten thousand years ago did not. Other 'non-nutritional' origins of agriculture models We are not the first to suggest a non-nutritional motive for early agriculture. Hayden (1990) argued that early cultigens and trade items had more prestige value than utility, and suggested that agriculture began because the powerful used its products for competitive feasting and accrual of wealth. Braidwood et al. (1953) and later Katz and Voigt (1986) suggested that the incentive for cereal cultivation was the production of alcoholic beer: 'Under what conditions would the consumption of a wild plant resource be sufficiently important to lead to a change in behaviour (experiments with cultivation) in order to ensure an adequate supply of this resource? If wild cereals were in fact a minor part of the diet, any argument based on caloric need is weakened. It is our contention that the desire for alcohol would constitute a perceived psychological and social need that might easily prompt changes in subsistence behaviour' (Katz & Voigt 1986:33). This view is clearly compatible with ours. However there may be problems with an alcohol hypothesis: beer may have appeared after bread and other cereal products, and been consumed less widely or less frequently (Braidwood et al. 1953). Unlike alcohol, exorphins are present in all these products. This makes the case for chemical reward as the motive for agriculture much stronger. Opium poppies, too, were an early cultigen (Zohari 1986). Exorphin, alcohol, and opium are primarily rewarding (as opposed to the typically hallucinogenic drugs used by some hunter-gatherers) and it is the artificial reward which is necessary, we claim, for civilisation. Perhaps all three were instrumental in causing civilised behaviour to emerge. Cereals have important qualities that differentiate them from most other drugs. They are a food source as well as a drug, and can be stored and transported easily. They are ingested in frequent small doses (not occasional large ones), and do not impede work performance in most people. A desire for the drug, even cravings or withdrawal, can be confused with hunger. These features make cereals the ideal facilitator of civilisation (and may also have contributed to the long delay in recognising their pharmacological properties). Compatibility, limitations, more data needed Our hypothesis is not a refutation of existing accounts of the origins of agriculture, but rather fits alongside them, explaining why cereal agriculture was adopted despite its apparent disadvantages and how it led to civilisation. Gaps in our knowledge of exorphins limit the generality and strength of our claims. We do not know whether rice, millet and sorghum, nor grass species which were harvested by African and Australian hunter-gatherers, contain exorphins. We need to be sure that preagricultural staples do not contain exorphins in amounts similar to those in cereals. We do not know whether domestication has affected exorphin content or-potency. A test of our hypothesis by correlation of diet and degree of civilisation in different populations will require quantitative knowledge of the behavioural effects of all these foods. We do not comment on the origin of noncereal agriculture, nor why some groups used a combination of foraging and farming, reverted from farming to foraging, or did not farm at all. Cereal agriculture and civilisation have, during the past ten thousand years, become virtually universal. The question, then, is not why they happened here and not there, but why they took longer to become established in some places than in others. At all times and places, chemical reward and the influence of civilisations already using cereals weighed in favour of adopting this lifestyle, the disadvantages of agriculture weighed against it, and factors such as climate, geography, soil quality, and availability of cultigens influenced the outcome. There is a recent trend to multi-causal models of the origins of agriculture (e.g. Redding 1988, Henry 1989), and exorphins can be thought of as simply another factor in the list. Analysis of the relative importance of all the factors involved, at all times and places, is beyond the scope of this paper. 'An animal is a survival machine for the genes that built it. We too are animals, and we too are survival machines for our genes. That is the theory. In practice it makes a lot of sense when we look at wild animals.... It is very different when we look at ourselves. We appear to be a serious exception to the Darwinian law.... It obviously just isn't true that most of us spend our time working energetically for the preservation of our genes' (Dawkins 1989:138). Many ethologists have acknowledged difficulties in explaining civilised human behaviour on evolutionary grounds, in some cases suggesting that modern humans do not always behave adaptively. Yet since agriculture began, the human population has risen by a factor of 1000: Irons (1990) notes that 'population growth is not the expected effect of maladaptive behaviour'. We have reviewed evidence from several areas of research which shows that cereals and dairy foods have drug-like properties, and shown how these properties may have been the incentive for the initial adoption of agriculture. We suggested further that constant exorphin intake facilitated the behavioural changes and subsequent population growth of civilisation, by increasing people's tolerance of (a) living in crowded sedentary conditions, (b) devoting effort to the benefit of non-kin, and (c) playing a subservient role in a vast hierarchical social structure. Cereals are still staples, and methods of artificial reward have diversified since that time, including today a wide range of pharmacological and non-pharmacological cultural artifacts whose function, ethologically speaking, is to provide reward without adaptive benefit. 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F., 1987, Chronic candiosis and allergy, in Brostoff, J. & Challacombe, S.J., eds, Food allergy and intolerance, Bailliere Tindall, London. Lee, R. B. & DeVore, I., 1968, Problems in the study of hunters and gatherers, in Lee, R.B. & DeVore, I., eds, Man the hunter, Aldine, Chicago. Mycroft, F. J., Wei, E. T., Bernardin, J. E. & Kasarda, D. D., 1982, MlF-like sequences in milk and wheat proteins, New England Journal of Medicine 301:895. Mycroft, F. J., Bhargava, H. N. & Wei, E. T., 1987, Pharmacalogical activities of the MIF-1 analogues Pro-Leu-Gly, Tyr-Pro-Leu-Gly and pareptide, Peptides 8:1051-5. Panksepp, J., Normansell, L., Siviy, S., Rossi, J. & Zolovick, A., 1984, Casomorphins reduce separation distress in chicks, Peptides 5:829-83. Paroli, E., 1988, Opioid peptides from food (the exorphins), World review of nutrition and dietetics 55:58-97. Pedersen, B., Knudsen, K. E. B. & Eggum, B. 0., 1989, Nutritive value of cereal products with emphasis on the effect of milling, World review of nutrition and dietetics 60:1-91. Peters, C. R. & O'Brien, E. M., 1981, The early hominid plant-food niche: insights from an analysis of plant exploitation by Homo, Pan, and Papio in eastern and southern Africa, Current Anthropology 22:127-40. Peuch, P., Albertini, H. & Serratrice, C., 1983, Tooth microwear and dietary patterns in early hominids from Laetoli, Hadar, and Olduvai, Journal of Human Evolution 12:721-9. Pfeiffer, J. E., 1977, The emergence of society: a prehistory of the establishment, McGraw Hill, New York. Pryor, F. L., 1986, The adoption of agriculture: some theoretical and empirical evidence, American Anthropologist 88:879-97. Radcliffe, M. J., 1987, Diagnostic use of dietary regimes, in Brostoff, J. & Challacombe, S. J., eds, Food allergy and intolerance, Bailliere Tindall, London. Ramabadran, K. & Bansinath, M., 1988, Opioid peptides from milk as a possible cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Medical Hypotheses 27:181-7. Randolph, T. G., 1978, Specific adaptation, in Annals of Allergy 40:333-45 Redding, R., 1988, A general explanation of subsistence change from hunting and gathering to food production, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 7:56-97. Reed, C. A., ed., 1977, The origins of agriculture, Mouton, The Hague. Rindos, D., 1984, The origins of agriculture: an evolutionary perspective, Academic Press, Orlando. Scadding, G. K. & Brostoff, J., 1988, The dietic treatment of food allergy, in Reinhardt, D. & Schmidt, E., eds, Food allergy, Raven, New York. Simopoulos, A. P., 1990, Genetics and nutrition: or what your genes can tell you about nutrition, World review of nutrition and dietetics 63:25-34. Sprague, D. E. & Milam, M. J., 1987, Concept of an environmental unit, in Brostoff, J. & .Challacombe, S. J., eds, Food allergy and intolerance, Bailliere Tindall, London. Stark, B. L., 1986, Origins of food production in the New World, in Meltzer, D. J., Fowler, D. D. & Sabloff, J. A., eds, American archaeology past and future, Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington. Susman, R. L., 1987, Pygmy chimpanzees and common chimpanzees: models for the behavioural ecology of the earliest hominids, in Kinzey, W. G., ed., The evolution of human behaviour: primate models, State University of New York Press, Albany. Svedburg, J., De Haas, J., Leimenstoll, G., Paul, F. & Teschemacher, H., 1985, Demonstration of betacasomorphin immunoreactive materials in in-vitro digests of bovine milk and in small intestine contents after bovine milk ingestion in adult humans, Peptides 6:825-30. Thatcher, J. P., 1987, The economic base for civilization in the New World, in Melko, M. & Scott, L. R., eds, The boundaries of civilizations in space and time, University Press of America, Lanham. Walker, A., 1981, Dietary hypotheses and human evolution, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B292:57-64. Washburn, L. & Lancaster, C. S., 1968, The evolution of hunting, in Lee, R. B. & DeVore, I., eds, Man the hunter, Aldine, Chicago. Wittfogel, K., 1957, Oriental Despotism, Yale University Press, New Haven. Wraith, D. G., 1987, Asthma, in Brostoff, J. & Challacombe, S. J., eds, Food allergy and intolerance, Bailliere Tindall, London. Wright, H. E., 1977, Environmental changes and the origin of agriculture in the Near East, in Reed, C. A., ed, The origins of agriculture, Mouton, The Hague. Zioudrou, C., Streaty, R. & Klee, W., 1979, Opioid peptides derived from food proteins: the exorphins Journal of Biological Chemistry 254:244S9. Zohari, D., 1986, The origin and early spread of agriculture in the Old World, in Barigozzi, G., ed., The origin and domestication of cultivated plants, Elsevier, Amsterdam other links for this article, possibly dead:

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A martlet is a heraldic charge depicting a stylized bird with short tufts of feathers in the place of legs. Swifts, formerly also called martlets, have such small legs that they were believed to have none at all. The inability of the martlet to land is often seen to symbolize the constant quest for knowledge and learning. It has been suggested that this same restlessness is the reason for the use of the martlet in English heraldry as the cadency mark of the fourth son: the first son inherited the estate, the second and third traditionally went into the Church and the Army, and the fourth had no well-defined place. As the fourth son received no part of the family wealth and had to earn his own, the martlet was also a symbol of hard work, perseverance, and a nomadic household.

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Choose another writer in this calendar: by birthday from the calendar. ||Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)| American author, outstanding representative of naturalism, whose novels depict real-life subjects in a harsh light. Dreiser's novels were held to be amoral, and he battled throughout his career against censorship and popular taste. This started with Sister Carrie (1900). It was not until 1981 that the work was published in its original form. Dreiser's principal concern was with the conflict between human needs and the demands of society for material success. "A woman should some day write the complete philosophy of clothes. No matter how young, it is one of the things she wholly comprehends. There is an indescribably faint line in the matter of man's apparel which somehow divides for her those who are worth glancing at and those who are not. Once an individual has passed this faint line on the way downward he will get no glance from her. There is another line at which the dress of a man will cause her to study her own." (from Sister Carrie) Theodore Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, the ninth of ten children. His parents were poor. John Paul Dreiser, his father, a devout Catholic German immigrant, had attempted to establish his own woolen mill in the 1860s, but after it was destroyed in a fire, the family lived in poverty. Dreiser's mother, Sarah Maria Schänäb, was an American-born Mennolite. As the family moved from town to town, Dreiser's schooling remained erratic. He left home when he was 16 and worked at whatever jobs he could find. With the help of his former teacher, he was able to spend the year 1889-1890 at Indiana University. A voracious reader, the impact of such writers as Hawthorne, Poe, Balzac, Herbert Spencer, and Freud influenced his thought and his reaction against organized religion. In 1892 Dreiser started to work for the Chicago Globe, and moved to a better position with the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. During this period he wrote the short story 'Nigger Jeff,' probably based on a lynching he witnessed. The story appeared in Ainslee (November 1901), a small monthly journal, and collected in Free and Other Stories (1918). In 1894 Dreiser published the Republic an article, 'Ten-Foot Drop,' about lynching outside St. Louis. Unfortunately, Dreiser chose to use the "N-word" in the title of the story and today it is no longer anthologized in college surveys of American literature. In the manuscript its title was 'A Victim of Justice.' Dreiser moved to New York City late in 1894. Through the connections of his older brother Paul Dresser (1858-1906), an actor, singer and songwriter, he was employed as editor of a music-publishing magazine for a period. In 1898 he married Sara White, a Missouri schoolteacher; the marriage was unhappy. He separated permanently from her in 1909, but never earnestly sought a divorce. In his own life Dreiser practised his principle that man's greatest appetite is sexual – the desire for women led him to carry on several affairs at once. While in Kentucky reporting on coal miners' strike, he was charged with adultery. His relationship with Yvette Szekely Eastman is recorded in Dearest Wilding by Yvette Eastman (1995) – she was 16 and Dreiser 40 years older when they first met in 1929. Yvette was the stepdaughter of a female acquaintance. Dreiser seducted Yvette when she was seventeen. "I lay down on the sheet," she recalled, "hoping this part of the 'business' would soon be over with." Yvette was hired as Dreiser's secretary and put to work on his scientific essays. She remained his friend long after the seuxual relationship had ended. As a novelist Dreiser made his debut with Sister Carrie, a powerful account of a young working girl's rise to success and her slow decline. The story was partly based on the life of his sister. "She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterized her thoughts it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in the throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken." (from the 1981 edition) The president of the publishing company, Frank Doubleday, disapproved of the work – Dreiser illuminated the flaws of his characters but did not judge them and allowed vice to be rewarded instead of punished. No attempt was made to promote the book. Sister Carrie was reissued in 1907 and it became one of the most famous novels in literary history. Among its admirers was H.L. Mencken, an aspiring journalist, whom Dreiser had hired as a ghost-writer in his paper. William Wyler's film version, starring Laurence Olivier and Jennifer Jones, was made at the height of the Cold War and McCarthy era. Paramount executives delayed the releasing of the film – they thought the picture was not good for America and it was a flop. "It was a depressing story", said Wyler, "and it might not have been a success anyway." The 500 sold copies of his first novel and family troubles drove Dreiser to the verge of suicide. He worked at a variety of literary jobs, and as an editor-in-chief of three women's magazines until 1910, when he was forced to resign, because of an office love affair. Jennie Gerhardt (1911), Dreiser's second novel, told the story of a young woman, Jennie, who is seduced by a senator. She bears a child out of wedlock but sacrifices her own interests to avoid harming her lover's career. Again Dreiser drew on the life of his sisters. A passage in which Jennie's lover Lester Kane, the son of a wealthy family, tells her about contraceptives, was removed by Ripley Hitchcock, the editor at Harper & Brothers. Jennie Gerhardt was followed by novels based on the life of the American transportation magnate Charles T. Yerkes, The Financier (1912), and The Titan (1914), which show the influence of the evolutionary ideas of Herbert Spencer and Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch. Last volume of the Frank Cowperwood trilogy, The Stoic, was finished in 1945. "At the height of his success, when he had settled old scores and could easily have become the smiling public man, he chose instead to rip the whole fabric of American civilization straight down the middle, from its economy to its morality. It was the country that had to give ground." (Nelson Algren, in Nation, 16 May, 1959) While in Chicago, Dreiser began an affair with the actress Elaine Hyman. His semi-autobiographical novel The "Genius" (1915) was censured by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The book remained off the market until Liveright reissued it five years later. Dreiser's commercially most successful novel was An American Tragedy (1925), which was adapted for screen for the first time in 1931, directed by Josef von Sternberg. Dreiser had objected strongly to the version because it portrayed his youthful killer as a sex-starved idle loafer. The second time was in 1951 under the title A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. During the filming the stars became attached to one another, which is reflected in the tenderness of their performance. The director George Stevens won an Academy Award, as did the writers Michael Wilson and Harry Brown for Best Screenplay. However, Robert Hatch in the New Republic (September 10,1951) dismissed the film. "Unfortunately, the power and bite of the book have been lost in the polite competence of the screen. These are such nice, such obviously successful people, they must be playing characters... there doesn't seem much use in dragging Dreiser's classic off the shelf just to dress it in this elegant, ambivalent production..." The book made Dreiser the champion of social reformers, but his later works did not attain similar notice. Also as a short story writer Dreiser never gained similar fame as a novelist. 'The Last Phoebe' (1914) was rejected by more than ten magazines, and 'Free' (1918) was criticized for promoting divorce. An American Tragedy tells the story of a bellboy, Clyde Griffiths, indecisive like Hamlet, who sets out to gain success and fame. After an automobile accident, Clyde is employed by a distant relative, owner of a collar factory. He seduces Roberta Alden, an employee at the factory, but falls in love with Sondra Finchley, a girl of the local aristocracy. Roberta, now pregnant, demands that Clyde marry her. He takes Roberta rowing on an isolated lake and in this dreamlike sequence 'accidentally' murders her. Clyde's trial, conviction, and execution occupy the remainder of the book. Dreiser points out that materialistic society is as much to blame as the murderer himself. Dreiser based his study on the actual case of Chester Gillette, who murdered Grace Brown – he hit her with a tennis racket and pushed her overboard at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondack in In 1927, An American Tragedy was banned in Boston after a jury declared New York publisher Donald Friede guilty of violating the Massachusetts antiobscenity statue by selling the novel. When the case went to court, neither the judge nor the members of the jury read the entire novel. Dreiser was denied the opportunity to show that he had never intended to write an indicent or obscene book. Much of Dreiser's works evolved from his own experiences of poverty. In 1929 the stock market crash wiped out approximately half of his financial worth. Among his rare excursions into the realm of fantasy is the ghost story 'The Hand' (1920). It is a tale of murder and the haunting of the killer, but again behind the nightmare of the protagonist are the familiar themes of Dreiser's novels – fear of losing ones social position, feelings of moral guilt arising during the unrestrained struggle for success. "People did live, then, after they were dead, especially evil people – people stronger than you, perhaps. They had the power to come back, to haunt, to annoy you if they didn't like anything you had done to them." (from 'The Hand') Dreiser's friend Edgar Lee Masters included "Theodor the Poet" in his Spoon River Anthology (1915): "As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours / On the shore of the turbid Spoon / With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish’s burrow, / Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead, / First his waving antennæ, like straws of hay, / And soon his body, colored like soap-stone, / Gemmed with eyes of jet." In 1919 Sherwood Anderson wrote about Dreiser: "... he is very, very old. I do not know how many years he has lived, perhaps forty, perhaps fifty, but he is very old. Something grey and bleak and hurtful, that has been in the world perhaps forever, is personified in him." After his wife's death in 1942, Dreiser married his second cousin Helen Richardson, who had been his companion from 1919. Her grandmother, Esther Schänäb Parks and Dreiser's mother had been sisters. Helen had been married to the actor Frank Richardson. While in Hollywood, she had bit parts in movies, including Rudolph Valentino's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). Dreiser died in Hollywood, California, on December 28, 1945. In the last months of his life, Dreiser joined the Communist Party. In the 1920's Dreiser had travelled in Russia and depicted his experiences in Dreiser Looks at Russia (1928). During the reign of J. Edgar Hoover, Dreiser was considered a security risk and the F.B.I. had a dossier on him. Like many intellectuals in the 1930s (Hemingway, John Dos Passos, André Malraux, C. Day Lewis etc.), Dreiser had travelled to Spain during the civil war in support of the socialist government. Only a small number of writers supported Franco – George Santayana and Ezra Pound were the most famous. "He had an enormous influence on American literature during the first quarter of the century – and for a time he was American literature, the only writer worth talking about in the same breath with the European masters. Out of his passions, contradictions, and sufferings, he wrenched the art that was his salvation from the hungers and depressions that racked him. It was no wonder that he elevated the creative principle to a godhead and encouraged by word and example truthful expression in others." (from Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey 1908-1945 by Richard Lingeman, 1991) For further reading: Theodore Dreiser by B. Rascoe (1926); Forgotten Frontiers: Dreiser and the Land of the Free by D. Dudley (1933); Theodore Dreiser: Apostle of Nature by R.H. Elias (1949); Theodore Dreiser by F.O. Matthiessen (1951); The Stature of Theodore Dreiser, ed. by C. Shapiro and A. Kazin (1955); Theodore Dreiser by P.L. Gerber (1964); Dreiser by W.A. Swanberg (1965); Theodore Dreiser by M. Thader (1965); Theodore Dreiser: His World and His Novels by R. Lehan (1969); Homage to Theodore Dreiser by R.P. Warren (1971); Theodore Dreiser by J. Lundquist (1974); Theodore Dreiser: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography by D. Pizer (1975); The Novels of Theodore Dreiser by D. Pizer (1977); Theodore Dreiser: At the Gates of the City, 1871-1907 by Richard Lingeman (1986); The Gospel of Wealth in the American Novel by Arun Mukherjee (1987); After Eden by Conrad Eugene Ostwalt (1990); Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey 1908-1945 by Richard Lingeman (1991); Dearest Wilding by Yvette Eastmaned, ed. by Thomas P. Riggio (1995); Love That Will Not Let Me Go, ed. by Marguerite Tjader (1998); An American Tragedy by Paul A. Orlov (1998); Dreiser and Veblen Saboteurs of the Status Quo by Clare Virginia Eby (1999); Reading the Sympton by Mohamed Zanyani (1999); The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser by Jerome Loving (2005) - See also: H.L. Mencken

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You may not know whether it will rain next month, but at least you’ll be able to tell whether flu season is still in. Health scientists are trying to move forward with “disease forecasting” as they increasingly include whether data in their attempts to predict outbreaks. In one recent study, two scientists reported they could predict — more than seven weeks in advance — when flu season was going to peak in New York City. Theirs was just the latest in a growing wave of computer models that factor in rainfall, temperature or other weather conditions to forecast disease. At the same time, experts note that outbreaks are influenced as much, or more, by human behavior and other factors as by the weather. Some argue weather-based outbreak predictions still have a long way to go. And when government health officials warned in early December that flu season seemed to be off to an early start, they said there was no evidence it was driven by the weather. This disease-forecasting concept is not new: Scientists have been working on mathematical models to predict outbreaks for decades and have long factored in the weather. They have known, for example, that temperature and rainfall affect the breeding of mosquitoes that carry malaria, West Nile virus and other dangerous diseases. Recent improvements in weather-tracking have helped, including satellite technology and more sophisticated computer data processing. In the United States, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of New Mexico tried to predict outbreaks of hantavirus in the late 1990s. They used rain and snow data and other information to study patterns of plant growth that attract rodents. People catch the disease from the droppings of infected rodents. Some diseases are hard to forecast, such as West Nile virus. Last year, the U.S. suffered one of its worst years since the virus arrived in 1999. There were more than 2,600 serious illnesses and nearly 240 deaths. Some think flu lends itself to outbreak forecasting — there's already a predictability to the annual winter flu season. But that's been tricky, too. Seasonal flu reports come from doctors' offices, but those show the disease when it's already spreading. Some researchers have studied tweets on Twitter and searches on Google, but their work has offered a jump of only a week or two on traditional methods. In the study of New York City flu cases published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors said they could forecast, by up to seven weeks, the peak of flu season. They designed a model based on weather and flu data from past years, 2003-09. In part, their design was based on earlier studies that found flu virus spreads better when the air is dry and turns colder. They made calculations based on humidity readings and on Google Flu Trends, which tracks how many people are searching each day for information on flu-related topics (often because they're beginning to feel ill). Despite the optimism by some, Dr. Edward Ryan, a Harvard University professor of immunology and infectious diseases, is cautious about weather-based prediction models. "I'm not sure any of them are ready for prime time," he said. Based on reporting by the Associated Press.

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This video is an introduction to the National Standards for Foreign Language Learning. The standards define what students should know and be able to do in foreign language education. Through classroom examples and interviews with teachers, students, and experts in the field, this program begins to show how a range of teachers are using the standards to advance their students' foreign language skills and engage them in lifelong learning. The video is organized according to the five goal areas of the National Standards -- Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities -- called the Five Cs. For the Communication goal area, teachers see how students use language in culturally appropriate ways and talk about, read about, write about, and learn about topics of interest or importance to them. The video then shows how teachers incorporate Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities goal areas into their lessons. In addition, the video illustrates teachers taking a thematic approach to designing lessons and units. Ways To Use the Video You can use this video for the following purposes: Watch the Video - to learn about or refresh your understanding of the standards, - to launch a professional development workshop, or - to facilitate a discussion about standards-based foreign language education. This video presents the broad goals of the standards and explores the Five Cs individually and in relation to one another. Watch the video in its entirety, or pause for discussion or reflection after each of the Five Cs is presented. Use the Standards and the Five Cs Viewing Chart to guide your viewing. Error - unable to load content - Flash Reflect on the Video After watching the video, reflect on these questions or discuss them as a group. Watch Other Videos - What do the Five Cs goal areas and their standards represent? - What linkages are there among the five goal areas, for example, between Communication and Cultures? Between Communication and Connections? Among Cultures, Comparisons, and Communities? - What did you find interesting, surprising, or especially important about the way standards were addressed in these classroom examples? - What aspects of the Five Cs did you learn more about through the video? - If your state or district has foreign language standards, how do they align with the National Standards for Foreign Language Learning? - What aspects of the goal areas and their standards would you like to explore further? For more information on the classrooms featured in this video or to see other classroom examples of the standards in action, go to the Video Organizer Chart and select another video from the Teaching Foreign Languages K-12

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The Land Grant System: At Work for Nebraska When you enter a building on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln east campus, you'll find these words on the door: "The Morrill Act of 1862 established a Land Grant University in each state where the Leading Object would be instruction in agriculture and related fields." "The land grant university system is really a very special thing, rooted in the absolute depths of the Civil War, when the country was at war with itself in literally every way," said John Owens, who served as NU vice president and Harlan Vice Chancellor of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources from 2001 until June 2010. "In the summer of 1862, Congress passed an act that established land grant colleges, which then grew into these wonderful land grant universities today," Owens said. The land grant model was created to make education more affordable for a state's people through federal, state and county support for land grant institutions. "The whole notion of the land grant model is having a responsibility, not only to deliver academic programs to students in the classroom and in the laboratory, but also having an obligation to take knowledge to the people of the state," Owens said. "It's been part of Nebraska from the very beginning, this notion of the people, the taxpayers who work in businesses and farms and ranches and in the professions, and expect their tax dollars to be well-spent, that they have taken it upon themselves to invest in the future of the state through making the University of Nebraska as strong as it can possibly be." The taxpayers' partial financial support of the land grant system helps to make education affordable for people who live in that state or territory, but it goes a step further. The land grant system "extended" the reach of the land grant university to the rest of each state. In Nebraska, there are University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension offices in nearly every county in the state. Extension educators in these offices make university research available, free of charge, to anyone who requests information. |Dr. John Owens| "In a knowledge-based economy, we want a strong, educated population here in Nebraska. The world is competitive today, and it's going to be more competitive tomorrow," Owens said. Generally speaking, he added, education gives people a broader viewpoint of the world and with that viewpoint, they are likely to make better decisions. The Hatch Act of 1887 ensured that federal dollars would be invested in agricultural research, so each state and territory in 1887 received $10,000 in federal funds. That was a huge amount of money in 1887, Owens said, and the lure of those funds played a role in other states' interest in adopting the tenets of the land grant act. From Owens' point of view, the federal government used money as a reason to get the states interested in supporting research, teaching and later, with the adoption of the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, Cooperative Extension. "The larger amount of the investment in traditional land grant programs comes from the state itself," Owens said. "They meet the match and then provide considerably more dollars than the basic match. But over time, the federal investment has grown to be so large that we all depend on those dollars." The funds are called 'formula funds' and according to Owens, "is about the only part of the federal funding system for the entire country where money comes to an educational enterprise based on a formula." The formula funds are allocated to various states in different proportions based on the size and importance of the state - particularly its agricultural importance. Funds allocated by the state government are even more important, Owens said. "We simply could not open the door on an enterprise like this if we did not have those funds from the taxpayers of Nebraska." County government funds also are extremely important, Owens said. The land-grant component of the university is very often delivered to the people through extension and very often, that delivery is through an extension office associated with a county. Extension offices are operated in 83 of Nebraska's 93 counties - the other 10 counties are in two-or three-county partnerships to provide extension services to each county's people. Nebraska's Unicameral, Owens said, now supports the salaries of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln faculty who work in the extension offices, but each county provides office space and funds to run the office. "On any given day, some county, state or federal government has a budget problem, but over time it always seems to be worked out. It only gets worked out because these programs are important to people," he said. The land grant mission extends to young people, too, in the national 4-H charter that is held by Congress and allocated to various land grant institutions in each state. Nebraska has 135,000 young people involved in 4-H, along with 10,000 volunteers, making Nebraska the state with the highest 4-H involvement per capita of any state in the country. Nationally, the 4-H Foundation has a goal called One Million New Scientists. One Million New Ideas.™ which is intended to educate one million new scientists by 2013. To achieve that goal, 4-H is delivering educational programs to young people in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics - STEM education - which is a national focus. In Nebraska, the emphasis is on building and programming robots with the support of corporations and volunteer leaders. It is expensive to fund and deliver university programs in science, technology and engineering, so scholarships for university students are "just huge" in making public education a bit more affordable for students, Owens said. "In agriculture and natural resources and related areas, the generosity of Nebraskans has just been phenomenal in how many scholarships we have and how important they are in the lives of the students." Even more will be needed in the future, however, because the world has become more competitive, Owens added. An independent study by Battelle of Columbus, Ohio indicates that for every Nebraska tax dollar invested, there's a return of $15 in the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources alone, Owens said. "I believe this totally - the difference between an adequate public university and an excellent public university is always, always, always found in the generosity of its friends, its alumni and its clientele or supporters. Nebraskans have really stepped up to the plate in a big way to do that," he said. Vol. 2 Articles - Download Magazine - Land Grant Mission Articles - NU Funding Sources - U.S. Economic Power Hinges on Research Universities - Nebraska Innovation Campus Means More Jobs, Keeping Talent in Nebraska - Helping Kids Learn, Grow and Connect - Wherever They Live - Choosing a Medicare Part D Plan: UNL Extension Offers Advice - Handling Rural Conflict Can Make or Break Small Communities - One Million New Scientists. One Million New Ideas.™ - Planning Your Meals to Save Your Life - "Impacting the World Three Times a Day" and "Food from Thought" - Feeding Millions of People Motivates UNL Grains Breeder - Understanding Nebraska - There's No Place Like Nebraska - for Weather - UNL Water Center Addresses Quality, Quantity, Sustainability Issues - Global Water for Food Institute Races to Find Sustainable Solutions

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Thursday, October 4. 2012 We have featured the impact melt flows of Byrgius A before, but today we are focusing on the ejecta. Above we can see that the ejecta blocks have a mixture of two reflectance levels. Maybe the impact is excavating two separate geologic units: one with low reflectance, and the other with high reflectance. Or, perhaps the bright, high reflectance ejecta blocks were covered by darker, lower reflectance impact melt. Can we figure out which hypothesis is correct? If the crater is excavating two different units, then we should expect to see nearby craters exposing the same. We don't see this in the context image. Several lines of evidence argue instead that impact melt covers some boulders: the darker boulders have a similar reflectance to the impact melt, and the dark boulders have pools of material. Nearby melt on the rim has formed a veneer over the original surface, and we can see the melt fracturing parallel to the crater rim. This veneer unit has a reflectance of 0.14, close to the dark boulders with a reflectance of 0.155. The bright boulders have a reflectance of 0.25. The dark boulders also have small ponds of material. Larger melt ponds develop in depressions exterior to their parent crater, and this is likely the same process operating on a small scale. Can you test the hypotheses further with the full LROC NAC? Related Posts: Ejecta Starburst

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All Articles Tagged "african history" On January 13, 2010 Pat Robertson, founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, stated that Haiti “swore a pact to the devil.” This was one day after a 7.0 earthquake rocked the island nation resulting in massive loss of life. The “pact” Robertson so confidently mentioned to various media outlets was a reference to the Haitian Revolution, more specifically, the Bwa Kayiman (Bois Caiman) Ceremony in August of 1791. The event is significant because Africans of varying ethnicities joined together in a traditional ceremony to affirm that they would no longer remain enslaved. The insurrection in Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti), in what would become known as the Haitian Revolution, resulted in the establishment of a Haitian republic in 1804. The “devil” Robertson spoke of was a reference to the African gods invoked by Haitians to overthrow their French oppressors. This practice of referring to anything in the realm of African spirituality as evil or devilish is a continuation of the propaganda used by missionaries, slave traders, and colonizers ever since they ventured onto the continent. Enslaved Africans were treated as a people without culture. They were reduced to being treated as cargo. Africans were viewed as heathens because they had their own religious traditions prior to the introduction of Christianity and Islam. These traditions include ancestor veneration, systems of initiation and respect for the natural environment. African Traditions in the Americas African spiritual systems, which fall under the category of African Traditional Religion (ATR), are the traditions that have sustained us since time immemorial. Enslaved Africans brought these traditions to such places as Haiti, Brazil, Cuba, New Orleans, Florida, and South Carolina. They can be seen in the burial custom of placing items on the graves of deceased family members, knowledge of certain ritualistic and medicinal practices, known under various names as juju, hoodoo, rootwork, etc. They can be seen in the tradition of adorning trees with bottles, vessels, and other objects to protect the household through invocation of the dead as noted in places like Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia. (AJC) — Janai’s number was 4390. He was 22 when he was captured, and his body bore no marks. No. 4391 was 23-year-old Adoo. Tattoos flecked his arms and back. A series of cuts covered the cheeks, back and belly of Kootie, No. 4404. Whether the scars were the result of ritual or battle is unclear. Remarkably, of the more than 12 million Africans ensnared in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, a brutal venture where people lost their birth names and tribal origins in the span of an ocean voyage, these men’s names survive, as do those of almost 70,000 African men, women and children. Scholars believe the names are keys to solving a mystery that has confounded historians and amateur genealogists alike for centuries: Who exactly were all those African slaves who helped transform South, Central and North America and where did they originally come fromAn ambitious international research project based at Emory University is well on its way to solving that puzzle. The project, which officially launches to the public this month, is called “African Origins.” It is part of a much larger, interactive public database called “Voyages” that tracks close to 35,000 slave ship voyages between the early 1500s and 1866 from African ports to docks throughout the Americas. Using nearly $650,000 in grant money from the National Endowment for the Humanities, researchers have built the database using frail, sepia-toned court documents, ship manifests, diaries, church records, newspaper articles and corporate ledgers. Until now, most of this data was available only to scholars willing to travel to countries and cities such as Sierra Leone, Cuba, London or Liverpool, where records of the trade are kept. Its creators call it a “virtual memorial” to those who died on the journey. But they hope it becomes not simply a tool for researchers, but for high school teachers and students, amateur history buffs, even genealogists interested in an event that fundamentally shaped the modern Americas. (AP) — Internet search giant Google said it is working with the Nelson Mandela Foundation to publish thousands of never-before-seen documents belonging to the anti-apartheid icon through a $1.25 million grant given to Mandela’s foundation Tuesday. The money will allow the foundation to scan more than 10,000 of Mandela’s personal records, including unreleased notes written during his 27 years of imprisonment for his fight against apartheid, Google spokesman Luke Mckend said. The database will be accessible for free on the Internet. Achmat Dangor, the foundation’s chief executive, said anyone with a computer “from Timbuktu to New York” will be able to access documents about the 92-year-old Nobel peace laureate.

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Statements About Flying Saucers And Extraterrestrial Life Made By Prof. Hermann Oberth, German Rocket Scientist Research Material Provided by: John F. Schuessler Mutual UFO Network, Inc. Post Office Box 369 Morrison, Colorado 80465-0369 From The New York Times, December 31, 1989: NUREMBERG, West Germany, Dec. 30 (AP) - Hermann Julius Oberth, a pioneer of the space age who worked with Werner von Braun to help develop Germany's V-2 rocket, died on Friday (December 28, 1989). He was 95 years old. Mr. Oberth died at a hospital in Nuremberg after a short illness, the Hermann Oberth Museum in Feucht said in a statement. He began experiments on a jet motor for the German Government in 1930 and developed a model later that year. He worked on the motor with Mr. von Braun, considered the leading scientist in American space flight development. Mr. Oberth joined Mr. von Braun in rocket experiments in the United States in 1955, but he retired three years later and returned to West Germany. Mr. von Braun died in 1977. Mr. Oberth was born near Nuremberg on June 25, 1894. At age 15, he built a model of a rocket motor described in Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon." After high school and service in the infantry in World War I, Mr. Oberth studied medicine, aerodynamics, and physics at universities in Munich, Gottingen and Heidelberg. He submitted a thesis on rocket experiments for his doctorate, but it was rejected as too cursory. An expanded version was published in 1923 as the book "The Rockets to the Planets in Space." Flying Saucers Come from a Distant World By Professor Hermann Oberth The American Weekly, October 24, 1954 Professor Hermann Oberth started the article with the following statement: "It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another solar system. I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our earth for centuries. I think that they have been sent out to conduct systematic, long-range investigations, first of men, animals and vegetation, and more recently of atomic centers, armaments and centers of armament production. They obviously have not come as invaders, but I believe their present mission may be one of scientific investigation." Dr. Hermann Oberth Discusses UFOs Fate Magazine, May 1962 Dr. Oberth said he prefers to use the term "UFOs," rather than "flying saucers." Then he referred to thousands of cases of unexplained sightings and why they are important. He said: ..."I would like to say that as a physicist I am more satisfied by the assumption that we are dealing with flying machines. So far, other plausible explanations have not been found." Oberth went on to say: "But if we establish the working hypothesis that the UFOs are machines, we also have to assume the following: a) They are not built by human beings.. b) They are flying by means of artificial fields of gravity.. c) They produce high-tension electric charges in order to push the air out of their paths, so it does not start glowing, and strong magnetic fields to influence the ionized air at higher altitudes." Dr. Hermann Oberth Looks at UFOs By Rho Sigma Fate Magazine, July 1968 Professor Oberth said: "In my opinion, science should regard anything as possible so long as it cannot be proven impossible by facts based on observations. Each explanation should be considered valid as a working hypothesis until observations are presented to contradict it. I do not concern myself with UFO research because it is along the line of space travel and because I believe that objective persons should screen the material which is gathered in commendable fervor even by persons who are not always objective." Further, Oberth said: "It looks as if UFO research will go through the same stages as the automobile, aviation, space travel, bacteriology." In his reference to NASA, Oberth said: "NASA is busy telling us that there is a high probability of life in the universe but it's all far out there, not here. Frankly, when one looks long and carefully at the UFO evidence one wonders if perhaps it's not conceivable that some of it has found us - rather than vice versa. But to date my own efforts to get NASA to consider that intriguing possibility seem to have been ignored.. I realize, of course, that there may be semi-political considerations that make it awkward for NASA to fish in these waters.." Where Are They Now? Newsweek, March 25, 1968 In discussing Oberth and UFOs, Newsweek states: "Oberth holds that unidentified flying objects have been sighted for thousands of years." When asked why the outer spacemen have not contacted man, Oberth said: "Maybe they have looked us over and don't want to come in contact. Or perhaps they have conquered telepathy so they can read our thoughts and feel that is enough. Or maybe we represent nothing more important to them than a termite colony in the jungle." Lecture Notes About Flying Saucers 1954 by Hermann Oberth By Paul Norman Australian UFO Bulletin, September 1991 Paul Norman obtained Oberth's translated lecture notes from Drs. Blumrich and Ferdie, at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. In the notes Prof. Oberth gave his observations about UFOs as follows: "There are about 50 observations known from the time before World War II. Then the number of appearances increased; the Allies thought it was a German secret weapon, and the Germans thought it was one of the Allies. Since 1947, the reports of eyewitnesses increased considerably. It is said by the English Air Marshall Lord Dowding that there have been 10,000 (reports) by 1953." "The appearances are usually described as disks, sometimes as balls or ellipsoids. It sometimes happens that these disks place one upon the other, the largest in the center, the smaller toward the ends, to form an object the shape of a cigar, which then flies away with high speed. Sometimes one already saw such a cigar (UFO) stopping and untie into separate disks. The disks always fly in a manner as if the drive is acting perpendicular to the plane of the disk; when they are suspended over a certain terrain they keep horizontal; when they want to fly very quick, they tilt (tip) and fly with the plane directed forward. In sunlight, which is brighter than their own gleaming, they appear glittering like metal. They are dark orange and cherry red at night, if there is not much power necessary for the particular movement, for instance, when they are suspended calm. Then, they also do not shine very much. If more driving power is necessary, the shining increases (brightens) and they appear yellow, yellow-green, green like a copper flame and in a state of highest speed or acceleration extremely white. Sometimes they suddenly blink or extinguish. Their speed is sometimes very high, 19 km/sec has been measured with wireless measuring instruments (radar). Accelerations are so high that no man could stand it; he would be pressed to the wall and bruised. The accuracy of such measurements has not been doubted. If there would be only 3 or 4 measurements, I would not rely upon them and would wait for further measurements, but there is existing more than 50 such measurements; the wireless sets (radar) of the American Air Force and Navy, which are used in all fighters, cannot be so inaccurate that the information obtained with them can be doubted completely." Hermann Oberth Writing in Mitteilungen Der Gesellschaft Fur Interplanetarik Dr. Oberth summarized hypotheses that might explain the UFO phenomenon and predicted that scientific institutions will enter seriously into UFO research once the field had been more clearly defined so that it can be assigned to the appropriate specialists and when enough evidence had been collected so that facts can no longer be denied or ridiculed. Interview at the Second Congress of Aeronautical And Space Medicine By Antonio Ribera Flying Saucer Review, Sept/Oct 1962 Dr. Oberth said that in his opinion, the higher forms of life in our planetary system are to be found only on Earth. He said: "If we are to seek the place of origin of the flying saucers, we must look to other stellar systems, perhaps to the planets of Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, two of the suns nearest us and belonging to the same spectrographic type of our own." Radio Interview with Dr. Oberth Flying Saucer Review, Sept/Oct 1965 The radio interview with Dr. Oberth was conducted during the First Astronautical Week in Barcelona, Spain, May 3-9, 1965, where Dr. Oberth said: "We must consider real a fact of which we possess eight thousand certain sightings. I cannot say if they are or are not interplanetary vehicles, but nobody can doubt any more their existence." UFOs: Interplanetary Visitors In his book UFOs: Interplanetary Visitors, Raymond Fowler quoted statements from the Huntsville Times (Alabama), where Dr. Oberth said the following: "According to information available to me there exist more that 70,000 eyewitness reports of UFOs. Eleven percent of these reports cannot be easily explained. They should not be lies or hoaxes because they involve responsible senior Air Force officers of radar readings or photographs from responsible sources."

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June Is LGBT Pride Month Special Report - June 3, 2010 President Barack Obama has once again declared June “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month.” The annual event for homosexual activists and their allies commemorates the June 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City, an event that many activists consider to be the launch of the homosexual rights movement. The event is typically marked with “LGTB Pride” parades, festivals, and marches nationwide. President Obama issued a similar proclamation in 2009, which was the first time that a U.S. president had officially recognized “LGBT Pride Month” since President Bill Clinton became the first to do so in 2000. In this year’s proclamation issued May 28, President Obama wrote that, “LGBT Americans have enriched and strengthened the fabric of our national life. From business leaders and professors to athletes and first responders, LGBT individuals have achieved success and prominence in every discipline. They are our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters, and our friends and neighbors. Across my Administration, openly LGBT employees are serving at every level.” The proclamation details the Obama administration’s successful efforts to implement various aspects of the homosexual agenda, including signing into law the “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act,” which expanded the definition of federal hate crimes to include crimes motivated by actual or perceived “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” He also mentioned his April 2010 memorandum, directing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to expand patient visitation rights at most of the nation’s hospitals beyond immediate family membersincluding to gay, lesbian, and trangendered partners. As we previously reported, the president referred in the memo to North Carolina’s policy as an example of a state with expanded hospital visitation rights, although it is important to note that North Carolina’s policy does not mention sexual orientation or gender identity. Additionally, the president noted that under his administration, the DHHS created a National Resource Center for LGBT Elders. President Obama also restated his commitment to support efforts to redefine the institution of marriage, expand adoption rights for homosexuals, and implement the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA (see our previous story on ENDA), which is currently pending in Congress. The proclamation states, “we must give committed gay couples the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple, and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. We must protect the rights of LGBT families by securing their adoption rights, ending employment discrimination against LGBT Americans, and ensuring Federal employees receive equal benefits.” Copyright © 2010. North Carolina Family Policy Council. All rights reserved.

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Submitted by Betty Moore Posted February 12th, 2000 by Myrtle Bridges. In 1789, when PENELOPE JOHNSON was born in Southampton County, Virginia, the Federal Union was being organized. The new President, WASHINGTON, signed the first legislation enacted by Congress, an act to legalize certain oaths. In that year, the first officers too their oaths of office, including THOMAS JEFFERSON, Secretary of State; ALEXANDER HAMILTON, Treasurer; JOHN JAY, Chief Justice of the Supreme Also in 1789, Pennsylvania repealed the law prohibiting plays; though the appearance of GEORGE WASHINGTON at a play "cause disapproval of certain prominent citizens". At about this time, PENELOPE'S parents were making deeds to land and transfers of slaves, indicating that they were in reasonably good circumstances. Assuming that HARDY JOHNSON was age twenty-one when his father made feoffment to him in 1761, he would have been age forty-nine when PENELOPE was born. REBECCA, presumed to have been HARDY'S second wife, per above, was considerably younger than HARDY. PENELOPE was age fifteen when the family made its big move from Virginia to the Averasboro area of Cumberland County, North Carolina. It could be that shortly thereafter she received the attention of JOHN MOORE, as JOHN made horseback trips from the MATTHEW MOORE plantation on Black Mingo west several miles to Averasboro. The date of the culmination of the romance may have been influenced by the death of PENELOPE'S mother, REBECCA, in early 1806, and the re-marriage of her father on February 4, 1807. PENELOPE and JOHN MOORE were married JOHN MOORE and his wife, PENELOPE, first set up housekeeping in a separate residential building constructed on the land of JOHN'S father, on Black Mingo and Bold Branch. One year after the marriage, their first child, R EBECCA, was born; and on August 23, 1809, PENELOPE gave birth to her second child, a son, HARDY. The 1810 census show the JOHN MOORE family with these two children; however, the couple was wasting no time, and the following year, 1811, another daughter, EDNEY, came into the family; and she appears to have been named for an older sister of JOHN MOORE. Another son was born a year or so later, who was living for the 1820 census, but not in the 1830 census. A daughter, NANCY, arrived in 1815, and Susannah in 1818. The last child in 1822 was a boy "ANDREW J."and was probably named after GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON. PENELOPE'S eldest daughter, REBECCA, married MAJOR SURLES, son of a neighbor, in 1829. The records do not reflect whether PENELOPE lived to make the trip to Florida in 1833. My guess is that she did. A mother was needed for the three unmarried daughters, EDNEY, NANCY and SUSANNAH, and the young son, ANDREW, who was only 11 years of age. Men of that era usually remarried rather promptly, especially when there were children to be looked after; and JOHN never took a second wife. PENELOPE probably died in Leon County, Florida shortly before the 1840 census; and thus was able to see EDNEY marry JOHN DAWKINS, NANCY marry WILLIAM MILLS, and SUSANNAH marry LEVI MASSEY. PENELOPE was called "PENNIE", and the census records reflect that at least three grandchildren were named for her. As to nameology, I am interested in the fact that both HARDY and REBECCA gave the name "MARY" to their eldest daughter; and that NANCY and SUSANNAH also gave the name "Mary"to daughters. Perhaps this may help some future researcher. I like the name "PENELOPE". It is dignified and has a very feminine ring. If I were now in the enviable stage of giving a name to a daughter, my great, great grandmother's name would again live. I salute her for the first son that she presented to the world. An explanation is in order as to how I reached the conclusion that HARDY JOHNSON and wife, REBECCA, were the parents of PENELOPE. PENELOPE JOHNS'S marital bond, March 9, 1807, in Cumberland County, N. C. was my starting point in search for her parents, together with an old faded longhand note of information written by a granddaughter of PENELOPE "I do not know who PENNIE JOHNSON MOORE'S parents were, but PENNIE had two brothers, WILLIAM and Amos". My case, therefore, for PENELOPE being the daughter of HARDY JOHNSON and wife, REBECCA, includes the following: (1) When PENELOPE married JOHN MOORE in 1807, the two living sons of HARDY and REBECCA JOHNSON were WILLIAM and AMOS. The middle son, Silas, died in late 1805 or early 1806. HARDY and REBECCA are the only JOHNSON parents in Cumberland County that I could find with two sons named WILLIAM and AMOS. (2) When JOHN MOORE and PENELOPE bought their first tract of land in 1812, a witness to the deed was a AMOS JOHNSON. (3) The HARDY JOHNSON plantation on Juniper Swamp was accessable to JOHN MOORE during his courting days; and in later years, when JOHN and PENELOPE moved over to Black River to his newly acquired 450 acres they were even closer proximity to the HARDY JOHNSON plantation. (4) PENELOPE JOHNSON MOORE and husband, JOHN, named their first two children "REBECCA" AND "HARDY". The name, "REBECCA", could be for PENELOPE'S mother, and the name, "HARDY", could be for father and at the same time for an older brother of JOHN. (5) HARDY JOHNSON and his sons associated with people that JOHN MOORE associated with : WILLIAM KILLEN, JOHN MCALISTER, WILLIAM AVERA, JAMES PRITCHETT, and especially HECTOR STEWART and DUSHEE SHAW, the first two signatories to the character certification for HARDY JOHNSON quoted above. From original papers concerning JOHN MOORE that were drafted by DUSHEE SHAW, I feel reasonably certain that the certificate on the character of HARDY JOHNSON was also written in the hand of In fairness to the record, there were two other JOHNSONS that I looked into very carefully as prospective fathers of PENELOPE: both of whom also came from Southampton County, Virginia. They were (1) BENJAMIN and (2) RICHARD; and in both their family backgrounds there was a"PENELOPE". BENJAMIN JOHNSON, the man who bought the 1,444 acres of former FOLSOM land from JOSHUA VICK, (here it is unreadable). PENELOPE'S brothers fit only HARDY. (2) The circumstance of AMOS witnessing the JOHN MOORE deed was as strong for HARDY as was the matter of BENJAMIN being surety on JOHN MOORE, Guardian's bond; and BENJAMIN JOHNSON'S interest in the guardianship of the MASON HARVILL orphans may have been for a connection on the HARVILL SIDE. MASON HARVILL was a brother of MOSES HARVILL, son-in-law to RICHARD JOHNSON. RICHARD and BENJAMIN were very closely associated.) (3) I do not find that there were associates-in-common between BENJAMIN JOHNSON and JOHN MOORE, as ther were between HARDY JOHNSON and JOHN MOORE. RICHARD JOHNSON was a witness to the deed when JOHN MOORE sold his 450 acres before moving to Florida; however I am rather certain that such RICHARD was not the original RICHARD JOHNSON, an older man, who married SARAH SPEED in Southampton County, Virginia in 1785, had an aunt named"PENELOPE", but while he was carried in the Cumberland County census as "over 45" in both the 1810 and 1820 census, he is missing in 1830, and hense missing in 1832 when the "RICHARD JOHNSON" witnessed JOHN MOORE'S deed on the 450 acres. The original RICHARD appears to have died immediately prior to 1824, the year STERLING JOHNSTON rendered his own land on Stoney Run and also "436 acres for RICHARD JOHNSTON". A chart in the appendix show the varaious JOHNSON families in early Southampton County, Virginia, including that of HARDY, BENJAMIN and RICHARD. They lived near each other, and were probably related. PENELOPE JOHNSON MOORE'S son, HARDY, my great grandfather will be the subject of a later chapter, along with his illustrious bride, EDITH BERILLA FOLSOM. (Before reaching this couple, however, I shall back up again to introduce the antecedents of the bride, which brings in the FOLSOM, BRYAN, SMITH, MONTFORT and WHITFIELD (30 ) lines. Read the John Moore Marriage Bond Back to Descendants of Cumberland County Back to Cumberland County Homepage

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Features include interactive map, in-depth stories, and more.Download now. » The week's top five must-sees, delivered to your inbox. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution, was a social-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976. Set into motion by Mao Zedong, then Chairman of the Communist Party of China, its stated goal was to enforce communism in the country by removing capitalist, traditional and cultural elements from Chinese society, and to impose Maoist orthodoxy within the Party. The revolution marked the return of Mao Zedong to a position of power after the failed Great Leap Forward. The movement paralyzed China politically and significantly affected the country economically and socially. The Revolution was launched in May 1966. Mao alleged that bourgeois elements were infiltrating the government and society at large, aiming to restore capitalism. He insisted that these "revisionists" be removed through violent class struggle. China's youth responded to Mao's appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist Party leadership itself. It resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior officials who were accused of taking a "capitalist road", most notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. During the same period Mao's personality cult grew to immense proportions. (via Freebase)

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2013-05-19T19:44:52Z

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A protected area with multiple functions, Camargue Regional Park was created in 1970, in the department Bouches du Rhone, for protecting various bird species, wetland ecosystems and to find viable methods of exploiting the natural resources without degrading it. In 1990, the 85,000 hectares of the park were labeled as "Biosphere Reserve" by UNESCO, being a model of how humans can cohabit with wildlife. The park generally overlaps the Rhone Delta, presenting two distinct sectors: Grande Camargue, at the mouth of Rhone, between its two arms - Grande Rhone and Petite Rhone - and Camargue Gardoise, west of Petite Rhone. Camargue is the result of the Rhone-Mediterranean interaction and, in time, its shape has changed. Camargue looks like an island whose edges are marked by waters in the Gulf of the Saints Maries. It is an area of sun (more than 2500 hours of intense sunlight annually), winds and waters, made of millions of tons of deposits carried by Rhone, and of banks, solid ground, lagoons, roads, dams, households and crops. In the south, the Mediterranean Sea's shore currents formed compact sand dunes, disposed on a line, like an arch. Along the centuries, people fought to reduce the effect of the flooding caused by the river and, on the other hand, of the intrusion of salty sea water. At the end of the 19th century, both the sea and the river were under the control of the local communities, which practiced an intensive agriculture. The building of the dam, in 1859, was determined by the exploitation of the sea salt and led to the creation of an ample complex known as Salins de Giraud. In 1860, Rhone was dammed to limit the freshets flooding the arable terrains, causing huge damages. At a given moment, the inhabitants cultivated irrigated vineyards, but after the WWII, the intensive culture of the rice significantly decreased the area of wild ecosystems. Ample projects led to the increase of the net of irrigation ditches, which allowed the desalinizing of some lands and hydraulic workings that satisfy the need of freshwater of the 20,500 cultivated hectares. But the dams impeded the natural supply of sediments and freshwater. The high number of canals, pumping stations and ditches shows that the myth of the wild Camargue is no longer a reality. Camargue harbors a high number of fragile wet ecosystems. Sloughs and swamps make most of the Rhone Delta. They are 20-80 cm (0.6-2.6 ft) deep and have seasonal fluctuations. The delta is a refuge both for migratory birds and sedentary birds. In 1927, the ornithological zone Pont du Grau was created, on an area of 13,117 ha. Buoying paths allows the visitors to see the protected and rarely viewed bird species, from egrets to wild ducks, bitterns, herons, stilts, wagtails and sandpipers. The bird reserve Etang de Vaccares has 6,000 pools, being the largest in the Rhone Delta. With depths mostly under 2 m (6.6 ft), this aquatic zone is influenced in quality by the 50 million cubic meters of waters representing the draining from the rice paddies located to the north. This is the preferred biotope of mallards, coots, gulls, terns and grebes. But the bird that stands out as the symbol of the area is the flamingo, a bird whose name comes from Latin "flamma" (flame), alluding to the fact that, under the pink feathers, there is another layer of coral-red or bright-red feathers. This is the only region in Europe, together with 1-2 Spanish sites, where flamingos nest. The flamingo population of Camargue is of about 20,000 pairs, breeding in colonies strictly observed by human guardians. The flamingo nests are made of mud raised over the ground level. At the contact with the Mediterranean, there is the "dam area", with a length of 20 km (12 mi), where the circulation of the cars is strictly forbidden. It is a heaven for the birds, from gulls to terns and avocets. In the west, after the Gacholle Lighthouse, there is a sector of semimobile and mobile dunes, often protected by chestnut palisades that fix the sand. Specific dune vegetation - including spurges, sand iris, quitch grass and others - is commonly found here. Many low terrains of Camargue are covered by a salt crust, and here, a halophile (salt loving) vegetation grows, like glasswort (Salicornia) and saltwort (Salsola), which bulls and feral horses feed on. These terrains are flooded in the winter, and offer food for the wader birds in the spring. Along the arms of the Rhone and on the old dunes, south of Vaccares, there are many forested spaces. They may occupy small surfaces, but they are important in maintaining the delicate balance of the park. This is the favorite biotope for wild boars, foxes, rodents and many insects. Salty lagoons are surrounded by dunes. Today they are strongly modified by man, salt extraction being one of the most important activities in Camargue. The evaporation basins of Salin de Giraud occupy 14,000 ha, producing on average 1,000,000 tons of salt annually (one of the largest productions in Europe), in an extraction cycle in 4 phases: bringing the sea water into the basins, salt concentration through natural evaporation, salt deposition and drying, and the harvesting. The Camargue households are built with thick walls, offering cooling during the summer and resisting to the violent mistral wind, descending along the Rhone, during the winter. The entrance to Camargue is made through the city of Arles (52,593 inhabitants), founded by Caesar in 46 BC, and still harboring Roman vestiges (amphitheater and forum). In Saint Maries de la Mer, a small village in the southeastern part of Pont du Grau, over an ancient Gallo-Roman sanctuary, a fortified church was built in the 10th century. The church harbors relics of two Saint Maries - Saint Mary Salome, and Mary, the sister of the Virgin, come into the area for spreading Christianity after the death of Jesus. The church also contains the statue of their Egyptian servant, Sara, considered the patron of the Gypsies by more than a century. A traditional festivity is hold in the honor of these saints on 24th of May every year. These festivities bring 8,000 gypsies in the area annually. Amazingly, even if modified by human activity, the geometry of Camargue, with its salt fields and rice paddies, does not diminish the beauty of nature. These people learned to combine harmoniously the resource exploitation and biodiversity conservation.

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2013-05-19T19:12:40Z

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H5N1 Flu Poses Threat to Brain Health As if the very high mortality rate of the H5N1 bird flu wasn't enough cause for alarm, the August 18, 2009 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) carries a report that the H5N1 influenza virus may cause damage to the central nervous system. (Published online before print August 10, 2009, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0900096106 PNAS August 18, 2009 vol. 106 no. 33 14063-14068 http://www.pnas.org/content/106/33/14063) H5N1 currently has a 61 percent mortality rate, that is, of the more than 400 confirmed cases, more than half proved fatal even with advanced medical treatment. It is important to remember that this is NOT the same influenza stream as the current pandemic H1N1. Testing in laboratory mice has shown that infection by A/Vietnam/1203/04 (H5N1) causes nerve damage which may trigger such diseases as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's in humans. A report by St Jude's Children's Hospital researchers agree, ""This avian flu strain does not directly cause Parkinson's disease, but it does make you more susceptible," said Richard Smeyne, Ph.D., associate member in St. Jude Developmental Neurobiology. Smeyne is the paper's senior author. "Around age 40, people start to get a decline in brain cells. Most people die before they lose enough neurons to get Parkinson's. But we believe this H5N1 infection changes the curve. It makes the brain more sensitive to another hit, possibly involving other environmental toxins," Smeyne explained." The 1918 "Spanish Flu" (also an avian influenza strain) was related to some later development of Parkinson's. Fortunately, the same researchers say that the current pandemic threat, H1N1, poses LOW neurologic risk. Scientists and researchers are highly concerned about the potential spread of H5N1 and are closely monitoring the virus for indications that it might mutate into a form which is easily spread between humans - so far there is only very limited evidence of this and it has not spread widely. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is internationally recognized for its pioneering work in finding cures and saving children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. Founded by late entertainer Danny Thomas and based in Memphis, Tenn., St. Jude freely shares its discoveries with scientific and medical communities around the world. No family ever pays for treatments not covered by insurance, and families without insurance are never asked to pay. St. Jude is financially supported by ALSAC, its fundraising organization. John McCormick is a reporter, /science/medical columnist and finance and social commentator, with 17,000+ bylined stories. Contact John through NewsBlaze. Related Health News News

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2013-05-19T19:51:11Z

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Frequently Asked Questions 9. What is pre-diabetes? Pre-diabetes means your blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not high enough for a diagnosis of diabetes. People with pre-diabetes are at an increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes and for heart disease and stroke. The good news is that if you have pre-diabetes, you can reduce your risk of getting type 2 diabetes. With modest weight loss and moderate physical activity, you can delay or prevent type 2 diabetes

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2013-05-19T19:22:28Z

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By Dr. Kabyemela Special to NurseZone The recent launch of a Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine aimed at protecting girls and women against cervical cancer has provoked a lot of debate. Debate is good because it is the catalyst of mass information and information is the truest form of empowerment. In the United States in 2002, over 12,000 women were diagnosed with cervical cancer and nearly 4000 women died of the disease that year. About 3,700 women were expected to die of the disease in 2006. World-wide, over 270,000 women die of cervical cancer each year and it accounts for 9 percent of all female cancer deaths annually with women in the developing world bearing the brunt of this disease. Cervical cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women in Central America and Southern Africa. With the introduction of regular cervical cancer screening, the rate of the disease and death in western countries has fallen steadily over the years. In the United States, the annual rate of fall has been around 4.5 percent but it is still a significant cause of morbidity and mortality among women of all age groups. The HPV Vaccine The HPV infection is known to be the leading predisposing factor to cervical changes which lead to cervical cancer. The infection accounts for almost all cervical cancers. It is also responsible for genital warts. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States and quite possibly the world. Crucially, it is almost always symptom-less at the time of transmission. There are over 100 strains or subtypes of the Human Papilloma Virus, a third of which are sexually transmitted. The other non-sexually transmitted strains are dubbed low-risk and possibly clinically insignificant. The strains that are known to be predisposed to cervical cancer are subtypes 16, 18, 31, 33 and a few others. Subtypes 16 and 18 are by far the most important, accounting for 70 percent of cervical cancers. Subtypes 6 and 11 are the strains up to 90 percent responsible for genital warts. The newly introduced HPV vaccine, Gardisil®, protects against subtypes 6, 11, 16 and 18. These, as shown above, are responsible for the vast majority of genital warts and cervical cancer cases. What’s more, studies have shown the vaccine to be almost 100 percent effective in preventing cervical cancer and other diseases, including dysplasia (pre-cancer) of the cervix, vulva, vagina and genital warts caused by the four HPV strains. That is so if given to girls and women who have not been exposed to the virus. With that logic, it has been recommended that it be made available to girls and young women from the age of 9 to 26 years. With universal coverage, such a program has the potential of dramatically cutting down the rate of cervical cancer and save millions of lives. With universal vaccination, it is estimated that such a program could cut cervical cancer deaths by as much as 75 percent. Gardisil® and Cervarix® At the time this article was written in the summer of 2007, over 75 countries have approved Gardisil. Another vaccine, Cervarix® protecting against HPV subtypes 16 and 18—the strains responsible for cervical cancer—should be approved in Europe by the end of 2007. It is already licensed for use in Australia. In the United States, Indiana became the first state in January 2007 to legislate for this vaccine. The bill requires girls to be vaccinated against HPV before the start of sixth grade. Texas followed soon after, with an executive order in February 2007, launching the vaccination program starting with girls entering the 6th grade in 2008. The order also makes the vaccine available free to uninsured girls aged 9 to 18. When to Start Vaccinating The adopted age is a reasonable and understandable compromise; it is clear why the recommended start age is 9 years. It is to ensure girls are protected well before they become sexually active. HPV is largely sexually transmitted and the whole process starts there. For some, that process inexorably leads to pre-cancer (dysplasia) changes and then cancer. This is a very distressing disease which might eliminate the woman’s fertility, lead to premature menopause and for some, tragically, death. The HPV vaccine is a very important milestone in our fight against cancer. I put its advent, not quite, but almost in the same league with the discovery of aspirin and penicillin. Unsung and shrugged shoulders were at it’s launch, but it is now responsible for thousands of saved lives and the well-being of billions of women across the world. These women are our mothers, sisters and daughters. It is incumbent upon us with the knowledge and the facts to spread the word. Joe Kabyemela, M.D., MRCOG, is an obstetrician & gynecologist and author of “The Daily Telegraph Complete Pregnancy and Childbirth Answers.” For any and all questions regarding conception, pregnancy, childbirth and antenatal issues access his Web site at www.pregnancy-bliss.co.uk.

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2013-05-19T19:28:46Z

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On dark winter mornings, bring a little zing to your day with this lemon scented sight words sensory tub. The tub smells so good! It’s energising and lovely to play with, and it’s also great for some sigh words practise. Here’s how to dye and scent the rice, and a fun idea for sight words play. Lemon scented sight words sensory tub Read more » This maths game combines crafting, turn taking and a bit of science as well as the chance to work on counting and number ordering. It’s easy to create the materials for the game and you can adapt it to suit whichever set of numbers you’re working on – or make a set with letters if you want to practise the alphabet. You’ll need to start by making a set of fish. 1. Cut out some fish shapes from some coloured card and let the children decorate them. Leave a space on each one to add a number. 2. Fill in the numbers on each fish. We start out with numbers 1-10 but you can add more, or perhaps use 10, 20, 30… depending on which number sequence you’d like to play with. 3. To make a magnetic version you can add a metal paperclip near the mouth of each fish. You can then use a magnetic fishing rod (which you can make by trying a magnet to a piece of string) to go fishing for your number letters. How to play: - Place the fish, number side up, on the floor, in a hoop or in a bucket. Or make an undersea landscape picture for them to swin in. - The easiest version of the game is to practise your hand-eye co-ordination and just let the children go fish. See if they can recognise the numbers on each fish they catch. Encourage the children to co-operate and take turns with the fishing rod. - You can aim to catch the fish in ascending or descending number order, or just see which ones they catch and arrange them into a sequence once they’ve all been caught. - Tell the children you had ten fish when you started and, as they catch the fish, ask them if they can work out how many more must be left in the pond. - You can try some sums too. Pick a number, say 3, and then catch a fish. Can you add the number on the fish to your starting number of 3? (you might like to use a number line to help work this out). Or have the children catch two fish and see if they can add their numbers together. - If you have an older sibling playing along they can practise their number bonds. If they catch a 3, what number do they need to add to get to ten? They could work on times tables too. As an alternative, you can make version of the fish with letters instead of numbers. When they catch a fish you can see if the children can say the sound of the letter they have. Can they think of something that starts with that letter? Can they find something in the room that starts with the letter? We like to use this game to make numbers (and letters) fun and have the children approach learning them in a playful way. How do you add numbers to your play? happily shared with Math Monday and Made By Little Hands and Tot School and For the Kids Friday, Preschool Corner and Frugal Friday L keeps telling me she wants to be a grown up. She wants to be a mummy with a baby, she wants to do the washing up and she keeps asking me if she’ll be able to do things ‘when I’m big numbers’. (I’d quite happily put the brakes on her and keep her as a lovely four-year-old for quite a while longer.) One thing she likes do to, in her quest to be a grown up, is read the paper or one of my books, so long as it’s full of text with no pictures at all. She’ll sit on the sofa, leafing through the pages, commenting now and then on a few of the articles. She’s also very interested in letters, and this week has discovered punctuation marks with a huge shriek of ‘What is this?’ as she pointed to the question mark at the end of one sentence, as if she had uncovered something new to the universe. It’s always my aim to follow a child’s lead and add in some learning in a way that suits their current interest, so I suggested she might like to be a Letter Detective and go on a hunt to find some letters. Big hit! Now we can keep each other company on the sofa, reading alongside each other, as I suggest she spots a particular letter and she goes off to hunt. Spy glass optional. happily shared with ABCand123 and We Play Here’s how to make your own bingo game to help your child practise their letters. 1. Make several grids on paper or card. You can draw them by hand or print them from the computer. You need at least one grid per player but if you make more you’ll be able to swap cards and play the game several times. You can make the grid any size you like but 6 squares are a good start for pre-schoolers. 2. Add a letter into each square. 3. Make a set of square cards with a letter on each, corresponding to the letters on your grids. 4. Give every player a grid and then turn the square cards face down. 5.Take it in turns to pick a square card. When you turn over a square, see if you can make the right sound for the letter. 6. If the letter you picked is on your grid you can keep it to cover up the letter on your grid. If you don’t have the letter on your grid, place it back face-down. 7. The winner is the first person to cover all the letters on their card and gets to shout ‘bingo!’. You can of course make different versions of this game to work on numbers, colours and words. happily shared with Tot Tuesday and ABCand123 and Preschool Corner

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2013-05-19T19:36:02Z

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Thirteenth Governor of New France; b. at Cherbourg, France, 1646; d. May 26, 1705 Callibres, LOUIS-HECTOR DE, thirteenth Governor of New France; b. at Cherbourg, France, 1646; d. May 26, 1705. He was the son of Jacques de Callieres and Madeleine Potier de Courcy. He ranked as captain in the regiment of Navarre. He came to Canada in 1684, and was appointed Governor of Montreal at the demand of the Sulpicians who were Seigneurs of the island. The situation of the colony at that time was most critical, owing to Frontenac's departure, the weakness of Governor de la Barre, and the woeful error of the French government in sending to the galleys in France some Iroquois chiefs captured at Cataracoui (Kingston). In 1689 Callieres proposed to Louis XIV to invade New England by land and sea, and obtained the reappointment of Frontenac as governor. In 1690 he marched to the defense of Quebec, when it was besieged by Phipps. A valiant and experienced soldier, he aided Frontenac in saving New France from the Iroquois and in raising the prestige of the French flag. He was one of the first to receive the Cross of St. Louis (1694). Having succeeded Frontenac in 1698, he devoted all his skill and energy to the pacification of the Indians. The treaty of Montreal (1701), agreed to by representatives of all the tribes, was the crowning result of his efforts. This treaty is considered as Callieres' chief title to fame. That same year he sent Lamothe-Cadillac to found Detroit. One of the most conspicuous figures in Canadian history, he left a reputation of disinterestedness, honor, and probity.

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2013-05-19T19:13:18Z

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This stream flowing into Alaska's Makushin Bay was impacted by the oil spill caused by the 2004 wreck of M/V Selendang Ayu. Coastal and estuarine habitats include marshes, forested wetlands, oyster reefs, seagrass beds, beaches, tidal streams, and riparian forests. These habitats are vital not only for fish, birds, and other wildlife, but for human communities as well. They help to protect against flooding, improve water quality, provide recreational opportunities, and support commercial fisheries and tourism. Restoring habitats helps ecosystems by removing pollutants and invasive species, re-establishing natural ecosystem processes, and re-introducing native plants and other wildlife. Several programs within NOAAs National Ocean Service (NOS) are actively restoring injured resources by providing the necessary data, science, tools, and long-term monitoring efforts. As a natural resource trustee under the Clean Water Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, the Oil Pollution Act and the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, NOAA conducts restoration activities along the nations coastal zones and estuaries. The Estuary Restoration Act of 2000 also mandates NOAAs restoration activities. A fish habitat restoration site at the Strandley-Manning Superfund site in Puget Sound, Washington. The channel was recreated, its banks stabilized, and in-stream structures placed to create fish habitat. NOSs Office of Response and Restoration addresses environmental threats to coastal resources that result from oil and chemical spills, chronic releases from Superfund sites, and damage to resources within the nations marine sanctuaries. The office also works with the responsible parties, other NOAA offices, and other agencies to conduct hazardous waste site investigations, assess natural resource damage, and implement coastal ecosystem restoration projects. The office also pursues legal action, if necessary, against those parties responsible for the harm and works with parties to restore damaged resources. NOS restoration scientists also conduct ecological research and test restoration approaches to determine the most effective restorative measures. NOS scientists also have developed several tools using geographic information system technology to build state and local capacities for restoration planning and implementation. These tools include interactive watershed mapping projects and databases. Once restorative measures are implemented, NOS scientists monitor the ecosystem response to allow for adjustments to the restoration approach when necessary. In addition, NOS scientists also help local groups design monitoring plans that will accurately gauge the success of restoration projects and determine the need for any further action. When ship groundings, oil spills, and other disturbances impact marine resources within the nation's marine sanctuaries, NOS restoration scientists conduct ecological research and test restoration. This researcher is trench diving at the site of the Athos I oil spill in Delaware Bay NOS restoration experts also participate in an interagency restoration council created by the Estuary Restoration Act (ERA) of 2000. With staff from the Restoration Center of NOAAs National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), NOS supports an interagency workgroup tasked with developing a National Estuary Habitat Restoration Strategy. This workgroup coordinates restoration activities with other federal agencies and with private sector partners. In addition, NOS is working to develop monitoring protocols and guidance that will be used to implement the ERA. NOS and NMFS also are developing a database that will help track progress in restoring estuarine habitat. Anacostia River. Read about NOAA's restoration efforts on the Anacostia River, which runs through Maryland and the District of Columbia.

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2013-05-19T19:12:49Z

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It has been a mystery for many that why some people use left hand (about 10 per cent on average). Now, two researchers of North-western University have reported that a high degree of cooperation was the major cause behind this speciality. It is interesting to mention here that in the past people used to think lefthanders as if they were some kind of evil creature. However, the study described it the other way round. The balance between cooperation and competition in human evolution was the reason that some people in the world were lefthanders, the researchers noted, describing the process through a mathematical model. “The more social the animal—where cooperation is highly valued—the more the general population will trend toward one side,” said Abrams, an assistant professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. “The most important factor for an efficient society is a high degree of cooperation. In humans, this has resulted in a right-handed majority.” If societies were entirely cooperative everyone would be same-handed, Abrams revealed this interesting fact. The model helps to explain our right-handed world now and historically: the 90-10 right-handed to left-handed ratio has remained the same for more than 5,000 years. “The accuracy of our model’s predictions when applied to sports data supports the idea that we are seeing the same effect in human society,” Abrams said. “As computers and simulation become more widespread in science, it remains important to create understandable mathematical models of the phenomena that interest us, such as the left-handed minority,” Abrams said. “By discarding unnecessary elements, these simple models can give us insight into the most important aspects of a problem, sometimes even shedding light on things seemingly outside the domain of math,” Abrams added. The results have been published in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Blog post Written by Farhan Khan and You can visit the original article at http://www.thenewstribe.com/

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2013-05-19T19:21:24Z

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NEAR Shoemaker photographs Eros under a variety of lighting and viewing geometries suited to different science objectives. Taken with the Sun high in the sky, images with few shadows are best for mapping the color properties of the surface. Conversely, images taken from directly above a surface with oblique illumination are best for seeing landforms, because shadowing highlights the subtle shape changes on the asteroid's surface. This image was taken at the latter geometry on May 11, 2000, from an orbital altitude of 52 kilometers (33 miles). The whole scene is about 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) across, and shows features as small as 4 meters (13 feet). The rounded nature of the landforms results from formation of small impact craters over the eons. Sharp topography is eroded away by this process, and the surface is blanketed and smoothed by the fragmental debris, or "regolith." The large boulders scattered throughout the scene are the largest fragments of the rocky regolith. Built and managed by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, NEAR was the first spacecraft launched in NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, small-scale planetary missions. See the NEAR web page at http://near.jhuapl.edu/ for more details.

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2013-05-19T19:38:06Z

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Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have discovered how an enzyme "knows" where to insert a double bond when desaturating plant fatty acids. Understanding the mechanism -- which relies on a single amino acid far from the enzyme's active site -- solves a 40-year mystery of how these enzymes exert such location-specific control. The work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of September 19, 2011, may lead to new ways to engineer plant oils as a renewable replacement for petrochemicals. "Plant fatty acids are an approximately $150-billion-dollar-a-year market," said Brookhaven biochemist John Shanklin, lead author on the paper. "Their properties, and therefore their potential uses and values, are determined by the position of double bonds in the hydrocarbon chains that make up their backbones. Thus the ability to control double bond positions would enable us to make new designer fatty acids that would be useful as industrial raw materials." The enzymes responsible for double-bond placement, called desaturases, remove hydrogen atoms and insert double bonds between adjacent carbon atoms at specific locations on the hydrocarbon chains. But how one enzyme knows to insert the double bond at one location while a different but closely related enzyme inserts a double bond at a different site has been a mystery. "Most enzymes recognize features in the molecules they act on that are very close to the site where the enzyme's action takes place. But all the carbon-hydrogen groups that make up fatty-acid backbones are very similar with no distinguishing features it's like a greasy rope with nothing to hold onto," said Shanklin. In describing his group's long-standing quest to solve the desaturation puzzle, Shanklin quotes Nobel laureate Konrad Bloch, who observed more than 40 years ago that such site-specific removal of hydrogen "would seem to approach the limits of the discriminatory power of enzymes." Shanklin and his collaborators approached the problem by studying two genetically similar desaturases that act at different locations: a castor desaturase that inserts a double bond between carbon atoms 9 and 10 in the chain (a 'delta-9' desaturase); and an ivy desaturase that inserts a double bond between carbon atoms 4 and 5 (delta-4). They reasoned that any differences would be easy to spot in such extreme examples. But early attempts to find a telltale explanation which included detailed analyses of the two enzymes' atomic-level crystal structures turned up few clues. "The crystal structures are almost identical," Shanklin said. The next step was to look at how the two enzymes bind to their substrates fatty acid chains attached to a small carrier protein. First the scientists analyzed the crystal structure of the castor desaturase bound to the substrate. Then they used computer modeling to further explore how the carrier protein "docked" with the enzyme. "Results of the computational docking model exactly matched that of the real crystal structure, which allows carbon atoms 9 and 10 to be positioned right at the enzyme's active site," Shanklin said. Next the scientists modeled how the carrier protein docked with the ivy desaturase. This time it docked in a different orientation that positioned carbon atoms 4 and 5 at the desaturation active site. "So the docking model predicted a different orientation that exactly accounted for the specificity," Shanklin said. To identify exactly what was responsible for the difference in binding, the scientists then looked at the amino acid sequence the series of 360 building blocks that makes up each enzyme. They identified amino acid locations that differ between delta-9 and delta-4 desaturases, and focused on those locations that would be able to interact with the substrate, based on their positions in the structural models. The scientists identified one position, far from the active site, where the computer model indicated that switching a single amino acid would change the orientation of the bound fatty acid with respect to the active site. Could this distant amino-acid location remotely control the site of double bond placement? To test this hypothesis, the scientists engineered a new desaturase, swapping out the aspartic acid normally found at that location in the delta-9 castor desaturase for the lysine found in the delta-4 ivy desaturase. The result: an enzyme that was castor-like in every way, except that it now seemed able to desaturate the fatty acid at the delta-4 carbon location. "It's quite remarkable to see that changing just one amino acid could have such a striking effect," Shanklin said. The computational modeling helped explain why: It showed that the negatively charged aspartic acid in the castor desaturase ordinarily repels a negatively charged region on the carrier protein, which leads to a binding orientation that favors delta-9 desaturation; substitution with positively charged lysine results in attraction between the desaturase and carrier protein, leading to an orientation that favors delta-4 desaturation. Understanding this mechanism led Ed Whittle, a research associate in Shanklin's lab, to add a second positive charge to the castor desaturase in an attempt to further strengthen the attraction. The result was a nearly complete switch in the castor enzyme from delta-9 to delta-4 desaturation, adding compelling support for the remote control hypothesis. "I really admire Ed's persistence and insight in taking what was already a striking result and pushing it even further to completely change the way this enzyme functions," Shanklin said. "It's very rewarding to have finally solved this mystery, which would not have been possible without a team effort drawing on our diverse expertise in biochemistry, genetics, computational modeling, and x-ray crystallography. "Using what we've now learned, I am optimistic we can redesign enzymes to achieve new desirable specificities to produce novel fatty acids in plants. These novel fatty acids would be a renewable resource to replace raw materials now derived from petroleum for making industrial products like plastics," Shanklin said. Explore further: Attacking MRSA with metals from antibacterial clays

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http://phys.org/news/2011-09-long-standing-biochemistry-mystery.html

2013-05-19T19:28:17Z

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Milky white chemical clouds were briefly visible in much of the night sky along the Eastern seaboard on Tuesday after NASA launched a series of rockets to study the jet stream at the edge of the earth's atmosphere. The five sounding rockets began blasting off just before 5 a.m. from NASA's Wallops Island facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Each of the rockets was fired about 80 seconds apart and released a chemical cloud so that scientists could `see' little-understood winds about 65 miles above the earth's surface. Firing multiple rockets allows scientists to track the high-speed winds over hundreds of miles. NASA said it received reports that the chemical clouds were visible as far south as Wilmington, N.C.; west to Charleston, W.Va.; and north to Buffalo, N.Y. The clouds were also visible above major metropolitan areas like Washington and New York. The winds NASA is studying travel at speeds of up to 300 miles per hour in an area of the atmosphere where there are strong electrical currents. Data gathered from the experiment should allow scientists to better model the electromagnetic regions of space that can damage satellites and affect radio communications. Scientists also hope the experiment will help explain how atmospheric disturbances in one part of the globe can be transported to other parts of the globe in a day or two. NASA had been trying to launch the rockets since March 14, but had a series of delays due to bad weather. NASA needed skies to be clear in Virginia as well as coastal North Carolina and New Jersey, where the space agency had cameras set up to capture images of the clouds. Explore further: Field tests in Mojave Desert pave way for human exploration of small bodies More information: http://www.nasa.gov/mission-pages/sunearth/missions/atrex-nightlight.html

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(PhysOrg.com) -- Pandemic swine flu can infect cells deeper in the lungs than seasonal flu can, according to a new study published today in Nature Biotechnology. The researchers, from Imperial College London, say this may explain why people infected with the pandemic strain of swine-origin H1N1 influenza are more likely to suffer more severe symptoms than those infected with the seasonal strain of H1N1. They also suggest that scientists should monitor the current pandemic H1N1 influenza virus for changes in the way it infects cells that could make infections more serious. Influenza viruses infect cells by attaching to bead-like molecules on the outside of the cell, called receptors. Different viruses attach to different receptors, and if a virus cannot find its specific receptors, it cannot get into the cell. Once inside the cell, the virus uses the cell's machinery to make thousands more viruses, which then burst out of the cell and infect neighbouring ones, establishing an infection. Seasonal influenza viruses attach to receptors found on cells in the nose, throat and upper airway, enabling them to infect a person's respiratory tract. Today's research, which was funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, shows that pandemic H1N1 swine flu can also attach to a receptor found on cells deep inside the lungs, which can result in a more severe lung infection. The pandemic influenza virus's ability to stick to the additional receptors may explain why the virus replicates and spreads between cells more quickly: if a flu virus can bind to more than one type of receptor, it can attach itself to a larger area of the respiratory tract, infecting more cells and causing a more serious infection. Professor Ten Feizi, a corresponding author of today's paper from the Division of Medicine at Imperial College London, said: "Most people infected with swine-origin flu in the current pandemic have experienced relatively mild symptoms. However, some people have had more severe lung infections, which can be worse than those caused by seasonal flu. Our new research shows how the virus does this - by attaching to receptors mostly found on cells deep in the lungs. This is something seasonal flu cannot do." The researchers found that pandemic H1N1 influenza bound more weakly to the receptors in the lungs than to those in the upper respiratory tract. This is why most people infected with the virus have experienced mild symptoms. However, the researchers are concerned that the virus could mutate to bind more strongly to these receptors. "If the flu virus mutates in the future, it may attach to the receptors deep inside the lungs more strongly, and this could mean that more people would experience serious symptoms. We think scientists should be on the lookout for these kinds of changes in the virus so we can try to find ways of minimising the impact of such changes," added Professor Feizi. The researchers compared the way seasonal and pandemic H1N1 flu viruses infect cells by identifying which receptors each virus binds to. To do this, the researchers used a glass surface with 86 different receptors attached to it, called a carbohydrate microarray. When viruses were added to the glass surface, they stuck to their specific receptors and the corresponding areas on the plate 'lit up'. This meant the researchers could see which receptors the different viruses attached to. Pandemic H1H1 influenza could bind strongly to receptors called α2-6, which are found in the nose, throat and upper airway, and it could also attach more weakly to α2-3 receptors, which are found on cells deeper inside the lungs. However, seasonal H1N1 influenza could only attach to α2-6. "Receptor binding determines how well a virus spreads between cells and causes an infection," said Professor Feizi. "Our new study adds to our understanding of how swine-origin influenza H1N1 virus is behaving in the current pandemic, and shows us changes we need to look out for." More information: "Receptor-binding specificity of pandemic influenza A (H1N1) 2009 virus determined by carbohydrate microarray" Nature Biotechnology, 10 September 2009. Source: Imperial College London (news : web) Explore further: New formula invented for microscope viewing, substitutes for federally controlled drug

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2013-05-19T19:51:30Z

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With global population expected to increase by about 2.5 billion by 2050 even while climate change hits farmlands with shifting rainfall and temperatures, it may be time to rethink what we eat and how we produce food, according to a Harvard Medical School instructor and authority on environmental change and human health. Samuel Myers, instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), laid out evidence that the global food supply system is already showing cracks. Add those people and throw in the effects of climate change and — although it’s not time to panic — it may be time to be concerned, Myers said. Myers, who spoke as part of the Harvard Museum of Natural History’s “Food for Thought” lecture series Tuesday (Feb. 23), said that the 20th century’s “green revolution” in agriculture made use of new farming techniques, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and new crop strains to increase the global food supply dramatically and make a liar out of Thomas Malthus, who famously predicted that population growth would outstrip the expanding food supply. Myers pointed out, however, that even one of the fathers of the green revolution, Norman Borlaug, who won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, said burgeoning agriculture would buy only a few decades of food security against continued population growth. In recent years, humans have appropriated more land and water to feed themselves, until now between a third and a half of all ecosystem yield is used for human food production. Humans use roughly half of all ice-free, non-desert land and half of accessible fresh water, much of that for agriculture. Despite that massive use of the Earth’s resources, humanity still fails to feed itself adequately. The inequities in the global food network hit a dubious milestone last year, authorities say, for the first time passing the mark of 1 billion people who go to bed hungry nightly. Even before population growth and climate change are considered, the current agricultural system is already under siege, Myers said. Much arable land is lost each year to erosion, salinization, and desertification. Fresh water is increasingly drawn from nonrenewable sources, such as melting glaciers and slowly draining subterranean aquifers. Three hundred million Chinese and Indians are living on what Myers termed “fossil water,” deposited underground in the ancient past. One estimate suggests that 3 billion people will live amid water scarcity by 2025. “We are already coming against very sharp constraints in the use of water,” Myers said. Other concerns include agricultural pollution, fisheries depletion (fish catches peaked in the 1980s), and biodiversity loss, Myers said. With a global population surge, the spread of Western-style diets, and the rise of an international middle class demanding higher-quality foods, Myers said that growers may need to double global food production by 2050 to meet demand. That would require a tripling of water for irrigation using current methods, something that Myers said was impossible. While the effects of climate shifts are uncertain, some — such as changing rainfall patterns, snowpack timing, and glacier melt — could hurt agriculture. In addition, Myers said, recent research has shown that plant production can decline when temperatures increase, leading to less-efficient food production at a time when more is needed. The 2003 European heat wave, for example, did more than kill many people. It cut agricultural yield by 20 to 36 percent. Despite the gloomy outlook, however, Myers said he is optimistic that such challenges will yet be solved. New technologies, plant breeds, and agricultural techniques can be devised to conserve water and boost productivity. And even as we rethink how our food is produced, we may also need to rethink what it is that we eat. Either way, he said, it’s important to get the conversation started now. Explore further: Bold action, big money needed to curb Asia floods

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2013-05-19T19:22:40Z

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Too much sun – for plants as well as people – can be harmful to long-term health. But to avoid the botanical equivalent of “lobster tans,” plants have developed an intricate internal defense mechanism called photoprotection, which acts like sunscreen to ward off the sun's harmful rays. “We knew that biomolecules called carotenoids participate in this process of photoprotection, but the question has been, ‘How does this work?' ” says Iris Visoly-Fisher, a postdoctoral research associate in the Biodesign Institute at ASU. Carotenoids act as “wires” to carry away the extra sunlight energy in the form of unwanted electrons, somehow wicking away the extra electrons across long distances from locations that could damage plant tissues and photosynthesis. During photoprotection, the consensus school of thought was that carotenoids—the source of the orange pigments in carrots and Vitamin A – become oxidized, or charged, losing an electron in the process. Fisher and other ASU scientists have found a way to measure the electrical conductance within such an important biomolecule. In doing so, the team has produced a new discovery that shatters the prevailing view. The research team found that oxidation is not required for photoprotection; rather, carotenoids in a neutral, or uncharged, state can readily handle the electron overload from the sun. Their findings have been published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) under the title “Conductance of a Biomolecular Wire.” The findings can be accessed at the Web site (www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0600593103v1). “This is a remarkable experimental tour de force, and the result is quite unexpected,” says Lindsay, who directs Fisher's work in the Biodesign Institute's Center for Single Molecule Biophysics. “Carotene was regarded as the poster child for this molecular mechanism, but it turns out that a much simpler mechanism works just fine.” The innovative work was a collaboration between several ASU departments and the Univesidad Nacional de Rio Cuarto in Argentina . In addition to Fisher, who was lead author on the paper, contributions from chemistry and biochemistry professors Devens Gust, Tom Moore and Ana Moore of ASU's Center for the Study of Early Events in Photosynthesis were instrumental in the project. “The initial interest was to more fully understand how photosynthesis works,” Fisher says. “Because our center focuses on electron transport in a single molecule, Devens Gust and Tom and Ana Moore suggested that we look at single-molecule transport in carotene.” To get at the heart of the problem, Fisher had to attempt an experiment that had never been done before for any biomolecule: to control the charge of the biomolecule while measuring its ability to hold a current. By holding a carotenoid under potential control, Fisher could control whether the biomolecule was in a neutral state or in the charged state (the oxidized state), while simultaneously measuring the electron transport through a single molecule. “The importance of this result is not only for understanding natural systems and photosynthesis, but also for the fact that, technically, for the first time, we could hold a molecule in a state pretty close to the natural conditions found in the plant,” Fisher says. To make the experimental measurements, Fisher needed to work out several technically challenging variations to a method first pioneered by electrical engineering professor Nongjian Tao of ASU's Fulton School of Engineering. In concept, it's much like trying to measure the current of a wire found in an everyday household appliance – only, in this case, the “wiring” is a miniscule 2.8 nanometers long and less than a single nanometer thick. That's about 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. One of the greatest challenges of the experiment came down to the human endurance of taking thousands of measurements over an intense, six-month period. “We needed to keep this finicky molecule away from the light,” Fisher says. “So sometimes the microscope room became like a cave, where I was sitting for hours and hours in the dark.” But for Fisher and the rest of the team, the main satisfaction was being able to break down a complex process to understand its simplest components and produce a groundbreaking discovery. Source: Arizona State University Explore further: Honeybees trained in Croatia to find land mines

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2013-05-19T19:22:20Z

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Published June 24, 2010 OUTSIDE the main hospital in San Cristóbal de las Casas, women in traditional multicoloured garb queue up to see a doctor. Many are pregnant or carry infants on their backs. One expectant mother says she fears there will not be a bed for her when she enters labour—all too common in the overcrowded hospital. Tales of deaths from hypertension, haemorrhage or infection during or after giving birth are common in the second city of the state of Chiapas. In a nearby village, one doctor recalls a woman whose journey took so long that she died on the street outside his clinic. Maternal mortality in Mexico has fallen by 36% since 1990, but it is still higher than in other Latin American countries. The problem is far worse among Indians and in the poorer south. Mothers in Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero states die in childbirth 70% more often than the national average, and indigenous women are three times less likely to survive birth than non-indigenous women. Most of these deaths are preventable. One of the first obstacles for a pregnant woman is transport. To reach a doctor you need to get a car, a driver, petrol, and someone to take care of the other children. The roads to the nearest town hospital are often slow and dangerous. As a result, many women—including one-third of Indian mothers—give birth without any medical help at all... Read the full story at The Economist.

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This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a detailed view of the spiral arms on one side of the galaxy Messier 99. Messier 99 is a so-called grand design spiral, with long, large and clearly defined spiral arms — giving it a structure somewhat similar to the Milky Way. Lying around 50 million light-years away, Messier 99 is one of over a thousand galaxies that make up the Virgo Cluster, the closest cluster of galaxies to us. Messier 99 itself is relatively bright and large, meaning it was one of the first galaxies to be discovered, way back in the 18th century. This earned it a place in Charles Messier’s famous catalog of astronomical objects. In recent years, a number of unexplained phenomena in Messier 99 have been studied by astronomers. Among these is the nature of one of the brighter stars visible in this image. Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest

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2013-05-19T19:43:52Z

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quality posts: 12 This is in honor of the only thing I remember from Chemistry, the mole. The mole is a unit of measurement used in chemistry to express amounts of a chemical substance, equal to about 6.02214×1023 molecules of that substance. It is one of the base units in the International System of Units, and has the unit symbol mol. From wikipedia: The mole is widely used in chemistry, instead of units of mass or volume, as a convenient way to express the amounts of reagents and products of chemical reactions. For example, the chemical equation 2 H2 + O2 → 2 H2O implies that 2 mol of dihydrogen and 1 mol of dioxygen react to form 2 mol of water. The mole may also be used to express the number of atoms, ions, or other elementary entities in some sample. The concentration of a solution is commonly expressed by its molarity, the number of moles of the dissolved subtance per liter of solution. Some BBQ, Bake It So! Apron, Only Memories, The aVEGers!, Forbidden Future Remix, Forbidden Future Remix (Golden Bender Version), Bake It So!, Kitchen Warfare Apron, The Dark Knight, Teacher Talks Funny, Ruff Justice, Four S’mores and Seven Weenies Ago, "Special" Delivery, Seasons Greetings, Let’s Get Sauced!, Squeeze, The Extended Bell Curve, Jurassic Parka quality posts: 3 Re: Chemical Words of Wisdom Words I live by... some may even call me a Master Procrastinator. lol Hope you guys enjoy my very amateur design! "Expect to get shot down often and hard." -- The Great TT

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Ethnic groups of Pakistan ||This article needs more sources for reliability. (May 2013)| About 98% of languages spoken in Pakistan are Indo-Iranian (sub-branches: 75% Indo-Aryan and 20% pure Iranian), a branch of Indo-European family of languages. Most languages of Pakistan are written in the Perso-Arabic script, with significant vocabulary derived from Arabic and Persian. Punjabi (Shahmukhi), Seraiki, Sindhi, Pashto, Urdu, Balochi, Kashmiri (Koshur), etc. are the general languages spoken within Pakistan. The majority of Pakistanis belong to various Indo-Aryan-speaking ethnic groups, while a large minority are various Iranic peoples and Dardic language groups. In addition, small groups language isolates such as Burusho and Brahui-speaking peoples also live in the country. The major ethnic groups of Pakistan in numerical size include: Punjabis, Pashtuns, Sindhis, Seraikis, Muhajirs, Balochis, Chitralis and other smaller groups. The population comprises several main ethnic groups (2009): - Punjabis (42.15%) 70.7 million - Pashtuns (17.42%) 35.2 million - Sindhis (14.1%) 24.8 million - Seraikis (10.53%) 14.8 million - Muhajirs (7.57%) 13.3 million - Balochs is (3.57%) 6.3 million - Others (4.66%) 11.1 million Smaller ethnic groups, such as Kashmiris, Kalash, Burusho, Brahui, Khowar, Shina, and Turwalis are mainly found in the northern parts of the country. The people of the Potohar Plateau in Northern Punjab, (Potoharis) are sometimes listed separately from Punjabis. This would tend to decrease the Punjabs population further. Hindkowans is a general term applied to the inhabitants of the Hazara Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The area falls in between the 'proper' Pashtun districts of the province, the Northern Punjab and Kashmir. Thus, it is a 'transitional' area where the Hindko dialect, or language, is mostly spoken, with a little Pashto and other languages. It must be noted that as such, there are no people or races of this name, but it is a purely linguistic definition or term. The people inhabiting the 'Hindko-speaking belt' are in fact from a number of ethnic origins—Pathan settlers such as the Yusufzai, Tarin, Mishwani, Jadoon, Utmanzai and others, as well as representatives of various Punjabi and Kashmiri tribes, as well as several indigenous hill and aboriginal tribes such as the Karlal, Dhund Abbasi, Malichas, Tanoli, Swatis and so on. Whilst the term is generally applied to the inhabitants of Hazara (especially Abbottabad, Haripur and Mansehra districts)it is also applied, by extension to sizable pockets of Hindko-speaking populations of Peshawar city, Kohat and Dera Ismail Khan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in Dera Ghazi Khan and Mianwali in Punjab. The Hazara race (not to be confused with the inhabitants of the Hazara region above) are a Persian language-speaking people. The local or Pakistani Hazara are residing in Quetta, Balochistan, and a small number from Afghanistan as refugees in the Islamabad area and a very few in Peshawar city too in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They are closely related to the Mongols and the Uygurs. The total estimated population of Pakistani Hazaras is believed to be more than 200,000. Afghan refugee Hazaras are not more than between 10000 to 12000. Makrani are the inhabitants of Makran coast of Balochistan in Iran and Pakistan. They are the Negroid people of Pakistan. They are the descendants of slaves first brought to Pakistan by Arab merchants in medieval times from the Bantu-speaking parts of eastern Africa. Tajiks are a Persian-speaking people, with traditional homelands in present-day Afghanistan, Tajikistan, southern Uzbekistan, northern Pakistan and western China. The Pakistani Tajiks live amongst other majority Central Asian-origin peoples such as the Dardic and Chitralis, the Hunzukuts, Shina, Baltis etc., and proper Tajiks are estimated to be no more than between 100,000 to 125,000[source?]. The Balti are an ethnic group of Tibetan descent with some Dardic admixture in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan and Ladakh. In Pakistan they mainly live in major urban centres of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad/Rawalpindi. The Balti language belongs to the Tibetan language family and is a sub-dialect of Ladakhi.

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Spanish 1 Teaching Resource Guide Book: A Teacher’s Guide You won’t find a collection of this many classroom tried and tested materials for level 1 in once place for this price! A must have for student teachers and first and second year teachers. Click here to see full description and preview. CD – $ 14.99 Binded-Book Version $ 24.00 Over 50 Bell Ringers A Microsoft PowerPoint slideshow of 69 different bell ringer activities to use to start your Spanish class. These Spanish 1 concepts review material and are a great way to get the class started. You can certainly adapt any slide to your own preferences. Includes some culturally rich backgrounds on the slides as well. Spanish Projects: 15 Projects for Level 1 Includes projects for: Practicing Vocabulary, Animal Description, School Unit, Food Unit, Menu, Family Album, House unit, Body Part, Commands, Doctor Skit, Daily Routine skit, Clothing unit, Advice Unit, Past Tense and Country Research. Rubrics included for majority of projects. Spanish Conversation Cards: Pages: 60 total Get your beginning Spanish students talking! Over 300 questions for your students to ask and respond to. 32 pages for Level 1 Cards and 28 pages for Level 2 Cards with 6 “cards” on each page to cut out. A great lesson to have students orally respond to questions. Can be used in pairs, small groups, or as a whole-class activity. Can even be used as review for Spanish 3 class as well. Click here for product preview. 12.8 MB of over 40 files for your Spanish class to help your students conjugate verbs in level one. Includes multiple files for: -Teaching Subject Pronouns -Conjugating AR Verbs -Conjugating Stem Change Verbs -Tener and Estar Expressions -Conjugating Preterite Tense -Verb Word Wall Save yourself the time and trouble of creating all these files. These files are ready to print and copy for your classes! All files have been classroom tested. Click here to see full description. CD – $ 20.00 $15.00 Over 13 Speaking Activities to get your Spanish students talking and conversing in the language. Includes: Surveys and Questionnaires to ask their classmates, questions on notecards, and 5 pre-made activities for arranging partners. 11 files necessary to teaching any food unit. Includes vocabulary powerpoint presentation, worksheets/assessments, Bingo game, info-gap activities, and final project with rubric. Guess Who Cheat Sheet A cheat sheet to print out for students to use to help facilitate language while playing “¿Adivina Quién?” or “Guess Who” in Spanish. Includes all the necessary adjectives students need to use to be able to play the game. $3.50 PDF file to be e-mailed to customer, thus NO SHIPPING FREE. (Be sure to check your spam folder for our e-mail sent within approx. 24 hours) Purchase entitles buyers for use in personal classroom only, but you can make as many copies as you need for your own classes. $ 15.00 Class set of 30 pre-printed on heavy card-stock and mailed to customer. Facebook Profile Project Students can create their own ‘Facebook’ profile page that describes themselves in Spanish. This ‘perfil’ will include students writing about themselves, giving: name, origin, birthday, favorite activities, hobbies, movies, tv shows, comments from ‘friends’ and more. Includes list for common vocabulary/terminology used by Facebook as well as a list of Spanish texting abbreviations. Includes a Editable Word Template and a PDF template of both a PROFILE and a NEWSFEED page. Download Preview now. $3.99 PDF file to be e-mailed to customer. Can print unlimited copies (no shipping fee. E-mailed within 24 hours.) Games & Other Engaging Activities CD -Body Parts Drawing -Body Parts Project -Comida Bingo Game -Comida Communicative Activity -Prepositions of Location Unit -Spanish Class Ice Breakers - Ser + Adjective Flashcard Game Check out our preview for full details. Reflexive Verb & Ser/Estar Units CD: Includes our 2 most complete units on two of the most difficult subjects for Spanish students. Our reflexive verb unit offers 22 pages of notes and activities. Our ser/estar unit offers a 19 page unit lesson plan including guided notes, worksheets, and more. Spanish Speaking Country Project: Groups will research a Hispanic country in South or Central America. The student project includes a presentation board, map, travel brochure, and flag. Rubric is detailed but this product includes a PDF and a Word file so the buyer can EDIT any part of the project or rubric to their satisfaction. This project is great for middle school or high school Spanish classes looking to teach about the countries and culture of the Spanish-speaking world. Also contains a shorter, one page project outline for research and an additional 1 page project for planning a trip to a particular country. (also included on 15 Spanish Projects CD above) $5.00 Digital File (to be e-mailed to customer. No shipping fee. Please be sure to check your spam folder or add spanishplans at gmail to your safe list.)

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://spanishplans.org/store/teachingmaterials/

2013-05-19T19:36:22Z

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en

Solar System Bodies Solar system bodies are divided into the following groups: Comets and asteroids are also referred to as "small-bodies" on this site. The current number of known bodies with reasonably secure orbits in each group is shown on a separate page. Data for each group of bodies is represented slightly differently, but in general, the following are available for all bodies: ephemerides, orbital elements, and discovery data (see the subsections below). Additional data may be available only for a specific body group, for example, orbit diagrams are available only for The exception is meteor streams for which there is only limited data. High precision custom ephemerides are available via our HORIZONS system. See the separate detailed page describing available ephemerides. In general, orbital elements should not be used to compute ephemerides. This is particularly true for planetary satellites. Use the ephemeris section links above if you need ephemerides. Orbit diagrams are available for the planets, comets, and asteroids. Discovery circumstances are available for most planetary satellites, select comets, and numbered asteroids. These data include the discovery date, location of discovery, and one or more names credited with the discovery.

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?bodies

2013-05-19T19:14:19Z

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en

Solar sailers were a method of propulsion used by some starships. Although called "solar" sailers, they were more commonly propelled by tachyon streams and ultraviolet lasers rather than the photons and "solar wind" (high-energy plasma which escapes a star's gravity) of sunlight. Gathered on a sufficiently large surface (solar sails would unfurl to colossal diameters, rivaling the surface area of moons), the absorbed momentum would then accelerate the spacecraft. Once optimal acceleration has been reached, the hyperdrive motivator would kick in and allow the craft to enter hyperspace. While cheap and easy to produce, solar sails were not widely used as a propulsion system, for three main reasons: the first is that the sail is at its most efficient when traveling close and directly away from a star. Solar wind and photons are only exploitable in the general vicinity of a star, and changing directions would imply either the use of gravity from a nearby stellar object, or the inclination of the whole sail. The second reason is the sail's size: even a small ship would require a very large sail to be accelerated to hyperspace entry velocity, thus increasing the overall ship's size. this can be averted to a point by storing the sail away when not in use. The third reason is that the sail is rather fragile: micrometeorites and random stellar debris can very quickly and irremediably shred a solar sail to the point of uselessness.[source?] A major advantage of the solar sail, however, is that since it uses no on-board fuel, it leaves no readily identifiable residues, and it's passage is virtually undetectable once the ship has departed. Count Dooku had a one-of-a-kind solar sail procured from the Gree Enclave fitted to his Punworcca 116-class interstellar sloop, which he used as his personal transport prior to and during the Clone Wars. Very small for a sailer, with a sail of exotic matter powered by mysterious undetectable energies, Dooku's interstellar sloop was one of the most unique craft in the galaxy. List of known solar sailersEdit - Jemlaat-class in-system sail yacht - Koros-Strohna worldships - Punworcca-116 interstellar sloops - Starbreaker 12 - LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game (Non-canonical appearance) - LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Non-canonical appearance) - Jango Fett: Open Seasons - Star Wars: Bounty Hunter - The Eyes of Revolution - Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones - Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones comic - Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones junior novel - Most Precious Weapon - Star Wars: Republic 49: Sacrifice - Star Wars: Clone Wars – "Chapter 6" - Jedi: Mace Windu - Star Wars: The Clone Wars film - Star Wars: The Clone Wars 5: Slaves of the Republic - Chapter 5: A Slave now, a Slave forever - Star Wars: The Clone Wars Volume 1: Shipyards of Doom - Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Ambush" - Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Dooku Captured" - Star Wars: The Clone Wars 11: Hero of the Confederacy, Part 2 - Star Wars: The Clone Wars 12: Hero of the Confederacy, Part 3 - Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Monster" - Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Witches of the Mist" - Legacy of the Jedi - Star Wars: Republic 63: Striking from the Shadows - Brothers in Arms - Labyrinth of Evil - Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of Darth Vader (Appears in flashback(s)) - LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (Non-canonical appearance) - Junior Jedi Knights: Vader's Fortress (First appearance) - Junior Jedi Knights: Kenobi's Blade - "Firestorm"—Star Wars Adventure Journal 15 - Star Wars Adventure Journal 15 - Star Wars Attack of the Clones: Incredible Cross-Sections - The New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels - The Art of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace - The Clone Wars: The Visual Guide

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http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Solar_sailer

2013-05-19T19:29:04Z

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en

In three new independent studies, researchers have deepened our understanding of the remarkable ability of some specialized areas of the brain to activate both in response to one's own actions and in response to sensory cues (such as sight) of the same actions perpetrated by another individual. This ability is thought to be based in the activity of so-called mirror neurons, which have been hypothesized to contribute to skills such as empathy, socialized behavior, and language acquisition. The new findings contribute to our understanding of how conceptually related instances of language and action, and sound and action, are linked in the brain, and how the brain distinguishes actions perpetrated by "self" and by "other." Mirror neurons were first identified in the cortex of macaque monkeys: A particular subset of these neurons fire when, for example, a monkey picks up a banana, and when the monkey observes a human picking up a banana in a similar way. Mirror-neuron activity appears to be highly specific, such that a somewhat different set of mirror neurons would fire if a banana were poked, for example, rather than picked up. There is also evidence that mirror neurons link actions not only with visual stimuli, but also with other types of sensory cues. Technical limitations have impeded identification of individual mirror neurons in humans, but brain-imaging studies support the existence of these neurons. In the new work from Lisa Aziz-Zadeh and colleagues, researchers used a brain-imaging technique to investigate how literal phrases describing actions performed by the mouth, hand, or foot influenced cortical neurons that are activated by the sight of actions being performed by mouth, hand, or foot. The researchers found a significant concordance between activation of certain cortical areas in response to linguistic descriptions and observed actions relating to the different body parts carrying out the actions. For example, when individuals read literal phrases such as "biting the peach" or "biting the banana," some brain areas activated that were also stimulated by videos of fruit being bitten. Similar findings were obtained for hand actions (for example, grasping a pen) and foot actions (for example, pressing a piano pedal). Together, the findings suggest that mirror neurons play a key role in the mental "re-enactment" of actions when linguistic descriptions of those actions are conceptually processed. In the study reported by Christian Keysers, Valeria Gazzola, and colleagues, researchers investigated a different question: how mirror neurons might contribute to our understanding of auditory cues. Past work had shown that in monkeys, so-called auditory mirror neurons activate when monkeys perform certain actions and when they hear the same actions being performed. In the new work, the researchers report new evidence for an auditory mirror system existing in humans as well. Intriguingly, the researchers also found that of the subjects taking part in the experiment, those that scored higher on tests for empathy activated the system more strongly than those who scored lower on the empathy evaluation. While the relationship between motor mirror systems and empathy skills is far from clear, these findings are consistent with the existence of a link between the two. Though mirror neurons appear to relate--and, potentially, equate--the actions of oneself with those of another, we are in fact highly adept at distinguishing our own actions from those of someone else. The basis for this distinction is explored in the study reported by Simone Schütz-Bosbach, Patrick Haggard, and colleagues, who used an established method--the so-called rubber-hand illusion--for experimentally manipulating the sense of body ownership. Taken together, the findings indicate that the observation of others facilitates the motor system. The authors point out that the findings also suggest that the neural mechanisms that underlie action observation are intrinsically "social" --that the neural mechanisms map the actions of others onto one's own body, rather than initially treating all observed action (whether perpetrated by one's self or by others) as essentially neutral in ownership. These findings inform our understanding of the motor system's role in social cognition, and support previous suggestions that the motor system may have strongly influenced developments in human social evolution. >from *Mirrors in the mind: New studies elucidate how the brain reflects onto itself the actions of others*. September 18, 2006 > beauty and the brain. 'what you like is a function of what your mind has been trained on. a stimulus becomes attractive if it falls into the average of what you’ve seen and is therefore simple for your brain to process. we can make an arbitrary pattern likeable just by preparing the mind to recognize it quickly.' september 26, 2006 > mental link between actions and words. 'what is the difference in our minds between talk and action?.' september 18, 2006 > mirror neurons. 'a set of neurons in the premotor area of the brain that are activated not only when performing an action oneself, but also while observing someone else perform that action.' march 11, 2005 > brain region learns to anticipate risk, provides early warnings. february 17, 2005 > others' intentions. march 5, 2004 > eye gaze direction: how the brain perceives emotion. june 13, 2003 > the actions of others onto one's own body sonic flow| permaLink > ...from those of someone else [stream] ...from those of someone else [download]

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://straddle3.net/context/03/en/2006_10.html

2013-05-19T19:28:47Z

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en

WHY "MĀORI" LANGUAGE PLANNING? A Bilingual Nation A vision Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori has for Aotearoa - is of a bilingual nation (using the official languages Māori and English) where all New Zealanders value "our" reo as a living national taonga. It recognises that while reo Māori will always be central to Māori culture, it contributes significantly to New Zealand's unique identity in the world. go to: www.tetaurawhiri.govt.nz To achieve our vision of a bilingual nation: - Whānau, hapū and iwi Māori must be able to maintain and strengthen reo in their communities; - all New Zealanders should have the opportunity to become bilingual; - the Government must treat Māori and English equally; and - when people speak Māori they should be assisted to use the language appropriately. Māori language planning can contribute to achieving all of these outcomes by developing strategies and initiatives suitable for organisations, businesses or community groups. Further, it ensures that work undertaken is informed by research and theory, and for communities, supported by a Māori validated concept of knowledge. Māori Language - The Indigenous Language of Aotearoa "All languages are equally complex and capable of expressing any idea in the universe, with a vocabulary able to be expanded to include new words for new concepts". (Fromkin & Rodman, An Introduction to Language (2nd ed.) 1978, p331, Ministry of Education, Aoteareo (draft), 1992, p33. Māori language is the indigenous language of Aotearoa and whether in written or spoken form, has the proven potential of expressing any concept. For example, the national education curriculum is delivered totally in reo Māori, and the vocabulary commonly used in information technology is in the process of being translated. If successful Māori language regeneration is the goal, careful planning will be necessary for individuals, whānau, hapū and iwi, government and non-government organisations to satisfy the main indicators of language health: usage, status, acquisition corpus, and critical awareness. According to the Health of the Māori Language Survey 2001, after continual decline for several decades, the numbers of adult Māori language speakers have stabilised at around 136,700 (42% of Māori aged 15 years and over or approximately 25% of the entire Māori population). They can be divided into three general levels of Māori language proficiency: - Nine percent of all Māori adults speak Māori 'well' or 'very well' - 33 percent speak Māori 'fairly well or 'not very well' - 58 percent can understand spoken Māori to some degree For more information on the Māori Language Survey 2001, go to: http://www.tpk.govt.nz/maori/language/default.asp For the past 20 years, language regeneration efforts have been largely centered on supporting Māori language acquisition, particularly in the education sector, for example, Te Ataarangi, Kōhanga Reo. However this focus alone, will not guarantee language health. With the development of a relatively large pool of speakers, we now have the opportunity to look at the other activities that can contribute to the overall regeneration of reo Māori. Language planning can support the health and continuous development of our language by guiding efforts to: - increase Māori language proficiency as well as numbers of speakers - disseminate information about Māori language issues - encourage positive attitudes towards reo Māori - assist people to use Māori language in new ways and in new domains Planning will also ensure that efforts across the community, iwi and government are coordinated and working to compliment, not duplicate each other. Benefits to Aotearoa and all New Zealanders - National identity: who we are, what we do, where we live and how we are seen by the world; by promoting and increasing awareness of Māori language and Māori languages issues to all New Zealanders thereby contributing to the maintenance of a distinctively New Zealand culture; - Families both young and old having the support and choices they need to be secure and be able to reach their full potential within our knowledge based economy; by working with key institutions and Ministries to ensure access to Māori language is equitable; and - the transformation to a high income, knowledge based market economy, which is both innovative and creative and provides a unique quality of life to all New Zealanders; by supporting and strengthening the language capabilities of all New Zealanders, and by encouraging New Zealanders to realise the potential and relevance reo Māori has in our society. back to top

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://tetaurawhiri.govt.nz/english/services_e/intro_why.shtml

2013-05-19T19:37:39Z

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en

In the tundra there are many different types of animals. I wrote about the caribou and the musk ox because they are the most commonly found animals in the tundra. The height of the caribou, range from 100 to 150 cm at the shoulders. They can weigh anywhere from 90 to 300 kg. Both the female and the male have antlers, but the female's antlers are smaller. The caribou breed in September and October, and the calves are born in May and June. The main diet of the caribou are lichens, but they also eat grasses, shrubs, tree shoots, and mushrooms. The musk ox is not a true ox, it is more closely related to goats and sheep. The musk ox is mostly found in Greenland and Canada, and has been introduced to Alaska. The average length of an adult bull is about 2.4 m, and its average height is about 1.5 m at the shoulders. The bull has long downward curving horns with upturned tips. The females are a lot smaller with slightly seperated horns. For protection against the cold, the musk ox have dense undercoats and an ankle length outercoat. Designed by Gabe Hatter, Joe Howanic, and Eric Hustrulid

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://ths.sps.lane.edu/biomes/tundra4/tundra4a.html

2013-05-19T19:28:02Z

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en

a city on the coast of Pamphylia, 10 or 12 miles to the east of the river Eurymedon. It is mentioned in 1 Macc. 15:23, and was a colony of Cumaeans.SIDE si'-de (Side): An ancient town of Pamphylia, occupying a triangular promontory on the coast. It was one of the towns to which a letter favorable to the Jews was sent by the Roman consul Lucius (1 Maccabees 15:23). The town seems to have been of considerable antiquity, for it had existed long before it fell into the possession of Alexander the Great, and for a time it was the metropolis of Pamphylia. Off the coast the fleet of Antiochus was defeated by the Rhodians. During the 1st century, Side was noted as one of the chief ports of pirates who disposed of much of their booty there. The ruins of the city, which are now very extensive, bear the name Eski Adalia, but among them there are no occupied houses. The two harbors protected by a sea wall may still be traced, but they are now filled with sand. The wall on the land side of the city was provided with a gate which was protected with round towers; the walls themselves are of Greek-Roman type. Within the walls the more important of the remains are three theaters near the harbors, and streets with covered porticoes leading from the city gate to the harbors. Without the walls, the street leading to the city gate is lined with sarcophagi, and among the shrubbery of the neighboring fields are traces of many buildings and of an aqueduct. E. J. Banks 1. (n.) The margin, edge, verge, or border of a surface; especially (when the thing spoken of is somewhat oblong in shape), one of the longer edges as distinguished from the shorter edges, called ends; a bounding line of a geometrical figure; as, the side of a field, of a square or triangle, of a river, of a road, etc. 2. (n.) Any outer portion of a thing considered apart from, and yet in relation to, the rest; as, the upper side of a sphere; also, any part or position viewed as opposite to or contrasted with another; as, this or that side. 3. (n.) One of the halves of the body, of an animals or man, on either side of the medial plane; or that which pertains to such a half; as, a side of beef; a side of sole leather. 4. (n.) The right or left part of the wall or trunk of the body; as, a pain in the side. 5. (n.) A slope or declivity, as of a hill, considered as opposed to another slope over the ridge. 6. (n.) The position of a person or party regarded as opposed to another person or party, whether as a rival or a foe; a body of advocates or partisans; a party; hence, the interest or cause which one maintains against another; a doctrine or view opposed to another. 7. (n.) A line of descent traced through one parent as distinguished from that traced through another. 8. (n.) Fig.: Aspect or part regarded as contrasted with some other; as, the bright side of poverty. 9. (a.) of or pertaining to a side, or the sides; being on the side, or toward the side; lateral. 10. (a.) Hence, indirect; oblique; collateral; incidental; as, a side issue; a side view or remark. 11. (n.) Long; large; extensive. 12. (v. i.) To lean on one side. 13. (v. i.) To embrace the opinions of one party, or engage in its interest, in opposition to another party; to take sides; as, to side with the ministerial party. 14. (v. t.) To be or stand at the side of; to be on the side toward. 15. (v. t.) To suit; to pair; to match. 16. (v. t.) To work (a timber or rib) to a certain thickness by trimming the sides. 17. (v. t.) To furnish with a siding; as, to side a house.Side (4225 Occurrences) Side is used 4225 times in 12 translations. You can narrow your search using the Advanced Bible Search.Side (4225 Occurrences) ... oblong in shape), one of the longer edges as distinguished from the shorter edges, called ends; a bounding line of a geometrical figure; as, the side of a field ... biblethesaurus.com/s/side.htm - 10k Side-chambers (10 Occurrences) Side-chambers. << Side-chamber, Side-chambers. Sided >>. Multi-Version Concordance Side-chambers (10 Occurrences). 1 Kings ... biblethesaurus.com/s/side-chambers.htm - 9k Way-side (10 Occurrences) Way-side. << Wayside, Way-side. Waysides >>. Multi-Version Concordance Way-side (10 Occurrences). Matthew 13:4 As he sows ... biblethesaurus.com/w/way-side.htm - 9k Side-rooms (7 Occurrences) Side-rooms. << Side-roads, Side-rooms. Sides >>. Multi-Version Concordance Side-rooms (7 Occurrences). Ezekiel 41:5 Then ... biblethesaurus.com/s/side-rooms.htm - 8k Side-posts (7 Occurrences) Side-posts. << Side-post, Side-posts. Side-roads >>. Multi-Version Concordance Side-posts (7 Occurrences). Exodus 12:7 And they shall ... biblethesaurus.com/s/side-posts.htm - 8k Side-chamber (4 Occurrences) Side-chamber. << Side-bones, Side-chamber. Side-chambers >>. Multi-Version Concordance Side-chamber (4 Occurrences). Ezekiel 41:5 Then ... biblethesaurus.com/s/side-chamber.htm - 7k Sea-side (7 Occurrences) Sea-side. << Seaside, Sea-side. Season >>. Multi-Version Concordance Sea-side (7 Occurrences). Matthew 4:13 and having left ... biblethesaurus.com/s/sea-side.htm - 8k Side-walls (2 Occurrences) Side-walls. << Sidewalls, Side-walls. Side-ward >>. Multi-Version Concordance Side-walls (2 Occurrences). Ezekiel 40:48 Then ... biblethesaurus.com/s/side-walls.htm - 7k Side-bones (1 Occurrence) Side-bones. << Side, Side-bones. Side-chamber >>. Multi-Version Concordance Side-bones (1 Occurrence). Daniel 7:5 And I saw another beast ... biblethesaurus.com/s/side-bones.htm - 6k Side-post (2 Occurrences) Side-post. << Side-growth, Side-post. Side-posts >>. Multi-Version Concordance Side-post (2 Occurrences). Exodus 21:6 then hath his lord ... biblethesaurus.com/s/side-post.htm - 7k 4125. pleura -- the side ... the side. Part of Speech: Noun, Feminine Transliteration: pleura Phonetic Spelling: (plyoo-rah') Short Definition: the side of the body Definition: the side of ... //strongsnumbers.com/greek2/4125.htm - 6k 1782. enteuthen -- from here, on each side, thereupon ... from here, on each side, thereupon. Part of Speech: Adverb Transliteration: enteuthen Phonetic Spelling: (ent-yoo'-then) Short Definition: hence, from this place ... //strongsnumbers.com/greek2/1782.htm - 6k 4008. peran -- on the other side ... on the other side. Part of Speech: Adverb Transliteration: peran Phonetic Spelling: (per'-an) Short Definition: over, beyond Definition: over, on the other side ... //strongsnumbers.com/greek2/4008.htm - 6k 1188. dexios -- the right hand or side ... the right hand or side. Part of Speech: Adjective Transliteration: dexios Phonetic Spelling: (dex-ee-os') Short Definition: on the right hand, right hand, right ... //strongsnumbers.com/greek2/1188.htm - 6k 495. antipera -- on the opposite side ... on the opposite side. Part of Speech: Adverb Transliteration: antipera Phonetic Spelling: (an-tee-per'-an) Short Definition: on the opposite side or shore ... //strongsnumbers.com/greek2/495.htm - 6k 3902. parasemos -- marked amiss, marked at the side, marked with a ... ... marked amiss, marked at the side, marked with a sign. Part of Speech: Noun, Neuter Transliteration: parasemos Phonetic Spelling: (par-as'-ay-mos) Short ... //strongsnumbers.com/greek2/3902.htm - 6k 3953. paropsis -- a side dish of delicacies ... a side dish of delicacies. Part of Speech: Noun, Feminine Transliteration: paropsis Phonetic Spelling: (par-op-sis') Short Definition: a bowl, dish, platter ... //strongsnumbers.com/greek2/3953.htm - 6k 3844. para -- from beside, by the side of, by, beside ... from beside, by the side of, by, beside. Part of Speech: Preposition Transliteration: para Phonetic Spelling: (par-ah') Short Definition: from, in the presence ... //strongsnumbers.com/greek2/3844.htm - 8k 3845. parabaino -- to go by the side of, to go past ... to go by the side of, to go past. Part of Speech: Verb Transliteration: parabaino Phonetic Spelling: (par-ab-ah'-ee-no) Short Definition: I transgress Definition ... //strongsnumbers.com/greek2/3845.htm - 7k 3886. paraluo -- to loose from the side 6763. tsela -- rib, side ... to loose from the side. Part of Speech: Verb Transliteration: paraluo Phonetic Spelling: (par-al-oo'-o) Short Definition: I relax, enfeeble Definition: I relax ... //strongsnumbers.com/greek2/3886.htm - 6k ... << 6762, 6763. tsela. 6764 >>. rib, side. Transliteration: tsela Phonetic Spelling: (tsay-law') Short Definition: side. Word Origin from ... //strongsnumbers.com/hebrew2/6763.htm - 6k 6654. tsad -- a side ... << 6653, 6654. tsad. 6655 >>. a side. Transliteration: tsad Phonetic Spelling: (tsad) Short Definition: side. Word Origin from an unused ... //strongsnumbers.com/hebrew2/6654.htm - 6k 6285. peah -- corner, side ... << 6284, 6285. peah. 6286 >>. corner, side. Transliteration: peah Phonetic Spelling: (pay-aw') Short Definition: side. Word Origin from ... //strongsnumbers.com/hebrew2/6285.htm - 6k 7859. setar -- a side ... << 7858, 7859. setar. 7860 >>. a side. Transliteration: setar Phonetic Spelling: (shet-ar') Short Definition: side. Word Origin (Aramaic ... //strongsnumbers.com/hebrew2/7859.htm - 5k 3802. katheph -- shoulder, shoulder blade, side ... << 3801, 3802. katheph. 3803 >>. shoulder, shoulder blade, side. Transliteration: katheph Phonetic Spelling: (kaw-thafe') Short Definition: side. ... //strongsnumbers.com/hebrew2/3802.htm - 6k 3409. yarek -- thigh, loin, side, base ... yarek. 3410 >>. thigh, loin, side, base. Transliteration: yarek Phonetic Spelling: (yaw-rake') Short Definition: thigh. ... body, loins, shaft, side, thigh. ... //strongsnumbers.com/hebrew2/3409.htm - 6k 5676. eber -- region across or beyond, side ... << 5675, 5676. eber. 5677 >>. region across or beyond, side. Transliteration: eber Phonetic Spelling: (ay'-ber) Short Definition: beyond. ... //strongsnumbers.com/hebrew2/5676.htm - 6k 5980. ummah -- close by, side by side with ... << 5979, 5980. ummah. 5981 >>. close by, side by side with. Transliteration: ummah Phonetic Spelling: (oom-maw') Short Definition: alongside. ... //strongsnumbers.com/hebrew2/5980.htm - 6k 3411. yerekah -- flank, side, extreme parts, recesses ... flank, side, extreme parts, recesses. Transliteration: yerekah Phonetic Spelling: (yer-ay-kaw') Short Definition: rear. ... border, coast, part, quarter, side. ... //strongsnumbers.com/hebrew2/3411.htm - 6k 6655. tsad -- side ... << 6654, 6655. tsad. 6656 >>. side. Transliteration: tsad Phonetic Spelling: (tsad) Short Definition: against. Word Origin (Aramaic) corresponding ... //strongsnumbers.com/hebrew2/6655.htm - 6k The Life Side of Death. ... The Resurrection: Gravity Upward The Life Side of Death. ... All the old limitations are gone, never to return. Jesus had moved over to the life side of death. ... /.../gordon/quiet talks about jesus/the life side of death.htm The Opening of the Side of Jesus. ... CHAPTER XLVIII. The Opening of the Side of Jesus. Death of the two thieves. Whilst these events were taking place in Jerusalem, silence reigned around Calvary. ... /.../the dolorous passion of our lord jesus christ/chapter xlviii the opening of.htm Who is on the Lord's Side? Exodus 32:26. ... Who is on the Lord's side? Exodus 32:26. The question ... man. What! no heart to feel when sinners are going to hell by your side! No ... /.../finney/lectures to professing christians/who is on the lords.htm Who is on the Lord's Side? Exodus 32:26. ... Who is on the Lord's side? Exodus 32:26. Last Friday evening, you will remember, that in discoursing from this text, I mentioned ... /.../finney/lectures to professing christians/who is on the lords 2.htm December the Twenty-Seventh the Sunny Side of Things ... DECEMBER The Twenty-seventh THE SUNNY SIDE OF THINGS. 1 John 1:1-7. ... "Walk in the light." The Lord's companionship always makes the sunny side of the street. ... /.../december the twenty-seventh the sunny.htm But Some one on the Opposite Side Says, How do we Know Whether the ... ... Book IV. 18 But some one on the opposite side says, How do we know whether the theologians¦ But some one on the opposite side ... /.../arnobius/the seven books of arnobius against the heathen/18 but some one on.htm The Practical Side of Religion ... TALK THIRTY-FIVE. THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF RELIGION. ... The low-hanging sun glorified the drifting clouds with the hues of the autumn mountain-side. ... /.../naylor/heart talks/talk thirty-five the practical side.htm Dear Angel! ever at My Side ... No. 112 Dear Angel! ever at my side. ANGELS Dear Angel! ever at my side. The Guardian Angel Father Faber Nicola A. Montani. Semplice. 1. Dear angel! ... /.../the st gregory hymnal and catholic choir book/no 112 dear angel ever.htm Each Side Claims to Possess the True Gospel Antiquity the ... ... Jesus is the Christ of the Creator. Chapter IV."Each Side Claims to Possess the True Gospel Antiquity the Criterion of Truth in Such a Matter. ... /.../tertullian/the five books against marcion/chapter iv each side claims to.htm July 31. "We were Troubled on Every Side" (ii. Cor. vii. 5). ... JULY 31. "We were troubled on every side" (II. Cor. vii. 5). "We were troubled on every side" (II. Cor. vii.5). Why should God ... /.../simpson/days of heaven upon earth /july 31 we were troubled.htm

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http://topicalbible.org/s/side.htm

2013-05-19T19:51:10Z

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en

A New York Times story says researchers studying Jefferson's Y chromosome have discovered that it belongs to a lineage rare in Europe but common in the Middle East. This has raised the possibility that the third U.S. president had a Jewish ancestor. According to the article: "Jefferson’s Y chromosome belongs to the branch designated K2, which is quite rare. It occurs in a few men in Spain and Portugal and is most common in the Middle East and eastern Africa, being carried by about 10 percent of men in Oman and Somalia, the geneticists report in the current issue of The American Journal of Physical Anthropology." Providing some interesting information, University of Arizona geneticist Dr. Michael Hammer said that the Jefferson Y chromosome produced four close matches in his database. One was a perfect match with a Moroccan Jew and there were also close matches with another Moroccan Jew, a Kurdish Jew and an Egyptian. According to Hammer, he would “hazard a guess at Sephardic Jewish ancestry” for the president, albeit tentatively. Descendants of Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492 are termed Sephardic Jews. Bennett Greenspan, president of Family Tree DNA, a DNA-testing service, said that among the 90,000 Y chromosome samples contributed to his database, K2 occurred in 2 percent of Ashkenazim, Jews of Central or Northern European origin, and 3 percent of Sephardim. “Whether the non-Jews with K2 are descendants of Jews or come from an earlier migration into Europe is hard to say,” Mr. Greenspan said, “but my sense is that it’s separate migrations from the Middle East.”."

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Vaccination is an important medical decision to be made by you in consultation with your veterinarian. Educate yourself then ask the upcoming questions before you vaccinate. Click the links for more information. To learn why over-vaccination is a problem, read Vaccine Reactions: Underreported and Unrecognized, Not Unimportant. Do not vaccinate pregnant animals. Top veterinary organizations (AVMA, WSAVA, AAHA, AAFP and AHVMA) and many top veterinary schools divide vaccines into “core” (with which all pets should be vaccinated) and “noncore” (which should be given only when a specific risk exists, if then). AAHA (p. 12) recommends puppies get 3 doses of the core vaccines (distemper, parvovirus and adenovirus) every 3-4 weeks starting at 8 weeks with the final dose at 14–16 weeks of age or later. (Some U.S. experts forgo adenovirus “because canine hepatitis has not been a clinical entity in North America for more than a decade.” Others recommend giving it once after 16 weeks of age.) Core vaccines for cats include panleukopenia, calicivirus, rhinotracheitis, and rabies. Per WSAVA (p. 14): “All kittens should receive the core vaccines. [For panleukopenia] a minimum of three doses is recommended: one at 8–9 weeks of age, a second 3–4 weeks later and a final dose at 14–16 weeks of age or older should be administered. Cats that respond to MLV core vaccines maintain immunity for many years in the absence of any repeat vaccination.” According to vaccine researcher Dr. Ron Schultz, if your cat is already 16 weeks of age or older at the time of its first vaccine, only a single dose is needed to provide solid, long-lasting immunity. No booster vaccines are needed for most adult cats, except rabies as required by law. Questions to Ask BEFORE You Vaccinate Your Dog or Cat 1. Is my pet already immune from the disease in question? After completing puppy or kitten core vaccination series, dogs and in some cases cats likely have long term or even lifetime immunity for the important diseases (canine distemper and parvovirus; feline panleukopenia). Vaccine labels recommending annual or three-year revaccination intervals for canine core vaccines generally reflect the length of time the vaccine was tested before approval, and show minimal, not average or maximum, immunity given. Revaccinating an animal with pre-existing immunity (as a result of prior vaccinations) will not make the animal “more immune” and increases the chance of an adverse reaction. It is also an unnecessary expense. 2. Do I know that only the rabies vaccine is required by law? Groomers, day care providers and others may insist on certain vaccinations, but aside from rabies, what they require is their choice and may be based on inaccurate or outdated information. Veterinarians in the same community vary in their requirements and recommendations. It pays to shop around. The 1-year rabies vaccine is usually required at 3 or 4 months of age per local law. Generally, a “3-year vaccine” (guaranteed by the drug maker to give 3 years of immunity) is given a year later, then every 3 years thereafter unless outdated local laws conflict with state law. (Note: change the law!) There is no benefit, but substantial risk, to vaccinating more often, or earlier, than required by law. Failure to vaccinate on time, however, can result in being required by your vet or the law to start the series from the beginning even though vaccines don’t automatically stop giving immunity at 1 or 3 years. A French study of dogs has shown the 3-year vaccine to last at least 5 years; blood tests show 7 or more years of immunity. The USDA Center for Veterinary Biologics reports that the rabies vaccine is responsible for more adverse reactions than other vaccines. Do not give this vaccine during surgery or with other drugs. Give 3 or more weeks apart from other vaccine boosters. Many veterinarians suggest the use of vaccines free of thimerasol (mercury) for dogs and Merial Purevax for cats. Some locales allow exemptions for unhealthy animals. 3. If a “noncore” (optional) vaccine is recommended, do I know my pet’s individual risk of contracting the disease in question, the severity of the illness, the success rate of the vaccine and the risk of vaccinating? Noncore vaccines can be given alone or mixed with core vaccines (not recommended). Bacterial vaccines like Leptospira, Bordetella, Borrelia and Chlamydophilia are more likely to cause reactions than the MLV core vaccines (per WSAVA Guidelines, p. 31) and should be given on different days from other drugs. Leptospirosis, the “L” in a canine combo vaccine, is not a problem everywhere or for all pets; the vaccine does not protect against all strains of the disease, must be given frequently, is known to cause more adverse reactions than most other vaccines and is believed to be particularly problematic for toy breeds (although large breeds are also at risk). (See more WSAVA Guidelines, p. 12.) Eminent vaccination scientist Dr. Ron Schultz, who lives in a Leptospirosis endemic area of the U.S., does not recommend the vaccine or does not give it to his own dogs. Bordetella (kennel cough) is given as nose drops, is generally a mild, self-limiting illness (like the human cold) which is mostly spread in close quarters with poor ventilation. Hence, the name “kennel cough.” The vaccine has limited effectiveness and is not recommended by Dr. Schultz and others. Noncore bacterial cat vaccines, Chlamydophila (Chlamydia) and Bordetella, are of limited effectiveness. Read WSAVA, p.16. 4. Is my pet ill? All vaccine manufacturers recommend vaccinating healthy animals only, but don’t define “healthy.” Poor health could include (but is not limited to) allergies, ear infections, kennel cough, severe stress and malnutrition as well as serious chronic illnesses like liver, bladder or kidney disease, immune system dysfunction, neurological disorders and cancer. Barring a local life-threatening epidemic, vaccination can often be postponed until health improves. A positive titer test for a core vaccine can offer peace of mind. Caution: Vaccinating an unhealthy pet not only puts your pet at great risk but also risks vaccine failure, something especially dangerous for pets and for the public when vaccinating against rabies. Medical exemptions to rabies vaccination are available in some areas. 5. Does my pet have a personal, family, breed or species history of vaccine reactions? At risk pets should be vaccinated only if a particular immediate, potentially fatal risk exists and perhaps not even then. If the vaccine must be given, a different brand than the one that caused the reaction is often recommended, although this is no guarantee of safety. WSAVA (p. 31; #54) says that a positive titer test precludes the need for vaccination for core diseases; they discourage revaccination with noncore vaccines. Cats are particularly at risk for injection-site sarcomas (as are some dogs) and have special vaccination needs. Click here for more details. Also read Vaccination Protocols for Dogs Predisposed to Vaccine Reactions. 6. Is my veterinarian recommending a combination vaccine? A Purdue study of 1.2 million dogs shows that multiple vaccines given in one visit, especially when given to a small-to-medium size dog, may greatly increase the chance of a vaccine reaction. (A second study shows risks to cats.) Multiple vaccines also make it impossible to determine which vaccine caused any subsequent reaction. Vaccines are available with only one or two or three antigens in one hypo (called monovalent or bivalent vaccines) although you may have to shop to find a veterinarian who carries them. Using monovalent or bivalent vaccines could lessen the chance of a reaction while increasing the chance that your pet is getting only necessary vaccines. To further lessen the chance of a reaction, bacterial vaccines should not be given with viral vaccines. Note: many common products contain 4-7 vaccines, mixing bacterial with viral, and are given with additional vaccines like Bordetella and rabies. These practices unnecessarily increase the likelihood of reactions. 7. Have I been fully briefed about the vaccine’s possible side effects? Often, clients are warned about common reactions like fever, lethargy and possible loss of appetite but are not warned about moderate and serious reactions. Though less common, these reactions can be life threatening and may require expensive long-term treatment. You have the right to evaluate risks versus the benefits before vaccinating. Ask to read the vaccine “package insert.” This will help you evaluate risks and also determine if your pet is having a reaction should he or she become ill or exhibit odd behavior or impaired function after vaccination. 8. Have I been told how to react to and report a vaccine reaction? Some reactions require an emergency trip to the vet. Others can be treated at home. Have your vet explain which reactions are emergencies. All possible reactions must be reported to the vaccinating vet (or emergency vet) and recorded in your pet’s file. Click here to learn how to report adverse vaccine reactions. Do not presume your vet will report any reaction. 9. Do I know to keep a written record of vaccination details? It’s important to record injection sites (front, back, right or left leg, etc.) plus the vaccine manufacturer and brand name, the lot, serial number and expiration date for each vaccine given. Vets retire and move and records are lost or recorded inaccurately. It is imperative that you know which vaccines were given when and where, especially for cats (WSAVA, p. 14) but also for dogs. It is important to give different vaccines in different spots; vaccination sites should be rotated yearly. 10. After having been briefed by my veterinarian about a vaccine’s benefits and risks, can I freely give my informed consent or comfortably withhold it? You have the right to refuse vaccination, in part or in full, if you do not believe it is in the best interest of your animal (although with rabies there may be legal complications unless your vet will apply for a medical exemption). You may also request to be more fully informed before proceeding and can ask to see the vaccine “package insert.” It’s not easy to reject or modify your veterinarian’s recommendations, but your animal’s well-being is your responsibility, both morally and financially. An activist against over-vaccinating children suggests that refusing is easier if you just say: “Not today, thank you very much.” Some people also like to take with them a copy of an article or study from an expert. DISCLAIMER: All information and links provided here are for general information purposes only, and are not to be intended as medical or legal advice. This information should not be used to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified pet health care professional. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from available research. The decision whether or not to vaccinate is an important and complex issue and should be made by you in consultation with your pet health care provider. Our goal is to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through education. We neither promote the use of any vaccine or vaccine protocol nor advise against it. Authors of posted articles may not agree with all the information in other posted articles.

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The Climate Change Imperative Why is Climate Change an important issue? Shrinking polar caps. Floods in the Philippines. Droughts in India. All three occurred in different regions but connected by one common cause-climate change. This is a serious global issue and like other events which have threatened our way of life such as viral pandemics and terrorism, we have to come together to mitigate the situation with what we can control. Climate change is real, urgent and severe. In the past few years, developments in climate science and increasing observable occurrences of extreme weather events have brought climate change to the forefront of the global agenda. The 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has conclusively demonstrated climate change is unequivocally human-induced. Despite this, measures being implemented so far have been woefully inadequate. Climate change is perhaps the gravest issue our generation has yet to tackle. Global greenhouse gas emission levels have increased by 70% between 1970 and 2004. Following this trend, it is expected that the global average temperature will rise by 1.8 to 4.0°C by 2100. It has been further speculated that an increase in temperature by 2°C can have catastrophic effects on our climate and ecosystem. Effects will be experienced, at worse, in our future and definitely by future generations. Climate change is therefore an issue that must be tackled by our generation NOW. The impacts of climate change range from sea level rise, melting ice caps and glaciers, biodiversity loss along with increased incidences of drought and flooding. This in turn is already leading to more agricultural shortfalls, endangered water security and the spread of vector-borne diseases. Yet, climate change is no longer solely an environmental problem. Rather, it is a challenge that spans the economic and geopolitical horizons. Changes in earth’s atmosphere which increasingly destabilizes the global climate will have a significant bearing on the future of food scarcity, water stress, the prevalence and intensity of diseases and the loss of homelands, natural wonders and livelihoods around the world. In this regard, climate change will have a profound impact on human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights such as the right to life, security, food, and health. At the same time, efforts to mitigate the causes and effects of climate change are raising complex questions on the economic rights of nations to prosper and improve the lives of their people. There is not only an environmental imperative to act but also a moral, social and even economic one as the world targets to support around 9 billion people in 2050. UNFCCC report

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2.30 Do not generate pop-ups or other windows and do not change the current window without informing the user WAI checkpoint 10.1 Full WAI text: "Until user agents allow users to turn off spawned windows, do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear and do not change the current window without informing the user." User agents are software which people use to access Web content. These include graphical browsers, text-only browsers, voice browsers, mobile phones, multimedia players, plug-ins and assistive technologies such as screen readers, screen magnifiers and voice recognition software. It is possible to create pages which cause new windows to open automatically. This is called "spawning" and the new windows are called "pop-ups" because they tend to pop open on the desktop, on top of the original window. Pop-ups usually contain advertising content but they are sometimes used to present error messages. Each time a pop-up appears, the focus on the user's desktop goes to that window. Pop-up windows should be avoided at present, since not all user agents allow the user to disable pop-ups. If pop-ups are used, you should inform the user. Pop-ups can be very confusing and frustrating for users who may not be overly familiar with computers or the web. Many people find them annoying because they take control of the desktop away from the user, who can quickly become disoriented. Pop-ups can erode a user's trust in a site as it takes away their control over the navigation and interaction. Pop-ups cause problems for screen reader users because they take the focus without warning. This means that the screen reader begins reading the content of the new window, usually without warning the user that a new window has opened. If the new window contains content from another site, the user can become very disoriented and confused. Directions and Techniques Avoid using pop-ups to present error messages Pop-ups should not be used as a way to present error messages on HTML forms because the content of the pop-up is not provided within the context of the form itself. This means that the user has to read the content of the pop-up, then find the relevant position on the form before they can fix the error. Include warnings about pop-ups in link titles Including a message like "(opens in a new window)" as part of link titles which activate pop-ups. Including the warning as part of the hyperlink makes the link title more meaningful when read out of context, e.g. it will be read by screen reader users when they call up a list of links on the page. Refer to the WAI recommended techniques for this guideline See the WAI recommended techniques for avoiding pop-ups. How you could check for this: Open the page and see if new windows appear New windows can appear over or under the original window. You should also test forms to ensure that pop up windows are not used for error messaging by submitting deliberately incorrect information on forms.

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Intelligent design (sometimes abbreviated as ID) is a variety of creationism that relies on the argument from design. Proponents of the Intelligent Design movement claim that, unlike creationism, they are motivated by science and not religion. This is a claim that echoes that of ID's intellectual precursor, scientific creationism. Like scientific creationism, ID's claim to be scientific is suspect, since the ID movement has produced no original research. ID proponents tend to spend their time engaging in public relations and politics rather than doing science. Virtually all of them are Protestant Christians, usually of a fundamentalist slant (officially, the Catholic Church endorses the theory of evolution). The aim of the ID movement is to conceal the religious nature of creationism in order to make the idea legally acceptable to secular public institutions. The Intelligent Design movement was spawned by lawyer Phillip Johnson when he wrote The Wedge Strategy. It was a response to the U.S. Supreme Court case Edwards v. Aguillard, which ruled that teaching creationism in public classrooms violated the U.S. Constitution. Key figures in the ID debate - The Discovery Institute is an ID think tank that hosts most of the people in this section as members. - Phillip Johnson, mentioned above, is a founding figure of the ID movement. - Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, is a biochemist who coined the term "irreducible complexity." - William Dembski, author of The Design Hypothesis, is a mathematician who coined the term "specified complexity." - Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution, is a biologist who declared that his life is devoted to "destroying Darwinism." - Eugenie Scott, the head of the NCSE, is a prominent opponent of ID. - Robert Pennock, author of Tower of Babel, is a professor of the philosophy of science. - Judge Jones, mentioned above, presided over Kitzmiller v. Dover. - Barbara Forrest uncovered the term "cdesign proponentsists" in the book Of Pandas and People during the Kitzmiller trial.

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en

Search for native plants by scientific name, common name or family. If you are not sure what you are looking for, try the Combination Search or our Recommended Species lists. Search native plant database: Flaigg, Norman G. Juglans nigra L. Black walnut, Eastern black walnut USDA Symbol: juni USDA Native Status: Native to U.S. Black walnut is a large, rugged, deciduous tree, 50-75 ft. in height and width, sometimes reaching 150 ft. tall. Dark, furrowed bark on the trunk. Wide-spreading branches form an upright, umbrella-like crown in the woods or a round-topped crown in the open. The well-formed trunk is usually devoid of branches a considerable distance from the ground. Leaves up to 2 feet long with 5 to 11 pairs of leaflets along a central axis and a single leaflet at the tip; midrib of the lateral leaflets off-center with the wider part of the blade toward the leaf tip. Leaflets emerge very late in spring and are yellow-green. Fall color is clear yellow, unless the tree has been troubled with insects or leaf blight. Flowers inconspicuous, in elongate, green clusters. Fruit 1 1/2 to 2 1/4 inches in diameter, consisting of a hard-shelled, furrowed nut enclosed in a green husk, darker when ripe. One of the scarcest and most coveted native hardwoods, Black Walnut is used especially for furniture, gunstocks, and veneer. Individual trees fetch attractive prices and a few prized trees have even been stolen. Since colonial days and before, Black Walnut has provided edible nuts and a blackish dye made from the husks. Tomatoes and apples do not survive near mature trees. The delicious nuts must be gathered early, before squirrels and other wildlife can consume them. Of all the native nut trees of North America, the Black Walnut is the most valuable save only the Pecan (Carya illinoinensis), and in the traditions of pioneer life and rustic childhood it is even more famous. Bloom InformationBloom Color: Yellow , Green , Brown Bloom Time: Apr , May AL , AR , CT , DC , DE , FL , GA , IA , IL , IN , KS , KY , LA , MA , MD , ME , MI , MN , MO , MS , NC , ND , NE , NH , NJ , NY , OH , OK , PA , RI , SC , SD , TN , TX , UT , VA , WI , WV , WY Canada: ON Native Distribution: W. MA to n.w. FL, w. to s. MN, n.e. NE, w. OK & c. TX Native Habitat: Rich, moist woods; bottomlands USDA Native Status: L48(N), CAN(N) Growing ConditionsWater Use: High Light Requirement: Sun , Part Shade Soil Moisture: Moist Soil pH: Circumneutral (pH 6.8-7.2) CaCO3 Tolerance: High Cold Tolerant: yes Heat Tolerant: yes Soil Description: Moist, rich soils. Sandy Loam, Medium Loam, Clay Loam, Acid-based, Calcareous Conditions Comments: Black walnut is slow-growing especially if not in its preferred moist, fertile, sunny site. The deep tap-root makes transplanting difficult. Nuts may become a nuisance as they litter and stain. Foliage is often attacked by caterpillars, and the species is susceptible to anthracnose which defoliates trees for the season. Fall conspicuous, Shade tree Use Wildlife: Squirrels are among the few creatures with strong enough teeth and the determination to gnaw through the extremely hard shells. Use Other: Certain plants will not grow under Black Walnut trees because of the juglones that the tree puts in the soil. Walnut husks are rich in tannins and toxins. Ground husks have provided insecticides, fish poison and black dye. Fragrant Foliage: Birds , Butterflies Larval Host: Black walnut is the preferred host of the luna and regal moth. PropagationPropagation Material: Seeds Description: Plant nuts in fall or spring. If nuts are sown in spring, they must be stratified. Protection from squirrels is necessary. Seed Collection: Collect nuts in fall or winter when husks begin to turn black and split open. Remove husks. It is not necessary to remove shell. Sow immediately or keep in moist sand over winter. Nuts lose viability if allowed to dry out. Seed Treatment: Stratify for 60-120 days at 34-41 degrees. Commercially Avail: yes Mr. Smarty Plants says Edible Plants for North Georgia January 10, 2010 We are planning a forest food garden in the hollers of the N GA Mountains. Which edible fruit, nut, berry, herb and creepers would be best for this reddish, clay-like soil? The food garden is in... view the full question and answer Are black walnut and sugar maple poisonous to alpacas June 09, 2008 I have alpacas and wonder if black walnut or sugar maple are poisonous to them. view the full question and answer From the National Suppliers Directory According to the inventory provided by Associate Suppliers, this plant is available at the following locations: American Native Nursery - Quakertown, PA Recommended Species Lists Find native plant species by state. Each list contains commercially available species suitable for gardens and planned landscapes. Once you have selected a collection, you can browse the collection or search within it using the combination search. View Recommended Species page Record Modified: 2010-05-01 Research By: TWC Staff

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(photo credit: gomboc.eu) A Gömböc (pronounced 'goemboets', from the Hungarian for dumpling) is a strange thing. It looks like an egg with edges, and it seems to have a life on its own. It has two points of equilibrium, stable and unstable. If you place it on a table it will start rolling around until it flips itself upright. Yes, it is a self-righting object regardless of which side you put it on. (photo credit: expo2010china.hu) The Gömböc is a result of a long mathematical quest. In 1995 Russian mathematician Vladimir Arnold postulated the existence of convex, homogeneous mono-monostatic objects. It intrigued two scientists - Gábor Domokos and Péter Várkonyi, both of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. They began to look for a naturally occurring example. Domokos studied 2000 pebbles during his honeymoon in Greece, but none of them could right themselves. Domokos and Várkonyi used mathematics to design an object that comes up by itself. The result was reminiscent of a turtle, which they had not predicted in advance! The shell of the Indian star tortoise (Geochelone elegans) allows the tortoise to right itself with minimal effort, it proves such monostatic object could exist. The main challenge in making a Gömböc is an incredible level of precision: a Gömböc of diameter 10 cm admits a tolerance less than 0.1 mm. Besides that both mathematicians believed that the Gömböc should be manufactured from transparent material; otherwise, the homogeneity of the object would be hard to demonstrate. Finally 3D printing technology has been used to create the Gömböc series. Gömböc 001, the very first one was a gift of the inventors to Professor V.I. Arnold on his 70th birthday. The Gömböc logo and serial number have been printed inside the Gömböc 001 using an Objet 3D printer, and it worked reliably under physically realistic conditions. In 2007, New York Times Magazine selected the Gömböc as one of the most interesting seventy inventions of the year - for its extreme precision, harmony and abstract beauty. Posted in 3D Print Applications Maybe you also like: - 3D Printer brings a Robotic Hand from design to life - Designing and 3D printing a synchro gearbox - 3D printing and 111 five euro cent coins - Experimental kite features 1700 3D printed connectors - Nature-inspired greenhouse created using a 3D printer - GE shares a 3D printed Christmas Tree ornament - 3D printed Kindle Kapsule Lightstand for your beloved - World's first 3D printed customized implant wins innovation award - Fishman guitar amplification devices created with 3D printer - 5 stunning 3D printed gear sibling Anja wrote at 8/17/2012 12:11:53 PM: Thanks Tom, I have also removed it from the site. Thank you for the tip. Tom wrote at 8/17/2012 10:17:45 AM: Video was removed

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News: News Archives Science Magazine Honors Web Site That Makes Physics Come Alive Open Source Physics’ Roller Coaster simulation allows students to explore kinetic and potential energy in Earth’s gravitational field. [Video courtesy of Wolfgang Christian; © Science/AAAS] Physics professor Wolfgang Christian learned about the wonder of science when he was very young. Among the toys Christian’s father, an engineer, introduced to his son were electric trains, magnets, and lenses. “A lot of my interest in science came about through interactive engagement at home,” said Christian. This early education no doubt started Christian on a path toward becoming not only a scientist, but also someone who has played a central role in bringing interactive computer modeling to physics students of all levels. His Open Source Physics Web site, a valuable tool in physics education developed with colleagues Francisco Esquembre and Lyle Barbato, has been selected to win a Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE). The journal Science developed the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE) to promote the best online materials in science education. The acronym SPORE suggests a reproductive element adapted to develop, often in adverse conditions, into something new. Similarly, these winning projects can be seen as the seeds of progress in science education, despite considerable challenges to educational innovation. Each month, Science publishes an article by a recipient of the award, which explains the winning project. The article about Open Source Physics (OSP) was published on 25 November. “We're trying to advance science education,” said Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief of Science. “This competition provides much-needed recognition to innovators in the field whose efforts promise significant benefits for students and for science literacy in general. The publication in Science of an article on each Web site will help guide educators around the globe to valuable free resources that might otherwise be missed.” In 1979, not long after Christian earned his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University and began his teaching career, he became a microcomputer enthusiast, joining a club that bought teletype machines at ham radio events and experimented with data acquisition. By 1986, Christian had established the first Ethernet network on the campus of Davidson College in North Carolina, where he still teaches, introducing microcomputer-based laboratories into the physics department. By 1991 Christian had begun working on employing computers throughout the curriculum and was using the Web to deliver curriculum materials to others. He said that during the first years of the Internet, if someone searched Davidson College, that search would lead directly to the physics department server. “We were really early in adopting the Internet in 1992,” Christian said. The next big step toward the OSP project occurred when Christian stumbled on Java as a way to bring Internet-based interactive physics problems to upper-level students. He said he knew he “had a winner” in his use of Java, and he began showing how it worked at meetings of the American Association of Physics Teachers, of which he is president-elect of the North Carolina Section, and the American Physical Society, of which he is a fellow and a past Forum on Education chair. While attracting the interest of major publishers who tied their physics textbooks to Christian’s online materials, he stuck to a course that would make interactive computer modeling of physics available to students at earlier stages of their education, a direction that was greatly aided by Esquembre, who had developed Easy Java Simulations (ESJ). ESJ provided an intuitive tool for students who were not expert in Java. Without writing much code, physics students could manipulate the elements of a model, experiment with the effects of those manipulations, and learn firsthand about physics and its laws. Christian is currently working toward involving K-12 students, such as his wife’s middle-school students, who as seventh graders are learning about concepts such as temperature. Christian was able to adapt a college-level molecular dynamics simulation for them to explore changes in the phases of matter. “The students could heat and cool the system, and then we could ask them questions like, ‘At what temperature does it melt?’” Christian said. “They got visual feedback from the simulation and had to make decisions about the basic concepts.” The OSP Web site was designed by Barbato, who is the technical director of the ComPADRE Digital Library, which provides an infrastructure for the online dissemination of OSP materials. The Web site contains ready-to-run simulations and tools such as EJS and a video analysis program called Tracker. Although the site’s ready-to-run simulations can be used to provide a deeper understanding of physics concepts, they are distributed with their source code and are intended to be modified by students and teachers. All are based on research-grade algorithms and can be adjusted and reconfigured easily using the free OSP code library and the EJS modeling tool. “These ready-to-run simulations and tools for developing new simulations help students visualize situations and better understand abstract concepts,” said Melissa McCartney, editorial fellow at Science. “That is not always possible when learning physics through static pictures.” Christian explained how OSP allows students and teachers to adapt existing simulations and develop their own simulations as follows: “You're running a simulation, and you want to change it, so you can just right-click,” he said. “This action copies the code from within the running program into EJS, where you can change the packaged narrative, the internal parameters, and the algorithm to suit your teaching method and your student’s abilities. “We’ve essentially made programming accessible at a very early stage.” With about 20% of physics teachers aware of OSP, the Web site last year hosted about 500,000 page views and 50,000 downloads of simulations. Christian hopes that the SPORE award and the essay in Science will confer on OSP an additional layer of prestige, which will then bring in more users. “Once your signal gets above the noise,” he said, “it tends to amplify itself.” 28 November 2011

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Studying Living Organisms An Automobile Phylogenetic Tree Woodrow Wilson Biology Institute |Target age or| |High school biology or life science classes.| |Materials and equipment: ||Text book for reference, pencil and paper. Pictures of various automobiles and trucks might be useful. |Summary of activity: Students will construct a phylogenetic tree for the various automobiles and trucks listed after considering important characteristics of these "organisms." For many students it may be easier to construct a phylogenetic tree using vehicles rather than organisms with characteristics that may not be obvious or familiar This activity can lead into other similar exercises using real plants or animals. |Prior knowledge, concepts or vocabulary necessary to complete activity: ||Be sure students understand the basics of biological classification, evolutionary processes and phylogenetic tree construction. Explain that a phylogenetic tree is a hypothesis regarding the evolutionary history of a group of organisms. Assume all of these vehicles evolved from a primitive ancestor having four wheels Have students work in small groups and devise a way that each group can present their work to the class. It may be necessary to draw a simple version of a phylogenetic tree to get students off to a good start. Students will probably interpret relationships in a variety of ways. Emphasize that this work is very speculative. The important point is to carefully consider all evidence. There is no single "right" interpretation. An Automobile Phylogenetic Tree Purpose of this activity: Carefully look at the list of cars and trucks below. In this activity we are going to consider these vehicles to be organisms that are all related in an evolutionary way. Actually, there has been an evolutionary process in automotive design that is a lot like biological evolution. As you study this list of vehicles think about the characteristics that can be used to show relationships. The number of wheels and the number of doors are two that come immediately to mind, but there are others as well. Using the characteristics you identify, you can construct a phylogenetic tree to show how this group evolved over time. We can never really know what happened in the past, but we can make reasonable speculations. Instructions: Using a pencil, draw a branched phylogenetic tree starting at the bottom of a sheet of paper. Start with what you think is the most primitive vehicle. Be sure you have a reason, based on a careful consideration of characteristics, for each branch. At the appropriate location on each branch place the name of the vehicle. Work with a small group and be prepared to present your work to the class. Keep in mind that there may not be a single ÒrightÓ way to draw a phylogenetic tree for these vehicles. Remember that scientific knowledge grows by trial and error. All theories or interpretations are open to revision. car with three wheels and one seat (nearly extinct in the U.S.) car with four wheels, four doors , front and back seat car with four wheels, two doors, front seat only car with four wheels, two doors, front and back seat, no top truck with four wheels, two doors, one seat and a short bed truck with four wheels, two doors, one seat and a long bed truck with six wheels, two doors and only one seat truck with six wheels, four doors, front and back seat 1. What characteristics are you going to consider? List below. 2. Explain several of the branching points on your tree. 3. Which vehicle seems to be the most primitive? Justify your answer. 4. Which vehicles seem to be the most advanced? Justify your answer. 5. What is the value of a phylogenetic tree to biologists? On to The Endosymbiotic Theory, OR Eukaryotic and Prokaryotic Feast Back to Index

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Science Fair Project Encyclopedia - Chorion redirects here. For the entertainment company see Chorion (company) The amniotic sac is a tough but thin transparent pair of membranes, which hold a developing embryo (and later fetus) until shortly before birth. The inner membrane, the amnion, contains the amniotic fluid and the fetus. The outer membrane, the chorion, contains the amnion and is part of the placenta. An artificial rupture of membranes (ARM), also known as an amniotomy, may be performed by a midwife or obstetrician. This is usually performed using an amnihook and is intended to induce or accelerate labour. Amniotic fluid is the watery liquid surrounding and cushioning a growing fetus within the amnion. It allows the fetus to move freely without the walls of the uterus being too tight against its body. Buoyancy is also provided. The amnion grows and begins to fill, mainly with water, around two weeks after fertilisation. After a further 10 weeks the liquid contains proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and phospholipids, urea and electrolytes. By the second trimester the fetus can breath in the water, allowing normal growth and the development of lungs and the gastrointestinal tract. The forewaters are released when the amnion ruptures, commonly known as when a woman's "waters break" or "spontaneous rupture of membranes" (SRM). The majority of the hindwaters remain inside the womb until the baby is born. Complications related to amniotic fluid Too little amniotic fluid (oligohydramnios) or too much (polyhydramnios or hydramnios) can be a cause or an indicator of problems for the mother and baby. However, in both cases the majority of pregnancies proceed normally and the baby is born healthy. Polyhydramnios is a predisposing risk factor for cord prolapse. Twins and multiple pregnancies sometimes share the amnion and the chorion. Monoamniotic pregnancy is when each embryo or fetus from one single zygote (monozygotic, commonly known as identical twins) is located within the same amnion which is itself in one chorion (monochorionic). Diamniotic pregnancy is when there are more than one amnions inside one chorion or each having their own chorion (dichorionic). Dizygotic (fraternal, non-identical) twins each have their own amnion and chorion and may or may not share a placenta. Sharing the same amnion (or the same amnion and placenta) can cause complications in pregnancy. For example, the umbilical cords of monoamniotic twins can become entangled, reducing or interrupting the blood supply to the developing fetus. Monochorionic twins, sharing one placenta, usually also share the placental blood supply. In rare cases, blood passes disproportionately from one twin to the other through connecting blood vessels within their shared placenta, leading to twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details

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Science Fair Project Encyclopedia As with many such games, StarCraft came with a series of pre-set combat missions for gamers to play against the computer. These series typically start with introductory missions and become ever more challenging battles. These campaigns are set in a time and place in a fictional universe, and events in one battle lead to the next in the campaign. Unlike some previous Blizzard Entertainment games, StarCraft campaigns aren't alternative histories that vary with which side the player chooses, but are sequential parts of a single larger timeline. Also, the background for StarCraft is far more detailed and complex than others, including the personal stories of tragic and heroic main characters, and was created with the help of professional science fiction authors and artists to give it a full cinematic depth. The campaigns in StarCraft are called "episodes" and are numbered, similar to the Star Wars movies. Besides the events in the game missions themselves, video clips and text stories and descriptions supplied with the game flesh out the background of the universe. Blizzard has authorized some independent novels, covering events beyond the StarCraft games. StarCraft fans have supplied additional battles and historical commentary, but these aren't considered canon, and aren't covered here. StarCraft features three races: the renegade human Terrans, the noble cybernetic warrior Protoss, and the horrific bug-like Zerg. The storyline covers the fortunes of these three races and their leaders, fighting for dominance in a remote region of the galaxy. Typically, the player's race makes gains during an episode, but never completely conquers the other races. Full details are in StarCraft Prequel The year is AD 2499. The Terrans have spread far beyond Earth. In this region at the edge of the galaxy, beyond any contact from the civilized systems, the dregs of Terran society struggle against the elements on a few harsh worlds. The ruthless Terran Confederacy strives to tighten its rule over the scattered colonies. Seemingly from nowhere, a swarm of unknown creatures descend and attack — the Zerg. The Protoss arrive and wipe out all life on the planet Chau Sara, including the Terrans, in an effort to halt the Zerg infestation. This is the Terran campaign of the original StarCraft game. Full details are in StarCraft Episode I The player starts as a new official of the Terran Confederacy, charged with protecting local colonies, but finds the Confederacy forces won't help. The player and Marshall Jim Raynor on their own initiative fight the Zerg menace. This leads to a break with the Confederacy and joining forces with the rebel underground, led by Arcturus Mengsk. During the battles, Mengsk's second-in-command, Sarah Kerrigan, a telepath and former covert agent, becomes friends with Raynor. It's then discovered that the Confederacy is secretly using telepathic power to lure the Zerg to attack disloyal colonies. The desperate rebels use the same methods to lure the Zerg to attack the Confederacy. This requires beating back the Protoss before they can destroy the Zerg. The rebels eventually succeed, but only by perverting all the causes they originally fought for, as Mengsk abandons Kerrigan to the Zerg to gain his victory. The player and Raynor then must fight to escape the rebels. Mengsk declares himself Emperor of the Terran Dominion, the new government of the surviving Terran colonies. This is the Zerg campaign of the original StarCraft game. Full details are in StarCraft Episode II. The player takes over the role of a newly hatched Zerg Cerebrate, the immortal motive force behind an otherwise mindless Zerg swarm. The player must first protect and transport a unique new Zerg; an infested form of Sarah Kerrigan. This new Zerg hybrid is instrumental in unlocking the secrets of Protoss assimilation. The player must fight off Terran forces that are telepathically called by Kerrigan, and a new form of Protoss attack that can permanently kill Zerg cerebrates. However, when the cerebrate was killed by this attack, the Overmind, center of the Zerg hive mind, learns the location of the Protoss homeworld, Aiur, and the Zerg battle their way there. Here, the Overmind is made manifest as the Protoss reel in defeat. This is the Protoss campaign of the original StarCraft game. Full details are in StarCraft Episode III. The player takes the role of an official working with Tassadar, who was in charge of the Protoss fleet "sterilizing" Zerg-infested Terran worlds in Episode I. Tassadar has abandoned this mission of endless slaughter as fruitless, and, during Episode II, sought out the outlaw Protoss Dark Templar, and learned ways to use their dark telepathic powers to defeat the Zerg Cerebrates. Tassadar returns to lead the Protoss attacks using this new weapon, but is instead arrested for his dealings with the outlaws. With the help of the few Protoss still loyal Tassadar, and the renegade Terrans under Jim Raynor, Tassadar is freed, and a Protoss civil war starts. To stop the war, Tassadar agrees to submit, if all will unite to free their homeworld from the Zerg. The agreement is reached, and the combined Protoss and renegade Terrans fight their way to the massive Overmind. After a long, devastating battle, Tassadar drives his ship, charged with Dark Templar energies, into the Overmind, destroying it along with himself. This is the Protoss campaign of the StarCraft Brood War game. Full details are in StarCraft Episode IV. Following Tassadar's sacrifice, the Zerg on the Protoss homeworld are in disarray, but still overwhelmingly numerous. Protoss refugees retreat to the homeworld of the Dark Templar, Shakuras, despite protests from Aldaris, the leader of the Conclave. The Zerg follow them to Shakuras. The Protoss and Dark Templar reluctantly join forces with Sarah Kerrigan's Zerg forces, after she explains she's now free of the Overmind's control, but that a new Overmind is growing on Char. Kerrigan asks for their help to kill it before it reaches maturity and takes control of Kerrigan's mind again. However, the Protoss ask for a favor in return. Two ancient crystals, fused with the powers of the dark and light templar, must be recovered to defeat the Zerg on Shakuras. The two crystals are discovered and the Overmind is crippled (but not killed). During the battles, a massive Terran fleet from the distant United Earth Directorate intervenes, and Aldaris, troubled by their relations with the "traitorous" Dark Templar, split off and declare war on Tassadar's forces and the Dark Templar. The two crystals, infused with the power of the two templars, are then joined in a Xel'Naga temple on Shakuras. The two energies mix and wipe out all Zerg on the planet and thus saving the Protoss. This is the Terran campaign of the StarCraft Brood War game. Full details are in StarCraft Episode V. The player joins the United Earth Directorate (UED) Expeditionary Fleet, assigned to subdue the Terran worlds in this sector, but their high-handed actions quickly make enemies of all the various Zerg and Protoss factions as well. Their first enemy to fall is Mengsk's Dominion, and later they gain telepathic control of the local Zerg. Kerrigan convinces Raynor to rescue Mengsk. Though divided by a Zerg infested human spy, the UED succeeds in capturing and enslaving the new Overmind and control of Zerg swarms. This is the Zerg campaign of the StarCraft Brood War game. Full details are in StarCraft Episode VI. With the Zerg growing under the control the massive UED fleet, Kerrigan is severely threatened. Painting herself as a victim, and the combined UED and Zerg as the greater enemy (combined with careful use of threats and hostages) she gains the reluctant assistance of the scattered Terran, Protoss and Dark Templar forces. As the UED is beaten back, however, she turns on each of her "allies" one by one. The Overmind is killed, and Kerrigan gains control of all the Zerg. The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details

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The Catalytic Converter and Exhaust Systems (Figure 135) work together to control the release of harmful engine exhaust emissions into the atmosphere. The engine exhaust gas consists mainly of Nitrogen (N) , Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Water Vapor (H2O) . However, it also contains Carbon Monoxide (CO) , Oxides Of Nitrogen (NOx) , Hydrogen (H) , and various unburned Hydrocarbons (HCs) . CO, NO(x), and HCs are major air pollutants, and their emission into the atmosphere must be controlled. The exhaust system generally consists of an exhaust manifold, front exhaust pipe, upstream Heated Oxygen Sensor (HO2S) , rear exhaust pipe, downstream HO2S, a muffler and an exhaust tailpipe. The catalytic converter is installed between the front and rear exhaust pipes. Catalytic converter efficiency is monitored by the On Board Diagnostic (OBD II) system. Generic Catalyst and Exhaust System A catalyst is a material that remains unchanged when it initiates and increases the speed of a chemical reaction. A catalyst will also enable a chemical reaction to occur at a lower temperature. The concentration of exhaust gas products released to the atmosphere must be controlled. The catalytic converter assists in this task. It contains a catalyst in the form of a specially treated honeycomb structure saturated with catalytically active precious metals. As the exhaust gases come in contact with the catalyst, they are changed into mostly harmless products. The catalyst initiates and speeds up heat producing chemical reactions of the exhaust gas components so they are used up as much as possible. The purpose of the exhaust system is to convey engine emissions from the exhaust manifold to the atmosphere. Engine exhaust emissions are directed from the engine exhaust manifold to the catalytic converter through the front exhaust pipe. An HO2S is mounted on the front exhaust pipe before the catalyst. The catalytic converter reduces the concentration of Carbon Monoxide (CO) , unburned Hydrocarbons (HCs) and Oxides of Nitrogen (NO) in the exhaust emissions to an acceptable level. The reduced exhaust emissions are directed from the catalytic converter to a muffler through the rear exhaust pipe. Another HO2S is mounted on the rear exhaust pipe. Lastly, the exhaust emissions are directed to the atmosphere through an exhaust tailpipe. The downstream HO2S may be located after the light off catalyst or underbody catalyst. The underbody catalyst may be in-line with the light off catalyst, or the underbody catalyst may be common to two light off catalysts, forming a "Y" pipe configuration. For an exact configuration of the catalyst and exhaust system, refer to Exhaust System. Three Way Catalytic Converter The Three Way Catalytic (TWC) converter contains either platinum (Pt) and Rhodium (Rh) or Palladium (Pd) and Rhodium (Rh) . The TWC converter catalyzes the oxidation reactions of unburned HCs and CO and the reduction reaction of NO. The three-way conversion can be best accomplished by always operating the engine air fuel/ratio at or close to stoichiometry. The exhaust manifold runners collect exhaust gases from engine cylinders. The number of exhaust manifolds and exhaust manifold runners depends on the engine configuration and number of cylinders. Exhaust pipes are usually treated during manufacturing with an anti-corrosive coating agent to increase the life of the product. The pipes serve as guides for the flow of exhaust gases from the engine exhaust manifold through the catalytic converter and the muffler. Upstream Heated and Downstream Heated Oxygen Sensors The HO2S provide the Powertrain Control Module (PCM) with voltage and frequency information related to the oxygen content of the exhaust gas. In addition to providing the PCM with indications of how rich/lean the engine is operating, the upstream HO2S signal serves as an input to the HO2S monitor. The downstream HO2S signal is an input to the Catalyst Efficiency monitor. Mufflers are usually treated during manufacturing with an anti-corrosive coating agent to increase the life of the product. The muffler reduces the level of noise produced by the engine, and it also reduces the noise produced by exhaust gases as they travel from the catalytic converter to the atmosphere.

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To measure blood pressure, your doctor uses an instrument call a "sphygmomanometer," more often referred to as a blood pressure cuff. The cuff is wrapped around your upper arm and inflated to stop the flow of blood in your artery. As the cuff is slowly deflated, your doctor uses a stethoscope to listen to the blood pumping through the artery. These pumping sounds register on a gauge attached to the cuff. The first pumping sound your doctor hears is recorded as the systolic pressure, and the last sound is the diastolic pressure. - The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. - A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. - Call 911 for all medical emergencies. - Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. ©1997 - A.D.A.M., Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.

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en

• dozen • Part of Speech: Noun Meaning: 1. A group of twelve. 2. A large unspecified number. Notes: So what could be interesting about such a common word? Well, did you know you could abbreviate it two different ways: doz. or dz? We all know that the ordinal variant is dozenth ("This is the dozenth time I've told you!") However, did you know that dozenal is sometimes used in mathematical circles instead of duodecimal referring to the base 12 numbering system? Few languages use a dozenal system for counting since we do not characteristically have 12 fingers, the origin of the decimal system. Still, many cultures do have dozenal systems for keeping track of time: 12 months in a year, 12-hour days, 12 zodiac signs. In Play: Because it is not a regular cardinal number (like twelve), we have taken great liberties with the meaning of today's Good Word. A baker's dozen, of course, means 13 rather than 12. Bakers once gave their customers a lagniappe of an extra pastry to encourage the customer's return. Dozen can also refer to an unspecified large number: "I can't understand why people think it is difficult to quit smoking; I've done it dozens of times" (taking shameful liberties with Mark Twain's famous claim). Word History: Today's Good Word comes to us from Old French dozaine "dozen", douzaine in Modern French, the correlate of Spanish docena and Italian dozzina. All these words are descendants of Latin duodecim "twelve" based on duo "two" + decem "ten". Duo we use in English unadulterated referring to a set of two, as well as with the French suffix, -(e)t in duet, usually two musicians or a musical piece for two instruments. But the original PIE root for "two" turns up in a plethora of English words, almost anywhere you see [tw] togeher: twilight, between, twain, twin, and twig because one usually branches into two. (We owe dozens of bows to Mark Morath of State College, Pennsylvania for suggesting today's surprisingly interesting common word.) Come visit our website at <http://www.alphadictionary.com> for more Good Words and other language resources!

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2013-05-19T19:28:58Z

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by Kevin Oeffinger MD and Nancy Keene Source: Spring 2002 CCCF Newsletter Treatment for childhood cancer sometimes damages the bones, causing an increased risk for developing osteoporosis (weak bones). Fortunately, there are several things survivors can do to strengthen their bones and avoid or minimize this problem. It is therefore important to find out if you are at risk and ensure that you get the appropriate testing and counseling so that any problems are identified early and treated. Bone Mass (Strength) and Osteoporosis First, let's talk about bones in general. In the next section, we will talk about bones in childhood cancer survivors. To start with, here are a few terms that will be used in this column: Bone mineral density or bone mass = bone strength Osteoporosis = weakened or brittle bones Bone density test = test to determine the density or strength of the bone Bone is a living, growing tissue. The human skeleton contains 206 bones, all held in place by connective tissues such as ligaments and tendons. The skeleton gives structure to the body and protects the internal organs. The skeleton also works as a factory, since the marrow in the bones manufactures various blood cells. Bones also act as a storage depot holding calcium and phosphorus for later use by the body. Nearly half of the bone in an adult's body is created during adolescence. During the teen years, the length of bones increases. The density and mass of bone dramatically increase as well. The average person reaches their peak density or strength of their bones around the age 25 to 30. Then, as we age, calcium is slowly lost from our bones, causing them to weaken as we get older. When a person's bones are significantly weakened or less dense (brittle bones), s/he is at a much higher risk for having a fracture (broken bone) of the hip, wrist, or other bones, from a simple fall. Also, the vertebrae (bones of the spine) can collapse or "smush" down, which makes the person shorter and can lead to a curvature of the spine. This often causes a lot of problems including chronic pain. This disease, osteoporosis (osteo = bone; porosis = porous), affects 10 million Americans. Another 18 million Americans are at risk and have low bone mass. Many of us have seen this disease in our grandparents, especially grandmothers. If all of us lived to be 120 years old, we would all have osteoporosis. It is important to do everything that we can to keep from having osteoporosis while we are alive. A lot of research has been done on people in the general population who have never had cancer. From these studies, we know several things. First, there are certain factors that we cannot change that affect our chance of developing osteoporosis. Genes are important-if you have someone in your family with osteoporosis, you are more likely to also develop it. Women have this disease about four times as often as men. Hormone replacement, or taking estrogen pills, reduces this risk in females who have gone through menopause. Similarly, osteoporosis is more common in Caucasians and Asians than African Americans or Latinos, and more common in very thin or short people. So, if you are a slim, white female whose mother developed osteoporosis, you have a high risk of developing it yourself. Research has also shown us that there are many things that we can do to prevent osteoporosis. Regular exercise and eating a diet that has enough calcium and vitamin D are very important to keep the bones strong. This is especially important in our teenage and young adult years as we are reaching the peak of our bone mass or strength. If we do not exercise or have enough calcium in our diet, we may not reach a normal peak and so when we start to lose calcium from our bones, we can develop osteoporosis at a younger age. Exercise and calcium are not only important for our teenage and young adult years, but throughout our life they can help keep our bones strong. There are several things that cause the bone to lose calcium at a faster rate, which can lead to osteoporosis at a young age. Smoking is the worst culprit. There is also research to suggest that consuming too much caffeine, drinking carbonated beverages, and eating too much salt may cause an increase risk for bone fractures and osteoporosis. Childhood cancer survivors and their bones Many of the therapies used to treat childhood cancer can affect the strength of bones. That makes sense, since children's bones are growing and developing when they receive chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. Because this is such an important issue, there are a growing number of studies looking at how cancer treatment affects the growth and development of bones. Based upon early studies, we know that cancer treatment can affect the bones in two different ways, both of which may occur in some survivors. First, because of treatment, the survivor may never reach a normal peak bone mass or density. This is shown in the following graph that shows the bone mineral density or strength of the bone as we age. Note, in the average person, the strength of the bone gradually decreases with age. The survivor, on the other hand, does not reach the normal peak strength of the bone and so may develop osteoporosis at a younger age. Also, a survivor may lose bone at a faster rate than normal, as shown in the next graph. Some survivors may have both problems-a lower peak bone mass and a faster rate of loss of calcium from their bones, which may lead to osteoporosis at a much younger age. Needless to say, other factors can add to this problem. If a survivor is a thin white female who smokes and does not exercise, she is at a very high risk. It is important to remember that male survivors are also at risk. So, which treatments can cause a problem and increase the risk for osteoporosis? The following information is based on early studies. We hope that much more will be learned in the next few years to help better understand individual risks. The following groups of survivors appear to be at risk for developing osteoporosis at a younger age: - Survivors at highest risk are those who have ovarian or testicular failure from radiation below the diaphragm (abdominal or pelvic/gonadal radiation), and/or took high doses of alkylating medications (cyclophosphamide, ifosfamide). Similarly, survivors who experience early or premature menopause may have a faster loss of calcium. - Survivors with premature or early puberty tend to have an early end of their growth spurts, thus may not reach a normal peak bone mass. - Survivors who took or take medications such as glucocorticoids (prednisone, dexamethasone) and/or methotrexate can have decreased bone mass. Steroids have a direct effect on bone, causing problems with bone formation, decreased calcium absorption from the intestine, and increased excretion of calcium through the kidneys. - Survivors who had whole brain or cranial radiation. - Survivors who were bed ridden for long periods. - Survivors who do not exercise during and after treatment. Weight bearing exercise (walking, jogging, most sports) causes bone mass to increase. - Survivors who have inadequate calcium intake What can a survivor do to lower the risk of osteoporosis? Two very important things can be done by all survivors to lower their risk: be physically active and take adequate calcium. Exercise and a physically active lifestyle If a survivor picked the one thing that would have the greatest impact on his/her life and lower the risk for a number of late effects and common adult health problems, it would be to make a lifetime habit of being physically active. Regular exercise, four times a week for about thirty minutes, makes a huge difference in the strength of our bones. Suggestions for exercise: - Simple walking is GREAT! - If you are not active, begin slowly and build up each week - You can exercise for short periods several times a day. - Alternate the types of exercise to keep it fun. - Use other ways to increase your activity level. Use the stairs rather than the elevator. When weather permits, park a few blocks from the store or office and walk. Mow your own lawn. Take an exercise break at work. Some survivors are limited to certain types of activity because of surgeries or other treatments for their cancer. If you have a problem with deciding how to best exercise or be active, sit down and discuss the options with your physician or health care provider. Most people do not have an adequate amount of calcium in their diet. The National Osteoporosis Foundation recommends that all adults have a daily dietary intake of 1000 to 1200 mg of calcium each day. Some physicians recommend that survivors get 1500 mg a day. The main sources of calcium in the diet are dairy products (milk, yogurt, cheese) and green, leafy vegetables. Calcium in foods: - Milk (8 ounces) 300 mg - Yogurt (8 ounces) 400 mg - Cheese (1 ounce) 200 mg - Broccoli (1/2 cup) 47 mg - Pinto beans (1/2 cup) 40 mg An excellent web site with a calculator to help determine the amount of calcium in your diet is www.calciuminfo.com If your diet is low in calcium and you are unable to get the level up to 1200 to 1500 mg per day, then taking a calcium supplement pill is recommended. A wide variety of calcium supplements are available at the grocery or health food store. See the following web site for a discussion of calcium pills: www.nof.org Other important things that a survivor can do to lower the risk for osteoporosis: - Don't smoke - Don't drink more than one alcoholic drink per day (e.g. 12 oz. beer or 5 oz. of wine or 1.5 oz of 80-proof distilled spirits) - Avoid excessive intake of caffeinated products-they can increase the loss of calcium through the kidneys and drain off skeletal calcium - Avoid excessive consumption of carbonated soft drinks What follow up is needed for those at risk? First, it is important that all survivors be physically active and get enough daily calcium. Those who are at risk for osteoporosis should discuss screening options with their physician or health care provider. To date, we do not know the best way to screen survivors. Most of the research has been done in the general population, especially in women sixty-five years of age or older. For survivors at highest risk, such as those who have ovarian failure or premature menopause, it is reasonable to get testing to determine your current bone density. We do not know what screening is beneficial for other survivors, but a number of studies in process should provide some answers within the next few years. Peak bone mass can be measured by a number of different methods, with dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA or DEXA) being the most widely used technique. From this special x-ray of two or three sites (hip, wrist, low back), the bone density can be calculated. DXA has a low radiation dose and is fairly precision and accurate. The bone mineral density is reported as a "T-score", which is a comparison to the peak bone mass of young adults in the general population. Osteopenia (low bone mass) is a T-score between -1.0 and -2.5 standard deviations (SD; a unit of variation), while osteoporosis is defined as a T-score of < -2.5 SD. A single test, such as a DEXA, tells us how the bone mass is only at that time and does not tell you how rapidly calcium is being lost from the bone. A follow-up DEXA, generally one or two years later, can show how the bone mass is changing over time. Based upon this information, your physician can discuss your bone strength with you and what further testing or treatment might be needed. Some excellent web sites for more information are: Family Doctor is a web site run by the American Academy of Family Physicians and includes general health information. Articles on the site discuss healthy habits, including exercise and calcium; women and osteoporosis. National Osteoporosis Foundation describes ways to prevent osteoporosis.

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Listen to This Information Doctors can accurately diagnose 90 percent of Alzheimer's cases. Alzheimer's disease can be diagnosed with complete accuracy only after death, when microscopic examination of the brain reveals plaques and tangles. To help distinguish Alzheimer's disease from other causes of memory loss, doctors typically rely on the following types of tests. Blood tests may be done to help doctors rule out other potential causes of the dementia, such as thyroid disorders or vitamin deficiencies. Sometimes doctors undertake a more extensive assessment of thinking and memory skills. This type of testing, which can take several hours to complete, is especially helpful in trying to detect Alzheimer's and other dementias at an early stage. By looking at images of the brain, doctors may be able to pinpoint any visible abnormalities — such as clots, bleeding or tumors — that may be causing signs and symptoms. Positron emission tomography (PET) can reveal areas of the brain that may be less active and the density of amyloid plaques. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). An MRI machine uses radio waves and a strong magnetic field to produce detailed images of your brain. You lie on a narrow table that slides into the tube-shaped MRI machine, which makes loud banging noises during scans. The entire procedure can take an hour or more. MRIs are painless, but some people feel claustrophobic in the machine. Computerized tomography (CT). For a CT scan, you lie on a narrow table that slides into a small chamber. X-rays pass through your body from various angles, and a computer uses this information to create cross-sectional images, or slices, of your brain. The test is painless and takes about 20 minutes. Positron emission tomography (PET). During a PET scan, you'll be injected with a low-level radioactive material, which binds to chemicals that travel to the brain. You lie on a table while an overhead scanner tracks the radioactive material. This helps show which parts of your brain aren't functioning properly. The test is painless and can be particularly useful in distinguishing between different types of dementia.

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Aquarium of the Pacific - Online Learning Center - Species Print Sheet Conservation Status: Safe for Now (Sphyrna tiburo)Cartilaginous Fishes • Sharks Bonnethead sharks are the smallest of the 10 hammerhead shark species. The head shape of these sharks is unique among hammerhead species. Unlike most species that have straight heads with notched edges, those of bonnetheads are smooth and rounded between the eyes. These sharks are highly migratory. Although, they are common, coastal inshore sharks, only one unprovoked attack on a human has been recorded. At the Aquarium They are currently in our Tropical Reef Habitat. Western Atlantic: from Rhode Island (occasionally) south to the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil and throughout the Caribbean including Cuba and the Bahamas. Eastern Pacific: southern California (rarely above San Diego) to Ecuador Their migrations and reproductive behaviors result in their inhabiting a variety of seasonal habitats in temperate and subtropical waters including the surf zone, bays and estuaries, on coral and rocky reefs, and over sandy and muddy bottoms. They are also found on the continental shelf to depths of about 80 m (260 ft) but more commonly at 10-25 m (31-82 ft). Bonnethead sharks have a moderately compact body and are distinguished by their compressed, wide, smooth, rounded, shovel or bonnet-shaped head. Their eyes are located at the ends of the evenly rounded lobes of the flattened head. Pectoral fins are short and straight along the rear margin and the anal fin is slightly concave with no notch. They are countershaded in color, a plain gray-brown dorsally shading to a lighter gray to white on the ventral side of the body. Occasionally, there are round dark spots along their sides. Adult females are commonly about 0.7-1 m (2.3-3.3 ft) in length, reaching a maximum of 1.5 m (5 ft). Males are smaller than females. Diet and Feeding Bonnetheads feed during the day with foraging activity peaking in the late afternoon. The varied diet of bonnethead sharks includes crabs, shrimps, bivalves, snails, and some small bony fishes; however, they are also known to eat seagrasses. This menu of primarily hard-shelled invertebrates differs from that of other hammerheads which usually do not eat such prey. The tooth structure and jaws of bonnetheads has been adapted for feeding on both hard-shelled and soft prey. They have small sharp teeth at the front of their jaw for grasping soft-bodied prey, and broad, flat molar-like teeth at the back for crushing hard-shelled invertebrates. Like most sharks, they have rows of teeth in place ready to replace any worn or lost. The primary diet of juveniles is swimming crabs and shrimps. Females reach maturity when they are 75-84 cm (30-33 in) in length. Males are 52-75 cm (20-30 in) long. After mating, the female can store the sperm for four months prior to actual fertilization of the eggs. When the embryos first emerge from the egg, they absorb the yolk for nourishment. The sac attaches to the female’s uterine wall to form a yolk-sac placenta through which nourishment is then received from the female. Females move to shallow bays and estuaries during the pupping season; whereas, males move to a different location, an adaptation believed to prevent males from feeding on their own pups. Females are prevented from doing so because of a loss of desire for food. The female delivers 4-14 pups that are born live. The pups are 30-40 cm (12-16 in) long at birth. The gestation period is only five to six months long, the shortest of all sharks. Scientists have observed at least 18 different behaviors that bonnetheads display toward other individuals in a number of ways. Some of these are: males adopt a threat posture known as a “hunch” toward others in the group, and will physically bump and bite females or smaller males; patrolling; head-shaking; and jaw-snapping. It is believed that the purpose of these displays is to establish and/or maintain dominance. Preferring a water temperature of at least 15o C (70o F), bonnethead sharks migrate in large schools to warmer latitudes in the winter and to cooler waters in the summer. Rarely alone, there are usually 5-15 sharks in a school of either males or females. The schools sometimes number 100, and occasional 1,000. The unique head shape of the bonnethead shark, like that of other hammerhead sharks, may give them added lift, enabling them to make sharper turns than other sharks. The wider head also provides space for more ampullae of Lorenzini to help detect prey, and also possibly function as a navigation aid. The location of the eyes of these sharks at the far sides of their heads increases their field of vision. As they swim, they roll the head from side to side, taking in the scene on all sides and the front. Like other sharks, their eyes have a special organ, the tapetum lucidum, which reflects light back to the retina of the eye, allowing them to see in low light. They also have a membrane that comes up from beneath their eyes to protect them during feeding. The life span of bonnethead sharks is believed to be about 12 years. Like most sharks, bonnetheads are under pressure as a result of overfishing by small-scale fisheries. They are both targeted and caught as by-catch. When targeted, the meat is sold fresh, salted, or dried for human consumption. They are occasionally processed into fish meal. Since bonnetheads are on inshore coastal species, coastal development may have a major impact on their survival. NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service laboratory in Panama City, Florida is currently doing population modeling on bonnetheads. One study called Year of the Young (YOY) has shown that the mortality of young bonnetheads is high. A bonnethead shark excretes a unique cerebrospinal fluid (Cl-excess) that is believed to be used to let other bonnetheads know it is in the area.

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White Oak Creek Radionuclide Releases Public Health Assessment In 1942, the U.S. government established the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) in Anderson and Roane Counties in Tennessee. The reservation was part of the Manhattan Project, a government program to research, develop, and produce radioactive materials for nuclear weapons. One of the facilities built at that time was the X-10 site, created to process plutonium. After the end of World War II, the role of the ORR under the Atomic Energy Commission, which subsequently became part of the Department of Energy (DOE), broadened to include a variety of nuclear research and production projects vital to national security. Beginning in 1943, some contamination from the ORR entered White Oak Creek (located on the reservation) and flowed off the reservation into the Clinch River and Watts Bar Reservoir. Most of the radioactive contamination in the creek came from the X-10 site (known in the past as Clinton Laboratories and now called the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, or ORNL). People living along and using the Clinch River and the Lower Watts Bar Reservoir want to know if their health could be affected by the radionuclide releases. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) conducted a public health assessment to evaluate whether these radiological releases could be harmful for people who use, or who live near, the Clinch River and the Lower Watts Bar Reservoir. ATSDR's scientists concluded that some residents living along or visiting the Clinch River and the Lower Watts Bar Reservoir were exposed to radionuclides released from the X-10 site via White Oak Creek. The greatest exposure occurred in the 1950s, and resulted from frequently eating fish caught near Jones Island, close to the mouth of White Oak Creek. The radiation dose from eating fish from the Jones Island area was well below levels associated with a health hazard. Radiation doses were much lower for the other exposure pathways evaluated (drinking water and milk, walking on sediment, and eating meat) and for individuals who caught their fish further downstream. Therefore, ATSDR does not expect adverse health effects to occur from past, current, and future exposure to the surface water, sediment, drinking water, and fish in the Clinch River and Lower Watts Bar Reservoir, and to turtles and geese in the Clinch River.

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en

Rationale: In order to learn to read and spell words, children need to understand digraphs so they can match letters to their phonemes. In this lesson, children will learn to recognize the ou = /ow/ in both spoken and written words They will learn to do this by practicing reading and spelling words containing ou = /ow/. I will use a letterbox lesson to help with instruction of this correspondence. Materials: Primary paper, pencil. The Napping House by Audrey Wood. Elkonin letter boxes. letter: s.h,o.u.t.l,d,m.n,f,a,and b, flashcards of the letterbox words, and a chart with the following tongue twister on it: I found out about the loud shout. Procedures: 1. Introduce the lesson by asking the children if they have ever gotten hurt and said "ow!" I will then tell them that when the two letters o and u get together, they make that sound. I will write these letters on the hoard. Today we are going to work on words that have the ow sound in them and are spelt with an on. 2. I want all of you to repeat this tongue twister after me. "I found out about the loud shout" Good! Did you hear the ow sound in those words. Now I want you to hold out the ow sound when we say the tongue twister. I fou------nd ou-------t abou------t the lou-------d shou--------t. Excellent job! 3. Next. I will have the children take out their letterboxes and the letters listed ahove. Now we are going to spell the words that I've just said. Remember the ow sound is made when the o and u get together. I will model one example on the hoard for the students and then we will go through words one at a time as the students spell the words in their letterboxes. Because the o and u together make one sound, they should put them in one box. Words to spell: out = ou/t loud = l/ou/d shout = sh/ou/t found = f/ou/n/d mound = m/ou/n/d 5. We will then practice this sound by reading the hook The Napping House. I will read The book to the students and they will say ow! when they hear the ou sound. The students will then read the book themselves and write down the words that have the ou correspondence in them. 6. For review, I will hold up flash cards of the words we have learned with the ou sound and the children will be called upon one at a time to say what is on the card. 7. For assessment. I will pass out a worksheet in which the students will have to circle the words that have the ou = /ow/ correspondence in them. They will fill it out and turn it in. References: Murray, Bruce and Lesniak T.(1999) The Letterbox Lesson: A Hands-On Approach to teaching decoding. Wood. Audrey. The Napping House Click here to return to Challenges

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Free Online Dictionary |Wikipedia English The Free Encyclopedia||Download this dictionary| Clean Water Act The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution. Commonly abbreviated as the CWA, the act established the goals of eliminating releases of high amounts of toxic substances into water, eliminating additional water pollution by 1985, and ensuring that surface waters would meet standards necessary for human sports and recreation by 1983. |See more at Wikipedia.org...| The following video provides you with the correct English pronunciation of the word "NPDES", to help you become a better English speaker. © This article uses material from Wikipedia® and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License |EPA Terms of Environment Dictionary||Download this dictionary| National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) A provision of the Clean Water Act which prohibits discharge of pollutants into waters of the United States unless a special permit is issued by EPA, a state, or, where delegated, a tribal government on an Indian reservation. Provided as a public service by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency |FAA Glossary of Airport Acronyms||Download this dictionary| National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Source: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). | NPDES in French | NPDES in Spanish You think you have ethics... Take the survey NOW!

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2013-05-19T19:28:58Z

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Slow lorises may not be swift, but they are accomplished climbers and are able to hang from branches by their feet alone. Disputed, but thought to be four subspecies. Head and body length: 26-38cm, Tail: 1.3-2.5cm, Weight: Female: 1.1, Male: 1.2g. Slow lorises vary in colour from grey to white depending on their range. They are plumper and shorter-limbed than slender lorises. They have strong grasping hands and feet, with opposable thumbs. Slow lorises have dark rings around their eyes and a dark stripe running along the back. They range across southeast Asia. They inhabit tropical evergreen rain forests. Slow lorises feed on fruit, animal prey, gums, shoots and bird eggs. They are nocturnal and arboreal. They spend the day sleeping in a tight ball up a tree, with their head between their thighs, but become active at sunset. They are thought to be solitary, and males have larger ranges than the females. Slow lorises make a buzzing hiss sound when disturbed. They move quadrupedally and slowly through the forest. Slow lorises breed at any time of the year. Females give birth after a gestation period of 193 days, usually to one offspring (sometimes two). The Bornean slow loris (N.c.menagensis) is listed by the IUCN as Data Deficient.

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Antimatter belt around Earth discovered by Pamela craft A thin band of antimatter particles called antiprotons enveloping the Earth has been spotted for the first time. The find, described in Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth's magnetic field could trap antimatter. The team says a small number of antiprotons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped "normal" matter. The researchers say there may be enough to implement a scheme using antimatter to fuel future spacecraft. The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite (an acronym for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) - launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and from beyond our Solar System - so-called cosmic rays. These cosmic ray particles can slam into molecules that make up the Earth's atmosphere, creating showers of particles. Many of the cosmic ray particles or these "daughter" particles they create are caught in the Van Allen belts, doughnut-shaped regions where the Earth's magnetic field traps them. Among Pamela's goals was to specifically look for small numbers of antimatter particles among the far more abundant normal matter particles such as protons and the nuclei of helium atoms.'Abundant source' The new analysis, described in an online preprint, shows that when Pamela passes through a region called the South Atlantic Anomaly, it sees thousands of times more antiprotons than are expected to come from normal particle decays, or from elsewhere in the cosmos. The team says that this is evidence that bands of antiprotons, analogous to the Van Allen belts, hold the antiprotons in place - at least until they encounter the normal matter of the atmosphere, when they "annihilate" in a flash of light. Although normal matter particles outweigh the antiprotons by thousands to one, the band is "the most abundant source of antiprotons near the Earth", said Alessandro Bruno of the University of Bari, a co-author of the work. "Trapped antiprotons can be lost in the interactions with atmospheric constituents, especially at low altitudes where the annihilation becomes the main loss mechanism," he told BBC News. "Above altitudes of several hundred kilometres, the loss rate is significantly lower, allowing a large supply of antiprotons to be produced." Dr Bruno said that, aside from confirming theoretical work that had long predicted the existence of these antimatter bands, the particles could also prove to be a novel fuel source for future spacecraft - an idea explored in a report for Nasa's Institute for Advanced Concepts.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14405122

2013-05-19T19:38:14Z

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Jan 19,2007 00:00 Like a thirsty juniper growing on Oregon’s high desert, Bend needs water. So do Redmond and Madras, Prineville and Sisters, Warm Springs and La Pine. Growth in central Oregon is changing the face of its people, the landscape, and water resource management. Griffiths estimates nearly 60 percent of Bend’s residential water consumption is being used to irrigate landscapes. That is one reason why he and Amy Jo Detweiler, associate professor of horticulture with the Oregon State University Extension Service, teamed up to publish “An Introduction to Xeriscaping in the High Desert.” The guide presents a seven-step process covering landscape planning and design, plant selection and placement, soil amendments, efficient irrigation, turf and turf alternatives, mulching, and landscape maintenance. “We needed a pictorial plant guide to help people see the colors and textures and variety they can have and still be using water-wise plants that are appropriate for this area,” said Detweiler. “There are hundreds of plants that can be used in a xeriscape.” Since its release in 2005, Detweiler says several Bend-area homeowners’ associations have adopted the guide and it has become an important training tool for the professional landscape industry. Partnerships such as these are helping Bend and surrounding communities address a growing need for water. Historically, agriculture has been the primary drain on upper and middle Deschutes River stream flows. That is still the case, but United States Geological Survey studies during the 1990s concluded the Deschutes is fed significantly by groundwater. With growing cities pumping more and more water from wells—and the lower Deschutes protected as a national wild and scenic river—officials in Oregon’s Department of Water Resources took action to avoid potential declines in stream flows and water quality. The agency enacted groundwater mitigation rules in 2002, requiring all new well permits for major water users to be offset by equivalent amounts of surface water restoration. “If you’re going to stick a straw into the cup and draw out water, you’ve got to pull another straw out of the cup so you don’t drain it down,” said Bruce Aylward of the Deschutes River Conservancy. “The main way you do that is by acquiring water from agricultural areas that are becoming urbanized and transferring the water rights back to in-stream uses.” Aylward manages the Central Oregon Water Bank, a multi-organization partnership that will help guide the transition. He says irrigated agriculture in the Deschutes basin requires about five feet of water per acre each year. In contrast, he says the City of Bend is using less than one foot of water per acre each year. The Oregon Court of Appeals overturned the Deschutes Basin groundwater mitigation rules in 2005, stating they were insufficient to maintain necessary stream flows for fish, wildlife, and recreational uses. A short time later, the Oregon legislature passed House Bill 3494, a law that reinstated the mitigation rules. Despite the legal challenges and changes, those involved in the water planning process say they are proud of the partnerships that have developed in recent years. They stress the importance of bringing all interested parties together, being open to compromise, and listening to one another. “Ideally, we will preserve as much agricultural ground as we can, maintain stream flows, and get the cities their water,” said Steve Johnson, manager of the Central Oregon Irrigation District. “If we keep our partnerships together, using tools like the water bank, we believe we can effectively manage our way into the future without being totally disruptive of the interests and stakeholders that are here.” One downstream partner agrees. “Fisheries and water are important to us from a cultural-spiritual side,” said Bobby Brunoe, general manager of natural resources for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. “The Tribes have been here for thousands of years, we’re going to be here for thousands more, and we know our neighbors are going to be right there with us. We all need to be working together to create solutions.”

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http://www.bendweekly.com/print/2032.html

2013-05-19T19:44:00Z

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Art That's A BLAST Ecce Homology is a physically interactive new-media work that visualizes genetic data as calligraphic forms. A group of artists and scientists has created an interactive artwork using BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool), one of the foundational algorithms for comparative genomics. Normally, the BLAST process of looking for homologous genes is invisible to researchers: They enter a gene sequences into a computer and wait for BLAST to kick out the matches. But the collaborative art work opens that black box by making the BLAST search visible. The result, Ecce Homology was shown in early August at SIGGRAPH 2005 in Los Angeles. “It’s artwork that’s deeply grounded in science without being didactic,” says Ruth West, director of visual analytics and interactive technologies at the University of California, San Diego, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research and research associate with the UCSD Center for Research in Computing and the Arts. She heads the collaboration which includes 11 biologists, artists and computer scientists from UCSD, UCLA and the University of Southern California. With a name inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, a meditation on how one becomes what one is, the project explores human evolution by examining similarities between genes from human beings and a target organism, in this case the rice plant. Ecce Homology is a physically interactive new-media work that visualizes genetic data as calligraphic forms. A novel computer-vision based interface allows multiple participants, through their movement in the installation space, to select genes from the human genome for visualization using the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST). Five projectors present these changes in Ecce Homology’s calligraphic forms across a 40-foot wide wall. “If we worked on the genomic calligraphy visualization further, it could be useful to scientists,” she says, “but the installation is not a tool; it’s art. And it’s specifically ambiguous and a bit mysterious—by intention.” Ecce Homology, which was first displayed two years ago at the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles, works on many levels both scientifically and artistically. “People assume that there’s value in the vast amounts of genomic data we are generating,” says West, “but data is not knowledge, and in order for us to derive knowledge from it, we need to interpret it. The more complex it is, the harder it is for human beings to do that and, consequently, the greater our need to find new approaches.” So, says West, “we’ve produced an artwork that both speaks to this need and lets viewers interact fluidly with the data in a visceral way.” Ultimately, West says, the exhibit poses the question, “If you were to do work that’s truly hybrid art/science, what would that process be like? And would there be any outcome that would point to how art might nurture scientific discovery?” For more information about Ecce Homology, visit www.insilicov1.org.

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http://www.biomedicalcomputationreview.org/content/art-thats-blast

2013-05-19T19:22:03Z

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Are you seeking more resources on the topic of the tropical forests or deforestation?Deforestation and global warming- there is no fire without smoke Deforestation and global warming Losing the tropical forest biodome - original article Deforestation may be the cause for the drop in Monarch butterflies to Mexico 27 to 60 million acres of tropical rainforest biome are annually destroyed around the world. About 25 percent of the Amazon Rainforest has already been cut down. It is mostly done for getting resources like ore and timber, but this biome can never be brought back. The tropical rainforest biome animals comprise about two thirds of the planet’s wildlife. There are various species of tropical rainforest biome animals that are still unknown and have never been discovered. The rainforest also contains a variety of plants that may hold cures for many diseases plaguing humanity, like cancer and AIDS. Many of these plants have not been discovered yet, and new ones are being found by researchers all the time. There are also many native tribes in the rainforest, which have not had any contact with the outside world and still live the way they lived centuries ago. Tropical rainforest biome provides copious amounts of oxygen to the earth’s atmosphere, and it removes massive amounts of carbon from it. All this is done through natural processes. If the tropical rainforest biome were to disappear, the planet would suffer from a lack of oxygen, especially because of the vast amounts of carbon emissions we are constantly surrounded by. We have gotten many gifts from the rainforest in the past, such as chocolate, medicine, rubber, and various others. Losing tropical rainforest biome is one of the biggest disasters that is happening to the world, and if it continues, there could be dire consequences for the whole planet. A lot of the deforestation is done to gain rare and unique types of wood for sales of exclusive furniture. However, no kitchen cabinets are worth the destroying as much as one acre of the tropical rainforest biome. Ore is another reason for the deforestation, and miners try to get it from under the rainforest ground. The third reason for the tropical rainforest biome loss is farming. As the population grows, more and more land is required for agricultural purposes. Settlements located close to the rainforest will sometimes start using rainforest land for farming. Tropical rainforest biome is very important for another reason. The way that rainforests normally work is they rely on trees to return moisture into the air. The rainforest takes in the rain it receives and gives it back to the atmosphere. This is kind of like a recycling process called evapotranspiration. However, with the deforestation underway as it currently is, it could become impossible for the rainforest to continue this process and sustain itself – it may be unable to thrive and regenerate fast enough in order to keep the balance of its unique ecosystem. All this could happen within a decade. For the original article, click here. For more information, go to:

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http://www.bionomicfuel.com/losing-the-tropical-forest-biome-self-inflicted-doom-for-man-upd/

2013-05-19T19:43:34Z

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Given the prevalence of girls on softball and soccer fields, the love heaped on female Olympians, and the frenzy over women’s basketball, it’s almost hard to imagine the world before Title IX. The federal act, passed on June 23, 1972, and signed into law by President Richard Nixon, prohibited sex discrimination in any educational program or activity that received federal funding. In effect, it required schools to provide equal access to sports for men and women, boys and girls — to level the playing field, sometimes quite literally. In 40 years, the landmark bill — which also improves women’s access to labs and technology, and protects against sexual harassment and discrimination — has gone through its share of ups and downs. There have been congressional attempts to water it down, lawsuits required to make colleges comply, laws passed to increase accountability. Title IX has been criticized for its imprecision: Because schools must invest in women’s sports based on enrollment in men’s sports, some believe that certain girls’ sports have been unnecessarily inflated, and certain men’s sports have been unfairly shuttered. But the overarching social stereotype that prompted Title IX in the first place — the idea that girls aren’t as interested in sports as boys — has been disproven by the law’s dramatic results. In 1971, before Title IX passed, 7 percent of high school athletes were girls. By 2011, that number had risen to 41 percent. And the effects of the law have reached far beyond athletic fields. Before Title IX, many schools had separate entrances for men and women, limits on the number of women who could enroll, and few scholarship opportunities for women and girls. Many credit Title IX for the increased numbers of women in biology labs and computer labs, in boardrooms and in politics. It is rare legislation that changes things so dramatically, and for the benefit of so many.

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http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2012/06/22/title-signed-years-ago-unleashed-passion-for-sports-millions-girls/fVoQnHPRnjrNzU7R0lSwxH/story.html

2013-05-19T19:29:34Z

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This essay considers the Royal Charter Storm, perhaps the most devastating weather event to occur in Britain in the nineteenth century, a gale that is named for the wreck of the Royal Charter steamship off the coast of North Wales and the subsequent drowning of most of its passengers and crew. Although this tragedy resulted in improvements in weather warning systems that contributed to the rise of modern forecasting, that is not the storm’s only legacy. In the aftermath of a parallel media storm, a host of reports ran in newspapers across the country in the days, weeks, and even months that followed, together producing a sense of this wide-ranging storm as a shared, national event. Among these reports was Charles Dickens’s account in All the Year Round, a striking portrayal of the losses associated with the wreck and an effort to ameliorate the suffering it had caused. Rather than predicting the weather, reports of the storm in the popular press turned to another kind of weather model of sorts, the retrospective work of memorializing and sympathy. In the early hours of 26 October 1859, the Royal Charter steam clipper, en route from Melbourne to Liverpool, found herself too close to the shore near Moelfre on the coast of Anglesey in North Wales when winds began to pick up dangerously. Sending up distress signals, but finding no pilot to respond, the captain dropped the anchors, powered the coal engines, and eventually cut the masts, but to no avail. The ship was torn apart and then submerged by eight o’clock that same morning. Having originally sailed with a crew of 103 and 324 passengers, only 41 survived the wreck (Steele and Williams 3-5). Decades before the sinking of the Titanic, the fate of the Royal Charter was similarly unexpected. This 2719-ton, 200-horsepower marvel of Victorian shipping was fireproof, watertight, and iron-hulled. Carrying a cargo of gold from the newly discovered Australian goldfields worth 500,000 pounds, she was on schedule to complete the journey in fewer than sixty days. Having successfully negotiated the tricky waters of the Cape of Good Hope, the journey home had seemed assured until, when only about seventy miles from Liverpool, the winds gathered devastating power to reach gale force 12. (See Fig. 1.) The gale was by no means confined to the waters off North Wales, nor would the Royal Charter be the only loss, as this storm continued on for a further two or three days (Fitzroy, Weather Book 299-301). Beginning off the coast of Cornwall on 25 October, the storm grew the next day over the mainland, the North Sea, and then northeast into Scotland before reaching Norway by the 27th (Anderson 110). Another storm brewed over 1-2 November, such that from 25 October until 9 November there were up to 343 wrecks and 748 lives lost as a result of the gales (“Autumnal Storms and Shipwrecks” 2). Among the fortunate ships to escape this fate was Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s the Great Eastern, surviving the storm by anchoring in Holyhead Harbour “while,” as one seaman would later put it, “all round her the shores and harbour were strewn with wrecks” (Ballantyne 352). Named for what would become its most-cited victim, the Royal Charter Gale or the Royal Charter Storm (or, in Scotland, the Great Hyperborean Storm) has earned the reputation as one of the most devastating weather events in Britain in the nineteenth century (Lamb 135-36). Losses were so serious and alarming that they prompted significant measures to improve storm warnings along Britain’s coasts, many at the recommendation of Robert Fitzroy. Formerly captain of the HMS Beagle (see Ian Duncan, “On Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle”) and in 1853 appointed as advisor to the Board of Trade (forerunner of the Meteorological Office), Fitzroy was made head of a newly formed department of meteorological statistics. Fitzroy then conducted a detailed analysis of the tragedy and presented his findings to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1860 (Anderson 48-49; 110 n.65). His recommendation for a storm-warning system was approved that same year; it was partly comprised of a set of visual signals that could be communicated from shore to ship, a mechanical contraption of cylinders and cones hoisted on pulleys (Gribbin and Gribbin 263-64). But the new system also came to embrace the further possibilities of the existing telegraph network when thirteen storm glasses were eventually placed in telegraph offices around Britain’s coastal and fishing communities. There, operators were charged with reading Fitzroy’s instruments and then sending the results swiftly to a central office in London, which then issued weather warnings based on the data it had received. The local telegraph operators would then hoist a signal. But these improvements in forecasting were not to be the gale’s only outcome. In addition to meteorological advancements was another effect of the Royal Charter Storm: the ways in which newspapers were reporting the weather to a non-specialist reading public. A day after the winds reached hurricane force, The Times printed a story simply entitled “The Gale,” which included reports on the wind-storm from across the nation received by telegraph from Liverpool, London, Plymouth, Portland, Portsmouth, Sussex, Dover, Brighton, Hartlepool, Bristol, and Exeter. These reports showed how the storm that had wrecked ships in coastal regions also wreaked havoc in London on the same day in October where, among other incidents, high winds were linked to downed trees, to several injuries “from being struck by tiles and chimneys,” and most spectacularly to “a woman being carried off her feet into [the Surrey] [C]anal” in Peckham where she drowned (9). The links between events near Moelfre and in the metropole became clear. Similarly, when The Illustrated London News reported that “Chester and Birkenhead Railway had been destroyed in two places; between Conway and Holyhead an embankment had been washed away,” these storm-damage details mattered to readers elsewhere in Britain. Disruption to rail lines was not a local inconvenience but a matter of national concern in the by-now networked, imperial nation (“Wreck of the ‘Royal Charter,’ and Loss of About Four Hundred Lives” 413). In the aftermath of the storm, however, reports of the gale itself—the power of the winds and the damage they caused—soon gave way to many column inches devoted to the particular loss of the Royal Charter ship. This wide-ranging wind storm, it seems, required a focal point in the papers, and the ship’s distress served as one for the growing and corresponding media storm: a means by which to transform for readers a robust weather occurrence into a narrative about human fear, heroism, and in the end, death for most. Print accounts of the disaster show how, following the event, weather became a matter for a shared outpouring of sympathy, extending from the provinces to the nation as a whole. “In this town and port alone,” stated one Liverpool paper, “from which the Royal Charter sailed, and where her officers and crews were shipped, hundreds of hearts are now throbbing in anguish over friends snatched from them at the moment when they were opening their arms to welcome them; and there is scarcely a town or country in England in which there will not be participators in their grief” (“Loss of the Royal Charter”). As the testimonials of the few survivors began to circulate, the papers often represented the storm in the moments it was happening to those on board the ship; for these frightened passengers, the weather was not all around them but with them and in their very midst, as in one account in the Manchester Guardian: “Time passed anxiously and wearily; the storm still raged. Suddenly the vessel struck, not violently, not even with sufficient force to throw the passengers off their seats. Water then came pouring down into the cabin” (qtd. in “The Royal Charter”). As the weeks went on, the story of the ship continued to run, shifting from the Board of Trade inquiry (into the cause of the wreck of a merchant vessel) that was soon undertaken, to the matter of dealing with the bodies from the wreck that were washing ashore. One such list appearing in The Times on Friday, 2 December, by this time many weeks after the storm, mentions nearly two dozen still-unidentified bodies, and of these two whose only identifying marks were the initials monogrammed on their socks (“The Wreck of the Royal Charter” 7.) The Illustrated London News, in a moment of particular poignancy, recounts on 26 November 1859 that, when the body of one of the passengers, Captain Wither, washed ashore, he was still wearing his watch and that it “had stopped at half-past seven” (“The Wreck of the ‘Royal Charter’” 504). The ILN also printed a sentimental ballad on Christmas Eve, “Christmas on the Seashore,” and while the Royal Charter tragedy is not directly mentioned in this poem, this event seems implicit; the ballad makes mention of great winds and waves, a ship going down, and the drowning of passengers. It urges those who remain alive to take comfort since the victims of the sinking have now found eternal rest in Heaven: “Mourn not for those who bravely died” for “What we are seeking, they have found, — / Sweet rest, unbroken by the storm-winds fretting” (Heevey 41-42). Apart from a reference to the real-life Royal Charter, the shipwreck in this poem would also have been recognizable to contemporary readers as a well-known evangelical trope: the shipwreck as an emblem of any crisis that might precipitate conversion and salvation, or as an emblem of moral courage amidst life’s trials and tribulations. Storm and shipwreck had already figured in a similarly sentimental way in Charles Dickens’s earlier, 1850 fictional treatment in Chapter 55 of David Copperfield, “The Tempest,” in which Ham dies while trying to rescue the sailor who turns out to be Steerforth. In the middle of that chapter, David joins others on the Yarmouth beach who, in the midst of a violent wind-storm, look on in horror as a distressed schooner is pitched about: The agony on the shore increased. Men groaned, and clasped their hands; women shrieked, and turned away their faces. Some ran wildly up and down along the beach, crying for help where no help could be. I found myself one of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew, not to let those . . . lost creatures perish before our eyes. (648) In what ensues, Ham resolves to make a rescue attempt with the aid of a rope secured by some men on the shore at whatever the cost to his own life, and just as the ship has begun to part in the middle with Steerforth clinging to the one remaining mast. When Dickens, a decade later, wrote a journalistic account of a real-life wreck, that of the Royal Charter, his coverage of local salvage-work assesses both the effects and the affects of the storm. It was published in All the Year Round on 28 January 1860 as “The Shipwreck” and reprinted the following year along with other essays in The Uncommercial Traveller. “The Shipwreck” is a sombre first-person account of the storm’s local aftermath in the Welsh community close to where the ship went down, one that also includes, in Dickensian-fashion, an instance of the political uses to which sentiment is often put. Upon seeing the wreck, Dickens relates how he is taken aback by the extent of the damage to the ship. But as an “uncommercial” traveler, he is struck particularly by the gold that remains, a visible reminder and remainder of the ship’s link to a commercial, imperial economy: “So tremendous had the force of the sea been when it broke the ship, that it had beaten one great ingot of gold, deep into a strong and heavy piece of her solid iron-work: in which, also, several loose sovereigns that the ingot had swept in before it, had been found, as firmly embedded as though the iron had been liquid when they were forced there” (Dickens 4). By 12 January 1860, an American paper, The Country Gentleman, was reporting that the value of the recovered gold from the wreck had reached £275,000. Dickens’s focus, though, turns soon from the wreck and the gold that was fueling the salvage, to the trauma visited upon the community near where the ship had struck, as the bodies, and not just sovereigns, wash up. For Dickens, the incalculable cost is human, and these costs include not just the dead but also the living, including the local clergyman, the Reverend Stephen Roose Hughes of Llanallgo parish, to whom fall the duties of dealing with the dead and with those who grieve for them. Hughes comes across as an exemplary character in Dickens’s account, a man of tireless work and boundless empathy in the midst of great mourning: “So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true practical Christianity ever is!” (4). Dickens follows Hughes to the church, which has been transformed into a makeshift morgue. Here, the clergyman spends countless hours devoted to the difficult task of trying to identify the dead. Meanwhile, in the churchyard, there are already 145 victims of the wreck buried, for whom Hughes has conducted all the funeral services. But the most daunting task, one which Hughes continues to perform, is to write condolence letters, of which Hughes has composed an astonishing 1,075. This makes Dickens anxious to see the letters, ten of which he reprints for his All the Year Round audience to read for themselves: letters written by family and friends of the victims to thank Hughes, to make one inquiry or another in the course of identification, and one especially touching note from a grieving husband which begs the clergyman to write to him simply for consolation, “to prevent my mind from going astray” (8). Having reached a high emotional pitch with these letters—which Dickens includes one by one without linking commentary, such that they stand on their own generated and accumulated affect—he concludes the essay with “A Blessing,” one that is, in part, a wish for good weather: “May the sun of glory shine around thy bed . . . . May no sorrow distress thy days; may no grief disturb thy nights” (10). The blessing is for his readers, who have made a harrowing journey to the scene of the Royal Charter with him, and also a means to express a sense of admiration for Hughes, who weathers the storm’s aftermath with great fortitude. For Dickens, then, writing about this tragic outcome of weather comes to rest upon a portrait of human sympathy in the person of Reverend Hughes, whom Brigid Lowe calls “Dickens’s emblem for the preservation of memory in the face of time” (30). Hughes apparently carried out his work of remembering far beyond the call of duty, for by 1862 he was dead at the age of 47. His tombstone notes his work in connection to the Charter Storm and observes that “[t]he subsequent effects of those exertions proved too much for his constitution, and suddenly brought him to an early Grave” (qtd. in Steele and Williams 25). Among memorials to the actual wreck and its victims was a monument erected in the Llanallgo churchyard “by public subscriptions to the memory of those who perished in the wreck of the Royal Charter” (“Remains of the Royal Charter” F5). Dickens’s sympathetic and memorializing weather report might stand in contrast to a more dispassionate and standardized weather model that would follow, and which might be best summed up as the newspaper weather map. Robert Fitzroy had already begun mapping the weather in 1857 (Anderson 191), but the first map to appear in the newspapers for the British public was published in The Times on 1 April 1875 (“Weather Chart”). Composed not by Fitzroy but by the polymath Francis Galton, it showed barometric pressure, temperature, and winds superimposed upon a map of the British Isles and parts of Western Europe (Hill). As Jen Hill has shown, the weather map did the cultural work of shaping British notions of geography and nationhood. It resembles, in other words, the weather map of today that inducts us into a sense of what the weather will be like: the fore-runner to our benign but informative five-day forecast. This kind of weather model is, in a sense, observed by John Ruskin (although in his case, not dispassionately) by 1884, when he delivers his lecture, “The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century,” to the London Institution. Ruskin’s storm is, of course, the result of industrial manufacturing and not the forces of nature. But more to the point here, his clouds portend a future moment, which Ruskin calls his listeners to predict and to read. He urges at the end of his lecture, sounding like prophet as much as weatherman: “What is best to be done, do you ask me? The answer is plain. Whether you can affect the signs of the sky or not, you can the signs of the times” (8). The first newspaper weather map to be published, however, as Hill points out, did not prophesy or predict the weather. Rather, it reported on the previous day’s weather of 31 March. This quirk of the first weather map—that it was retrospective rather than anticipatory—might lead us to consider whether the Royal Charter Storm of 1859 is part of a cultural moment when reading the weather was similarly not yet fully predictive. While weather-warning systems would improve after the Great Charter Storm, the storm did not function for the reading public as a sign of the times, as portent, but in the form of newspaper reports concerning the scale and scope of what had happened, as the popular press turned finally to meditations on grave markers and stone memorials to the wreck’s victims. Whenever today’s cable news storm-trackers try to anticipate the next hurricane to make landfall, or where the impending tornado will hit, their eagerness to predict is all too apparent; there is a sense that to report the weather is to close the gap between when weather will happen and as it happens. Television reporters stand at the ready dressed in the latest rain- and wind-proof gear, eager to call the storm into being while their images are beamed simultaneously by satellites. Victorian accounts of the Royal Charter Storm remind us of how difficult it is to pin down our sense of the weather as a single, meaningful event—and why, in the face of that uncertainty, newspapers and journalists in 1859 might have turned as they did to mapping the extent of a shared national sympathy as an ensuing weather model. HOW TO CITE THIS BRANCH ENTRY (MLA format) Lysack, Krista. “The Royal Charter Storm, 25-26 October 1859.” BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. Web. [Here, add your last date of access to BRANCH]. Allingham, Philip V. “David Copperfield and Contemporary Shipwrecks.” The Victorian Web: Literature, History, and Culture in the Age of Victoria. N.p., 23 September 2010. Web. 9 May 2012. Anderson, Katharine. Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005. Print. “The Autumnal Storms and Shipwrecks.” The Shipwrecked Mariner: A Quarterly Maritime Magazine 7.25 (1860): 1-16. Google Books. Web. 9 May 2012. Ballantyne, Robert Michael. Man on the Ocean. London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1863. Google Books. Web. 9 May 2012. Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. (1850) Ed. Mariel Fyee. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1973. Print. —. “The Shipwreck.” The Uncommercial Traveller. 1861. London: Chapman and Hall, 1866. Print. Fitzroy, Robert. The Weather Book: A Manual of Practical Meteorology. 2nd ed. London: Longman, 1863. Print. “The Gale.” The Times 27 October 1859: B9. Gale Group. Web. 9 May 2012. Gribbin, John and Mary Gribbin, FitzRoy: The Remarkable Story of Darwin’s Captain and the Invention of the Weather Forecast. New Haven: Yale UP, 2004. Print. Heevey, Eleanora L. “Christmas on the Seashore.” The Illustrated London News 24 December (1859): C609. Print. Hill, Jen. “Weather as (Inter)National Performance: The Weather Map, Francis Galton, and the Isobar.” North American Victorian Studies Conference. Vanderbilt University, Nashville. 5 November 2011. Conference Presentation. Hilton, Boyd. The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795-1865. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988. Print. Lamb, H. H. [Hubert Horace]. Historic Storms of the North Sea, British Isles and Northwest Europe. Contributor Knud Frydendahl. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. Print. “Loss of the Royal Charter.” Liverpool Mercury 28 October 1859: n.pag. Print. Lowe, Brigid. Victorian Fiction and the Insights of Sympathy. London: Anthem, 2007. Print. Marriott, William. “The Earliest Telegraphic Daily Meteorological Reports and Weather Maps.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 28 (1902): 123-31. Print. McKee, Alexander. The Golden Wreck: The True Story of a Great Maritime Disaster. London: Souvenir Press, 1961. Print. Middleton, W[illiam] E[dgar] Knowles. Meteorological Instruments. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1941. Print. “Remains of the Royal Charter.” The Times 6 July 1863: F5. Gale Group. Web. 9 May 2012. “Review of Passing Events.” The Country Gentleman 15.2 (12 January 1860): 36-37. Google Books. Web. 25 January 2013. “The Royal Charter.” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser 1 November 1859: n.pag. Print. “Royal National Life-boat Institution.” The Illustrated London News 5 November 1859: B444. Print. Ruskin, John. The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century: Two Lectures Delivered at the London Institution, February 4th and 11th, 1884. Sunnyside, Kent. G. Allen, 1884. Print. Scoresby, William. Journal of a Voyage to Australia, and Round the World for Magnetical Research. 1859. Ed. Archibald Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. Google Books. Web. 9 May 2012. Steele, Philip and Robert Williams. Shipwrecked! Charles Dickens and The Royal Charter Storm. 2nd rev. ed. Llansadwrn: Llyfrau Magma, 2009. Print. “Weather Chart, March 31, 1875.” The Times 1 April 1875. Gale Group. Web. 17 May 2012. “The Wreck of the Royal Charter.” The Illustrated London News 5 November 1859: A-C448. Print. “The Wreck of the ‘Royal Charter.’” The Illustrated London News 26 November 1859: C504. Print. “The Wreck of the Royal Charter.” The Times 2 December 1859: F7. Gale Group. Web. 9 May 2012. “Wreck of the ‘Royal Charter,’ and Loss of About Four Hundred Lives.” The Illustrated London News 29 October 1859: C413. Print. The Illustrated London News provides the weight and horse-power of the Royal Charter (“The Wreck of the Royal Charter” 448). For more on the Royal Charter’s dimensions and capabilities, see, for instance, Scoresby 14-19 and McKee. While there were great losses, there were also some rescues. The Illustrated London News, for example, reported on 5 November 1859 that the Royal National Life-boat Institution held a meeting, during which it handed out rewards totaling 42 pounds, 10 shillings to crews “for saving large number of lives during the recent terrific storms on the coasts” (444). To Joseph Rodgers, a Maltese crewman, was awarded the gold medal (and 5 pounds) for his rescue of persons from the Royal Charter before it went down. See also Fitzroy’s description of this storm warning system in his The Weather Book 1-46. For more on such instruments and others, see, for instance, Middleton’s Meteorological Instruments. Fitzroy embraced yet another technology of weather forecasting: the weather map. For more on Fitzroy’s synoptic maps, see, for instance, Anderson 190-95. On the significance of shipwrecks to evangelical discourse, see, for instance, Boyd Hilton’s The Age of Atonement. Philip V. Allingham has explored how the wrecks of three other ships in 1850—those of the Vine (off Whitby), the Onyx (at Ostend), and the Royal Adelaide (off Margate)—occur within months of Dickens’s October 1850 installment of David Copperfield, in which his fictional storm appears and offers a convincing account of the ways in which Dickens’s fictional story resembles these three storms in particular. As Steele and Williams note (3), Dickens had earlier written about a fictional storm and shipwreck in his 1850 David Copperfield. For mentions of still more treatments of shipwreck in Dickens, see, for instance, Anderson 110 n. 67. On the political uses of sentiment, see, for instance, Brigid Lowe’s Victorian Fiction and the Insights of Sympathy. Nearly four years on, The Times was still reporting on continued operations to recover the gold from the sunken wreck, some of these by treasure-seekers (“Remains of the Royal Charter” 5). See also William Marriott, “The Earliest Telegraphic Daily Meteorological Reports and Weather Maps,” 123-31. Thanks to my research assistant, Miriam Love, for her work in locating newspaper articles for this essay, and thanks also to the anonymous readers.

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Sir William DugdaleArticle Free Pass Sir William Dugdale, (born Sept. 12, 1605, Shustoke, Warwickshire, Eng.—died Feb. 10, 1686, Blythe Hall, Warwickshire), English antiquary who was preeminent among the medievalist scholars in his time. An authority on genealogy and charters, he displayed accurate scholarship and insight unusual for his period. Dugdale married early and settled as a small landowner at Blythe Hall, Warwickshire. Gradually he became the centre of a scholarly circle, and, following an introduction to the antiquary Sir Henry Spelman in London, he compiled, with the help of Roger Dodsworth, Monasticon Anglicanum, 3 vol. (1655–73), a collection of records relating to medieval English religious houses. Among his other important works are the Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), which became a model for large-scale county histories, and The Baronage of England (1675–76). He was knighted in 1667. What made you want to look up "Sir William Dugdale"? Please share what surprised you most...

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Greek terra cotta dancing girl, about 350 B.C. (British Museum.) Greek mythology attributes the origin of dancing to Rea who taught this art to Kourites in Crete. Cretan dances were performed in open or closed circles. Cretans were usually dancing around a tree, an altar, or mystical objects in order to free themselves from the evil. Later on, they used to dance around a singer or a musician. Christianity & Dance The institution of Christianity in Greece put the reins on the development of dance in Greece. Dance performances were banned, which resulted in dance taking an “underground” turn to pagan tradition that lasted up to the period of Byzantium. Much of the current folk traditions eventually returned to Greece by way of the Ionian Islands which were ruled As early as the first century A.D., ancient Greek tragedy, which at its peak of harmonious unity, incorporated poetry, music and dance, had disintegrated into its component elements. Actor-tragedians continued to perform only certain parts of the dialogue of the tragedies, while others with good voices sang the vocal parts. There also arose a gesticulator whose purpose was to illustrate, with pantomimic gestures, what the actor-tragedian was singing. This gradually transformed the old Attic style of tragedy and comedy into the tragic-pantomime style of the imperial Byzantine years that included dance, mime, recitation and song. The reactions of the Church Fathers and the stream of condemnatory decisions and excommunications issued by ecumenical synods indicate the popularity of these spectacle-concerts in multi-ethnic Byzantium and the influence of the mime performances on the austere moral code of the Christians for many centuries to come. |Greek dancers could also be expert gymnastic tumblers. These acrobats were skilled at playing between knives and swords. Rope-dancing or funambulus likely begun with the Greek Dance Terminology --dithyrambic poetry -lyric poetry performed in song and dance as a tribute to the god Dionysus --nomic poetry - choral lyrics, performed in praise of Apollo and other gods --drama of tragedy and comedy the chorus conveys the elements of the play's text in song and dance. • Pyrrihic dance was the most known among martial dances, part of the basic military education in both Athens and Sparta. • Gymnopaedia is the early history of present-day gymnastics. • Geranos This dance included serpentine movements, imitating the movements of Theseus inside was a dionysiac dance danced on top of the vats while treading the grapes with their feet. was the dance of tragedy, enhancing the events enacted on was the dance of the comedy was looked down on, and in general regarded as unworthy of serious men. •Sikkinis was the dance of the satirical drama, imitating the movements of cats and danced by • Imeneos was the dance of the marriage. It was danced by the bride with her mother and friends. It was quick with a lot of twists and turns. • Hormos is according to Lucian a common dance of the young men and women who dance one by the other forming a chain. The leader is a young man who shows his dancing and martial abilities through his movements. A young woman follows him providing an example of solemnity and decency to all other women dancers. • Iporchima was a combination of dance and pantomime, singing and music. It comes from Crete. It was danced by boys and girls together singing choric poems. Greek dances may be divided into sections somewhat thus: •religious dances including the Emmeleia, the Hyporchema, the Gymnopedia, and the Endymatia •gymnastic nature, which include the military dances as well as tumblers mimetic character: sign-talk, which antedates spoken language theatre, such as the chorus, partly social, partly religious dances, such as the hymeneal and wedding chain dance --chamber dances often shown Dancing Bacchante. From a vase in the British Museum. Bacchanalian dancer. Vase from Nocera, Greek and Bacchanalian Dance Dance, according to Greek thought, was one of the civilizing activities, like wine-making and music. Most Greek Mythology was written by poets, like Homer, and as the spiritual sustenance for its people, dance communicated its wisdom and truth as effectively as words. dancing tradition prevalent among the Greeks was likely inherited from Crete which was conquered by Greece around 1500 BC but Greece was very effective in synthesizing the best from surrounding cultures, its poets and artists borrowed significantly from surrounding Pyria and Thrace and its scholars were being initiated into the Egyptian mysteries by temple priests long before Alexander the Great conquered Egypt. Learning to dance was considered a necessary part of and education which favored appreciation of beauty. Ancient Greece drove a sharp distinction between the Apollonian dance and the Dionysian dance. The former – the Apollonian dance – was accompanied by guitars called lyres, lutes and kitharas. It was a ceremonial dance incorporating slower cult dances performed during religious festivals, as well as martial and social dances performed during communal events and funeral practices. The Dionysian or Bacchanalian dance, associated with the cult of Dionysus, is about passion, panic and desire. It is an “orgasmic” dance with breathtaking moves whose purpose is to connect all to a frenetic dance vibration. The synthesis of the Apollonian and the Dionysian is the art of dance. The tension between these opposites played an instrumental role in the shaping of the ancient Greek theatre and the birth of tragedy in the evolution of the arts The lively imagination and mimetic powers of the Greeks found abundant subjects for various kinds of dances, and accordingly to William Smith, in his authoritive A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, the names of no less than 200 different dances have come down to us. With the Greeks, dancing was primarily part of a religious rites; with music it formed the lyric art. The term however, for them included all those actions of the body and limbs, and all expressions and actions of the features and head which suggest ideas; marching, acrobatic performances, and mimetic action all came into the term. Skillful dancers were at all times highly prized by the Greeks: we read of some who were presented with golden crowns, and had statues erected to their honour, and their memory celebrated by inscriptions. There were dancers of all grades, from the distinguished to the moderate. Distinguished dancers, unlike among the Romans, could even marry into upper-class positions, if they did not already occupy them by birth. Philip of Macedon married Larissa, a dancer, and the dancer Aristodemus was ambassador to his Court. The greatest men were not above showing their sentiments through their dancing. Sophocles danced around the trophies of the battle of Salamis. AEschylus and Aristophanes danced in various performances of their own plays. While the important religious and other dances were not generally performed by professionals there was plenty of opportunity for professional dancers who could also find work at the symposiums and entertainment of the men was as important as the conversation and more popular than listening to after-dinner speeches. According to some authorities, one of the earliest dances was attributed to Phrygian origin, was the Aloenes, danced to the Phrygian flute by the priests of Cybele in honour of her daughter Ceres. The dances ultimately celebrated in her cult were numerous: such as the Anthema, the Bookolos, the Epicredros, and many others, some rustic for labourers, others of shepherds, etc. Every locality seems to have had a dance of its own. Dances in honour of Venus were common, she was the patroness of proper and decent dancing. On the other hand, those in honour of Dionysus or Bacchus concluded with revelry by all which is a form of degeneration as well as unity. This practice, also known as today's Carnaval has continued to remain popular by all who honor the natural impulses of the human spirit with a period of release from everyday masks of necessary Geronos or chain dance |Sexes did not mix during dance except for the chain or geronos dance. The dance reenacts the story of Ariadne, future wife of Dionysus and daughter of King Minos, aiding Theseus to escape the labyrinth after killing the Minotaur. The lovers flee to the island of Naxos where they erect a monument to Aphrodite and dance a winding, mazelike dance in her honor to celebrate their love. Grown up men and women did not generally dance together, but the youth of both sexes joined in the Geronos [Hormos] or chain dance. When it was performed, the geranos was danced anamix -- boy-girl, boy-girl order. The Theseus story was also the initiation myth for Greek youth. Here Homer describes this dance: Here young men and the most desired young girls were dancing, linked, touching each other’s wrists, the girls in linen, in soft gowns.... Trained and adept, they circled there with ease the way a potter sitting at his wheel will give it a practice twirl between his palms to see it run; or else, again, in lines as though in ranks, they moved on one another: vase in the Museo Borbonico, Naples. |The following woodcut, taken from vases, shows three Pyrrhicists, two of whom with shield and sword are engaged in the dance, while the third is standing with a sword. Above them is a female balancing herself on the head of one, and apparently in the act of performing a somersault; she no doubt is taking part in the dance, and performing a very artistic kind of tumbling. Her danger is increased by the person below, who holds a sword pointing towards her. A second female may be providing music or be a spectator. Among the gymnastic the most important were military dances, the invention of which was attributed to Minerva; of these the Korybantum was the most remarkable. It was of Phrygian origin and of a mixed religious, military, and mimetic character; the performers were armed, and bounded about, springing and clashing their arms and shields to imitate the Corybantes endeavouring to stifle the cries of the infant Zeus, in Crete. The Pyrrhic a war dance of Doric origin, was a rapid dance to the double flute, and made to resemble an action in battle; the Hoplites of Homer is thought to have been of this kind. The Dorians were very partial to this dance and considered their success in battle due to the celerity and training of the dance. In subsequent periods it was imitated by female dancers as a mimetic performance as well as training for war, thus we read of its being danced by women to entertain a company or as a hand-in-hand dance alternately of males and females. The featured dance at a Dionysian festival was called a dithyramb -- it featured music by a double flute played in the Phrygian mode of music. The characteristic dance at these dithyrambs was the tyrbasia, a dance full of movement and improvisation. The Satyric dance would see the most illustrious men in the state danced in it, representing Titans, Corybantians, Satyrs, and husbandmen much delighting the spectators. The life and adventures of the god Dionysos were represented by mimetic dancing as well as the l The Chorus, composed of singers and dancers, formed part of the drama, which included the recitation of some poetic composition, and included gesticulative and mimetic action as well as dancing and singing. The Dorians were especially fond of this; their poetry was generally choral, and the Doric forms were preserved by the Athenians in the choral compositions of their drama. [More about the Chorus on the Masks of Tragedy & Comedy Page] The tragic dance, Emmelia, was solemn; whilst that in comedy, Cordax, was frivolous, and the siccinis, or dance of Satyrs, was often obscene. They danced to the music of the pipes, the tambour, the harp, castanets, cymbals, etc. Greek dancers. From a vase in the Hamilton Collection. efficiency and plasticity of the human body are dominant, particularly in the movements of the upper body. The torso, hands and wrist are instrumental in the reenactment of dramatic, tragic and lyric motifs. The face mirrors emotions that are in tune with music and rhythm. The art form attracted some significant talents such as Sophron of Syracuse, whose writings kept at hand by Plato during his last hours. Ovueikou were pantomimists of lesser rank, whose work was principally comedy of a farcical nature—though the word seems to have the primitive meaning of "chorister both a dance and a form of satirical mimodrama. It burlesqued the politics, philosophy and drama of the day and was said to cater to the taste of the common people for vulgarity and sensationalism. of Foreign Affairs The history of dance in Greece goes back to 1000 B.C. Dance has played a major role in the life of Greeks all through their history. The dance tradition of Greece was disseminated to Europe where it became accentuated with elements of theatre and ballet. The Greek dance is combined with unique forms of cultural expression, music and poetry, each claiming its unique identity and significance in the ensemble of an integrated dance pp1004‑1006 of William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D.: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, History of Greek Music The Byzantine Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered at its may be defined as a multi-ethnic empire that emerged as a Christian empire, soon comprised the Hellenized empire of the East and ended its thousand year history, in Greek Orthodox state. Its main constituent parts besides Greece were the Asia Minor which contained an overwhelmingly large Greek population. Ethnic minorities and sizeable communities of heretics often lived on or near the borderlands, the Armenians being the only sizeable one. Egyptians oriented themselves around the universe of stars and sought to be in harmony with the changing night sky. The stage is thus believed to have represented the sun and thus the choral movements around it, would be the movements of the celestial bodies. Moses, after the crossing of the Red Sea, bade the children of Israel dance. David danced before the Ark of the Covenant. The Greeks through their dance sought the beauty of harmonized movements of healthy bodies and to tell the glorious stories of the dancing gods. musical instruments were well developed and varied. They included string instruments such as harps, lyres, lutes, percussion instruments like drums, rattles, tambourines, bells (first used during the Late Period) and cymbals (Roman Period), wind instruments like flutes, clarinets, double pipes, trumpets, Egyptian Musical Instruments Castanets, were used in Greece, essentially the same as those of Spain today; also flat sticks in pairs, like clappers, but which unlike clappers were gripped between the thumb and fingers. Little cymbals on the dancers' hands sometimes added their voice, and the tambourine was popular. The variety of these time-marking instruments indicates knowledge of the many effects attainable by tempo |Cymbals (about 4 in.) and double flute. (British Museum.) |Greek dancer with castanets. (British Museum. |Music was an important part of education in ancient Greece, and boys were taught music starting at age six. Greek musical literacy created a flowering of development; Greek music theory included the Greek musical modes, eventually became the basis for Western religious music and classical music. Due to Rome's reverence for Greek culture, Roman music continued to use the Greek notational system. Despite the change from quantitative to tonic prosody, the ancient Greek rhythmical formations live on in modem Greek folk melody. The researches of Professors Thrasyvoulos Georgiadis and Samuel Baud-Bovy demonstrate that the 7/ 8 time, found throughout Greece, in none other than the heroic hexameter in which the Homeric epics were recited. reed instrument. Archeological finds indicate that it could be either single-reeded, like a clarinet, but more usually double-reeded, like an which could be mastered by any aristocrat with sufficient leisure to practice it, the aulos was an instrument chiefly associated with professional musicians, often slaves. Female aulos-players were a fixture of Greek drinking parties [Symposiums], and male and female aulos players often doubled as More about instruments |Much of modern dance with its de-emphasis of couple dancing and elevation of violent movement, group participation, and stress on individual expression appears to share these traits with Greco-Roman dance. |Dancing in ancient Greece closely connected with religion: Plato thought that all dancing should be based on religion, as it was among the Egyptians. The dances of the Chorus at Sparta and in other Doric states were intimately connected with the worship of Apollo, In all the public festivals, which were so numerous among the Greeks, dancing formed a very prominent part. The religious dances, with the exception of the Bacchic and the Corybantian, were very simple, and consisted of gentle movements of the body with various turnings and windings around the altar. Plutarch's "Banquet Topics" (90 AD), Lucian's "Dialogue on Dance" (160 AD), Athenaeus' "Deipnosophistae" ( and Nonnus' "Dionysiaca" (500 AD) as well as many of the earlier giants of philosphy like Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle all wrote about dance. The Greeks are credited with inventing a theory of dance Homer: It is frequently mentioned in the Homeric poems, such that the suitors of Penelope delight themselves with music and dancing while waiting Odysseus to return. Homer makes Apollo orchestes, or the dancer; and amongst the early dances is that in his honour called the Hyporchema. Pythagoras made a period of dancing a part of the daily routine of his pupils Socrates urged it upon his pupils. Physicians of the time of Aristophanes prescribed its rhythmic exercise for many ailments. Plato said that dancing (orchesis) was the instinctive desire to explain words by gestures of the entire body and "for the acquisition of noble, harmonious, and graceful attitudes." Aristotle said that “art is the mimesis of nature” Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the instinct for 'harmony' and rhythm, meters being manifestly sections of rhythm. gave it an important place in the training of youth, military and otherwise. Among the special dances whose teaching he decreed, was one, the Hormos, that was traditionally performed without clothing. tells of a protest against the nudity of the women. The Law-giver of Athens replied: "I wish them [the women] to perform the same exercises as men, that they may equal men in strength, health, virtue and generosity of soul, and that they may learn to despise the opinion of the vulgar." --"The military dance was an indefinable stimulus which inflamed courage and gave strength to persevere in the paths of honour In many of the Greek states the art of dancing was carried to great perfection by females, who were frequently engaged to add to the pleasures and enjoyment of men at their symposia. These dancers, for whatever reason, are always belonged to the hetaerae as a courtesan or high-class prostitute. Among evidence cited describing a mimetic dance which was represented at a symposium, where Socrates was present. It was performed by a maiden and a youth, and represented the loves of Dionysus and Ariadne. In addition the skilled musicians who performed at symposiums are also always described in the academic literature as being prostitutes as well. The evidence does not seem so certain to danced when the grapes were pressed, and imitated the gathering and pressing. The Anteisterios danced when the wine was vatted, and the Bahilicos, danced to the sistrus, cymbals, and tambour, often degenerated into orgies.

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PLAISTOW —After fifteen years of success in North America, the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) will open up to the entire world for the first time in 2013. Anyone, from anywhere on earth, can participate by visiting www.birdcount.org and reporting the kinds and numbers of birds they see during the 16th annual count, February 15–18. A joint project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, with partner Bird Studies Canada, the four-day count typically receives sightings from tens of thousands of people reporting more than 600 bird species in the United States and Canada alone. “This year’s count will give us a whole new perspective as sightings pour in from around the globe in real time,” said Marshall Iliff at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Millions of people encounter birds every day all over the world. Imagine what scientists will learn if each one of us shares observations from our own area!” During the 2012 count, participants reported 17.4 million bird observations on 104,000 checklists. Snowy Owls thrilled many participants when these striking birds-of-prey ventured south from the Arctic in record numbers. In 2013, scientists predict that U.S. and Canadian bird watchers will see an influx of Red-breasted Nuthatches and winter finches (such as Pine Siskins) because of scarce food supplies on their northern wintering grounds. Participating is easy. Simply watch birds for at least fifteen minutes at the location of your choice on one or more of the count days. Estimate the number of birds you see for each species you can identify. You’ll select your location on a map, answer a few questions, enter your tallies, and then submit your data to share your sightings with others around the world. The global capacity for the count will be powered by eBird, an online checklist program for all of the world’s 10,240 bird species. Participants will be able to view what others are seeing on interactive maps, keep their own records, and have their tallies recorded for perpetuity. TheGreat Backyard Bird Count is sponsored in part by Wild Birds Unlimited.

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Estimating Seasonal Influenza-Associated Deaths in the United States: CDC Study Confirms Variability of Flu Questions and Answers What are seasonal influenza-related deaths? Seasonal influenza-related deaths are deaths that occur in people for whom seasonal influenza infection was likely a contributor to the cause of death, but not necessarily the primary cause of death. Does CDC know the exact number of people who die from seasonal flu each year? CDC does not know exactly how many people die from seasonal flu each year. There are several reasons for this. First, states are not required to report individual seasonal flu cases or deaths of people older than 18 years of age to CDC. Second, seasonal influenza is infrequently listed on death certificates of people who die from flu-related complications. Third, many seasonal flu-related deaths occur one or two weeks after a person’s initial infection, either because the person may develop a secondary bacterial co-infection (such as bacterial pneumonia) or because seasonal influenza can aggravate an existing chronic illness (such as congestive heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Also, most people who die from seasonal flu-related complications are not tested for flu, or they seek medical care later in their illness when seasonal influenza can no longer be detected from respiratory samples. Sensitive influenza tests are only likely to detect influenza if performed within a week after onset of illness. In addition, some commonly used tests to diagnose influenza in clinical settings are not highly sensitive and can provide false negative results (i.e. the misdiagnose flu illness as not being flu.) For these reasons, many flu-related deaths may not be recorded on death certificates. These are some of the reasons that CDC and other public health agencies in the United States and other countries use statistical models to estimate the annual number of seasonal flu-related deaths. (Flu deaths in children were made a nationally notifiable condition in 2004, and since then, states have been required to report flu-related child deaths in the United States through the Influenza Associated Pediatric Mortality Surveillance System). Why does CDC estimate deaths associated with seasonal flu? CDC feels it is important to convey the full burden of seasonal flu to the public. Seasonal flu is a serious disease that causes illness, hospitalizations, and deaths every year in the United States. CDC estimates of annual influenza-associated deaths in the United States are made using well-established scientific methods that have been reviewed by scientists outside of CDC. What categories does CDC use to estimate flu-associated deaths? CDC uses two categories of underlying cause of death information listed on death certificates: pneumonia and influenza (P&I) causes and respiratory and circulatory (R&C) causes. CDC uses statistical models with records from these two categories to make estimates of influenza-associated mortality. CDC uses underlying R&C deaths (which include P&I deaths) as the primary outcome in its mortality modeling because R&C deaths provide an estimate of deaths that include secondary respiratory or cardiac complications that follow influenza. R&C causes of death are more sensitive than underlying P&I deaths and more specific than all-cause deaths. How many people die from seasonal flu each year in the United States? The number of seasonal influenza-associated (i.e., seasonal flu-related) deaths varies from year to year because flu seasons are unpredictable and often fluctuate in length and severity. Therefore, a single estimate cannot be used to summarize influenza-associated deaths. Instead, a range of estimated deaths is a better way to represent the variability and unpredictability of flu. An August 27, 2010 MMWR report entitled “Thompson MG et al. Updated Estimates of Mortality Associated with Seasonal Influenza through the 2006-2007 Influenza Season. MMWR 2010; 59(33): 1057-1062.," provides updated estimates of the range of flu-associated deaths that occurred in the United States during the three decades prior to 2007. CDC estimates that from the 1976-1977 season to the 2006-2007 flu season, flu-associated deaths ranged from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people. Death certificate data and weekly influenza virus surveillance information was used to estimate how many flu-related deaths occurred among people whose underlying cause of death was listed as respiratory or circulatory disease on their death certificate. How do the new estimates compare with the 36,000 figure that is often cited as an estimate of annual flu-associated deaths? The 36,000 estimate was presented in a 2003 study by CDC scientists published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), using similar statistical modeling techniques, but only refers to a period from 1990-91 through 1998-99. During those years, the number of estimated deaths ranged from 17,000 to 52,000, with an average of about 36,000. The JAMA study also looked at seasonal influenza-associated deaths over a 23 year period, from 1976-1977 and 1998-1999. During that period, estimates of respiratory and circulatory influenza-associated deaths ranged from about 5,000 to about 52,000, with an average of about 25,000. While the 36,000 number is often cited, it's important to note that during that decade, influenza A (H3N2) was the predominant virus during most of the seasons, and H3N2 influenza viruses are typically associated with higher death rates. CDC believes that the range of deaths over the past 31 years (~3,000 to ~49,000) is a more accurate representation of the unpredictability and variability of flu-associated deaths. What else does this study tell us? The MMWR study also found that during seasons when influenza A (H3N2) viruses were prominent death rates were more than double what they were during seasons when influenza A (H1N1) or influenza B viruses predominated. In addition, the study confirmed previous findings that about 90% of influenza associated deaths occur among adults 65 years and older. Why doesn’t CDC base its seasonal flu mortality estimates only on death certificates that specifically list influenza? Seasonal influenza may lead to death from other causes, such as pneumonia, congestive heart failure, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It has been recognized for many years that influenza is infrequently listed on death certificates and testing for seasonal influenza infections is usually not done, particularly among the elderly who are at greatest risk of seasonal influenza complications and death. Some deaths — particularly in the elderly — are associated with secondary complications of seasonal influenza (including bacterial pneumonias). Influenza virus infection may not be identified in many instances because influenza virus is only detectable for a short period of time and/or many people don’t seek medical care until after the first few days of acute illness. For these and other reasons, statistical modeling strategies have been used to estimate seasonal flu-related deaths for many decades, both in the United States and the United Kingdom. Only counting deaths where influenza was included on a death certificate would be a gross underestimation of seasonal influenza’s true impact. Does CDC think that influenza causes most P&I deaths? No, only a small proportion of deaths in either of these two categories are estimated to be influenza-related. CDC estimated that only 8.5% of all pneumonia and influenza deaths and only 2.1% of all respiratory and circulatory deaths were influenza-related.

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htm?s_cid=cs_000

2013-05-19T19:29:23Z

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en

The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment Advances in the science and observation of climate change are providing a clearer understanding of the inherent variability of Earth’s climate system and its likely response to human and natural influences. The implications of climate change for the environment and society will depend not only on the response of the Earth system to changes in radiative forcings, but also on how humankind responds through changes in technology, economies, lifestyle and policy. Extensive uncertainties exist in future forcings of and responses to climate change, necessitating the use of scenarios of the future to explore the potential consequences of different response options. To date, such scenarios have not adequately examined crucial possibilities, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, and have relied on research processes that slowed the exchange of information among physical, biological and social scientists. Here we describe a new process for creating plausible scenarios to investigate some of the most challenging and important questions about climate change confronting the global community.

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://www.citeulike.org/user/RonKahana/article/6652486

2013-05-19T19:29:14Z

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en

Hypertension or high blood pressure condition is a very serious medical condition that affects a great number of people around the world. This medical condition should not be underrated. Furthermore, unlike patients who know when their blood pressure is too high, most of people have no idea of what their blood pressure is. What is serious about high blood pressure is that this medical condition increases the risk for development of cardiovascular and kidney disease. It can also cause sexual dysfunction, sleep disorders, affects vision negatively and contributes to bone loss. Who are considered hypertensive? People whose blood pressure is below 120/80 have a normal blood pressure rate. People whose blood pressure is within the range of 120/80 and 140/90 are considered prehypertensive, which means that they have a high risk of developing hypertension. For such patients lifestyle changes are of a great importance. Note that your weight is a big factor. Overweight people are recommended to lose their weight to a normal rate in order to avoid problems with their blood pressure rate. People whose blood pressure is 140/90 or 130/80 and above and who have also such conditions as diabetes or chronic kidney disease then that people have hypertension. Often when you examine your high blood pressure in the physician’s office the reading is understate because you are anxious. But can it also mean that every time you are in an anxiety state you are in hypertensive state as well? One should not undervalue the blood pressure reading obtained at a doctor’s office. But greater significance has the routine daily fluctuation in blood pressure and metabolism during a 24 hour period. Normally, people have an increase in blood pressure rate in the morning and in the evening, but it typically lowers when they sleep in the evening time, which is called dipping. In case your blood pressure doesn’t decrease while asleep, the risk of developing of cardiovascular conditions including heart attack, stroke, cardiac failure, and other conditions increases greatly. How This Condition Can Be Managed? First of all, it is advisable for people suffering from hypertension to take blood pressure drugs with the exception of diuretics at night. The study data shows that the risk for development of hypertensive complications decreases when high blood pressure medications are taken at night in order to make your pressure dip if it doesn’t happen naturally. A number of people take diuretic which is one of the antihypertensive medications that patients suffering from high blood pressure are often prescribed are recommended to take it in the day time ,otherwise it is likely for them to awake many times during the night to urinate. If you think you have some blood pressure problems, you are recommended to discuss with your medical provider whether it would be beneficial for you to monitor your blood pressure within a 24-hour period to determine whether you have a dip or night medication is necessary to be prescribed to you. One should understand that the monitor is not expensive or complicated procedure and it can be very beneficial for some people to take it in order to ensure they don’t have high blood pressure problems which in turn might cause more serious medical condition.

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://www.comfortokc.com/category/high-blood-pressure/

2013-05-19T19:28:08Z

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en

The Primary Comprehension Toolkit is organized around 6 strategy books (22 lessons) focused on fundamental comprehension strategies.STRATEGY BOOK 1: MONITOR COMPREHENSION When readers monitor their comprehension, they keep track of their thinking as they read, listen, and view. They notice when the text makes sense or when it doesn't. Primary grade kids are always thinking about what they hear, see, and (if they can) read. They are noticing, wondering, making connections, and making judgments all the time. Readers, however, need to go beyond retelling and merge their thinking with the text to come up with big ideas and underlying themes. We focus on teaching young readers not just to retell, but to think about the words, the pictures, the features, and the ideas that spring from the text. Above all, monitoring comprehension is about engagement. Young learners are more likely to stray from meaning when they are not interested in the content, find the concepts too hard, or don't have sufficient background knowledge to understand it. They stay on track when they talk, draw, and write about their thinking, interacting with the text and with each other to gain understanding. Lesson 1: Think about the Text: Look, listen, talk, write, and draw to express thinking Primary kids are already having inner conversations about what they hear, see, and (if they can) read. They are noticing, wondering, making connections, and judgments all the time.As reading teachers, we want kids to have direct access to all that thinking, to help them become aware of the inner dialogue that all proficient thinkers engage in when they view, listen, or read. With such awareness, kids can steer their thinking and enter texts, whether viewing, listening, or reading, and expect to interact with the pictures, the words, and the author.For this lesson, we use an interactive read-aloud: we model our own thinking and then read several pages, stopping and encouraging the kids to respond by turning and talking with a classmate, and then jotting and drawing what the story make them think about.Lesson 2: Notice and Think about Nonfiction Features: Construct a Feature/Purpose chart When readers read nonfiction, they gain information from the visual and text features as well as from the words themselves. Nonfiction is chock-full of visuals, such as photographs, illustrations, diagrams, graphs, and charts. And it is also packed with text features, such as bold print, italics, captions, titles, headings, subheads, and more. These visual and text features make nonfiction more accessible for our younger readers, since they can get tons of information without having to read the words. By explicitly teaching the features of nonfiction and their purposes, we help kids gain a more complete understanding of the information in the text. Lesson 3: Explore Nonfiction Features: Create Nonfiction Feature books As early readers, many of us were not encouraged to pay attention to visual and text features when we read nonfiction. We were "text bound," ignoring subheads, titles, and visual features, focusing solely on the text. But, to get the most out of nonfiction reading, students need to pay close attention to the visual and text features. So, when reading and exploring informational text with students, we spend quite a bit of time teaching the features and their purposes. One way to nudge kids to focus on the features is to have them create their own books about nonfiction features. Kids pore over nonfiction texts, searching for and discovering numerous visual and text features to include in their very own Nonfiction Feature books. This immersion in nonfiction features supports them to attend to and use the features to better understand what they see, hear, and read.STRATEGY BOOK 2: ACTIVATE & CONNECT David Pearson reminds us that "today's new knowledge is tomorrow's background knowledge." The background knowledge we bring to our learning colors every aspect of our understanding. Whether we are connecting, questioning, or inferring, our background knowledge is the foundation of our thinking. We simply can't understand what we hear, read, or view without thinking about what we already know. To comprehend, learners must connect the new to the known. So we consider every conceivable way to build our kids' background knowledge to prepare them to learn new information. We begin by encouraging young learners to think about what they already know and care about and explore those topics. As they go on to read widely in nonfiction, they are bombarded with new information. To understand, they need to merge their thinking with new information, stopping and reacting as they go. They need to make connections to what they already know. In that way, they can make sense of their new learning and begin to integrate it into their ongoing understanding to build a store of knowledge. Lesson 4: Discover Your Passion: Become a specialist Kids, even very young ones, arrive in our classrooms with a wealth of information. It is our job to mine it. Nonfiction reading is "reading to learn," and nonfiction writing is "writing to inform, to teach." To help kids understand that they bring a good deal of valuable background knowledge to school with them, we explain that all of us know a lot about something, are passionate about something, and are all specialists in one thing or another—dinosaurs, puppies, or soccer, for example. We explain that specialists know a lot about one thing, care about it, and often want to share what they know with others. In this lesson, we model what it is to be a specialist and show kids how to create a list of specialist topics, with an eye toward writing about a specialty. Lesson 5: Think about What You Know: Write teaching books Nonfiction texts, with their myriad visual and text features, are a wonderful model for writing teaching books. Teaching books focus on topics that kids know and care a lot about. We want kids to understand that nonfiction writing is about writing to inform, to teach. We show them how to write teaching books as their first foray into nonfiction writing, which gives them an opportunity to share their specialty. After modeling how to write a teaching book, we ask kids to create nonfiction teaching books with text, illustrations, and features. They choose a topic from their list of specialties and write directly from their background knowledge. Kids use their Nonfiction Feature books (created in Lesson 3) to support them as they create a range of text and visual features in their teaching books. Lesson 6: Make Connections: Use personal experience to construct meaning The background knowledge we bring to our reading colors every aspect of our comprehension. We simply can't make sense of what we read, listen to, or view without thinking about what we already know. As we encounter information, we connect it to our own personal experience and our inner voice resonates with phrases such as It reminds me of.… So we teach even very young readers to notice and make personal connections while they read. One way that readers merge their thinking with the text is by connecting to it. But making connections for the sake of it is not the point. As kids actively notice personal connections, their prior experiences can open wonderful windows into understanding. Lesson 7: Merge Thinking with New Learning: Stop, think, and react to information When we stop, think about, and react to information, we learn, understand, and remember it. Noticing and thinking about new learning is one of the most important nonfiction literacy strategies that we can teach our kids. One of the reasons nonfiction readers have trouble picking out important information is that they haven't been explicitly taught to think about it. Kids can learn to merge their thinking with the information they read by having an inner conversation. When they hear the voice in their head say phrases such as "I never knew," "Wow!," and "Hmmm, that's interesting," it is a sign that they are learning something new. These phrases signal kids to stop and process the information before moving on.STRATEGY BOOK 3: ASK QUESTIONS Curiosity is at the heart of teaching and learning. Young kids burst through the door bubbling over with questions. Why is the sky blue? Where does the sun go at night? What happened to the cowboys? Questions spur curious minds to investigate. Questions open the doors to understanding the world. We have to mine them with a pickaxe! As young readers read nonfiction and meet new information, they brim with questions. As they try to answer their questions, they discover new information and gain knowledge. Questions spark further research and inquiry. Instead of demanding answers all the time, we need to teach kids to ask thoughtful and insightful questions. If we hope to develop critical thinkers, we must teach our kids to think about and question what they listen to, read, and view. Asking questions enriches the learning experience and leads to deeper understanding. Questioning is the strategy that propels learners on. Background knowledge is the primary determinant of comprehension. Nonfiction reading in particular requires readers to think about what they know in order to understand new information. So we encourage kids to ask questions about new information to make sure they understand it. In this lesson, kids use a thinksheet titled I Learned/I Wonder to support understanding as they meet new information while reading. Sometimes young children have limited or inaccurate background knowledge and develop misconceptions. In this lesson, we create a class Anchor Chart titled What We Think We Know/What We Learned before we read about the new topic. Then after reading, we go back and notice whether what we thought we knew was accurate and we celebrate how reading changes thinking and clears up prior misconceptions. Lesson 9: Wonder about New Information: Ask questions when you read, listen, and view Wondering comes naturally to children. Primary kids enter our rooms bursting with questions—Why is the moon out in daytime? Why do dogs bark? Questioning is the strategy that propels learners ahead and keeps them coming back for more. Active learners wonder about all sorts of things as they learn. They ask questions to learn new information, to clarify confusion, and to better understand what they view, hear, and read. From the day kids set foot in our classrooms, we nurture their wonder by sharing our own questions as we go. We celebrate kids' curiosity, so they understand right from the get-go that nothing is more important than their questions. We teach them that wondering is at the heart of learning and that all of their questions have value. Learning flourishes when kids believe their questions matter. Lesson 10: Use Questions as Tools for Learning: Understand why some questions are answered and some are not Once kids learn that asking questions is what good readers do, there's no stopping them! When we are reading to learn, sometimes our questions are answered and sometimes they are not. When readers stop for a moment to ask a question, we teach them to keep their question in mind and continue reading. As they read on, they often encounter additional information that answers their question. Reading and viewing the pictures and words in the text often provide the information kids are looking for. But when questions are not answered, kids need strategies for going beyond the text to find answers. We teach kids that talking with someone and sharing information is another way to find answers to questions. But most importantly, kids learn that it's a fact of life that not all questions are easily answered or fully resolved. Lesson 11: Read with a Question in Mind: Find answers to expand thinking As young kids explore the wide world through nonfiction, questions become tools for research and investigation. Questions provide a window into kids' thinking—letting us peek into their developing understanding of new information. As in previous lessons, questions spark curiosity and interest, but in this lesson we build upon kids' propensity for asking questions to extend thinking and foster understanding. Kids learn practical ways to navigate informational texts, using the table of contents, key words, and other visual and text features to locate information that answers their questions.STRATEGY BOOK 4: INFER & VISUALIZE Inferring is the bedrock of understanding. Writers don't always spill information onto the page; often they leak it slowly, leaving clues along the way to keep the reader engaged in the act of constructing meaning. Inferring involves taking what you know, your background knowledge, and merging it with clues in the text to come up with some information that isn't explicitly stated there. Inferential thinking helps readers figure out unfamiliar words, draw conclusions, make interpretations, make predictions, surface big ideas, and even create mental images. Visualizing is sort of a first cousin to inferring. When readers visualize, they construct meaning by creating mental images—seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and even smelling! Younger children seem particularly inclined to visualize in support of understanding as they listen to and read stories, often living through or living in the stories. When young children infer and visualize as they listen, read, and view, they respond with joy, surprise, or even dread. Inferring and visualizing allow learners to expand their thinking and get at the deeper meaning in text. Lesson 12: Infer Meaning: Merge background knowledge with clues from the text Inferring is at the heart of reading and thinking. Writers don't always spill information onto the page; often they leak it slowly, leaving clues along the way to keep the reader engaged in the act of constructing meaning. Inferring involves merging what you know, your background knowledge, with clues in the text to come up with information that isn't explicitly stated. Poetry is a great genre to launch a lesson about inferring. When we read or hear poetry, we understand more completely by thinking inferentially. Lesson 13: Learn to Visualize: Get a picture in your mindVisualizing is sort of a first cousin to inferring. When we visualize, we are really inferring with a picture in our minds. When readers visualize, they construct meaning by creating sensory images, not only picturing the words but also hearing, smelling, and tasting them. Younger children are particularly inclined to visualize as they listen to and read stories, often living through or living in the stories. Poetry is an ideal genre to introduce visualizing as well as inferring. We gain a deeper understanding of poetry when we create sensory images as we read. And we enjoy our reading and listening more fully when we visualize in this way. Often kids do not realize that they naturally use their experiences and background knowledge to infer information from pictures and text. This lesson shows them how to combine what they already know with information from images, words, and features to better understand the material. When kids understand the power of their own thinking as they make sense of information, their enthusiasm for learning soars. We encourage kids to share inferences and mind pictures by drawing and writing what they are visualizing and inferring. In this lesson we build on the vocabulary of visualizing and inferring, encouraging kids to use language such as "I think," "Maybe," "I visualize," and "I infer." We illustrate inferring with a picture equation that makes the process as concrete as possible for kids. Lesson 15: Infer and Visualize with Narrative Nonfiction: Tie thinking to the text This lesson encourages kids to use inferring and visualizing to make sense of information, the narrative thread of the story, and unfamiliar vocabulary. The lesson is conducted as a read-aloud with guided discussion that elicits inferential thinking as kids listen to the text. As they talk about their inferences, mind pictures, and predictions, we scribe kids' thoughts on the I Learned/I Inferred Anchor Chart to record their evolving thinking. As kids anticipate and predict what may happen as the story unfolds, we discuss inferring as "thinking ahead" to try to figure out what's going to happen. Children also infer answers to questions that arise during reading and discuss lingering questions that remain even after finishing the story.STRATEGY BOOK 5: DETERMINE IMPORTANCE When we read nonfiction, we are reading to learn and remember information. Kids know how to merge their thinking with the information, and now it's time for them to figure out what makes sense to remember. We can't possibly remember every fact or piece of information, nor should we. We teach kids to tell the difference between interesting details and more important information and ideas. When kids learn to put information into their own words, they are well on their way to understanding the information and shaping it into their own thought. Kids also learn to distinguish between facts, questions, and reactions so they can sort and sift information to better organize it. They use note-taking scaffolds to hold their thinking as they prepare to share it with others. Lesson 16: Figure Out What's Important: Separate important information from interesting details We begin helping young learners to distinguish important information from less important details in the primary grades. Nonfiction is packed with information. Some of that information coalesces around a "big idea." Some of that information reveals interesting details unrelated to the bigger, more important ideas. These details, however, often capture readers by providing interesting, even quirky, information about the subject or topic at hand. Quality nonfiction brims with fascinating, yet not always salient, information. We want kids to grow up to be readers who can sift the important ideas from the interesting details but also relish that quirky information. In this lesson, we teach ways to discover the most important information so that kids can add to their knowledge base. Lesson 17: Paraphrase Information: Merge your thinking to make meaning Young kids love to talk about and respond to what they are learning. This lesson teaches kids to paraphrase so they can accurately remember the important knowledge they gain. It builds on earlier lessons by asking kids to put information into their own words after they have stopped to think about it. Kids say the information to themselves in a way that makes sense. They turn and talk with someone else, emphasizing what they think is important. Once kids have put the information in their own words, we ask them to react, respond, and merge their thinking with the information. When kids shape their learning into a new thought, they are much more likely to understand and remember it. Lesson 18: Organize Your Thinking as You Read: Take notes to record information Young children revel in facts and details about things that interest them. They naturally respond, exclaiming "Amazing!," "I never knew that!," or "Cool!". We want them to remember what they have learned and here we teach kids a process for taking notes that involves more than "just the facts." We teach kids to record, sort, and organize their newfound information. Sometimes a question follows hot on the heels of new learning or kids react to startling information. We show kids how facts, questions, and responses are related using the I Learned/I Wonder/Wow! chart and Thinksheet. This note-taking scaffold provides a format for kids to write, draw, and collect new knowledge. Their notes and thinksheets provide a record of their evolving thinking.STRATEGY BOOK 6: SUMMARIZE & SYNTHESIZE Synthesizing information nudges readers to see the bigger picture, pull together their thinking, and organize their learning to share it with others. It's not enough for readers to simply recall or restate the facts—they use a variety of comprehension strategies including asking questions, inferring, and determining what's important to understand big ideas. We begin by simply asking young readers to stop and collect their thoughts before reading on. We give kids time, materials, and support to use comprehension strategies as tools for investigating curriculum-related and self-selected topics. Children summarize and synthesize their thinking through creating poems, posters, books, and other projects that demonstrate their learning and understanding. In this Strategy Book, we demonstrate how we use comprehension strategies to teach content and do research. Here kids apply reading and thinking strategies to delve deeply into a social studies/science topic. Once kids understand how to learn new information, ask questions, and make connections and inferences, as well as interact with each other and work collaboratively, they are ready to use strategies as tools for learning. In this group of lessons, kids build their knowledge about and research the rain forest. However, these lessons on the research process work with any topic, either a curriculum-related one or topics kids choose to investigate on their own. Lesson 19: Summarize Information: Put it in your own words and keep it interesting Summaries run the gamut—they can be oral, written, or drawn! In this lesson, we teach kids who already have information and notes on a topic to transform them into a summary. Depending on children's reading and writing development, summaries can look very different. An emergent reader and writer may draw a picture and jot down a sentence or two. A more developed reader may summarize learning in a complete paragraph. During the lesson we first create a summary of the TFK "Welcome to the Rain Forest" poster based on information kids share orally. Then we convene a small group to sort and organize notes that kids have written previously. They organize their Post-its to put their ideas in order and create a summary paragraph. Whatever form a summary takes, we make sure kids' enthusiasm and authentic voices don't get lost as they write up what they've learned. Lesson 20: Read to Get the Big Ideas: Synthesize the text As kids build knowledge about a topic, they synthesize the information to understand important ideas and issues. Inferring, visualizing, and questioning are strategies that support synthesizing, and kids use all of these strategies to move beyond factual knowledge about a topic. With fiction, kids often "put themselves in" the story, and this spurs their imaginations about the topic. Narratives, such as The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest, add to what kids have already learned from nonfiction so that they construct their own understanding of important ideas. When kids become well informed about a particular subject—grasping big ideas and synthesizing information—they not only learn more, but begin to care more about the topic. Lesson 21: Explore and Investigate: Read, write, and draw in researcher's workshop Comprehension strategies are tools kids use over and over again as they do research as part of a classroom unit of study. Our definition of research is broad: notice and pursue new learning, ask and answer questions, summarize information, and put all new learning together through drawing and writing. The classroom is transformed into a researcher's workshop, where kids read, write, talk, draw, and investigate over several days. We first review strategies for learning from nonfiction. When kids are ready to synthesize their learning, we show them how to create a poster-where they collect their Post-its and notes as well as illustrate and write what they have learned. Most of the teaching takes place during conferences so we can respond to kids' individual learning needs and interests while they research and create posters during researcher's workshop. Lesson 22: Share Your Learning: Create projects to demonstrate understanding Teaching others what they have learned provides kids with an authentic purpose for "putting it all together," or synthesizing their learning. Once kids summarize and synthesize their information, they enthusiastically share this new knowledge with peers and teachers alike. Researcher's workshop provides kids with time to draw and write posters, poems, books, and other projects. When kids realize they can choose how to synthesize and share their learning, the sky's the limit! In this lesson, we review how to make a poster and model how to write nonfiction poems and books. We also teach kids ways to respond to each other's work during sharing time. Kids respond orally and in writing, offering comments, asking questions, and building on each other's thinking. In this way, the classroom becomes a community where everyone is both a teacher and a learner.

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://www.comprehensiontoolkit.com/gradeK_2/contents.asp

2013-05-19T19:21:28Z

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en

Two Views of The History of Islamic Slavery in Africa By Susan Stephan Slavery in the Arab World New Amsterdam Books, New York, NY 1989 In his fact-filled work on the history of the Muslim Arab slave trade in Africa, Murray Gordon notes that this trade pre-dated the European Christian African slave trade by a thousand years and continued for more than a century after the Europeans had abolished the practice. Gordon estimates the number of slaves “harvested” from Black Africa over the period of the Muslim Arab slave trade at 11 million – roughly equal to the number taken by European Christians for their colonies in the New World. “Despite the long history of slavery in the Arab World and in other Muslim lands, little has been written about this tragedy,” writes Gordon in his introduction. “Except for the few abolitionists, mainly in England, who railed against Arab slavery and put pressure upon Western governments to end the traffic in slaves, the issue has all but been ignored in the West.” ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ on Arab Slave Trade Gordon decries a “conspiracy of silence. . .[that] has blocked out all light on this sensitive subject.” Among scholars in the Arab world, the author points out, “No moral opprobrium has clung to slavery since it was sanctioned by the Koran and enjoyed an undisputed place in Arab society.” The book starts out with a brief outline of the growth of the Islamic attitude toward slavery. There is no evidence that Muhammad sought to abolish slavery, notes Gordon, although he urged slave-owners to treat their slaves well and grant them freedom as a meritorious deed. “Some Muslim scholars have taken this to mean that his true motive was to bring about a gradual elimination of slavery. Far more persuasive is the argument that by lending the moral authority of Islam to slavery, Muhammad assured its legitimacy. Thus, in lightening the fetter, he riveted it ever more firmly in place.” High Rate of Black African Casualties While Gordon acknowledges that at times the Islamic version of slavery could be more “humane” than the European colonial version, he provides many facts which point out that the Muslim variety of slavery could be extremely cruel as well. One particularly brutal practice was the mutilation of young African boys, sometimes no more than 9 or ten years old, to create eunuchs, who brought a higher price in the slave markets of the Middle East. Slave traders often created “eunuch stations” along the major African slave routes where the necessary surgery was performed in unsanitary conditions. Gordon estimates that only one out of every 10 boys subjected to the mutilation actually survived the surgery. The taking of slaves – in razzias, or raids, on peaceful African villages – also had a high casualty rate. Gordon notes that the typical practice was to conduct a pre-dawn raid on an unsuspecting village and kill off as many of the men and older women as possible. Young women and children were then abducted as the preferred “booty” for the raiders. Young women were targeted because of their value as concubines or sex slaves in markets. “The most common and enduring purpose for acquiring slaves in the Arab world was to exploit them for sexual purposes,” writes Gordon. “These women were nothing less than sexual objects who, with some limitations, were expected to make themselves available to their owners. . .Islamic law, as already noted, catered to the sexual interests of a man by allowing him to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as his purse allowed.” Young women and girls were often “inspected” before purchase in private areas of the slave market by the prospective buyer. Racism Toward Black Africans Some of Gordon’s research disputes the oft-repeated charge that racism did not play a part in Islamic slave society. While it is true that the Muslims of the Middle East took slaves of all colors and ethnicities, they considered white slaves more valuable than black ones and developed racist attitudes toward the darker skinned people. Even the famous Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, expressed racist attitudes toward black Africans: “The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and their proximity to the animal stage,” Khaldun wrote. Another Arab writer, of the 14th Century, asked: “Is there anything more vile than black slaves, of less good and more evil than they?” Gordon covers the Arab/African slave trades up until the mid-20th Century, noting that Saudi Arabia only abolished the practice in the early 1960s. Unlike the European nations and the USA, the Arab nations did not abolish African slavery voluntarily out of moral conscience, but due to considerable economic and military pressure applied by the great colonial powers of time, France and Britain. Slavery is still practiced in two Islamic nations: The Sudan and Mauritania. Further reading about the Arab/Muslim slave trades can be found in the following book: continue next post

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Use the following procedure to connect the booster battery to tractor: For location of positive and negative terminals see Terminals for jump starting document. - Do not start engine by shorting across starter terminals. Machine will start in gear if normal circuitry is bypassed. Never start engine while standing on the ground. Start engine only from operator's seat, with transmission in park. - Gas given off by batteries is explosive. Keep sparks and flames away from batteries. Make last connection and first disconnection at a point away from booster batteries. Attach red cable to the remote positive terminal (A) located by the starter and positive terminal of booster battery. Attach black battery cable to negative terminal of booster battery. Attach other end to the ground (B) on tractor frame. Remove black ground cable first when disconnecting. Important: Set battery charger at nominal 12 volt and no more than 16 volt maximum. Attach positive charger lead to positive remote terminal with charger in OFF position. Attach negative charger lead to negative ground at engine block, away from batteries. Switch charger to ON and charge battery according to charger manufacturers instructions. Switch charger to OFF. Remove negative charger lead first, then opposite lead. Important precautions to remember: - Be sure polarity is correct before making any connections. Reversed polarity will damage electrical system and possibly cause battery to explode. For more information about protecting electronic components see Protecting Electronic Components When Jump Starting a Tractor Tip. - If two or more booster batteries are used, then connect all batteries in parallel ensuring booster batteries are producing a 12 volt change.

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Foreword - Maryland's Remarkable History Throughout time, favorable climate and fertile soils supported rich and diverse forests across what we now call Maryland. These forests have been influenced by people for as many as 8,000 years. Beginning in the late 1600's, European settlers began changing the landscape dramatically. In the late 1800's and early 1900's, several events occurred that influenced the forests we see today. During this time vast acreages of pastures and croplands were abandoned for many reasons. Improved transportation provided access to more fertile land in the Midwest. Advanced agricultural techniques increased crop yields so that fewer acres were needed to produce the same amount of crops. Logging for fuelwood, rail ties, and construction lumber depleted forests of healthy and high quality trees. Finally, hot fires raged out of control killing most trees and other plants left after logging. New forests began to grow on these lands. The abandoned agricultural lands were first covered by meadows, then shrubs and small trees, and then today's forest became established. New forests became established on cut-over or burned lands within a relatively short period of time. Now, most of these forests are between 70 and 110 years old, or approximately the same age. These events took place across the entire northeastern United States. The forests we see are a reflection of past cutting practices, as well as the resiliency of nature. We will continue to influence the forest. Our charge is to do so responsibly.

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Fa la la la la la la... Make 8 paper ornaments to create a gorgeous garland! It 's easy. Just add the paper strips to the stem and snap together! Includes: - 144 paper strips - Plastic stems and knobs - Easy instructions DEFINITION: If you are anything like us, you have no idea what a garland is. So, here is the definition: a circular or spiral arrangement of intertwined material (as flowers or leaves) - or in this case, paper and wribbon. Why Our Experts Love It We are always on the lookout for something different. And we found it. Developmentally, these are great. Super for fine motor development. And decorating-wise, we love them. Good for a unique way to decorate gifts, a room or the holiday tree!

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Unit E: Describing Matter The books listed below may be available through publishers, distributors such as bookstores or online retailers, or library systems. Leveled Independent Science Books - Sink or Float? - Summary: Readers find out whether different items will sink or float. - Louis Braille - Summary: Readers learn how Louis Braille invented the Braille system. - Summary: Readers explore gases that go into a child's balloon. - You Can't Taste a Pickle With Your Ear: A Book About Your 5 Senses - Readers learn how they can use their fives senses to explore the world around them. - Magnets: Pulling Together, Pushing Apart - Readers discover how magnets attract and repel objects. - You Can Use a Magnifying Glass - Readers explore how they can observe objects using magnifying glasses. - Sinking and Floating - Readers learn the principles behind why objects sink or float. - What's the Matter in Mr. Whiskers' Room? - Readers follow Mr. Whiskers' students as they uncover key ideas about matter. - Matter: See It, Touch It, Taste It, Smell It - Readers discover how solids, liquids, and gases change form. - Temperature: Heating Up and Cooling Down - Readers learn basic facts about temperature. - Solids, Liquids, and Gases - Readers explore the different forms of matter through everyday examples.

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- Provide photos and ask students to - create a shopping list. - make a checklist of things to take on a trip, to the beach, to the park. - Provide photos and sentences and ask students to decide - which sentence would be good in this thank you note? Download and explore My Backyard. This starter provided pages of animals that can be used in student writing projects. Create your own PowerPoint Sidekick. - Naturescapes Starters - DK Clipart - excellent for school topics - Earth Science Photos - Fish and Wildlife Photos - Pics4Learning - photographs - Discovery School - clipart - FirstGov Graphics - links to government sources - Microsoft Clipart - National Archives Exhibits - Free Cartoon clipart - very cute, but limited - Awesome Clipart for Educators - lots of ads - Classroom Clipart - lots of ads - Teacher Tap: Visual Resources - Public Domain and Copyright-Free Sites - FindSounds - search - Animal Sounds library from SeaWorld - eNature - search by animal or zipcode - Global Sound - songs from around the world

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Electrical fires is a worry that people often overlook. Electronic appliances and electrical equipment may have made our lives easier, but complacency in using them is what increases the risk of electrical fires. A huge component of electrical safety is knowing how to deal with fires that begin with an electrical source. To avoid this, you should make it a commitment to know how to prevent electrical fires. If you are not aware, a recent UK research study has stated that there would be 1 death and 80 electrical fires a week. These statistics should be enough to get any person to learn the basic steps on how to prevent electrical fires, as your life and those of your loved ones might be at stake. How to prevent Electrical Fires : What Causes Electrical Fires? In finding out how to prevent electrical fires, you must first look into what causes electrical fires. This would give anyone a clear understanding of how electrical fires begin, and what people can do to prevent them from happening. Electrical fires are often caused by electrical sparks coming from faulty electrical equipment or systems. When these electrical sparks end up reaching nearby combustible material, they would end up igniting a small fire that can lead to a bigger one. How to prevent Electrical Fires : Steps to Consider Everyone should be aware that the first step in knowing how to prevent electrical fires is to know the amount of electronics you use in your home. Looking into electronic appliances and electrical equipment around your home will be a good first step to find out how to prevent electrical fires. Most people own a number of electronic appliances that they have not taken time to check or have checked by professionals. Just because they still function well does not mean that they might not have any underlying problems. Another way of how to prevent electrical fires is to check your power plug-in sources. Extension cords have become popular as a way of efficiently using electricity even if socket availability is at minimum. If you use extension cords, make sure that you do not overload it with a ton of appliances. This could lead to more consumption of electricity and result to overheating. Overheating is the main culprit of electrical fires and the knowledge of how to prevent electrical fires should lead you into taking precautions like making sure you do not leave electronic appliances unattended or functioning for long periods of time. This measure should be practiced, especially during winter when the use of heaters is prevalent. Gas-powered heaters would be a perfect alternative, but electrical ones are more convenient. Make sure you don’t leave them working without monitoring their progress though. These heaters pose as one of the major electrical fire hazards, so it would greatly help to look after them more often. Electrical cords too are one of the major causes of electrical fire hazards. You can’t use electronic appliances without them most of the time though, so knowing how to prevent electrical fires would greatly help in reducing risks of electrical fires causes by electrical cords. Unplugging them from sockets should always be done carefully. Never pull them off using the cords, as it could loosen them from the plugs and might cause sparks, which would lead to an electrical fire. You should also avoid running wires and cords under carpets, as this would cause them to wear from rubbing off on the carpet and the floor. This would also cause overheating. Effective measures of how to prevent electrical fires also entail you to check your electrical cords frequently. Those that are worn, cracked, and discolored should immediately be replaced. With the use of light bulbs, always remember to match the capacity of the device to the bulb wattage. The wrong light bulb watt for your lamp or overhead lighting would cause overheating, making your home prone to electrical fires. Always get a technician to check your fuse box and circuit breakers, especially if your lights tend to flicker a lot or when your circuit breaker trips out all the time. Warm sockets and switches should also alert anyone into consulting technicians. Lastly, knowing how to prevent electrical fires should always involve careful placement of devices that tend to give off large quantities of heat, and even flame, away from combustible materials. Even the condition of your smoke detectors should be looked into. These are safety precautions that will lead to better avoidance of electrical fires, thereby saving anyone the inconvenience of experiencing such tragedy.

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Demand response is used by utilities and grid operators in a variety of ways to improve reliability, increase economic efficiency in regional energy markets, and to integrate renewable generation capacity into their systems. The here are three major categories of demand response products: Capacity Markets, Price-Responsive Markets, and Ancillary Services Markets. Prices are important, both to energy users and energy producers. The concept behind deploying demand response to compete against generating plants to deliver energy, or kilowatt hours, in electricity markets is to provide the opportunity for consumers to voluntarily reduce their energy consumption when prices rise in the regional wholesale electricity market. These actions allow demand response customers to limit their overall energy spending when it is economically attractive to do so. Utilities benefit from slowed growth in peak demand that, in turn, limits the need for the construction of new generation resources and upgrades to transmission lines. Effective price responsive markets curb the overall volatility of energy prices and provide rapid response to emergency shortage conditions to preserve short term system reliability. Demand response is the key tool used to unlock these benefits for energy users and energy producers alike.

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A simple but less efficient method of controlling a DC voltage is to use a voltage divider and transistor emitter follower configuration. The figure below illustrates using a 1K pot to set the base voltage of a medium power NPN transistor. The collector of the NPN feeds the base of a larger PNP power transistor which supplies most of the current to the load. The output voltage will be about 0.7 volts below the voltage of the wiper of the 1K pot so the output can be adjusted from 0 to the full supply voltage minus 0.7 volts. Using two transistors provides a current gain of around 1000 or more so that only a couple milliamps of current is drawn from the voltage divider to supply a couple amps of current at the output. The power consumed by the lamp will be only (3 volts * 1 amp) = 3 watts which gives us an efficiency factor of only 25% when the lamp is dimmed. The advantage of the circuit is simplicity, and also that it doesn’t generate any RF interference as a switching regulator does. The circuit can be used as a voltage regulator if the input voltage remains constant, but it will not compensate for changes at the input as the LM317 does. Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feedand get articles like this delivered automatically to your E-mail.

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Deep, Open Ocean Is Vastly Under-Explored, Study Finds ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2010) — New research from the University of Sheffield has discovered that the deep open ocean, by far the largest habitat for life on Earth, is currently the most under-explored area of the sea, and the one we know least about. The research, published in the journal PLoS ONE, has mapped the distribution of marine species records and found that most of our knowledge of marine biodiversity comes from the shallow waters or the ocean floor, rather than the deep pelagic ocean- the water column deeper than the sunlit surface waters but above the sea bed. This area is home to uncounted animals which never experience a hard surface, including megamouth sharks, giant squid, and a myriad of smaller species of gelatinous animals and other planktonic organisms. The research was led by Dr Tom Webb, a Royal Society Research Fellow and marine ecologist from the University's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, in conjunction with the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) secretariat at Rutgers University, and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in the USA. The team used data from OBIS, which collates all available information on geographical distributions of marine life, to plot the position in the water of seven million records of marine species. They combined this data with a separate dataset of the bottom surface of the ocean, and then attributed each separate record to a position in the ocean, to enable them to provide a global analysis of the depth distribution of recorded marine biodiversity. The almost limitless deep waters of the sea have been largely under explored due to a long-held belief, first expressed by Charles Wyville Thomson, leader of the challenger Expedition in the 1870s, which effectively launched the discipline of deep sea biology. He believed that life in the deep water was confined primarily to a belt at the surface and one near the sea bed, and believed the area in the middle to be almost completely without larger animals. More recent sampling, employing new techniques, has revealed that this is not the case, and the deep pelagic is actually teeming with life. Article continues: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100802173708.htm

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Although the civil rights movement sought to dismantle all forms of racial injustice, one of its most pointed goals was the elimination of segregation, the attempt by many white southerners to separate the races in virtually every sphere of life. Segregation gained a legal foothold in the historic case Plessy v. Ferguson, which revolved around Homer Plessy, a black shoemaker in Louisiana, who was arrested in 1892 after he boarded a train and took a seat in the whites-only section. In the case that followed, the court ruled that Louisiana had a right to prevent racial mixing.... (The entire page is 486 words.) Want to read the whole thing? Subscribe now to read the rest of this article. Plus, get access to: - 30,000+ literature study guides - Critical essays on more than 30,000 works of literature from Salem on Literature (exclusive to eNotes) - An unparalleled literary criticism section. 40,000 full-length or excerpted essays. - Content from leading academic publishers, all easily citable with our "Cite this page" button. - 100% satisfaction guarantee READ MORE

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(process): A thermodynamic change of state of a system in which there is no transfer of heat or mass (i.e. compression results in warming, expansion in cooling). Chart: A thermodynamic diagram with temperature as abscissa and pressure as ordinate. Transport of an atmospheric property solely by the mass motion of the Mass: A homogenous mass of air, the properties of which can be identified as having been established while the air was situated over a particular region of the earth's surface. Wind: An upslope wind usually applied only when the wind is blowing up hill or mountain as the result of local surface heating, and apart from the effects of the larger scale circulation. Instrument designed to measure the speed of the wind. A closed circulation of the atmosphere, of relative high pressure. (clockwise flow in the northern hemisphere). Pressure: The pressure exerted by the air as a result of gravity. It is measured by the barometer, and expressed in millibars or inches A change of wind direction in a counter-clockwise direction (the opposite of veering); i.e. from west to south. Obstruction, on a large scale, of the normal west to east movement of highs and lows. Absence of apparent motion of the air. The statistical collective of weather conditions over a specified period of time (i.e. usually several decades). The visible aggregate of minute water droplets and/or ice particles in the atmosphere above the earths's surface. Front: The leading edge of a relatively cold air mass. An area of low pressure within which more than one center is found. The physical process by which a vapor becomes a liquid. The transfer of energy within and through a conductor by means of molecular In meteorology, a line of constant height on a constant pressure surface In meteorology, atmospheric motions that are predominantly vertical, i.e. usually means upward as opposed to subsidence (downward). Net horizontal inflow of air into a layer. If at the surface, vertical motion results. Associated with low pressure systems. Force: The deflecting influence of the earth's rotation on winds. Deflects winds to the right (with wind at your back) in the northern Fire Weather Pattern: Patterns that can quickly increase fire danger and trigger rapid fire spread. A principal cloud type in the form of individual detached elements, sharp non-fibrous outlines, and vertical development. The ultimate growth of a cumulus cloud into a mushroom shape, with considerable vertical growth, usually fibrous ice crystal tops, and probably accompanied by lightning, thunder, hail and strong winds. off Low: A cold low which has become displaced to south, out of the basic westerly flow. Having a sense of counter-clockwise rotation about the local vertical. A closed isobaric circulation in the atmosphere, with counter-clockwise rotation in the northern hemisphere. A decrease in the central pressure of a cyclonic, or low pressure system. Point: The temperature to which a parcel of air must be cooled to reach saturation. front: A front across which the wind shift and temperature change are weakly defined. Downward (subsidence) motion results. Associated with high pressure Daily, especially pertaining to daily cycles of temperature, relative humidity and wind. A period of moisture deficiency, extensive in space and time. Devil: A small but vigorous whirlwind, usually of short duration. Forecast: A forecast of general weather conditions for days 3 A weather term implying no precipitation and no extreme conditions of clouds, visibility or wind. Danger: A subjective expression of an objective assessment of environmental (fuels and weather) factors which influence whether fires will start and how they may spread. Weather Watch: Issued when the forecaster feels reasonably confident that red flag conditions will develop in the next 12 to 48 hours. Same as cloud except base of cloud is touching earth's surface. A transition zone between two air masses of different density. Air: That portion of the atmosphere that is not modified by local Air Wind: The wind at the bottom layer of the atmosphere called free air, or just above the portion that is modified by local influences and friction approximately 1,000 feet above the earth's surface. Layer: The layer of air from the earth's surface to the geostrophic wind level or level of free wind. Wind: A horizontal wind resultant of the balance of the Coriolis acceleration and the horizontal pressure force. Wind: A horizontal wind velocity tangent to the contour line or isobaric surface resulting in a balance of the coriolis, pressure and centrifugal force. Wind: A wind directed down a slope caused by greater air density near the slope than at the same height at a distance from the slope. (Also called drainage or downslope wind). A sudden brief increase in wind speed. Index: A lower atmospheric stability and dryness index that can be one predictor of large fire growth due to plume dominated fires. A brief statement at the beginning of a forecast that highlights dangerous or changing weather conditions. Internal energy. A form of energy transferred between systems by virtue of a difference in temperature. Lightning: The luminosity observed from ordinary lightning too far away for its thunder to be heard. Low: An area of low pressure due to high temperatures (thermal In reference to precipitation, more than a half inch in forecast period. Pressure: An anticyclone. An area of atmospheric pressure with closed isobars and relative high pressure at its center. Air flows clockwise around a high. Clouds: Cirrus type clouds composed of ice crystals, usually above 25,000 feet. In reference to an airmass having similar horizontal properties or elements. A measure of the water vapor content of the air. An instrument that records temperature and relative humidity as a function A property of the steady state of a system such that certain disturbances introduced into the steady state will increase in magnitude. Line: A band of convective activity in the atmosphere, i.e. squall line, a line of active thunderstorms. An increase in temperature with height, i.e. a departure from the usual decrease of temperature with increase of altitude. A line passing through points having equal atmospheric pressure. A line passing through points having equal or constant values of a given gravity, with respect to either time or space. Affecting less than 20% percent of the area. Stream: Relatively strong winds concentrated within a narrow stream in the atmosphere. wind: A wind blowing down an incline. If warm, it is called a foehn or chinook. If cold, its called a gravity or mountain wind. Station Forecast: A forecast that takes into account an observing station location and the microscale effects on weather parameters in presenting exact values of weather parameters rather than ranges. The unit of speed in the nautical system; a nautical mile per hour. It is equal to 1.15 statute miles per hour. Rate: The rate of change of temperature with height. The moist lapse rate is 3.5 degrees per 1000 feet and the dry lapse rate is 5.5 degrees per 1000 feet. Trough: A low pressure trough formed on the lee side of a mountain range across which the wind is blowing at nearly right angles. Precipitation, ranging from .11 to .20 inches in a forecast period. All the various visible electrical discharges produced by thunderstorms. It can be cloud to cloud, cloud to ground, or cloud to air. Activity Level (LAL): An objective rating system used in the NFDRS that indicates the amount of cloud to ground lightning observed or forecast in a given area. Winds: Winds, which over a small area, differ from those appropriate to the general pressure distribution. Range: An extended forecast for a period greater than 5 days. Wave: A wave in the major belt of westerlies which is characterized by large length and significant amplitude. An area of low atmospheric pressure having closed isobars. Used interchangeably Aloft: An upper level cyclone (low pressure system). Trough: A long wave trough in the large scale pattern of the Layer: A shallow layer of air with relatively high humidity and cooler temperatures that moves from the ocean over land. It may be associated with diurnal land/sea breeze regimes or other features that increase on-shore pressure gradients. A scale that ranges in size from a few kilometers to about 100 kilometers. The study of the phenomena of the atmosphere. A scale that covers phenomena smaller than those in the mesoscale range. Clouds: Clouds of the altocumulus or altostratus family, anywhere from 7,000 to 25,000 feet in elevation. Trough: A pressure trough in the upper air of smaller scale than a long wave trough. It usually moves rapidly, i.e. short wave. Height: Maximum depth to which mixing will occur. Output Statistics: A generation of point specific output from a numerical model. Precipitation, ranging from .21 to .50 inches in a forecast period. and Valley Winds: Diurnal winds along the axis of a valley, blowing uphill and valley during the day and downhill and down valley during Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS): A national system used by all land management agencies to assess fuels, weather and fire potential on a daily basis during fire season. Stability: The state of a parcel of air, which if displaced vertically, will experience no buoyant acceleration. The average value of a meteorological element over a period of years, usually 30 in the United States. Occurrence of a meteorological element at infrequent intervals and for Of, pertaining to, or caused by mountains. A cloud layer that covers most, or all of the sky. Condition existing in which an air mass is in motion aloft above another air mass of greater density at the surface. The tendency for the occurrence of a specific event to be more probable, at a given time, if that same event has occurred immediately preceding the time period. Front: The semi-permanent, semi-continuous front separating air masses of polar and tropical origin. Any or all the forms of water particles, liquid or solid, that fall from the atmosphere and reach the ground. Fire/Burn: A natural or human ignited fire burning under a strict set of predetermined conditions to fulfill specified land management Center: The center of a high (anticyclone) or low (cyclone) pressure Wind Direction: The wind direction most frequently observed during a given period. The chance that a prescribed event will occur. Forecast: A forecast of the probability of occurrence of one or more of a mutually exclusive set of weather contingencies, as distinguished from a series of categorical statements. (Prog) Chart: A chart depicting some meteorological parameter at a specified future time. (chart): A thermodynamic chart (process), same as adiabatic, but with saturation adiabats added. An instrument used for measuring the water vapor content of the air. Front: A front which is stationary, or nearly so, The process by which electromagnetic radiation is propagated through Cooling: The cooling of the earth's surface suffers a net loss of heat due to terrestrial cooling. (RAOB): Balloon-borne instument for the measurement and transmission of temperature, humidity and pressure. When tracked by radar, also provides wind direction and velocity (Rawin). Flag Criteria: A locally determined set of criteria that expresses environmental and meteorological conditions that would provide for fire starts and rapid, dangerous fire spread. Flag Warning: A warning issued by the forecasters when red flag criteria are met or expected to be met within 12 to 24 hours. The warning highlights weather of particular importance to fire behavior and potentially extreme burning conditions or many new fires. Red flag warnings should always be coordinated with the customer. Humidity: (Humidity) - The ratio of the actual amount of water vapor in the air to the possible amount at that temperature. Usually used to denote the movement of a weather system in a direction opposite to that of the normal flow in which the system is embedded. An elongated area of relatively high atmospheric pressure. The condition in which the air contains all the water vapor possible at that temperature, i.e. 100% relative humidity. Level Pressure: The atmospheric pressure at mean sea level. Used in reference to thunderstorm intensity. Indicates strong winds and large hail. Wave: (Minor Wave) - A progressive wave in the pattern of upper air motion with dimensions of cyclonic scale, as distinguished from a long wave. Precipitation from a convective cloud, characterized by the suddenness with which they start, stop, and change intensity. Management Parameters: The weather parameters used to forecast smoke dispersal (mixing height and transport winds). Weather Forecast: A specialized forecast issued by the National Weather Service for a localized area and time, at the request of the A strong wind characterized by a sudden onset, of longer duration than gusts, and a rather sudden decrease in speed. Factor: This is determined by temperature differences between two atmospheric layers. A property of the steady state of a system such that a disturbance introduced into the steady state will not increase in magnitude. In meteorology, usually refers to cyclonic storms with considerable cloud and precipitation areas. Descriptive of clouds of extensive horizontal development. A descending motion of air in the atmosphere, of particular importance due to the heating and drying of the air as it contracts. Chart: An analyzed map showing the distribution of sea level pressure (isobars) and location of fronts and air masses. Pressure: The atmospheric pressure at a given location on the A statement giving a brief general review or summary. The degree of hotness or coldness as measured on some definite temperature scale by means of various types of thermometers. Belts: An area along the middle of a mountain slope that typically experiences the least diurnal variation in temperature and humidity, thus has the highest daily average temperature and the lowest relative Low: (Heat Low) - An area of low atmospheric pressure due to high temperatures and intensive heating at earth's surface, usually stationary and have weak cyclonic circulation. Cumulonimbus or ice top cumulus. A local storm produced by cumulonimbus clouds accompanied by lightning and thunder...often containing heavy rain...and sometimes strong winds A detailed description of surface features including rivers, lakes, A violently rotating column of air, pendant from a cumulonimbus cloud observed as a funnel cloud. Cumulus: The transitory stage of a cumulus into a cumulonimbus Winds: Winds in the lower mixed layer, used for smoke dispersal Cyclone: The general term for a cyclone that originates over the tropical oceans. The remnants of these storms occasionally recurve and move into the mid-latitude westerlies, bringing considerable moisture The boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere, usually characterized by an abrupt change to a small lapse rate. An elongated area of relatively low atmospheric pressure, the axis of which is called a trough line. A state of fluid flow in which the instantaneous velocities exhibit irregular and apparently random fluctuations. Air: Generally applied to levels above 850 mb (5,000 feet). Wind: A wind directed up a slope during the hot part of the day. Wind: A wind which ascends a mountain valley during the day. Index: This is the product of the mixing height and transport wind speed, and is an indicator of dispersion potential. Wind: A change in wind direction in a clockwise manner, i.e. south to southwest to west, the opposite of backing. Water or ice particles falling out of a cloud but evaporating before reaching the ground. The greatest distance it is possible to see permanent objects with the Front: A front that moves in such a way that warmer air replaces A disturbance propagated by virtue of periodic motions in the atmosphere. The state of the atmosphere, usually short term, with respect to its effects upon life, property and human activities. Rain: Precipitation of .10 inches or more over most of the area The dominant west to east motion of the atmosphere across the mid latitudes. Bulb Temperature: The temperature an air parcel would have if cooled to saturation. It lies between the dry bulb temperature and the dew point temperature. A small scale rotating column of air (dust devil). Air in horizontal motion relative to the surface of the earth. Direction: The direction from which the wind is blowing. Flow: The flow of air along a latitude circle. Weather Forecast: A portion of the general fire weather forecast issued on a regular basis during the normal fire season specifically to fit the requirements of fire management needs. These zones or areas are a combination of administrative and climatological areas, usually nearly the size of an individual forest or district.

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Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel: 781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive Gel electrophoresis is the single most important molecular biology technique and it is central to life sciences research, but it is often too expensive for the secondary science classroom or homeschoolers. A simple safe low-cost procedure is described here that uses household materials to construct and run DNA gel electrophoresis. Plastic containers are fitted with aluminum foil electrodes and 9-V batteries to run food-grade agar-agar gels using aquarium pH buffers and then stained with gentian violet. This activity was tested in a high school biology classroom with significantly positive responses on postactivity reflective surveys. The electrophoresis activity addresses several Life Science Content Standard C criteria, including aspects of cell biology, genetics, and evolution. It also can be used to teach aspects of motion and force in the physical science classroom.

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Mars Express evidence for large aquifers on early Mars Substantial quantities of liquid water must have been stably present in the early history of Mars. The findings of OMEGA, on board ESA's Mars Express, have implications on the climatic history of the planet and the question of its 'habitability' at some point in its history. audio interview These conclusions were drawn thanks to data on Martian surface minerals obtained by OMEGA (Observatoire pour la Mineralogy, l'Eau, les Glaces et l'Activité), the visible and infrared mapping spectrometer on board ESA's Mars Express. From previous observations, Mars must have undergone water-driven processes, which left their signature in surface structures such as channel systems and signs of extensive aqueous erosion. However, such observations do not necessarily imply the stable presence of liquid water on the surface over extended periods of time during the Martian history. The data collected by OMEGA unambiguously reveal the presence of specific surface minerals which imply the long-term presence of large amounts of liquid water on the planet. These 'hydrated' minerals, so called because they contain water in their crystalline structure, provide a clear 'mineralogical' record of water-related processes on Mars. During 18 months of observations OMEGA has mapped almost the entire surface of the planet, generally at a resolution between one and five kilometres, with some areas at sub-kilometre resolution. The instrument detected the presence of two different classes of hydrated minerals, 'phyllosilicates' and 'hydrated sulphates', over isolated but large areas on the surface. Both minerals are the result of a chemical alteration of rocks. However, their formation processes are very different and point to periods of different environmental conditions in the history of the planet. Phyllosilicates, so-called because of their characteristic structure in thin layers ('phyllo' = thin layer), are the alteration products of igneous minerals (minerals of magmatic origin) sustaining a long-term contact with water. An example of phyllosilicate is clay. Phyllosilicates were detected by OMEGA mainly in the Arabia Terra, Terra Meridiani, Syrtis Major, Nili Fossae and Mawrth Vallis regions, in the form of dark deposits or eroded outcrops. Hydrated sulphates, the second major class of hydrated minerals detected by OMEGA, are also minerals of aqueous origin. Unlike phyllosilicates, which form by an alteration of igneous rocks, hydrated sulphates are formed as deposits from salted water; most sulphates need an acid water environment to form. They were spotted in layered deposits in Valles Marineris, extended exposed deposits in Terra Meridiani, and within dark dunes in the northern polar cap. When did the chemical alteration of the surface that led to the formation of hydrated minerals occur? At what point of Mars's history was water standing in large quantities on the surface? OMEGA's scientists combined their data with those from other instruments and suggest a likely scenario of what may have happened. "The clay-rich, phyllosilicate deposits we have detected were formed by alteration of surface materials in the very earliest times of Mars," says Jean-Pierre Bibring, OMEGA Principal Investigator. "The altered material must have been buried by subsequent lava flows we observe around the spotted areas. Then, the material would have been exposed by erosion in specific locations or excavated from an altered crust by meteoritic impacts," Bibring adds. Analysis of the surrounding geological context, combined with the existing crater counting techniques to calculate the relative age of surface features on Mars, places the formation of phyllosilicates in the early Noachian era, during the intense cratering period. The Noachian era, lasting from the planet's birth to about 3.8 thousand million years ago, is the first and most ancient of the three geological eras on Mars. "An early active hydrological system must have been present on Mars to account for the large amount of clays, or phyllosilicates in general, that OMEGA has observed," says Bibring. The long-term contact with liquid water that led to the phyllosilicate formation could have existed and be stable at the surface of Mars, if the climate was warm enough. Alternatively, the whole formation process could have occurred through the action of water in a warm, thin crust. OMEGA data also show that the sulphate deposits are distinct from, and have been formed after, the phyllosilicate ones. To form, sulphates do not need a particularly long-term presence of liquid water, but water must be there and it must be acidic. The detection and mapping of these two different kinds of hydrated minerals point to two major climatic episodes in the history of Mars: an early – Noachian – moist environment in which phyllosilicates formed, followed by a more acid environment in which the sulphates formed. These two episodes were separated by a Mars global climatic change. "If we look at today's evidence, the era in which Mars could have been habitable and sustained life would be the early Noachian, traced by the phyllosilicates, rather than the sulphates. The clay minerals we have mapped could still retain traces of a possible biochemical development on Mars," Bibring concludes. Note to editors: These results appear on line in Nature, on 30 November 2005, in an article called: 'Phyllosilicate on Mars and implications for early Martian climate', by: F. Poulet, J-P. Bibring, Y. Langevin, B. Gondet and C. Gomez (Institut d'Astrophyisique Spatiale, Univ. of Paris Sud and CNRS, Orsay, France); J.F. Mustard and A. Gendrin (Geological Sciences, Brown Univ., Rhode Island, USA); N. Mangold (Interactions & Dynamique des Environment de Surface, Orsay, France); R.E. Arvidson (Earth & Planetary Sciences, Washington Univ., St. Louis, USA); and the OMEGA team. For more information: Jean-Pierre Bibring, OMEGA Principal Investigator Institut d'Astrophyisique Spatiale, University Paris Sud and CNRS, Orsay, France E-mail: jean-pierre.bibring @ ias.u-psud.fr Agustin Chicarro, ESA Mars Express Project Scientist E-mail: agustin.chicarro @ esa.int Fred Jansen, ESA Mars Express Mission Manager E-mail: fjansen @ rssd.esa.int

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