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TCBA was founded some 35+ years ago. The founders recognized, at that time, that Wayne, Holmes and Ashland counties were in need of an association that would support the beekeepers and the general public of the region; thus the "Tri" in the association's name. However, TCBA does not discriminate with our membership, including which county, state or even country they live in. As long as you are interested in honey bees or a related topic, you can apply for membership in TCBA. We currently have over 400 members thru-out Ohio and neighboring states. We have monthly meetings, which are open to the public. We show-off bees and beekeeping at local community events and host what is believed to be the largest one-day beekeeping workshop in the United States.
By-Laws For Tri-County Beekeepers Association Inc. Adopted June 24, 2015 |
Unique and typical of a ‘flavourful’ region, Provençal honey has a reputation that stretches far beyond regional borders. The wide variety of aromatic plants (over 200 species), particularly adapted to the hard and arid soils of Provence, explains the unique aromatic characteristic of Provençal honey.
The Var is known for the quality of its pollen (especially in the Maures Massif and the Estérel Massif), considered amongst the finest due to the wide variety of southern flowers in this area.
To each his own (honey): clear or dark, delicately fragrant or strong smelling, everyone can find a Provençal honey that they like.
Every year, the Honey Festival takes place during the first weekend in October, organised by the Provençal Honey appellation producers, in the Medieval village of Arcs-sur-Argens.
Professional beekeepers come to present their produce, alongside other farmers carefully selected to represent other local produce (wine, olive oil, cheese, fruit and vegetables). And of course, there are various free activities to learn more about Provençal beekeeping.
Share the link below to your friends so they can check your favorites. |
Phil Chandler - 'The Barefoot Beekeeper' & Biobees UK
People keep asking me what I think of the new 'Flow Hive', so FWIW here are my thoughts.
First, it is not a new hive, but simply an add-on to a conventional hive - really just a set of special frames, and only for honey, not brood. This removes many objections on the grounds of 'propolis jamming it up' and 'eggs laid in plastic foundation' - they are simply not going to happen if it is used correctly.
Do I approve of it? Only insofar as I approve of any conventional beekeeping, which I don't very much. I don't like plastic in hives - particularly plastic foundation - and I don't like unnecessary disturbances in the lives of bees, BUT- this device actually reduces such disturbance, as well as removing the need for a centrifugal extractor and other extraction/bottling equipment, so from that point of view, it is 'greener', provided it has a long life, which it should have, given that the moving parts only move infrequently and with little load stress.
As a piece of thoughtful engineering I think it is remarkable. I was invited to look at it and contribute my thoughts about 6 months before the launch, and while I expressed some reservations - particularly about crystallization of honey in the combs - I could see that, for some people, this was what they had been waiting for to take up beekeeping.
Given that most people live in urban locations, the storage problems generated by conventional equipment are considerable, especially when much of it is only used occasionally. Add to this the fact that bees can become very defensive when whole supers of honey are removed from their hives, which can put people off keeping them in populated areas or near their own house, then this device could be a boon to the backyard beekeeper who wants to disturb her bees as little as possible.
There have been accusations of 'exploitation' and even 'cruelty' associated with this product, but I suggest it is rather less exploitative or cruel than the violent methods currently used by commercial beekeepers to take honey - such things as bee-blowers result in the deaths of millions of bees during the honey-taking operation. This device enables honey to be taken in modest quantities without opening the hive.
Lastly, there is the question of 'attitude': promoters of the Flow Hive have been accused of 'callousness' and having a 'mindset of casual exploitation'. I must say that this is not borne out by my correspondence with the inventors, who appear to have bee welfare very much at heart.
Used correctly and with due care, this device may well increase people's awareness and appreciation of the lives of bees, and reduce the casual disruption promoted by so many beekeeping organizations. By enabling the removal of some of the honey at the right times, bees are able to top up the cells without having to suffer the violent removal of honey supers and the collateral damage this entails.
'Attitude' is not something that is derived from or dependent upon any particular device. A tool is a tool: an axe can be used for chopping wood or for killing someone. If people are of a mind to exploit nature, then they will find ways to do so. If they learn to appreciate the natural world, then they will treat it with respect, regardless of the tools they happen to be using.
I still prefer to do my beekeeping in top bar hives, because of their simplicity of construction and use and bee-friendly design, but given that many people prefer to use movable-frame hives, I see this device as a possible alternative to the 'box-removal and centrifugal extraction' method that may appeal to some beekeepers.
Subject: Following up a comment attributed to you on www.honeyflow.com
From: Maree B <email hidden>
Date: Tue, February 17, 2015 6:04 pm
To: Michael Bush <email hidden>
I am an amateur beekeeper in Australia and own a copy of your complete book - it's great (and I said so on Amazon !!). I know you are very busy but the reason I'm emailing you is to find out whether a comment attributed to you on the website http://www.honeyflow.com/ is real. There has been a lot of debate amongst beekeepers in my region as to whether this website is a scam. I'd be very grateful if you could confirm that you trialled this "flow' technology and the comment on the website is really from you.
Thanks very much,
From: Michael Bush
Sent: Wednesday, 18 February 2015 1:57 PM
To: Maree B.
The product is real. I was sent one box worth of the frames to test and have seen it in operation and in person. I thought it was impossible when I first saw a video. I actually wondered if it was a spoof or if it was real. But after seeing how it works and watching them do one frame in the open live on skype while I could see the entire frame and talk to them and after they sent me a box worth of them to test, I can assure you it works. My test of it so far is too small and over too short of a time to be sure what I think of it in practice, but I can't imagine that I'm going to find too many disadvantages. I'm not sure how I will manage my hives using them as it changes several things I have always done. First, I run all eight frame mediums and these are deeps, so I'll have to buy some deeps (which I already did). Second, it makes a hive much more static in size when you can empty the combs without even opening the hive really. No need to stack the supers up so high when you can just drain them periodically without having to clean up the extractor and all the equipment and the kitchen every time. Just draining it into a bucket eliminates all of that mess. The queen won't lay in them because they are too deep so you don't need an excluder (which I don't use, but some people do). You don't have to run the bees out to harvest so you eliminate all of that part of harvesting as well.
In recent years I've had all the same size boxes and I try to leave them honey for winter. This may change my view of some of how I determine what to leave them since these are deeper combs and can't be used for brood I don't think I want them to cluster in them over winter. So I'll have to work out the details of how I will use them as far as when to put them on, take them off, drain them, how many mediums to have on below them etc. In other words, I'm pretty sure I'll be using them, it will just be too useful not to, but exactly how that impacts my total system I'm not really sure, until I've tried to work those details out.
When I first saw it I thought of this story from "Mastering the Art of Beekeeping" by Ormond and Harry Aebi:
" 'I want to buy one of your beehives' he said. 'I want you to bring it to me tomorrow at eleven in the morning and I want you to set it up on top of a ten foot pole that I'll have set up by that time. And I want you to come over every Thursday afternoon and drain out the honey so that I can have fresh honey every week.'... 'I can't place a beehive up on a pole like that,' I said. 'And even if I could, I couldn't work it to take off the honey.' 'Why not? I shall expect you to install a spigot at the bottom of the hive. All you'll have to do is open it and drain off the quantity of honey I require.' 'Beehives don't work that way,' I told him. 'I can't possibly do as you ask.'..."
Chris Russell - New Inventors
Dear Cedar and Stuart,
My name is Chris Russell and I was the Ag Science based judge on the ABC TV New Inventors from 2005 to 2012 when the show concluded (http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s1057726.htm). I saw many and varied inventions for agriculture and food production on that show but I would have to say your "Flow" Honey Tap would without doubt be right up there as one of the most ingenious and innovative inventions I have seen.
It fits all the criteria for a great invention - simple, well-engineered and delivers fantastic value (hence being innovative) by both easing the labour for the professionals and bringing beekeeping further into the realm of a household enthusiast (perhaps in a "rent-a-chook" style business where the hive is rented and maintained by professionals for households but the collection can be done by the inexperienced householder).
So congratulations on a wonderful advance in bee keeping and honey production. You have ticked so many boxes and I just wish the show was still running so we could showcase it and celebrate your work.... |
The Rogersville Heritage Association has released the schedule for the festival, which as usual kicks off the second Friday in October with the Children’s Parade, Chili Cookoff and classic car Cruise-In.
The theme of the Children’s Parade is “Celebrating the People of Our Heritage.”
Registration for the children’s costume contest and parade will begin at 4:15 p.m. in the parking lot in front of First Baptist Church. Judging will begin at 5 p.m., followed by the parade at 5:30.
The parade is sponsored by US Bank, the Rogersville Hawkins County Chamber of Commerce and Walmart.
The First Community Bank Great Chili Cookoff will be held in conjunction with the Cruise-In. Cooking begins at 3 p.m. in the courtyard of the Hale Springs Inn, with judging at 5:30, and visitors are invited to enjoy live entertainment with a beer garden in the Gazebo beginning at 5 p.m.
Other events on Friday, Oct. 12
The Heritage Days food court on South Depot Street will be open from 5-9 p.m.
Rogersville Main Street and Random Rods Car Club will host the final Cruise-In of the season with a parade of more than 100 vintage automobiles (pre 1980) from 6-9 p.m.
During the Cruise-In, Ivy Road will perform at the Main Stage on the Town Square beginning at 6 p.m.
Events on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 13-14
On Saturday, the festival’s opening ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. on the courthouse lawn. Uniformed representatives of the Sons of the American Revolution accompanied by the Cherokee High School drum line will conduct a flag ceremony.
The national anthem will be sung by the Cherokee High School Chorale and the invocation conducted by Rev. Sheldon Livesay from One Accord Ministries.
The festival opens immediately after the ceremony with dozens of demonstrations highlighting heritage skills including toy making, whittling, blacksmithing, needlework, basket weaving, apple butter stirring, master gardening, chair caning, handmade turkey calls, broom making, long hunting, beekeeping, living history and others.
The Davis Grist Mill and Antique Farm Equipment exhibit will be on display on South Depot Street.
Artisan craft booths will line four blocks of Main and Church streets. The Young’uns Yard, sponsored by Farm Bureau at the corner of Depot and Washington, offers old-fashioned games, inflatables, balloon art and face painting.
The Dance Stage on Washington Street, featuring the award-winning Tennessee Hoedowners, will offer nonstop entertainment throughout the festival.
Saturday’s music on the Main Stage highlights bluegrass, country and pop, while Sunday will showcase gospel music. Visitors should bring a lawn chair and plan on spending the day.
The 12th Tennessee Calvary Battalion, B Company, Civil War re-enactment will return to Crockett Springs Park on Saturday only from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Events for all three days
The Art and Photography Show, sponsored by Holston Electric, offers categories for children, youth and adults.
Seven categories of art will be judged, including paintings, drawings, sculpture, needlework, photographs, enhanced photographs, and other three-dimensional art. The Art Show will be exhibited in the community room of US Bank on Main Street.
The Quilt Show, sponsored by Hawkins County Gas Utility, will be exhibited in the Hawkins County Courthouse on Main Street.
Entry forms for the Art and Photography Show, Quilt Show and Great Chili CookOff are available online at www.rogersvilleheritage.org.
For more information, contact the Rogersville Hawkins County Chamber of Commerce office at (423) 272-2186.
Heritage Days schedule:
Friday, October 12
3 p.m. – 6 p.m. — First Community Bank Great Chili Cookoff, Hale Springs Inn Courtyard
4 p.m. – 7 p.m. — Mary’s Spirit and Fine Wines moonshine tasting, 212 Washington St.
5 p.m. – 6 p.m. — Live music in the Gazebo, Hale Springs Inn
5 p.m. – 8 p.m. — Swift Museum Soul Food Dinner. Reservations required. Call (423) 921-3888
4:15 p.m. — Registration, Children’s Parade, First Baptist Church parking lot, West Main Street
5:00 p.m. — Costume judging
5:30 p.m. — Children’s Parade, Main Street
6 p.m. — Cruise-In on the Square, historic district
6 p.m. – 9 p.m. — Ivy Road, Main Stage beside Hale Springs Inn
Saturday, October 13
9 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. — Civil War re-enactment, Crockett Springs Park
10 a.m. — Opening ceremony, Tennessee Sons of the American Revolution Color Guard, Cherokee High School Drum Corps, national anthem by the CHS Chorale and invocation by Sheldon Livesay
10 a.m. – 6 p.m. — Craft booths, food court, Demonstrators Yard, Young’uns’ Yard, Quilt Show, Antique Farm Equipment Show, Mixed Media Art Show, Dance Stage and Music on the Main Stage
12 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. — Mary’s Spirit and Fine Wines moonshine tasting, 212 Washington St.
12:00 p.m. — Antique Tractor Parade
Sunday, October 14
12:00 p.m. – 6 p.m. — Craft booths, food court, Demonstrators Yard, Young’uns Yard, Quilt Show, Antique Farm Equipment Show, Mixed Media Art Show, Dance Stage, and Music on the Main Stage
12 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. — Mary’s Spirit and Fine Wines moonshine tasting at 212 Washington St.
2 p.m. – Antique Tractor Parade
2 p.m. – Historical Fashion Show, Hale Springs Inn Courtyard, sponsored by Hawkins County 4-H Sewing Club
More news about 2018 Rogersville Heritage Days:
Rogersville Heritage Days: Entertainment lineup includes 16 musical acts and 14 dance groups
Rogersville Heritage Days: Deadline for art show entries is Thursday
Rogersville Heritage Days: Fun for kids begins Friday with costume contest, parade
Rogersville Heritage Days: Everything you need to know about the quilting show
Rogersville Heritage Days kicks off Oct. 12 with 'Great Chili Cookoff' |
Podcasts, Self-Care, and…Bees?: Facebook Releases 2020 Trends Prediction
What topics dominated the online conversation in the last year? From beekeeping to craft coffee, Facebook set out to find the ideas that gained momentum on its platforms over the last 12 months.
The company just dropped its “2020 Topics and Trends Report From Facebook IQ,” and while the previous years’ reports only focused on the U.S., Facebook is taking a more global approach this time by expanding its focus to include 4 key regions of the world—Asia Pacific, Europe, South America, and North America.
Facebook releases this yearly report to highlight the conversations that happened across its platforms and around the world over the course of the last year. Offering an intimate look at the ideas that influence people’s attitudes, expectations, and behaviors, the report highlights valuable information that marketers can use in the future to understand consumer behavior and position their brand to connect with what matters to their audience.
This year, 5 key insights are shaping the conversation:
- Sustainable is this year’s buzzword. Consumers are more conscious than ever about how their actions are impacting our planet.
- We want new ways to experience art and entertainment. Across the world, creators are experimenting with new media.
- As our lives become ever more entangled with the digital world, people are finding opportunities to unplug and participate in hands-on activities like gardening, hiking, and creating art.
- We’re going back to basics. Minimalism in terms of routine, design, and ingredients is in style.
- Small moments can have a big impact. People are interested in ways to make their everyday routine—from taking a coffee break to breaking a sweat—more enjoyable.
The rest of the 34-page report is broken down by users’ geography, presenting insights into 5 trends from each of the 4 areas of the world Facebook studied.
The North American section features sections titled “Beekeeping for Good,” “Plant Parents,” “The Bath is Back,” “Flexitarianism,” and “From Pods to Screens.”
3 Key Pieces of Advice for Businesses in 2020
Create Small Opportunities for Everyday Enjoyment
Our lives are more complicated than ever, and it’s increasingly important to consumers to carve out small moments of enjoyment throughout the day. Businesses can capitalize on this desire by finding ways to elevate mundane routines and focus on “treating yourself.”
When anything you want is only a click away, local businesses are finding ways to compete with convenience by offering unique in-person experiences. For example, Facebook notes that Canadian brands are using plants to create “more inviting places for customers to unwind while they shop.” Something as simple as finding ways to make your space cozier and more welcoming makes a difference in where costumers want to spend their time.
Find ways to position your product through the lens of self-care. How does your product present opportunities for consumers to participate in more “me-time”?
Tone It Down
With more choices than ever in how we consume entertainment, social media demanding more of our attention, and influencers promoting lifestyles fueled by ever more consumption, people are understandably fatigued by messages of “more, more, more.”
They want simplicity, and they want businesses to support a more minimalistic lifestyle. Brands should take care to simplify the way they interaction with consumers to avoid overwhelming them with too much information or too many choices.
Keep that in mind—especially when you’re designing your website or creative. And remember, less is more.
Looking for New Ways to Connect? Try a Podcast
From the time our ancestors traded myths around the fire to the modern age of podcasting, storytelling has always been a part of the human experience.
While writing is still a valuable way to connect and share your story, people tend to connect on an intimate and personal level when they hear the words spoken to them by a real, live person. Also, auditory media, like podcasts, allow us to multi-task and take our entertainment on the go.
Luckily, podcasts are relatively cheap and easy to get off the ground, and they offer an engaging way to spread brand awareness. All you need is a decent microphone and a story.
We’ve highlighted just a few of the most interesting insights from this year’s report, but you can check out the full eBook here. It’s worth noting what topics are gaining traction to fuel your strategic planning for the coming year. |
“Make a savillum thus: Mix half a libra* of flour and two and a half librae of cheese, as is done for libum [another kind of cheesecake]. Add 1/4 libra of honey and 1 egg. Grease an earthenware bowl with oil. When you have mixed the ingredients well, pour into the bowl and cover the bowl with an earthenware testo [lid]. See that you cook it well in the middle, where it is highest. When it is cooked, remove the bowl, spread with honey, sprinkle with poppy, put it back beneath the testo for a moment, and then remove. Serve it thus with a plate and spoon.” ~ From Cato’s De Agri Cultura (“Concerning Agriculture”), 160 BCE
Savillum is a Roman recipe found in De Agri Cultura, the earliest-known work of Roman prose. It was written by the Roman politician Cato the Elder, a man noted for his devotion to simplicity and love of country life. Fitting its author’s lifestyle, De Agri Cultura is a straightforward instructional manual on farming. Those recipes which appear are just as simple and rustic as savillum.
This is one of several Roman dishes that could be called “cheesecake”, although it lacks a crust on the bottom. I frequently choose to make it for ancient food-themed events and parties because it’s an easy Roman dish to love, as it doesn’t deviate too far from a modern Western palate. It’s amazingly simple, with a batter made from just four ingredients: honey, fresh cheese (ricotta or a farmer’s cheese), flour and egg. After baking, the savillum is topped with a spice that was as well-known to the Romans as it is to us: poppy seeds (papaver). One time I ran out of poppy seeds and used black sesame seeds, and it was just as delicious.
Savillum would have been served at the end of a Roman meal, in keeping with the Roman dining customs that we follow to this day: appetizer, main course and dessert, called gustatio (tasting), prima mensa (first plate) and secunda mensa (second plate). Like many Roman desserts, this recipe makes extensive use of honey (mel), the favorite Roman sweetener. In fact, other than fruits like dates and figs, honey was the only Roman sweetener. Sugar was first refined from sugarcane in ancient India around 350 CE, centuries after this recipe was recorded. Even then, sugar did not penetrate far into the Roman world. Its faraway origin made it too expensive for daily use, and the Roman historian Pliny the Elder writes in the 1st century that sugar is to be used “only for medicinal purposes”, as it was said to soothe stomach pain and other ailments. Presumably if sugar had been more widely available to the Romans, they would have experimented enough to learn how to cook with it.
Honey, on the other hand, was widely available because it could be produced in so many places. The islands of Malta and Sicily were main centers of Roman beekeeping, with one Maltese apiary examined by archaeologists harboring over 100 hives. Romans were well-aware of regional differences creating unique flavors and qualities of honey. The Greek city of Cecropia and the island of Corsica were infamous for their inferior honey, while the Greek cities of Hybla and Hymettus were said to produce the best. In his Epigrams (86-103 CE), the poet Martial uses the reputations of these various honeys to make a metaphor about writing: don’t expect good poetry from lousy material, just as you wouldn’t expect Hymettian honey out of a Cecropian bee.
Romans preserved food in honey, used it in sauces for meat and delicate desserts like savillum, and mixed it with water and spices to make a refreshing non-alcoholic beverage called hydromel (honey-water), although they drew the line at fermenting honey into mead, regarded as the practice of foreign enemies. Like rock sugar, honey was believed to have medicinal properties, and the physician Galen wrote that it “warms and clears wounds and ulcers in any part of the body.” Despite this seeming honey obsession, the Roman diet was still low in sugar by modern standards, and Roman burial remains show strong, healthy teeth.
There are many modern recreations of this recipe, but I use Cathy Kaufman’s reconstruction in her book Cooking in Ancient Civilizations (2006).
The savillum will puff up into a golden brown mound as it cooks, which looks pretty cool but is unfortunately ruined by poking holes for extra honey to soak in. It’s mushy, so serve with a spoon, hot or room temperature.
3 1/2 cups ricotta or farmer’s cheese, drained and densely packed
3/8 of a cup honey, plus another 3/4 of a cup
1 1/4 cup flour, whole-wheat (more authentic) or white
1 beaten egg
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, mix all the ingredients except the 3/4 cup honey and the poppyseeds. Pour into a deep pie dish or springform cake pan and cook for 1 hour and 40 minutes. When the cake is firm, poke some holes to allow the additional honey to seep in. Top with 3/4 cup of honey and the poppyseeds and bake for 10 minutes more.
This is one of my favorite Roman recipes I’ve tried. You could easily serve it at a modern dinner-party and none would be the wiser. X out of X.
*Sometimes called the “Roman pound”, one libra was actually only .72 of a pound, or 329 grams. |
[Northern Bumbling at The Nordic House, Reykjavik. Photos: Erik Sjödin]
Using the public greenhouse and the surrounding wetlands at The Nordic House in Reykjavik as a model for a shared multispecies space, the participants in the self-organised Northern Bumbling art, research, and design network presented recent research and work in progress followed by a discussion around our various projects and practices.
Erik Sjödin (Sweden) has been immersing himself in the context of beekeeping in Iceland and presented a selection of video material recorded while meeting with beekeepers on Iceland, highlighting both problematic and hopeful aspects of beekeeping in Iceland.
Thomas Pausz (Iceland) continued his work on Animal Architecture and presented work imagining crossovers with the modernism of Alvar Aalto, the architect of the Nordic House, and the building methods of specific insect species.
The Northern Bumbling network, and the individual work of the participants in the project, is supported in part by Nordic Culture Fund, Nordic Culture Point and the Swedish-Icelandic Co-operation Fund, Office for Contemporary Art Norway, and the Norwegian Culture Council. |
In this opportunity we will be discussing a very important topic. We will talk about Bee Hive Removal St Petersburg. The state of New York enjoys very nice weather in the spring and summer months, which makes a great place for bees to start hiving non-stop. However, when Bees St Petersburg start hiving inside our very own walls, or under our children’s room, well, you can say that we have a problem, and the next logical step is to call the people that know how to Remove Bees St Petersburg in a professional manner.
To do that, you need people with experience in Bee Extraction St Petersburg Florida and of course, people that care for the continuity of the Bees St Petersburg, like Beekeepers in St Petersburg. Their main interest, besides helping you with your Bee Hive Removal St Petersburg FL, is to achieve a successful Bee Relocation St Petersburg operation.
There are problems and problems, but a Bee Problem in St Petersburg Florida is something to be taken seriously because of the importance that a Bee Relocation in St Petersburg has, not only for the people’s need of Bee Hive Removal St Petersburg Florida from their homes, but for the environment and nature’s balance.
That’s how Bee Hive Removal in St Petersburg becomes a very serious and important activity. Beekeeping St Petersburg is regulated by the St Petersburg Beekeepers Association Massachusetts and from there are given the basic and standard rules that every Bee Keeper St Petersburg must follow in order to ensure the client´s satisfaction alongside the bees safety as humanly possible.
St Petersburg Bee Control, as almost any other professional activity, consists of a method. In this case, in the Bee Hive Removal in St Petersburg FL scenario, the first step is to assess the situation according to the type of structure found and the client’s bee issue per-se. After knowing exactly what is going on and where, the Bee Hive Removal in St Petersburg Florida procedure can commence, with the choosing of the right set of tools for the job and of course, preparing the work site with drop cloths to prevent any honey dripping that may occur during the Bee Extraction St Petersburg. Every measure must be taken to avoid damaging the property.
How do I find the right bee removal company? Here are some important questions to ask.
1. Do you have experience removing bees from a wall?
Removing honeybees from a wall requires carpentry experience. A novice beekeeper can cause more damage than good if they are not experts in carpentry.
2. What is the process of removing bees from a wall?
An experienced beekeeper will identify the location of the bees with an infrared camera, use a smoker to calm the bees, use a bee vacuum and other professional tools to remove the honeybees safely, extract the hive, clean the affected area, apply pesticide to deter honeybees from returning to the empty hive, fill the open area with insulation and replace the wall with the original material whenever possible.
3. Do you have pictures of honeybee removals from walls?
Trustworthy honeybee removal companies will have plenty of pictures. Choose a company that has more than just a few examples.
4.How long have you been a beekeeper?
Because there are many species of bees, a beekeeper must have extensive knowledge of the different techniques to safely and effectively remove the bees.
5. How long have you been in business?
Make sure they have a valid business license and have many years of experience in the bee removal field.
6. Do you have references?
A reputable bee removal company will have good ratings online on platforms such as Google. Be wary of businesses that have too few good reviews. It’s not unusual for novice companies to ask friends and family to create favorable reviews.
7. Do you guarantee your work?
Read the warranty or guarantee agreement carefully. A good bee removal company will warranty a removal requiring a repair for at least a year.
8. Do you have insurance?
Some companies operate with little or no insurance. Companies should have both liability and workman’s compensation insurance. This is a good precaution against accidents caused by bee smokers causing fires or beekeepers falling from roofs or trees.
4 How to Get Rid of Bees – Do’s and Dont’s.
DO call a professional immediately.
This is the single most important step of bee removal! If you have a bee problem, it’s imperative that you use a professional bee removal expert to fix the situation for you. Their experience, knowledge and skills enable them to effectively remove the bees, quickly and safely, ensuring that no one gets hurt… |
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To be up to date with the latest information in the beekeeping industry to can check out our apiculture latest news. On the other hand if you are new to apiculture and desire to start professional beekeeping now get a copy of our beekeeping for beginners ebook.
Beekeeping, like every other action, has its own dos and don’ts. Beginning beekeeping generally includes purchasing bees and the equipment that is needed. Yet, some individuals who are beginning this hobby usually make a few mistakes. It’s acceptable to make mistakes, and this post can help new beekeepers prevent making exactly the same mistakes others have in the past.
Here are three errors which every beekeeper should avert:
1. Not understanding the best time to begin a beekeeping business or hobby can end up being a disaster. It can lead to some loss of your bees and money. Since most bees perish during the wintertime, winter is the worst possible time to begin. This would compel a beekeeper to buy a new mountain of bees, which would cost more money. Autumn is another poor time since there are fewer blooms, so a smaller amount of honey picked to begin beekeeping. The best time to start beekeeping is during summer, which is the time of the year where there are loads of flowers that are blooming.
2. Buying used equipment and old books on beekeeping. This can be a common error made by many start beekeepers. Purchasing used gear and old beekeeping novels is not a good thought, although it’s understandable that one would desire to conserve money as much as possible. First, used equipment can come with “familial” issues. The extractor outlet might have a leak, or the uncapping knife mightn’t be sharp enough to uncap all the wax. This would surely affect the quality of one’s honey, which will ben’t an ideal situation particularly if a beekeeper is intending to commence a honey-selling company. Second, outdated info can be provided by old novels on beekeeping. One might be stuck using the traditional method when there are quicker and better methods to maintain beehives and fabrication honey.
3. Refraining from purchasing protective equipment. Think about this. He/she will most likely come out as a pincushion with all the bee stingers stuck to their body if one doesn’t wear protective gear when handling the hives and amassing the honeycombs. Protective gear is pricey, yes, but it’ll help beekeepers avert having to pay medical bills from all the bee stings.
These three errors have been presented here to help they are avoided by future beekeepers. It truly is best to consult with an expert beekeeper before getting started beekeeping. If purchasing a certain item appears too high-priced, consistently think about the end cost ( in case that they do not buy this thing now, will it cost them more later on?). In the long run, it truly is up to the person to determine the best course of action. |
The web portal abgeordnetenwatch.de offers a direct link between citizens and their parliamentarians and candidates. The heart of the site is the forum “Citizens ask – politicians answer”. This public dialogue creates transparency and holds policymakers accountable for their statements and promises. Research on issues related to lobbying, party donations and the outside earnings of politicians represents another area of focus.
Why we supported abgeordnetenwatch
By offering the general public easy and direct access to information about politicians, the organisation creates increased transparency around political decision-making processes. In addition, abgeordnetenwatch’s research projects expose the one-sided economic influence of industry lobbyists.
The Würzburg-based organisation Bergwaldprojekt (Mountain Forest Project) works for the protection and conservation of ecosystems in various parts of Germany, including Alpine protection forests, nature parks and the close-to-natural forests of the Central Uplands.
Why we supported the Bergwaldprojekt
In week-long projects, volunteers do forestry work, such as reforestation. This work also educates participants and the public about the importance, and endangerment, of our natural resources.
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) uses the law to fight for a world free from torture, oppression and exploitation. It supports the oppressed in their struggle for justice and makes use of legal tools to enforce human rights worldwide.
Why we supported the ECCHR
In its programme “Business and Human Rights”, the ECCHR focuses primarily on strategies for holding transnational corporations accountable for human and environmental rights violations.
Founded in 2015, the Munich-based organisation offers emergency and transitional aid for refugees across Europe. Working with a team of volunteers in close coordination with non-governmental organisations, the IHA provides protection and assistance to refugees in the camps forming along the EU’s outer borders
Why we supported the IHA
In the context of the acute European refugee crisis, the organisation made an important contribution towards the improvement and implementation of Europe’s humanitarian and human-rights standards.
Klimastreik Schweiz (Climate Strike Switzerland) is an association of teenagers and young adults who are fighting for a radical shift in environmental and climate policy. They have decided not to remain silent about the catastrophic effects of the climate crisis but instead to put pressure on policymakers and call for science-based action on climate change.
Why we support Klimastreik Schweiz:
Klimastreik Schweiz organises demonstrations, conferences and other events to express their demands and fight for their, and our, future. With their SMILE Summit in the summer of 2019, they are seeking to connect the local groups that have formed through the “Fridays for Future” movement and develop a common strategy, because the climate crisis can only be solved by working together!
We have been supporting Klimastreik Schweiz since 2019.
The organisation Mellifera, based in Rosenfeld (Baden-Württemberg), focuses on species-appropriate and ecological beekeeping and the protection of bees. It develops concepts that help beekeepers strengthen the long-term health of their bees.
Why we supported Mellifera
In 2013 the European Commission placed major restrictions on the use of three neonicotinoid pesticides owing to their harmful effects on bee health. In response, the chemical firms BASF, Bayer and Syngenta filed a lawsuit. Mellifera and other beekeepers’ associations were involved in the case. In May 2018 the European Court of Justice upheld the partial ban of the bee-harming substances.
Founded in 2007 by a group of children and adolescents, the initiative “Plant-for-the-Planet” originated as a school project aimed at taking action against climate change. The initiative has since developed into a global movement involving 100,000 children and adolescents. Their worldwide tree-planting programme is making a practical contribution to climate protection.
Why we support Plant-for-the-Planet
The young people of “Plant-for-the-Planet” are fighting for climate justice. In addition, the organisation not only provides a strong voice for young peoples’ interests and demands for action on the climate emergency, but also gives them the chance to join together to fight for their future.
We have been supporting Plant-for-the-Planet since 2019.
The Wadden Sea World Heritage Site, as one of the world’s largest intertidal ecosystems and one of Europe’s last large-scale wilderness areas, is of paramount importance to millions of birds and other wildlife. The mission of the Husum-based environmental association Naturschutzgesellschaft Schutzstation Wattenmeer is to promote an understanding of, and fascination for, this ecosystem and help preserve it for future generations in spite of climate change, rising sea levels and intensive use.
Why we supported the Schutzstation Wattenmeer
In spite of the high legal-protection status of the German Wadden Sea, the measures that are being taken for its protection are inadequate. The influences of business interests and impacts of tourism are threatening this natural environment. The ecological status of the Wadden Sea is alarming and requires that urgent and concrete steps be taken for the protection of this unique natural area.
The Stiftung Feuchtgebiete (Wetlands Foundation) supports initiatives for the protection and restoration of natural wetlands. The foundation’s funding areas include not only practical field work in nature conservation, but also project-related research, awareness-raising and public-relations work, educational programmes and lobbying activities for the conservation of wetlands.
Why we supported the Stiftung Feuchtgebiete
Moors play a significant role in climate protection. They are important carbon sinks and offer a unique habitat for numerous plants and animals. The restoration of degraded moors will play a vital role in slowing down the further release of greenhouse gases.
In the autumn of 2016, shortly before decisions were to be made on the free trade agreements between the EU and United States (TTIP) and between the EU and Canada (CETA), a broad coalition of associations and organisations held demonstrations in several German cities.
Why we supported the Stop CETA, TTIP Demo
These types of free trade agreements – which have also been, and are still being, negotiated with other countries – pose the concrete risk that stricter legislation and regulations for environmental and climate protection will be prevented or watered down.
In the context of a PhD project at the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), project partners in Arba Minch, Ethiopia, are developing a new land-use system that uses sustainable and organic agriculture to restore and preserve eroded and degraded soils and ecosystems. Cooperative, synergistic systems are being created through the specific combination of various measures incorporating environmental technologies.
Why we supported the Slope Farming Project
The loss of fertile agricultural land through soil degradation and erosion is one of the main reasons for the problem of water and food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa. These issues are being caused by conventional agriculture and the ever-longer periods of drought associated with climate change. The project’s holistic approach is aimed at finding an innovative solution for the rehabilitation and maintenance of degraded soils and destroyed vegetation. |
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Discover all about beekeeping! Get answers to widespread thoughts, strategies from gurus, and learn the way to maintain your hives nutritious and joyful.
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One thing I have enjoyed about the lockdown is the extra time at home that’s allowed me to have a go at lots of creative and crafty things that I’ve always fancied or dabbled in but never really pursued. A recent birthday was the perfect time to get kitted up for some of them. Continue reading Flower Pressing (in the microwave)
So, my studies are complete and the results are in, I now officially hold a Gastronomy MSc. One of my lecturers, Charlotte Maberly is running some more workshops in the beautiful Newton Walled Garden (near Dalkeith) that might well be of interest to some of you (see below)…
Food Beyond The Plate is a collaborative project between food educators, foragers, chefs, artists and producers in the Edinburgh area. They offer workshops and experiences which explore the world of food in its broadest sense.
If you want to keep up to date with the events – you can find them all here on Facebook
This series of workshops will explore food culture, history and politics through some of our favourite foods. Meet producers, learn how and why to make your own, and see these ordinary products in a whole new light.(Beer and Honey dates TBD, but likely in April and June 2018)
For those looking to deepen their food education or develop a career in food, Charlotte will be holding 2-day courses from October 14th/15th until next Spring, investigating the extraordinary world of Gastronomy.
One of my Gastronomy lecturers is working on a collaborative project between food educators, foragers, chefs, artists and producers in the Edinburgh area.
They are offering workshops and experiences from July 2017 which explore the world of food in its broadest sense in the beautiful Newton Walled Gardens at Millerhill just outside Edinburgh.
You can find out more about the project on their Facebook page here
Upcoming events include Wild Crafts: beautiful botanicals with forager and herbal medicine specialist Anna Canning , Killing Cooking, Writing – a workshop with Ethical Carnivore author Louise Gray and How and Why to Eat The Wild – explore the possibilities of using wild foods with Rupert Waites of Buck and Birch, wild-chef and co-creator of Aelder Elixir – all of which sound fantastic for those with a love of the great outdoors, food and cooking, self provisioning and home crafts.
You can find more details on their upcoming events here
Guess I may well see some of you at one of these!
I found this beauty in the woods on the Newhall Estate yesterday – I wasn’t sure if it was a decomposing mushroom or a weird, yet strangely beautiful fungi.
After speaking with fellow Gastronomy student, Ally, from Beechbrae who is my go-to for all things fungi-related and some further consultation from Mark, a forager from Galloway Wild Foods we have the answer – it’s Blackening Brittlegill (Russula Nigricans)
Here are some interesting facts that I found about it.
Russula nigricans, the Blackening Brittlegill, is a very variable species in terms of its size, shape and colour: it changes in each of these respects quite markedly as it matures, eventually becoming black all over.
Common in broadleaf, mixed and coniferous woodland, Russula nigricans occurs throughout Britain and Ireland. On mainland Europe this brittlegill can be found from Scandinavia right down to the Mediterranean region; its range extends eastwards into temperate parts of Asia.
Caps of Russula nigricans are 6 to 20cm (exceptionally 25cm) in diameter, convex with an inrolled margin and then later flatter and centrally depressed, the caps are dirty white at first, turning grey-brown and then eventually blackening all over.
Culinary Notes – When they are young and still white, Blackening Brittlegills are considered by some authorities to be very good edible mushrooms; however, perhaps because they become tough and deteriorate in flavour as they blacken, the general view seems to be that these woodland fungi are at best only mediocre from a culinary perspective (and there are plenty of other mushrooms with a superior reputation). That is a shame, because not only are Blackening Brittlegills chunky and often abundant but with their thick, very widely spaced gills, they are also very easy to identify with confidence.
(German mycologist Andreas Gminder says that these brittlegills are excellent when fried with bacon and onions.)
Since starting an MSc in Gastronomy at Queen Margaret University I may not have had much time for gardening but I do seem to have acquired a lot of new books, fifty and counting to be precise.
The topics cover a broad spectrum including food culture, philosophy, history, agriculture, soil science, nutrition, rewilding, the effects of our agriculture systems on the environment, food communications, foraging and food production. I’ve not read them all yet, some are for reference and dipping in and out of and others have been complete page-turners.
Recently I’ve been asked for reading recommendations so here are some of my favourites from my newly acquired collection that relate to gardening, soil fertility, foraging and botany. In no particular order (although Feral by George Monbiot was an amazing read).
First published in 1965 this is not a new book, however, the artwork is a delight to peruse and makes it possible to identify plants at different stages of growth, along with accompanying descriptions of habitat, time of flowering etc. The drawings are categorised into plant families which can help when looking up a specimen. Both the botanical (Latin) names are noted along with their more common names. A beautiful book for those who live in the country or have a love of flora whether wanting to identify plants or simple browse the pages.
RHS Botany for Gardeners is more than just a useful reference book on the science of botany and the language of horticulture – it’s a practical, hands-on guide that will help gardeners understand how plants grow, what affects their performance, and how to get better results. Illustrated throughout with beautiful botanical prints and simple diagrams. For easy navigation, the book is divided into chapters covering everything from Plant Pests to Pruning with feature spreads profiling the remarkable individuals who collected, studied and illustrated the plants that we grow today.
The Hidden Half of Nature lays out the astonishing reality we’ve been missing in the soil beneath our feet and right inside our bodies- our world depends on a foundation of invisible life. This is a captivating story of the least-loved part of nature, taking readers through major milestones in agriculture and medicine to untangle our uneasy relationship with microbes. From the challenge of turning their barren Seattle lot into a flourishing garden through Bikle’s struggle with a surprise cancer diagnosis, the authors discover the power nature’s smallest creatures wield over our lives and stunning parallels in the relationships that microbes develop with plant roots and the human gut.
Journalist Judith Schwartz looks at soil as a crucible for our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises. Schwartz reveals that for many of these problems climate change, desertification, biodiversity loss, droughts, floods, wildfires, rural poverty, malnutrition, and obesity there are positive, alternative scenarios to the degradation and devastation we face. In each case, our ability to turn these crises into opportunities depends on how we treat the soil. Drawing on the work of thinkers and doers, renegade scientists and institutional whistleblowers from around the world, it challenges much conventional thinking about global warming and other issues.
If there’s one distinctive feature of the British countryside, it has to be the hedgerow. It’s not only plant life that thrives in the hedgerow – native wild animals, birds and insects are protected and nourished by them. Hedgerows can also provide fresh, wild food for us, too, Nozedar reintroduces the wild and natural hedgerow ingredients that our grandmothers used on a regular basis from angelica to borage, from pineapple weed to wild garlic, each entry is beautifully illustrated to help you identify each plant or flower, along with its history and folklore, and culinary and medicinal uses.
How many of us sometimes feel that we are scratching at the walls of this life, seeking to find our way into a wider space beyond? That our mild, polite existence sometimes seems to crush the breath out of us? Feral is the lyrical and gripping story of George Monbiot’s efforts to re-engage with nature and discover a new way of living. He shows how, by restoring and rewilding our damaged ecosystems on land and at sea, we can bring wonder back into our lives. Making use of some remarkable scientific discoveries, Feral lays out a new, positive environmentalism, in which nature is allowed to find its own way.
I’ve long been interested in beekeeping and although we don’t have enough land to have hives of our own I’d still been wanting to find out more so when we got the opportunity as part of our MSc Gastronomy course, I was on it like a buzzy bonnet.
Brian Pool is a commercial beekeeper and as it turns out he lives just a few miles from me in the Scottish Borders. As well as having hives across many sites including Edinburgh Zoo, on Edinburgh city-centre rooftops, at The Secret Herb Garden, Stobo, Biggar, on The Pentland hills and East Lothian, he also runs bee keeping classes. We visited him at Colstoun Cookery School just outside Haddington in East Lothian for an Introduction to bee keeping.
Brian has been keeping bees since he was 5 years old and is a 3rd generation beekeeper and he clearly knows his stuff, the day was incredibly interesting as we were taken through the activity and life cycle of honey bees – wow, is all I can say! Some of it was pretty mind blowing:
- A Queen lays 1500-2000 eggs a day & lives up to 5 years
- A female worker bee lives 6 weeks & produces just 1 teaspoon of honey in that time.
We covered all aspects from the components of a beehive and different types of hives, different types of bees, best plants for foraging bees throughout the year, swarm control and colony management, disease and pests management.
We also got to get suited and booted to visit the bee hives where Brian prepared the hives for the Winter season and removed the honey crop so that we could take it back and try the honeycomb. There was something incredibly dreamy about the sound of the bees in the Autumn sunshine, it made me feel quite drowsy.
This was a really special day, made even more so by the spectacular al fresco lunch that Fiona at Colstoun Cookery School put on for us. I so wish we could have bees too, we really need a bigger garden…
This week the Gastronomy MSc kicked off properly and Monday was a brilliant day – we were looking at Food Procurement – a brief history and consideration of the methods and location from which we acquire our food and how this shapes our relationship with the environment.
This included a guest lecture and foraging session with food historian and author Fi Martynoga. amazingly we found so many wild edibles within the campus environs – yarrow, hogweed, vetch, chamomile, brambles, rosehips, elderberries, barberries, beech nuts, hazelnuts, ground elder and also some leftover oats and barley – probably from a time when the land was farmed.
Tuesday began with a session in the campus allotment, it’s been a little neglected over the past year so our job will be to take it on and sort it out over the coming months. First, we got our hands dirty by examining the soil, looking for worms and testing the PH to see what we’ve got to play with.
This was followed by a lecture on understanding soil – love this quote “understanding soil isn’t rocket science, it’s far more complicated” Mark Kibblethwaite.
We also had a guest lecture from Dr Kenneth Loades from the James Hutton Institute who gave us a fascinating insight into Scottish soils, agriculture, root systems, erosion, the yield gap and other issues for soil and ultimately our food and drink supply.
We took a brief look at urban agriculture as well. So far so good, this is going to be one very interesting course. Off the back of this we discovered that Whitmuir Organic Farm, just along the road, is running a series of participative workshops with scientists, farmers, politicians and other interested parties over the coming months – I’ve applied to be part of this, couldn’t be more relevant so fingers crossed. More info here
On of my fellow cohorts, who also has a particular interest in gardening, kindly gave me some ‘Green Manure Seeds’ to try out as a soil improver through the Winter. I’ve got Red Clover, Winter Tares & Italian Ryegrass – the idea is to plant them now let them grow and in the Spring cut them back, cover with a good layer of compost/manure and sow our next lot of crops in much enriched soil. Really looking forward to seeing how they work!
We get a lot of game birds in the garden (pheasant and partridge), taking refuge from the local shoot. Although I’ve yet to catch one, we do get them from friends down the road. Continue reading Very Easy, Delicious Pheasant Casserole Recipe
I’ve been wanting to try this nettle beer recipe out for a few years now – and just somehow never managed to get my arse in gear to do it. I’ve just bottled up some homemade elderflower champagne so now that my fermenting bucket is free again I decided to go get cracking with this one.
It’s super simple and I won’t know if it’s worked for a couple of weeks but here’s the recipe. (I halved the quantities just to try) |
Book - Honey and pollen flora of south-eastern Australia
Honey & Pollen Flora of South Eastern Australia - DPI NSW - Hardcover
Fantastic reference book for all Australian beekeepers.
Understanding the biology of flora and its value to honey bees is core knowledge for successful beekeeping. Bees feed on nectar and pollen. No food equals no bees!
Beekeepers need to know the floral resources around them, and the nutritional value of those resources to bees, to keep their bee colonies healthy.
This publication focuses on the value of plants to nectarivores, and honey bees in particular. The result of over 30 years of research, it distills both scientific knowledge and the opinions of hundreds of beekeepers into a reference work that will be the cornerstone of floral understanding in apiculture for years to come.
Table of Contents:
- What makes an ideal apiary site?
- Hive stocking rate
- Honey bee nutrition
- Star rating
- A note on flowering charts
- What’s in a name?
- Describing plants
- List families – genus/species
- Individual plant profiles
Published in 2019. This book is 650 pages A4 in size and full colour. |
While wandering around various bee sites the other day, I found this post about how to build a swarm trap from two flower pots. The idea originally came from the Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping by Dean Stiglitz and Laurie Herboldsheimer. I admire Dean and read his posts gladly when he posts on Beemaster.com.
At first I was defeated by the unavailability of these pressed fiber pots in Atlanta - that's right - in Atlanta. The big nurseries use them to pot their trees and rosebushes but are unwilling to sell them. I found everything else at my big box hardware store, but ended up ordering the pots online.
Jeff and I built three swarm traps today. The whole operation takes about 15 minutes, not counting the time it takes for the goop that you use to fill the holes to cure.
First we drilled two holes in the pot that would be the top to put a cable zip tie for hanging. I confess it took me several tries to find the right size drill bit, but once that choice was made, we were up and running. I threaded the cable zip through the holes from the inside, fastened it on the inside, and we had a handle/loop for hanging.
For bait I put two pieces of old comb into each swarm trap. I also smeared the inside with homemade swarm lure (a recipe I posted several years ago) and shook some lemon grass essential oil into it as well.
Then we put the two halves together and Jeff screwed them together with 1 1/4 inch screws.
Then we went out on the deck (Jeff and Valerie live in my old house where the bee hives used to be - if the area where we are looks familiar to you) and used this goopy stuff to fill all the drainage holes but one. The open hole is supposed to provide an entry for the swarm scouts (first) and then the bees.
Since I've caught a swarm on this deck every year since I began beekeeping, we thought we should hang one on the deck. Also if Colony Square does swarm, this might be a place they would go and I wouldn't lose my precious bees!
It was too cold to make another nuc today so we put off another foray into Colony Square for another few days.
I do hope at least one of the three traps draws a swarm. I'm putting the other two in other places - one at my house and one at the Blue Heron.
Jeff and I decided that hanging this up is a little like fishing - you might not catch a thing, but the process is really fun! If we do catch a swarm in one of these, we'll unscrew the four connecting screws and dump the bees into a real hive. |
Rotohokahoka Trust and New Zealand Mānuka Group announce unique visitor experience partnership to tell the Story of Mānuka
On Sunday the Rotohokahoka D North 4D Trust voted to proceed with developing a joint venture partnership with New Zealand Mānuka Group, New Zealand’s leading, socially responsible innovator of mānuka products.
The Rotohokahoka Trust represents Ngati Waoku, a hapu named after a famous female ancestress of Whakaue-Raukawa lineage. As explained by its Chair, Paora Tapsell: Waoku’s descendants have maintained uninterrupted possession of an amazingly estate for 16 generations. From Kawaha Point to Rotohokahoka (Lake in the sky) deep in the Mamaku we have been the trustees of an incredibly diverse landscape of flora, fauna and waterways, which have served the Rotorua community for generations.
New Zealand Mānuka Group has committed to developing the Trust’s whenua of Ngati Waoku ki Rotohokahoka, beside Skyline Skyrides in Rotorua. Subject to the usual regulatory consents, the new tourism venture has an estimated project value of over $30 million dollars and is targeting over 180,000 local and international visitors per annum.
The Joint Venture will create a unique mānuka themed visitor experience, showcasing the critical importance of sustainably managing NZ’s still rich biodiversity before its too late. International award winning architect, RTA Studio and multimedia design house, The Gibson Group have been engaged to bring a unique feel to the Rotohokahoka Mānuka visitor experience.
Phil Caskey, Chairman and Founder of New Zealand Mānuka Group, explains that the Mānuka Story experience will provide visitors with hands on and locally guided viewing of a working mānuka plantation, beekeeping and honey operation while showcasing the historical importance of mānuka in traditional Māori medicine. Its vision is to also reflect the unique cultural innovation when Māori and Pākehā values are engaged in a co-productive business environment.
Over the decades the Trust has managed its strategically located land with patience, waiting for a like-minded organisation to appear and be willing to partner to not only provide a sustainable revenue for its beneficiaries and wider Arawa community, but also create a platform to tell Ngāti Waoku/Te Arawa’s story to the world.
Chief Executive of New Zealand Mānuka Group, Karl Gradon, says that “the partnership is one where all parties are fully aligned and excited by the opportunity to share the Story of Mānuka to a truly global audience in Rotorua. Being the industry pioneer, with a history of innovation and value sharing with landowners, we can join with the Trust and tell a uniquely New Zealand story in a way that can’t be matched by any other organisation. The location of this amazing whenua allows us to tap into the heart of the rapidly growing Rotorua health and wellness visitor hub, while creating employment for the wider community.
Another key player in the venture’s development is Crankworx Rotorua, comprising key investors Rotorua Lakes Council, Skyline Rotorua and Multi Day Adventures. Crankworx Rotorua chairman Dave Donaldson, who has led Rotorua Lakes Council’s economic growth portfolio, says the event group has had a great working relationship with Ngati Waoku to deliver a world-class festival with excellent economic outcomes for the district: “I’m excited about the Rotohokahoka Mānuka development from an economic perspective as well as how it proposes to make allowances for – and potentially enhance – our Crankworx event venue for the benefit of Rotorua.”
Mayor Steve Chadwick says the venture will add a unique new aspect to Rotorua’s many and varied tourism offerings: “It will align with Rotorua’s tourism aspirations as well as contributing to our future economic growth and seeding new investments and jobs.”
“This is a great example of an iwi partnership in action. Ngati Waoku also understands what it means to develop a legacy operation for future generations and the council has been fully supportive of this exciting new venture,” the mayor says. “It is a Maori joint venture with a Bay of Plenty success story that will use our unique biodiversity to produce medical grade export products and will also see profits flowing back into Rotorua for social good.”
Rotohokahoka trustee, Tania Butcher-Tapsell commended the Rotorua Lakes Council for its vision: "We are thrilled to have had the full support of the Mayor and her Council. This is a very important venture not just for Ngati Waoku/Te Arawa, but all of Rotorua.”
Paora Tapsell summarises: “We envisage Rotohokahoka becoming Ngati Waoku’s lighthouse of knowledge (mātauranga), a place of belonging (taonga) and a special centre in service (manaakitanga) to the Arawa region’s shared lands, waterways and people (whakapapa); aspiring us all to pursue our passion and find purpose in life, no matter what the odds: Te kakahi whakairoiro.” |
Be sure to check out this article!
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Saturday, December 13, 2008
Chemists Without Borders has been selected as one of the web's best blogs by the editors of Regator.com
Subject: Your Blog
Date: Monday, December 8, 2008, 4:04 PM
Hi. I wanted to let you know that your blog, Chemists Without Borders, has been selected as one of the web's best blogs by the editors of Regator.com, the most selective blog directory on the web. Each blog featured on Regator is hand-selected and reviewed by an editor to ensure that its content is topical, original, well-written, and frequently updated.
It is then put into one of nearly 500 channels covering topics as diverse as beekeeping, neuroscience, books, and pop culture. This makes it easy for mainstream audiences to find high-quality posts on things that interest them. Regator's What's Hot List gives an at-a-glance summary of what the chemistry community is discussing right now and is a great resource for bloggers and academics.
Please let your readers know you've been selected by visiting this link to download a badge for your site. There is NO fee involved and you don't have to take any action to have your blog added to Regator's directory--it's already there.
We know your content has value, so we aggregate your titles and summaries, but our users must click through to your blog to read the full text of your posts. In this way, we hope to drive traffic to your blog and expand your audience.
If you visit our site and find it useful, we'd be extremely grateful if you could help us spread the word by mentioning Regator on your blog.
Congratulations and welcome to Regator! Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
All the best,
Co-Founder / Editorial Director
Sunday, November 23, 2008
First, we still have the original idea of using water hyacinth to remove arsenic from water. There are several difficulties there. How much dried water hyacinth will absorb how much arsenic? Scientifically what are the isotherms that describe the sorptive behavior? What procedure can be worked out that would be effective in a non-lab setting? What is the best way to remove the arsenic-rich hyacinth? How does one dispose of the contaminated plant material? Culturally, would you drink water that have been mixed with powdered plants? As Elmo says, its not much different than drinking tea, is it? Maybe, maybe not.
Next, arsenic is not the only significant environmental problem in Bangladesh. Three others have been suggested: surface water pollution from tanneries, from textile dyers, and indoor air pollution from burning a variety of materials to provide cooking fires. Perhaps with much of the global community focused on the arsenic, we should tackle something else.
Third, what would it take to assist the Bangladeshi chemical community to build an environmental chemistry research and development centre? Rather than jumping in and jumping back out, how can we set up infrastructure that will train new Bangladeshi scientists, provide research space to current scientists with up to date technologies to study and make recommendations for improving the conditions in Bangladesh?
Fourth, can we set up a model semester abroad for science students in Bangladesh? Can we collaborate to the extent that US (and other) undergraduate students (graduate students also?) could go to Bangladesh and not miss out on their requirements for graduation. Students might study Bangladeshi language and culture, take a science class, and assist a graduate student or professor with a research project.
Mindmap added by Bego, 12/14/2008 (click to enlarge image):
Thursday, November 13, 2008
The 69-page decision described the Bush administration’s arguments as “weak,” “questionable,” “not sustainable,” and “not sufficient,” and rebuked EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson for failing to issue CO2 regulations, repeatedly recommending an “action of nationwide scope.”
Click on the title for the link.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
November 6, 2008 | Transcript: The World of Good company takes a different approach to shopping -- by encourage mainstream retailers like Whole Foods and eBay to take a build ethnical consumer experiences. Spencer Michels profiles Priya Haji, the CEO and co-founder of World of Good, and examines how the company sells messenger bags, handicrafts and other products with the aim of employing people in impoverished parts of the world and spreading social awareness among U.S. consumers.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste, 60 Minutes Follows The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste, Illegally Shipped From The U.S. To China - CBS News
This is an important story in which I believe Chemists Without Borders must become involved. Lives are at stake and it is our chemistry that is jeopardizing them. Please watch this video segment and respond with thoughts on where we can make a difference. Thank you.
Monday, November 03, 2008
As a special bonus, the second half of the program is about a play currently on Broadway, about the Black Watch. The Black Watch is a Scottish regiment that has existed for hundreds of years, and it is often the Black Watch whom the British send in to battle first. This play, which is very moving, addresses their recent deployment into Iraq. Since I am from Scotland, and lived in Fife whence comes the Black Watch, this is a story very close to my own heart. I would be very happy to hear from others your opinions on both segments.
Thanks for reading.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
We are pleased to be able to announce the availability of the official Systemic Approach to Teaching and Learning (SATL) website; the website is called “SATL Central.”[www.satlcentral.com] . As you may know, SATL techniques have been successfully applied to a wide spectrum of disciplines, and those reports have been published in a number of places, some of which may not readily be available. This SATL website incorporates a database of such reports that could be useful to colleagues of CCE.We should appreciate receiving notice you may find and any contribution in the area of SATL and its application.
Professor A. M. F.Fahmy
Professor of Chemistry
and Professor J. J. Lagowski
Professor of Chemistry and of Education
contact: email@example.com or firstname.lastname@example.org
Monday, September 01, 2008
Finding the best man for the job was Perot's specialty.
During every episode on The Goon Show on BBC radio when I was growing up in the 1950s, a particular character would have reason to say, "Do you think he's the right man for the job?"
He did just one thing superbly well: pick the right man, give him the resources, motivate him, then leave him alone to do the job.
[Of Bull Simons] He was a meticulous, endlessly patient planner; he was cautious -- one of his catchphrases was: "That's a risk we don't have to take."
It's easy to confuse "risk" with "risky". Many activities, like driving a car, have risk. Risky, by contrast, is driving the car drunk, smoking a cigarette, eating a sandwich, and drinking hot coffee whilst talking on a cell phone.
This was a persistent failing of Perot's: when he was in high gear, he trod on people's toes and never knew he had hurt them. He was a remarkable man, but he was not a saint.
When I was taught about Social Styles, it was as if I'd been provided with steel toe caps on my shoes.
Perot's single-mindedness, his ability to focus narrowly on one thing and shut out distractions until he got the job done, had its disagreeable side. He would wound people.
I never forgot the scene in the film Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence slowly extinguished a burning match with his bare fingers. When asked by an observer, "Doesn't it hurt?" he said, "Of course." "So what's the trick," he was asked. "The trick is not to mind," he replied.
His occasional unfeeling harshness was just part of the incredible energy and determination without which he would never have created EDS.
While I disapprove of callousness, I came to realize that for some people it was sometimes a necessary component of their greatness. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.
There had been times, in business, when EDS had been ready to admit defeat but had gone on to victory because Perot himself had insisted on going one more mile: this was what leadership was all about.
…: she understood her husband's concept of duty and she never complained. That was why he could stay focused on what he had to do, and block out negative thoughts that would excuse inaction. He was lucky to have her.
While we are not all so fortunate, the goal is worthy. For those of us so blessed, stay mindful of the blessings and acknowledge them.
You never said: "I can't do that because …" You always said: "This is the progress I have made so far, and this is the problem I am working on right now…"
I am proud to say this is an attitude commonly found within Chemists Without Borders.
[Rashid] It was easy to manipulate people if you understood the psychology of the human being. You just had to study the people, comprehend their situation, and figure out their needs.
The book gives several examples of Rashid's natural prowess in this. The necessary skills can be learned by anyone. Manipulation, however, is not something I recommend, but helping people meet their goals in ways that coincide with our own is a healthy win-win.
The decision was made. If you go through life thinking about all the bad things that can happen, you soon talk yourself into doing nothing at all. Concentrate on the problems that can be solved.
If I understand Thomas Khun correctly in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, this is precisely how we tend to select problems, knowingly or not.
As Simons talked, Coburn admired how he announced his decision in such a way that they all thought they were being asked for their opinions rather than being told what to do.
If we own an idea, if we think it was ours, we tend to be more committed to capitalizing on it.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Have you ever noticed how highly analytical people and highly expressive people seem not to understand each other as well as they do people of their own style? The same is true of amiable people and those who are strong drivers. To communicate well with others, we must ensure that we broadcast on the same wavelengths that they are receiving. Our discussion will examine the four basic social styles, how to identify them in ourselves and others, and how best to relate to the various types. If you are unfamiliar with this topic, I think you'll find it fascinating and quite useful.
Friday, August 15, 2008
It seems the fish we've been encouraged to eat may contain arsenic. We usually just worry about drinking water, whether here in the US where I am, or, for example, in Bangladesh where tens of millions of people daily drink water contaminated with dangerous levels of arsenic from geologic sources. I wonder:
- How prevalent is this arsenic in fish?
- What are its sources?
- Is it harmful to humans and other animals in this form?
- Is this a new phenomenon or has it always been this way?
- Do people who eat such fish as part of their daily lifestyle or culture have health consequences?
- Are those consequences good or bad?
- Do such arsenic compounds protect us from the arsenic?
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Francis Collins Leaves NIH
After 15 years at the helm, Genomics Institute Director steps down
by Susan R. Morrissey"
This was an interesting article about Francis Collins that brought a bunch of questions to mind, questions to which I would welcome answers from anyone. Viz.:
How does the Human Genome Project benefit the developing world physically as opposed to intellectually (health versus genetic history and origins)?
What needs to be studied that is not being?
What doors does this open for the developing world?
Where's the opportunity?
What ideas or actions should Chemists Without Borders be promoting?
What is BlogThis! ?:
BlogThis! is an easy way to make a blog post without visiting blogger.com. Once you add the BlogThis! link to your browser's toolbar, blogging will be a snap. Or rather, a click. Clicking BlogThis! creates a mini-interface to Blogger prepopulated with a link to the web page you are visiting, as well as any text you have highlighted on that page. Add additional text if you wish and then publish or post from within BlogThis!
There are two ways to use BlogThis!: if you use Windows and Internet Explorer, you can use BlogThis! from the SendTo feature of the Google Toolbar. If you're on another browser, just drag the link below to your browser's Link bar. Then, whenever the mood strikes, click BlogThis! to post to your blog:
BlogThis! -- drag this link to your browser's Links bar.
For those whose software does not print directly to PDF, I recommend CutePDF, a simple program which will appear as a printer on your PC. When you want to create a PDF file from a document, instead of printing to your regular printer, just select CutePDF from the list of printers and continue. CutePDF will simple ask where you want the file created, and do it. Links are below.CutePDF - Create PDF for free, Free PDF Utilities, Save PDF Forms, Edit PDF easily.: "CutePDF Writer (Freeware)
Create professional quality PDF files from almost any printable document. FREE for personal, commercial, gov or edu use! No watermarks! No popup Web ads! Now supports 64-bit Windows.
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Monday, August 11, 2008
Here's a nice summary of how various online software tools could be used by any member of the team who has internet access, regardless of location. These include a universally accessible desktop, instant messaging, mind-mapping, office suite with word processor, spreadsheet and presentation, file sharing, personal finance and expenses, among others. Does anyone have additional suggestions or improvements?
Friday, August 08, 2008
Here is one of the keys to our impact. Consider some numbers: the American Chemical Society has over 160,000 members; the American Medical Association has over 360,000 members. Suppose we assume that there are a like number in the rest of the world. That amounts to about one million people, professional people, educated people. Now consider all the other occupations that are necessarily involved in accomplishing our goals, for it is not just science and medicine that solves humanitarian problems. Many other activities are involved, from accounting to distribution to plumbing to information management to diplomacy to law to architecture, etc. (Another opportunity to stress that Chemists Without Borders is not just for chemists: "If all you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail." Some of the most exciting stuff comes from the interface between unlike and improbable things.) That's a lot of people.
One important point is that these millions of people are all connected to one another through their professional organizations and other relationships, and indeed there is nobody in our profession, whom we could do not reach in the six steps described referred to in the Washington Post article. We can reach anywhere on the planet just in our own profession never mind all the other people we know. One of the things that makes the Information Age so exciting is that we can capitalize on all these connections much more easily than people could do in the past. Networking is in. Social networking is a phenomenon unseen before. We have an opportunity that others do not have. The American chemical Society is the largest scientific society in the world. We uniquely positioned to connect people to address problems. Chemists Without Borders is devoted to seeing that happen.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
A picture of a starving African baby in its mother's arms tops the column; the caption is, "What's wrong with this picture?" Then:
The amount of money needed annually to eradicate world hunger, relaunch agriculture and avert future threats of conflicts over food, according to the Director-General of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf.
The amount of money spent on arms in 2006.
Given our capacity to run up an annual deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars of deficits (and that's just the US) with seeming impunity, why don't we just tack this on and get the job done? If we're going to run up credit, why not spend the money to improve the planet and the human condition? (But then, the demand for armaments might diminish, and then where would we be? Who was that Eisenhower fellow, anyway?) What then must we do?
Monday, July 21, 2008
Chemists Without Borders was founded on the principle that through the use of appropriate chemical technologies and related skills, human suffering in developing countries can be alleviated. Chemists Without Borders will do this by mobilizing global resources, expertise, knowledge and creativity; by developing self-reliance operating models; by organizing shared processes and activities; and by partnering with other social entrepreneurs and humanitarian organizations.
Rolande Hodel, president of AIDSfreeAFRICA and a board member of Chemists Without Borders said, “Chemists Without Borders and AIDSfreeAFRICA had a meeting of hearts knowing that we already have the solutions to the most pressing problems humankind faces. It is not rocket science, but it takes a great organization such as Chemists Without Borders to pull it all together, to connect the dots and to deliver the vision it takes to implement what is so obvious that is has been overlooked for so long.”
“Receiving 501(c)(3) status was critical for our development as it provides the possibility for others to contribute to our work, alleviating human suffering in developing countries,” said Bego Gerber, president and co-founder of Chemists Without Borders.
About Chemists Without Borders
Chemists Without Borders (www.chemistswithoutborders.org) is a 501(c)(3) public benefit, non-profit, international humanitarian organization designed to alleviate human suffering through the use of proven chemical technologies and related skills. It was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Campbell, California. Please take a look at the website and the weblog, http://chemistswithoutborders.blogspot.com, for more information.
|Chemists Without Borders|
Monday, July 14, 2008
A new series of half-hour programs about sustainable energy innovations, e² energy, releases on PBS stations October 19. And the second season of e² design releases on November 30. Check it out - very informative.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Monday, July 07, 2008
From the EPA:
"The confusion primarily surrounds temporary streams and wetlands not large enough to be navigable, but which are among the most prevalent types of waters across the country."
Uh, the creek runs in the spring, and is empty in the fall.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
"Fuel costs and supply shortages have caused a spike in food prices across Africa -- prompting calls for an agricultural revolution on the continent. Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan discusses efforts to address the crisis." Please watch the video here.
|This NewsHour segment is a great review of the impact of the Information Age on current affairs. While it specifically refers to the impact on the US presidential election, the implications are broad and apply to the building of our own Chemists Without Borders community. Please check this out. You can watch the video, listen to the audio, or read a transcript. It begins: |
|"A new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that a record-breaking 46 percent of Americans have used the Internet, e-mail or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaigns. Analysts examine how new Web-based tools are expanding the campaign trail."|
Here are some excellent reports on progress being made in Africa resulting from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Doug Molitor, Steve Chambreau, Bego Gerber, Lois Ongley
Our first meeting will be in Campbell, CA June 15, 2008 from noon on.
We will discuss our mission and vision; introduce everyone; review our on-going projects and do a project management training. In articular we will discuss efforts to alleviate some of hte difficulites caused by the China earthquake.
We will try to use Evite.com and invote our members. If you would like to attend and don't get an evite, contact longley at unity dot edu.
After the meeting, we will have a potluck BBQ and swim.
Restructure these biweekly calls. We will consider using Skype Live for our phone calls which are held regularly the first Thursday of the month @ 1600 GMT and the Friday after the third Thursday at 0100 GMT. More later. Timing may vary due to the US dayligfht savings time and other minor complications :).
Press releases should be no more than 350. We hope to get them our more regularly so that we can widen our "google footprint". We now have a group on Facebook.
"But the ad agencies argue their work has a minimal role in persuading people to buy a new car, raising the question of why car companies take up so much space in magazines."
Either the advertisers are really bad at their jobs, or they haven't watched the Superbowl...
Friday, May 30, 2008
If you are not familiar with the details of the policy, you can still respond to question # 4 expressing strong support for the policy in principles. You might want to refer to the Chemists Without Borders Open Chemistry Position Statement, which can be downloaded from here.
Details from Peter Suber on Open Access News:
Time is short to comment on the NIH policy
Submit your comments through the NIH web form. But before you do, see some of the comments already submitted. The pro-OA comments will give you ideas, and the anti-OA comments will show you what objections to answer and what perspective might predominate if you don't send in your own.
This time the NIH wants separate answers to four separate questions. The web form has four separate spaces for them:
- Do you have recommendations for alternative implementation approaches to those already reflected in the NIH Public Access Policy?
- In light of the change in law that makes NIH’s public access policy mandatory, do you have recommendations for monitoring and ensuring compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy?
- In addition to the information already posted [here], what additional information, training or communications related to the NIH Public Access Policy would be helpful to you?
- Do you have other comments related to the NIH Public Access Policy?
If you're thinking that the NIH just concluded a round of public comments for its March 20 meeting, you're right. See the comments generated by that round (and my blog post on them). One persistent publisher objection is that the policy has not been sufficiently vetted and one purpose of the new round no doubt is to give the stakeholders one more chance to speak. We must use it. Publishers will.
Please submit a comment and spread the word. Even if you have no suggestions to improve the policy, it's important to express your support.
Thanks to Peter Suber on
"http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/time-is-short-to-comment-on-nih-policy.html">Open Access News
Thursday, May 29, 2008
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) version 2.0, smaller, cheaper. Imagine what we can do when everyone is connected. This is just the beginning of the Information Age. Consider this: the types of jobs that many of today's elementary school children will end up seeking do not even exist yet.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
The current approach emphasizes profit; this makes the weight problems of the wealthy a higher priority than river blindness, a serious affliction for millions of people around the world.
The world wide web makes it possible to create new approaches to science discovery, based on open sharing of knowledge and collaboration.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
* Médecins Sans Frontières implements Open Repository service
* Growing momentum of the open access movement highlights the benefits of BioMed Central's platform
Today, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) adopts 'Open Repository' - the service from BioMed Central, which allows institutes to build, launch, host, and maintain their own repositories.
Whilst MSF is well known for its humanitarian medical work, the organisation also produces important research based on its extensive field experience within vulnerable populations. Its studies have often changed clinical practice and have been used for further humanitarian advocacy.
Through the implementation of the Open Repository system, MSF is now able to provide a personalized in-house repository that maximises the distribution of their research at a fraction of the cost of other commercial systems.
Speaking of the new system, Tony Reid, Medical Editor for Médecins Sans Frontières said: "The vast majority of our medical work, and by extension our research activities, take place in poorer countries where access to scientific publications is often difficult and expensive to obtain. With Open Repository, we are able to make MSF's research experience available to health workers, policy makers and researchers in those countries in an easily-searchable format at no cost."
Reid went on to add "Throughout the development process for this site, I have been most impressed by the support and professionalism provided by BioMed Central's Open Repository team. They have been unfailingly helpful and cooperative and I believe the final product demonstrates excellent quality."
There is ever increasing number of funding bodies mandating open and unrestricted access to published research. This has necessitated institutions like MSF to look for innovative ways to store and publicise their open access research. BioMed Central's Open Repository service provides an extremely cost effective solution for institutions looking to showcase their open access research. Not only does the system help institutions comply with open access mandates, but it can also be fully customized to help organizations raise their profile and showcase their intellectual output.
Médecins Sans Frontières is just one of 15 organizations who have adopted the Open Repository solution since its inception.
"Open Repository provided our organization with a hosted solution that was quick and simple to set up, customizable to our needs and extremely easy to use," said Adam Edwards who adopted the service in 2007 "We switched from our previous repository service with Digital Commons because Open Repository offered much better value for money and all of the features we required."
Open Repository is built upon the latest version of DSpace, an open-source solution for accessing, managing and preserving scholarly works. Customers of Open Repository benefit from updated system features not only from DSpace themselves, but also from BioMed Central's team who are continually working to enhance their repository service.
Head of PR, BioMed Central
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7079 4845
Mob: +44 (0) 7825 257 423
BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an independent online publishing house committed to providing immediate access without charge to the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This commitment is based on the view that open access to research is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of science.
Médecins Sans Frontières (http://www.msf.org/) is an international humanitarian aid organisation that provides emergency medical assistance to populations in danger in more than 70 countries.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Friday, May 02, 2008
Another interesting technology is described here, published in 2006 (original Science article here). I don't know what stage it's at currently.
The Scientific American report ends as follows: "Given the batch nature of this process, it is unlikely that homes in the developing world can be outfitted with filters placed directly on taps, but getting poison-free water by the tank load is still a step in the right direction." I immediately pictured the technology in conjunction with a water tower and indoor plumbing. Is that what the people we serve would really want?
Is this something about which our Engineers Without Borders colleagues can advise? (I also thought about Plumbers Without Borders - not the first time that idea has arisen, it seems.) Perhaps it's already happening and I just don't know about it. That happens a lot.
Check this article out, for it bears on what we are doing. There's exciting new stuff happening all the time. Also, the source web site MedIndia.net is packed with valuable information. There's an RSS feed for research news.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Reinstall Windows and outfit your system with all freeware programs Review & Download Link | freewaregenius.com
Chemists Without Borders promotes open source solutions. The above link, and other links therein, point to excellent resources for running Windows machines entirely with freeware programs. For those who wish to avoid Windows altogether, there are excellent Linux implementations like Ubuntu and Xandros which offer comparable desktops and resources.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Egeland's new book on these issues, A Billion Lives : An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity that looks worth a read.
Monday, April 28, 2008
This is a site with useful links. Slideshare, for example, is a popular way to create presentations and make them available to specific users or to the general public. We may use this for our continuing education and personal development program.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Here's an opportunity for us: Chemistry claims to be "The Central Science". If so, we are central to the issue of food and energy. The "silent tsunami" of rising food prices is exacerbated, for example, by the diversion of corn from food to fuel. Millions of lives are jeopardized not by the scarcity of the food, but by the price of the food. (I once heard that the 1,500,000 deaths during the notorious Irish Potato Famine of 1845 were more caused by prices rising beyond the reach of the poor than by an actual lack of potatoes.)
There are already many intelligent people addressing this problem, but it is by no means solved. Imagine the impact of bringing the minds of a half a million or so chemists worldwide to bear on the question. Add to that the medical profession, the architects, the designers, the financiers, the businesspeople, etc., etc., etc., not to mention the students most importantly, and you have a huge pool of people with minds trained to identify and solve problems.
If 70% of your $1-a-day income goes on food for the family, and the price of rice and wheat rapidly doubles, your family goes from 2 meals a day to 1 meal a day, and then .......
What then must we do?
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The purpose of the Green Chemistry Research & Development Act of 2008 is to advance research into environmentally friendly chemicals. Check it out and please contact your Senators and Representatives to express your opinions.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
I recently saw on PBS this wonderfully enlightening Bill Moyers interview about Afghanistan with Sarah Chayes, former New York Times correspondent. At the end of the conversation, they have the following dialogue:
BILL MOYERS: There's a thin line. As I listen to you, there's a thin line we sometimes walk, we human beings, between hope and folly.
SARAH CHAYES: Hmm.
BILL MOYERS: Are you very close to that line?
SARAH CHAYES: I don't think that hope is relevant. I think determination is all that counts. You just have to try. It doesn't matter if you hope you're going succeed or not. You have to keep trying.
I agree with the opinion about hope. It is indeed determination which counts. (Mind you, I wouldn't use the word "try" either. In the words of the great Yoda: "Do or not do, there is no 'try'.") Consider this: At the end of the ABC World News on television, Charlie Gibson finishes with , "I hope you had a nice day." I never understand what he means. Hope is about the future, if anything, so how does it apply to the day that has already passed?
I think "hope" is a word worth dropping from the vocabulary, as are words like "struggle", "desperate" and "try". When Victor Frankl talks in "Mans' Search for Meaning" about how people like him survived the Nazi concentration camps, it's not "hope" that he talks about; it's about a commitment to an idea that some day he would be reunited with his family (didn't happen -- they were all murdered), and that he would be standing in front of audiences answering the question, "How did you survive when so many others didn't?"
Sunday, April 13, 2008
In other recent open access news, EBSCO has created a free database for environmental information called GreenFILE, which includes bibliographic information and a fair bit of full text, too. Congratulations and thanks to EBSCO.
Monday, April 07, 2008
For details on how to join in the festivities - and support the NIH in this important move which certainly takes us beyond borders - see Peter Suber's post on Open Access News.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
European Universities Association (EUA) urges universities to develop clear strategies to advance open access
Details of the policy and my comments can be found on The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics.
Thanks to Bernard Rentier and Stevan Harnad.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
You can view the video (recommended), hear the audio and read the transcript.
This is an excellent report on the flooding of Bangladesh and the impact of even a modest rise in sea level of just a few feet, a process which seems already to have begun. The consensus is that such a rise is quite within the realm of possibility (for an intelligent overview, see, for example, http://urltea.com/31jr and click the Go button).
In Bangladesh, they get it from both sides, the rising ocean on the coast, and the increasing expansion and flooding of their major rivers owing to increased runoff from snow melting in the Himalayas. The latter leads to major flooding in central areas within Bangladesh. indeed, a good half of the entire country has the potential to flood as land-based ice melts around the globe.
For some perspective, Bangladesh occupies an area of 144 km² , about the same size as New York state (142 km²). The US itself is about 9.6 million km² . The population of Bangladesh (about 150 million) is about half that of the United States. The aforementioned flooding has the potential to displace a good half of the population of Bangladesh, 70 million people! As this climate change progresses, irrespective of the cause, we can expect massive population shifts globally during the current century. Massive opportunities exist to prepare for and capitalize on the increasing need for goods, services, transportation, distribution, housing, etc.
Think big, think bigger, plan, do. Involve other people.
A success story about fighting tuberculosis in Bangladesh!
I recommend watching the video on this page. There is also an audio link and transcript.
One of the things that struck me about his was that this is not really an issue of technology, science or medicine, but of distribution, monitoring and compliance. The skills required for effectiveness are organizational and relational. So many of us are focused on what we know rather than on what our customer, client, consumer or end user actually needs. It is crucial to have direct contact with the people we serve in order to know what and how to provide what is needed.
This TB treatment and prevention program is worth understanding and possibly duplicating for some of our own efforts. Indeed, for some things that we may wish to do, perhaps we would utilize their existing system of people and resources.
Friday, March 28, 2008
If I remember correctly, the National Research Council said within the last 2 years that it was achievable to raise fuel economy standards by 5-7 MPG without a significant effect on the cost of a vehicle.
Oh yeah, and see here:
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
"Earlier this month, the American Waterworks Association Research Foundation tested 20 of the nation's water systems for compounds typically used in medicines, household cleaners and cosmetics and found San Francisco's water almost alone in being free of contaminants. And blind taste tests have also shown that the city's water tastes as good as, and in some cases better than, bottled water."
SF water comes from Hetch Hetchy, a beautiful resevoir north of Yosemite. After all of the recent reports on pharmaceuticals in the tap water of many areas of the country, it is nice to know that the tap water in San Francisco is still drinkable.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
We need to share the road, meaning: give as much room to cyclists as you can without compromising your safety with oncoming traffic. If it looks like you can't pass safely, then please WAIT! until it is clear to pass. Please don't forget that bicyclists are considered to be vehicles on the road, too, and your car is much heavier that they are!
Just think of the CO2 you're saving by riding a bike to work!
UPDATE: the numbers are out from the CA CHP:
As a cyclist, I think these numbers are skewed against us, but I have also seen many unsafe riders.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Sheeran (UN) noted that in some countries food was available, but cost too much for the poor to buy it, or, as she put it “markets full of food with scores of people simply unable to afford it. These conditions have triggered food riots from Cameroon to Burkina Faso to Indonesia to Mexico and beyond.”
Food, she reminded the European Parliament, is a geostrategic issue, just as oil is.
“This challenge may be one of the most critical peace and security issues of our time. Fragile democracies are feeling the pressure of food insecurity; food riots have erupted throughout the globe,” she said.
Don't forget about water rights...
Thursday, March 13, 2008
When the OMB's Susan E. Dudley urged the EPA to consider the effects of cutting ozone further on "economic values and on personal comfort and well-being," the EPA's Marcus Peacock responded in a March 7 memo: "EPA is not aware of any information that ozone has beneficial effects on economic values or on personal comfort and well being.
Click the title for a link to the WaPo article
CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, is pleased to announce that it will contribute to the Wikipedia project. CAS will work with Wikipedia to help provide accurate CAS Registry Numbers® for current substances listed in Wikiprojects-Chemicals section of the Wikipedia Chemistry Portal that are of widespread general public interest.
The CAS Registry is the world’s most comprehensive collection of chemical substances and the CAS Registry Number is the recognized global standard for chemical substance identification.
CAS views Wikipedia as an important societal tool for the general public, and this collaboration with Wikipedia is in line with CAS’ mission as a Division of the American Chemical Society.
We look forward to working with the Wikipedia volunteers over the next few weeks to make this happen.
Kudos to CAS and the American Chemical Society - what a great contribution to Open Chemistry!
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Returning to the US is always like diving in from outer space. It does not seem real.
This years trip to Cameroon was a difficult one. On arrival two children in our school died on Malaria, two easily preventable death. Four year old Benwih (picture) survived because her mother knew how to turn adult malaria pills into pediatric drugs. One funeral after another followed week by week. Nothing worked according to plan. Nothing happened the way it had been anticipated. But the expectations on us as "givers" where sky high. This was in part fueled by our last years capacity of gifts/donations carried by six volunteers. There was no way for me to match this.
Having said that the trip was also utterly successful. We as in AIDSfreeAFRICA strengthened our relationships with Cameroonians and made many more friends. I trained a technician at the Cameroonian Baptist Convention on how to produce a diagnostic reagent that is usually in short supply but urgently needed by AIDS treatment centers and hospitals. We delivered donations in form of vitamins, skin lotions, mosquito nets, tooth brushes, sewing supplies, and crocheting yarn.
On the pharmaceutical side of our work, the trip was in part supported by a grant from Tibotec, a Belgium based Pharmaceutical outfit. With their help I established the a non-profit program selling an antifungal at cost. To accomplish this we were enabled to hire four Cameroonians for the various aspects of the project. They are Eric the sales manager (picture next to me), Tamukum the medical delegate (picture middle), Suh Theresia Bi our secretary and Richard a pharmacist who will be conducting a feasibility study. The jobs are not full time and as of yet limited to a year or less but they create jobs for Cameroonians who educated themselves and would otherwise have to leave the country for employment. Pharmacist Charles Boyo (picture far right) from Bamenda joined us as well. We appreciate his generous gift of his expertise in handling this project.
Now back in the US my job is very clear: We need to raise US$ 50,000.00 to buy and ship a blister packaging machine to Cameroon. This machine is the missing link between now and the start of production - with production meaning packaging drugs bought as bulk tablets from India - Acquiring this machine for Diamond Pharmaceutical is a pivotal step that has more impact than what is visible to the bare eye.
I challenge everyone - no I beg everyone of you to send a check or go on-line to our web site www.AIDSfreeAFRICA.org and use paypal for your most generous contribution. Please ask your friends, colleagues and tell your neighbors. The US Ambassador Janet Garvey put it succinctly when she said: "Cameroonians will be so proud when they learn that their country produces drugs." Yes, so am I am and so should you. Thank you everyone at home in the US, Europe and in Cameroon.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
* Here's a digest of the most important of the recommendations. European universities should...
1. launch OAI-compliant institutional repositories (A2)
2. adopt OA mandates for their research output (A3)
3. educate faculty about copyright and encourage the removal of permission barriers at least for users in the author's institution (A4)
4. consider paying publication fees for faculty who publish in fee-based OA journals (A5)
5. work with public funding agencies with OA mandates to encourage deposit in institutional repositories (B1)
6. educate university rectors about the importance of OA (B2)
7. support OA mandates for publicly-funded research in the EU (C1)
Kudos especially to Lesley Wilson, Secretary General of the EUA, and Sijbolt Noorda, chair of the Working Group on Open Access. Thanks to Stevan Harnad for breaking the news, and to Peter Suber for comments and summary.
My comments: this is huge; it sets the direction for European universities. It will take some time, of course, for each university to set its own policies and procedures, and a bit longer for these policies and procedures to take effect. Other jurisdictions are likely to follow the European example, each in its own time. Even if the impact is not felt immediately, the importance of this endorsement should not be underestimated.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
The final text of the NIH policy has been posted:
and a very interesting FAQ
The European Research Council has announced an exemplary Open Access Policy - open access to funded research within 6 months, no loopholes, and an indication that the 6-month maximum will be shortened! For links and a summary, see Peter Suber's Open Access News.
As always, the best way to keep with the latest developments is to tune into Peter Suber's Open Access News.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Happy New Year and Peace on Earth!
I want to take this opportunity and thank our donors. You are too many to all be listed individually but a few I will introduce to you all and explain the purposes that are attached to the donations.
Thank you to our 200+ donors during the year 2007 who have given big and small to our main cause: supporting people in Africa to produce drugs. We are pushing hard on this and before I come home Diamond Pharmaceutical will be producing a diagnostic reagent that the Hospitals and AIDS testing centers need to make sure patients are on the right combination of AIDS drugs. Most recently my hiking buddy Susan has contributed $500.
Gary Ostrow, Dr. DO PC donated $1800 towards the $6000 we need to give a micro loan so a very successful new school can move onto their own land and continue to grow in peace. He also donated $800 to buy mosquito nets. Pictures on that to follow soon.
Phyllis Pawlovsky and Ann Higgins are our sponsors. That means they contribute continuously on a monthly base.
Jeff Hurst from Herschey Pensilvania donated an analytical balance
Elliott Bay donated some of the chemicals we need to produce the diagnostic solution. He also donated an electrode to measure the pH of a solution, that is to measure how acidic or basic an aqueous solution is.
Susan from Rockland County was so kind to give us her mothers sewing supplies. See pictures below from Weh.
My dentist Lenore Schwartz, White Plains, NY donated toothbrushes and tooth paste for children living in a poor neighborhood in Bamenda.
This trip is sponsored in part by Tibotec, a company based in Belgium. They produce a very efficient and userfriendly antifungal drug and are making the drug available on a non-profit base in countries in Africa. Tibotec gave us a grant to find out what it takes so that this drug can be distribued and sold in Cameroon. We also want to find out if the doctors as well as the patients like the drug - as of today this question can be answered with a resounding YES. Fungus infections are very comon in Africa. Children have it in form of ring worms. That is a white flaky, itchy coloring on the head. Women know it as yeast infections and AIDS patients have it in the mouth and esaphokes and it is called thrush. It is one of the opportunistic infections of HIV/AIDS. Although thrush does not kill directly, the patient have difficulty eating and swallowing. Thus they stop taking in enough food. Unfortunately AIDS drugs require a patient to eat sufficiently. We are very hopeful that the drug will be allowed to be distributed through the already existing Cameroon Drug Procurement and Distribution Agencies.
I am looking forward to 2008 as the year in which we raise 1/2 a million US dollar. We have almost everything in place. What is now holding us back is lack of funding. I urge you to continue to be generous. Our web site www.AIDSfreeAFRICA.org offers the convinient PAYPAL credit card option. Your checks are always welcome.
With heaps of love and peace |
An Introduction to Beekeeping (£200)
Our two-day weekend course is one of the most comprehensive beginners’ beekeeping courses available on the market today. Covering bee disease and pests, husbandry skills, siting of apiaries, keeping bees in urban environments, components and the different types of the hives, making frames, various pieces of different beekeeping equipment, through hands on practical sessions, and PowerPoint lectures, which will include the inspection of several nearby sets of hives, providing the weather is permitting.
This intensive course weekend, is based on the ‘Introduction to Beekeeping’ syllabus, from the British Beekeepers Association, but is designed with a specific focus on keeping bees within an urban city environment. It is designed to ensure attendees are equipped with the basic skills and knowledge that they will need to keep their own bees productively and safely.
All attendees will get membership for the year of KBKA (Bromley Branch), in addition to annual membership of the British Beekeeping Association . In addition, those who may wish to eventually keep bees of their own will be allocated to an experienced mentor for a whole bee season. This is a unique and important service, which will help to prepare you to start keeping your own bees.
Please note that we are unable to guarantee finding you a mentor in the area you reside, but we will try to do the very best we can.
VENUE IN SE15 TO BE ANNOUNCED SHORTLY. |
Tuesday’s Tips – Disappearing Bumble Bees
Bees and Chicks: Adventures in organic gardening and beekeeping
We’ve written a lot about Colony Collapse Disorder and the nearly overwhelming problems that affect honey bees, but things are at least as dire for our native bees, most notably the lovely bumble bee.
Bumbles are the stuff of our childhood memories. Who, when remembering walks through wildflower fields, doesn’t see in their mind’s eye fuzzy, funny bumble bees drifting from flower to flower? These pollinators were plentiful years ago, but now, like many plants and animals, bumbles are suffering from loss of habitat, pesticide poisoning, changing climates, and diseases that were introduced along with non-native bees.
There are almost 50 bumble bee species native to North America and many of them are threatened not with just a serious decline in numbers, but with extinction. In a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a study done over the last three years shows a widespread pattern of decline in bumble bee populations. The western bumble bee, the rusty-patched bumble bee and yellow-banded bumble bee used to be very common, but their numbers have decreased by 96 percent and their range shrunk by as much as 87 percent. (This is video Native Bumblebees features an interview with Scott Black of the Xerces Society who’s been tracking the disappearance of the western bumble bees in Oregon.) Franklin’s bumble bee, found in a relatively small area covering southern Oregon and northern California, is now thought to be extinct.
Many other bumble bee species have also experienced serious declines in their numbers and ranges which is a big problem because bumbles are an important pollinator for high-value crops such as cranberries, blueberries and clover. They are also important elements in many ecosystems, pollinating wildflowers and plants that produce seeds and fruits that feed everything from songbirds to bears.
Bumble bees are unique in that they are able to fly in colder weather than other bee species and this makes them key pollinators for native plants in the tundra, prairie and higher elevation climates. In fact bumble bees are the most effective pollinators for certain plants and seem to have evolved along with particular species of plants — the length of their tongues is exactly what is required to pollinate them. So if that particular pollinator is in decline you can reasonably expect that the plant that depends on it will decline as well. And that’s exactly what appears to have happened in parts of Britain and the Netherlands where native insect-pollinated plants have declined along with bee populations.
There are many ways you can help bumbles survive and perhaps thrive. The most important is DON’T USE PESTICIDES in your gardens. The stuff on the shelf at your local big box stores and nurseries is dangerous to man and beast. Really, this stuff will poison you, your kids, the dog, the cat, the chickens, and any other creatures that happen to be in the vicinity. Make a resolution to forego poisons in your garden this year. (We’ll write a post or two about organic alternatives and how to safely use them in your garden soon.)
Other ways to help the bumble bees:
* Plant natives in your garden and plan for a succession of pollen and nectar-bearing blooms throughout the season.
* Bumbles like asters, bee balm, blueberries, borage, clovers, lupines, mints, and rhododendrons to name a few.
* Bumbles will nest lots of different places like logs, trees, old mouse burrows and grass tussocks. Leave a bit of your land wild if you can.
* Bumbles are very gentle and won’t act in a threatening manner. If you find a nest move away slowly and walk softly and they’ll leave you alone.
* Learn to identify the different types of bumble bees. Free I.D. guides can be downloaded here.
* You can participate in studies that are tracking bumble bees. Athena Anderson at the University of Georgia has developed a nest site survey to learn more about nest site and habitat features for bumble bees throughout North America and make this information available to anyone at no cost. If you find a bumble bee nest, please click on this link to fill out the survey and increase our knowledge of the range of native bumble bees: Bumble Bee Nest Survey
* The Xerces Society has asked that folks send them photos of yellow-banded and rusty-patched bumble bees and the locations where they were spotted. Email to firstname.lastname@example.org
May the bumbles be with you! Mary Beth and Barbara |
Capped frame of honey ready for extraction
Once the wax cappings are cut off with a hot knife, the frames are spun in this centerfuge
Family Honey Farm
Courtney removing a swarm @ a Stanford University Dorm
Then into this bucket for screening and bottling. The result is raw and unfiltered. All natural.
185 Pounds in July, 2017
TBD - Spring, 2018
Mama Q was inspired by a beekeeper she met at the Los Altos Farmers Market (Thursday nights May-September on State Street). Mama Q's apiary was founded in July, 2013 under the watchful eye of Wayne Pitts (Uvas Gold Apiary). A single brood box, turned into two before a honey super was added. With Wayne's retirement from commercial beekeeping, we added Mike Stang. Under his guidance, the first honey harvest was completed in early March 2015. The first 32 LB. batch of honey was bottled and went to family and friends and we took over management of the hives. We split the original hive in late March, 2015. In May, 2015, we aquired a swarm that created hive #3.
We became a commercial operation in September, 2016, when Draeger's started retailing our honey. By February 2017 we had 8 hives operational in 4 locations. By the summer, we've grown to 17 hives in 9 locations. |
(By Susan Salisbury – Palm Beach Post)
Once again, the American honeybee had a tough winter, but more and more people are pitching in to help save the troubled bees by becoming backyard beekeepers.
Commercial beekeepers reported losses of 30 percent of their colonies, similar to results reported during the past five years, according to survey results released Monday. The survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the U.S. Department of Agriculture covered October through April.
Colony Collapse Disorder, a phenomenon in which an entire colony of bees abruptly disappears from its hives, appears to still be occurring. It was first reported by Florida beekeeper Dave Hackenberg in 2006, and since then abandoned hives have been reported worldwide.
About one-third of commercial beekeepers who participated in the most recent survey said they lost at least some of their colonies without finding dead bees. Exactly why the bees are disappearing from their hives is not known, although scientists suspect it’s due to a combination of factors such as stress, poor diet, diseases and pests.
Jerry Hayes, assistant bureau chief of apiary inspection for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in Gainesville, said there’s an upside.
“Because of CCD, our numbers of residential backyard beekeepers has grown phenomenally, from 700 or 800 to around 2,000 registered backyard beekeepers. They have heard about honeybees. They want to save the world. It is amazing,” Hayes said.
Boynton Beach resident Judy Leger, a retired Siemens project manager, took up the hobby four years ago and has 18 hives on her half-acre property. She enjoys the many flavors and colors of honey they produce.
Leger’s interest was sparked after honeybees set up housekeeping inside her kitchen’s soffit, and she called the Palm Beach County Beekeepers Association to remove them. Aware of the bee’s struggles, she didn’t want them destroyed.
“People are more sensitive to the fact that the honeybees are the good bees and because they are suffering from CCD, people want to save them,” she said.
The Palm Beach County Beekeepers Association, founded in 1974, has grown from fewer than 20 members to more than 130 in the last few years.
Brendhan Horne, a suburban West Palm Beach hobbyist beekeeper who also operates a bee removal business, Bee Barf, has witnessed and helped spur the hobby’s growth in the seven years he has been involved. The honeybee losses have thrust the insects into the limelight.
“People want to try to preserve something they recognize as important, because of bees pollinating the food supply,” said Horne, a past president of the beekeepers association. “With the green movement, here is something they can do. You don’t have to have 2,000 hives; you can have one or two.”
Horne said many homeowner associations prohibit beekeeping, but some other areas allow it.
Through the beekeepers association, Horne organized the third annual Southeast Organic Beekeepers Conference in West Palm Beach in February.
Horne and other organic beekeepers say they have not seen any evidence of CCD, but unlike commercial bees, the backyard bees aren’t hauled around the country to pollinate various crops.
Hayes said if it wasn’t for the fact that commercial beekeepers split their hives’ populations so the bees can establish a new hive, there would be no bees left. The process is expensive, and replacing 30 percent of the nation’s colonies is not considered sustainable over the long term. |
We are having a very busy time right now! Honey bee season is fast upon us. The weather warmed up extra early this year which sent even more people into a beekeeping frenzy than usual and consequently swamped us. We are grateful for our customers this year-- we tripled our business in the month of February. We had no idea this would happen --no projections would have prepared us for that. Perhaps a 10 percent increase in business, maybe even 20--but triple? Thank you to those of you who are now our new customers, those of you returning again, and for those of you who go out of your way to tell people about us and send more on to us.
In the middle of our busiest season, our youngest daughter Karee eloped to Montana with our IT guy Jesse, who is also one of our shop carpenters. We've also had our shop shut down for weekends on end now so we can teach classes, vend at other classes, or be at conferences in the tri-state area. We hired four new people to help us out this year, so I won't be the only one you talk to on the phone anymore, but please make the other gals (and guys) as happy and blessed as you have made me over the years.
This year I noticed a different pattern in the students in our classes. Typically we get only people wanting to start beekeeping, or wondering if they can do it or have enough money. But this year I noticed many folks who come just to learn more about this incredible creature and find out what they can do to help without becoming a beekeeper.
Here are some of the best ways you can help: 1) Try to limit or completely stop using pesticides on your lawn, gardens and flowers. If you absolutely have to use something, try something more organic (although if it's still claiming it's a pesticide, it doesn't really matter if it's organic or not, right?) or try using a liquid late in the evening after the bees are back home that can dry before daylight. Stop spraying those dandelions! Bees LOVE dandelions and it makes the best honey. Don't use a powder pesticide. 2) Let wild areas grow up in your yard, and stop mowing ditches and fence rows. I know it doesn't always look that great, but bees have less and less area to forage now, and this is one thing you can do to help. Try to persuade your farmer neighbors to leave the edges of their fields and ditches alone too. I know it looks more tidy when they mow from the edge of their field down to the road, but think of all the wild flowers that get mowed down. 3) Advocate for the bees if you can. You need a little bit of knowledge for this--but some ideas would be to have a showing of a movie like Vanishing of the Bees, or Nicotine Bees at your local library or school and invite the public; ask your local nature center if they would hold a bee workshop (many, many of them do) either for adults or in their children's summer camps; donate books on bees to your local library--both for adults and children and 4) plant flowers and plants that bring bees and other beneficial insects into your yard.
I don't often see bees on plants like daffodils, tulips, roses or lilies, but early plants they love include boxwood, dandelions, clover, borage and many budding and flowering trees. Mid summer plants and flowers include mint, catnip, flowering herbs, cilantro, and of course vegetables flowering in your garden. I also let some items in my garden flower that typically we eat before it flowers--like the lettuce for example, just so the bees will use some of it. Late in the year, my bees love my cosmos, sunflowers, lavender, sage, coneflowers and seedum.
You can help even if you don't want to be a beekeeper! |
Who We Are
Our mission at Distelrath Farms is to provide an agriculturally-immersive, individualized education that fosters growth and builds character.
More specifically, we use the teachable moments and practical skills inherent in agriculture to guide children to be independent, curious, and world-wise. We leave behind the rote memorization and standardized testing in favor of a more personalized education, where our students are constantly challenged to apply what they learn to everyday situations. We acknowledge our students' successes and failures, and encourage improvement no matter the outcome.
We strive to promote values that guide individuals to become:
- Life-long learners
What We Do
There is never a dull moment at Distelrath. From beekeeping, to picking flowers, to making friends with our resident birds and beasts...our students interact with the world in fascinating ways!
Take a look at some of our favorite moments: |
Ted Dennard is the founder, President and head beekeeper for Savannah Bee Company. An elderly beekeeper, Roy Hightower, sparked young Ted’s journey in the magical world of bees and honey and it’s been 35 years of it ever since. Ted backed into business in 1999 when his friend opened a store in Savannah and began selling his tupelo honey. Ted’s passionate about sharing the world of bees with others and introducing new honeybee products to market. He loves his family and surfs when he can.
"Savannah Bee Company grew out of my passion for bees, beekeeping and honey. Our specialty honey is the culmination of a 35 year search for the world’s best. Our beauty products deliver real benefits derived from treasured hive ingredients– beeswax, royal jelly, propolis, and honey. " ~Ted
Images are a representative selection of available collection. Please call or email to find out more about our current inventory. We ship within the continental US and can process orders over the phone.
(C) 1998, 2016 Heart of the Home. All Rights Reserved. Images from this site may not be reproduced in any way without prior written permission of Heart of the Home and/or the artist whose work is portrayed. |
Subject Index. Variation of surface electric field during geomagnetic disturbed period at Maitri, Antarctica. 1721. Geomorphology. A simple depression-filling method for raster and irregular elevation datasets. 1653. Decision Support System integrated with Geographic. Information System to target restoration actions in water-.
IJBE Volume 1
Full Text Available SUBJECT INDEX IJBE VOLUME 1EPA, 1Agrotourism, 148AHP, 148balance scorecard, 63batik tulis Rolla Junior, 23Broiler, 90business model canvas, 137business performance,32capital structure, 81cashew industry,158CHAID,106CLI,42coal transportation service,63company’s characteristics, 81competitive advantage, 12competitive strategy, 127consumer satisfaction, 51CSI, 42customer loyalty, 42customer satisfaction,42decision of visitors, 72development strategy, 23development,158entrepreneurship, 32Feasibility studies, 90FEM, 81gap analysis, 1Indonesia Stock Exchange, 177Indosat, 137investor,177Kawah Putih, 72kedai sop durian lodaya (KSDL,51klassen typology, 96leading sector, 96less cash society, 137liquidity ratio, 165location quotient, 96logistic regression, 115market, 177marketing development strategy, 148Marketing mix, 72mobile payment, 137modern and Traditional cage, 90multiple regression analyse,165multiple regression, 177net working capital, 165organic tofu product, 115Padang, 106paired comparison, 63partnership, 1, 32Pecking Order Theory, 81PLS, 81Portfolio, 96power, 32product quality, 51profitability ratio, 165Prol Tape Primadona, 127purchase decision, 115purchase intention, 51purchasing interest,115QSPM, 23, 127refilled drinking water, 106seed,1segmentation, 106SEM, 42, 51service quality, 51SMEs, 96specialty coffee, 12stock,177strategic diagnosis,137strategy, 158Sukorambi Botanic Garden, 148SWOT, 23, 127, 148, 158SWOT-AHP, 12tourists,72UD. Primadona, 127value chain, 12VRIO,12 AUTHOR INDEX IJBE VOLUME 1Adiningsih, Kartika Puspitasari,42Aknesia, Vharessa,12Amalia, Firda Rachma,90Andati, Trias, 177Anggraeni, Lukytawati,23Asriani,158Daryanto, Arief,12, 90Djamaludin, MD., 42Djohar, Setiadi,96Fachrodji, Achmad,72Fahmi, Idqan,1, 63, 127Fasyni, Awisal,106Hubeis, Musa,148Iskandar, Dodi,51Juanda, Bambang, 165Kirbrandoko, 12, 106, 115Lumbantoruan, Dewi Margareth,96Maulana, TB Nur Ahmad,81Muksin, 148Mukti Soleh, Cecep,63Najib, Mukhamad,106Noor, Tajudin,81
IJBE Volume 2
Full Text Available SUBJECT INDEX IJBE VOLUME 2access credit, 93acquisition, 177AHP, 61, 82, 165arena simulation,43BMC, 69Bojonegoro, 69brand choice, 208brand image, 208brand positioning, 208bullwhip effect, 43burger buns, 1business synergy and financial reports, 177capital structure, 130cluster, 151coal reserves, 130coffee plantation, 93competitiveness, 82consumer behaviour, 33consumer complaint behavior, 101cooking spices, 1crackers, 1cross sectional analytical, 139crosstab, 101CSI, 12direct selling, 122discriminant analysis, 33economic value added, 130, 187employee motivation, 112employee performance, 112employees, 139EOQ, 23farmer decisions, 93farmer group, 52financial performance evaluation, 187financial performance, 52, 177financial ratio, 187financial report, 187fiva food, 23food crops, 151horticulture, 151imports, 151improved capital structure, 177IPA, 12leading sector, 151life insurance, 165LotteMart, 43main product, 61marketing mix, 33, 165matrix SWOT, 69MPE, 61multiple linear regression, 122muslim clothing, 197Ogun, 139Pangasius fillet, 82Pati, 93pearson correlation, 101perceived value, 208performance suppy chain, 23PLS, 208POQ, 23portfolio analyzing, 1product, 101PT SKP, 122pulp and papers, 187purchase decision, 165purchase intention, 33remuneration, 112re-purchasing decisions, 197sales performance, 122sawmill, 52SCOR, 23sekolah peternakan rakyat, 69SEM, 112SERVQUAL, 12Sido Makmur farmer groups, 93SI-PUHH Online, 12small and medium industries (IKM, 61socio-demographic, 139sport drink, 208stress, 139supply chain, 43SWOT, 82the mix marketing, 197Tobin’s Q, 130trade partnership, 52uleg chili sauce, 1 AUTHOR INDEX IJBE VOLUME 2Achsani, Noer Azam, 177Andati, Trias, 52, 177Andihka, Galih, 208Arkeman, Yandra, 43Baga, Lukman M, 69Cahyanugroho, Aldi, 112Daryanto, Arief, 12David, Ajibade, 139Djoni, 122Fahmi, Idqan, 1Fattah, Muhammad Unggul Abdul, 61Hakim, Dedi Budiman, 187Harianto, 93Hartoyo, 101Homisah, 1Hubeis, Musa, 112Hutagaol, M. Parulian, 93Jaya, Stevana
Teng Geng; Fu Xu; Han Mei; Wei Meng; Zhibo Chen; Changqing Lai
Traditional parser generators use deterministic parsing methods. These methods can not meet the parsing requirements of software reverse engineering effectively. A new parser generator is presented which can generate GLR parser with automatic error recovery. The generated GLR parser has comparable parsing speed with the traditional LALR(1) parser and can be used in the parsing of software reverse engineering.
Historical physiological data for Golden Delicious and Starking apples (Malus domestica Borkh.) from various orchards in the Ceres area were analysed. Significant correlations were obtained between the SI and subjective predictions of the release date for harvesting, after adapting the local starch breakdown values.
Brown, A. G.; And Others
This is the second of two volumes dealing with practical classification and subject indexing. The programed text considers use of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) and techniques of cross referencing based on UDC in the construction of classified and alphabetical subject catalogs. (Author/LS)
Azeredo, Leandro M; Nemer, Sérgio N; Barbas, Carmen Sv; Caldeira, Jefferson B; Noé, Rosângela; Guimarães, Bruno L; Caldas, Célia P
With increasing life expectancy and ICU admission of elderly patients, mechanical ventilation, and weaning trials have increased worldwide. We evaluated a cohort with 479 subjects in the ICU. Patients younger than 18 y, tracheostomized, or with neurologic diseases were excluded, resulting in 331 subjects. Subjects ≥70 y old were considered elderly, whereas those elderly. Besides the conventional weaning indexes, we evaluated the performance of the integrative weaning index (IWI). The probability of successful weaning was investigated using relative risk and logistic regression. The Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test was used to calibrate and the C statistic was calculated to evaluate the association between predicted probabilities and observed proportions in the logistic regression model. Prevalence of successful weaning in the sample was 83.7%. There was no difference in mortality between elderly and non-elderly subjects (P = .16), in days of mechanical ventilation (P = .22) and days of weaning (P = .55). In elderly subjects, the IWI was the only respiratory variable associated with mechanical ventilation weaning in this population (P elderly subjects that may contribute to the critical moment of this population in intensive care. Copyright © 2017 by Daedalus Enterprises.
Benjamin J Moss
Full Text Available Regulation of synaptic AMPA receptor levels is a major mechanism underlying homeostatic synaptic scaling. While in vitro studies have implicated several molecules in synaptic scaling, the in vivo mechanisms linking chronic changes in synaptic activity to alterations in AMPA receptor expression are not well understood. Here we use a genetic approach in C. elegans to dissect a negative feedback pathway coupling levels of the AMPA receptor GLR-1 with its own transcription. GLR-1 trafficking mutants with decreased synaptic receptors in the ventral nerve cord (VNC exhibit compensatory increases in glr-1 mRNA, which can be attributed to increased glr-1 transcription. Glutamatergic transmission mutants lacking presynaptic eat-4/VGLUT or postsynaptic glr-1, exhibit compensatory increases in glr-1 transcription, suggesting that loss of GLR-1 activity is sufficient to trigger the feedback pathway. Direct and specific inhibition of GLR-1-expressing neurons using a chemical genetic silencing approach also results in increased glr-1 transcription. Conversely, expression of a constitutively active version of GLR-1 results in decreased glr-1 transcription, suggesting that bidirectional changes in GLR-1 signaling results in reciprocal alterations in glr-1 transcription. We identify the CMK-1/CaMK signaling axis as a mediator of the glr-1 transcriptional feedback mechanism. Loss-of-function mutations in the upstream kinase ckk-1/CaMKK, the CaM kinase cmk-1/CaMK, or a downstream transcription factor crh-1/CREB, result in increased glr-1 transcription, suggesting that the CMK-1 signaling pathway functions to repress glr-1 transcription. Genetic double mutant analyses suggest that CMK-1 signaling is required for the glr-1 transcriptional feedback pathway. Furthermore, alterations in GLR-1 signaling that trigger the feedback mechanism also regulate the nucleocytoplasmic distribution of CMK-1, and activated, nuclear-localized CMK-1 blocks the feedback pathway. We
Moss, Benjamin J.; Park, Lidia; Dahlberg, Caroline L.; Juo, Peter
Regulation of synaptic AMPA receptor levels is a major mechanism underlying homeostatic synaptic scaling. While in vitro studies have implicated several molecules in synaptic scaling, the in vivo mechanisms linking chronic changes in synaptic activity to alterations in AMPA receptor expression are not well understood. Here we use a genetic approach in C. elegans to dissect a negative feedback pathway coupling levels of the AMPA receptor GLR-1 with its own transcription. GLR-1 trafficking mutants with decreased synaptic receptors in the ventral nerve cord (VNC) exhibit compensatory increases in glr-1 mRNA, which can be attributed to increased glr-1 transcription. Glutamatergic transmission mutants lacking presynaptic eat-4/VGLUT or postsynaptic glr-1, exhibit compensatory increases in glr-1 transcription, suggesting that loss of GLR-1 activity is sufficient to trigger the feedback pathway. Direct and specific inhibition of GLR-1-expressing neurons using a chemical genetic silencing approach also results in increased glr-1 transcription. Conversely, expression of a constitutively active version of GLR-1 results in decreased glr-1 transcription, suggesting that bidirectional changes in GLR-1 signaling results in reciprocal alterations in glr-1 transcription. We identify the CMK-1/CaMK signaling axis as a mediator of the glr-1 transcriptional feedback mechanism. Loss-of-function mutations in the upstream kinase ckk-1/CaMKK, the CaM kinase cmk-1/CaMK, or a downstream transcription factor crh-1/CREB, result in increased glr-1 transcription, suggesting that the CMK-1 signaling pathway functions to repress glr-1 transcription. Genetic double mutant analyses suggest that CMK-1 signaling is required for the glr-1 transcriptional feedback pathway. Furthermore, alterations in GLR-1 signaling that trigger the feedback mechanism also regulate the nucleocytoplasmic distribution of CMK-1, and activated, nuclear-localized CMK-1 blocks the feedback pathway. We propose a model in
Moura, Fernanda M L; Dias, Rosa M; Araujo, Eliete C; Brasil, Laélia M B F; Ferreira, Michelle V D; Vieira, Jose L F
The physiological changes in obese subjects can modify the pharmacokinetic profiles of drugs influencing the therapeutic efficacy. In this study, the authors compare plasma dapsone trough levels of multibacillary leprosy subjects stratified by body mass index (BMI) to evaluate if obesity plays a significant role on drug levels. The relationship between drug levels and BMI was also determined. Dapsone was measured by high-performance liquid chromatography and BMI based on World Health Organization criteria. At steady state, the median plasma dapsone trough level was significantly lower in obesity class 2 group, when compared with other groups, but they were similar between normal weight and preobesity groups. A weak association between drug levels and BMI was observed. Obesity promotes a significant reduction in plasma dapsone trough levels of subjects with multibacillary leprosy with a weak association between drug levels and BMI.
Layton, Danielle M; Clarke, Michael
To assess the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) indexing of articles that employed time-to-event analyses to report outcomes of dental treatment in patients. Articles published in 2008 in 50 dental journals with the highest impact factors were hand searched to identify articles reporting dental treatment outcomes over time in human subjects with time-to-event statistics (included, n = 95), without time-to-event statistics (active controls, n = 91), and all other articles (passive controls, n = 6,769). The search was systematic (kappa 0.92 for screening, 0.86 for eligibility). Outcome-, statistic- and time-related MeSH were identified, and differences in allocation between groups were analyzed with chi-square and Fischer exact statistics. The most frequently allocated MeSH for included and active control articles were "dental restoration failure" (77% and 52%, respectively) and "treatment outcome" (54% and 48%, respectively). Outcome MeSH was similar between these groups (86% and 77%, respectively) and significantly greater than passive controls (10%, P indexed as such. Significantly more time-related MeSH were allocated to the included than the active controls (92% and 79%, respectively, P = .02), or to the passive controls (22%, P < .001). MeSH allocation within MEDLINE to time-to-event dental articles was inaccurate and inconsistent. Statistical MeSH were omitted from 30% of the included articles and incorrectly allocated to 15% of active controls. Such errors adversely impact search accuracy.
A. V. Korotkov
Full Text Available The aim of the research is to analyze the subject matter of a country’s competitiveness and to characterize statistical indexes of competitiveness known in the international practice from the perspective of a more elaborated theory of market competition. This aim follows from the identified problems. First, there are no generally accepted interpretation and joint understanding of competition and competitiveness at country level. Even the international organizations giving estimations of global competitiveness disagree on definitions of competitiveness. Secondly, there is no relation to the theory of market competition in the available source materials on competitiveness of the country without original methodology. Thirdly, well-known statistical indexes of global competitiveness do not have enough theoretical justification and differ in sets of factors. All this highlights the incompleteness of the methodology and methodological support of studying competitiveness at country level.Materials and methods. The research is based on the methodology of statistics, economic theory and marketing. The authors followed the basic principle of statistical methodology – requirement of continuous combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis, when the research begins and ends with qualitative analysis. A most important section of statistical methodology is widely used – construction of statistical indexes. In the course of the analysis, a method of statistical classifications is applied. A significant role in the present research is given to the method of generalizing and analogue method, realizing that related terms should mean similar and almost similar contents. Modeling of competition and competitiveness is widely used in the present research, which made it possible to develop a logical model of competition following from the competition theory.Results. Based on the definitions’ survey the analysis of the subject matter of global
Z. M. Patel
Full Text Available Background. Morbidly obese patients demonstrate altered olfactory acuity. There has been no study directly assessing Body Mass Index (BMI in patients with olfactory dysfunction. Our purpose was to compare BMI in a group of patients with subjective olfactory dysfunction to those without subjective olfactory complaints. Methods. Retrospective matched case-control study. Sixty patients who presented to a tertiary care otolaryngology center with subjective smell dysfunction over one year were identified. Neoplastic and obstructive etiologies were excluded. Demographics, BMI, and smoking status were reviewed. Sixty age, gender, and race matched control patients were selected for comparison. Chi-square testing was used. Results. 48 out of 60 patients (80% in the olfactory dysfunction group fell into the overweight or obese categories, compared to 36 out of 60 patients (60% in the control group. There was a statistically significant difference between the olfactory dysfunction and control groups for this stratified BMI (p= 0.0168. Conclusion. This study suggests high BMI is associated with olfactory dysfunction. Prospective clinical research should examine this further to determine if increasing BMI may be a risk factor in olfactory loss and to elucidate what role olfactory loss may play in diet and feeding habits of obese patients.
Anna T Tillmann
Full Text Available The major fungal pathogen of humans, Candida albicans, is exposed to reactive nitrogen and oxygen species following phagocytosis by host immune cells. In response to these toxins, this fungus activates potent anti-stress responses that include scavenging of reactive nitrosative and oxidative species via the glutathione system. Here we examine the differential roles of two glutathione recycling enzymes in redox homeostasis, stress adaptation and virulence in C. albicans: glutathione reductase (Glr1 and the S-nitrosoglutathione reductase (GSNOR, Fdh3. We show that the NADPH-dependent Glr1 recycles GSSG to GSH, is induced in response to oxidative stress and is required for resistance to macrophage killing. GLR1 deletion increases the sensitivity of C. albicans cells to H2O2, but not to formaldehyde or NO. In contrast, Fdh3 detoxifies GSNO to GSSG and NH3, and FDH3 inactivation delays NO adaptation and increases NO sensitivity. C. albicans fdh3⎔ cells are also sensitive to formaldehyde, suggesting that Fdh3 also contributes to formaldehyde detoxification. FDH3 is induced in response to nitrosative, oxidative and formaldehyde stress, and fdh3Δ cells are more sensitive to killing by macrophages. Both Glr1 and Fdh3 contribute to virulence in the Galleria mellonella and mouse models of systemic infection. We conclude that Glr1 and Fdh3 play differential roles during the adaptation of C. albicans cells to oxidative, nitrosative and formaldehyde stress, and hence during the colonisation of the host. Our findings emphasise the importance of the glutathione system and the maintenance of intracellular redox homeostasis in this major pathogen.
Singh, Shashi Kant; Chien, Ching-Te; Chang, Ing-Feng
In Arabidopsis, 20 genes encode putative glutamate receptor-like proteins (AtGLRs). However, the functions of most genes are unknown. In this study, our results revealed that loss of function of AtGLR3.6 (atglr3.6-1) leads to reduced primary root growth and fewer lateral roots, whereas AtGLR3.6 overexpression induced both primary and lateral root growth. The glr3.6-1 mutant exhibited a smaller root meristem size compared with the wild type, indicating that AtGLR3.6 controls root meristem size. In addition, atglr3.6-1 roots show a decreased mitotic activity accounting for the reduced root meristem size. Furthermore, expression of a gene encoding a cell cycle inhibitor, the cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) inhibitor Kip-related protein 4 (KRP4), was significantly up-regulated in the mutant and down-regulated in AtGLR3.6-overexpressing roots, suggesting a role for KRP4 in AtGLR3.6-mediated root meristem maintenance. Importantly, the atglr3.6-1 mutant recovered most of its root growth when KRP4 expression is down-regulated, whereas elevated KRP4 expression in AtGLR3.6-overexpressing plants phenocopied the wild-type root growth, implying an underlying relationship between AtGLR3.6 and KRP4 genes. Cytosolic Ca(2+) elevation is reduced in atglr3.6-1 roots, suggesting impaired calcium signaling. Moreover, calcium treatment reduced the level of KRP4 and hence induced root growth. Collectively, we reveal that AtGLR3.6 is required for primary and lateral root development, and KRP4 functions as a downstream signaling element in Arabidopsis thaliana. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: email@example.com.
sensor for methanol determination in the gas phase. 703. Electrochemically active surface area. Platinum-carbon black-titanium dioxide nanocompo- site electrocatalysts for fuel cell applications. 655. Electrochemistry. Synthesis, spectroscopic and redox properties of the mononuclear Ni. II. , Ni. II. (BPh2)2 containing (B–C) ...
Amery Ice Shelf. Study of inter-annual variations in surface melting over. Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica, using space-borne scatterometer data. 329. Ammonium. Measurement of marine productivity using 15N and 13C tracers: Some methodological aspects. 99. Anabatic and katabatic wind. Study of vertical wind profiles in ...
Leibnitz series (2) 116 (GA). Guaiacum officinale L. (6) (FT). Gun-powder (11) 1009 (SA). Gust loads (3) 206 (SA). Gyrocarpus americanus Jacq. (12) FT. Handicap principle (5) 434 (GA). Hands-on learning (4) 351 (CR). Heisenberg (5) 411 (GA).
R. Narasimhan (Krishtel eMaging) 1461 1996 Oct 15 13:05:22
? 831. India. Folds in multilayered rocks of Proterozoic age,. Rajasthan, India. 299. Trace element geochemistry of Amba Dongar carbonatite complex, India: Evidence for frac- tional crystallization and silicate-carbonate melt immiscibility. 519.
179. Arabian Sea. Improved bathymetric datasets for the shallow water regions in the Indian Ocean. 261. Vertical propagation of baroclinic Kelvin waves along the west coast of India. 331. Arabian Sea Monsoon Experiment (ARMEX). Surface and upper air meteorological features during onset phase of 2003 monsoon. 305.
Landsat 7 ETM+ image in and around Kuju volcano,. Kyushu, Japan. 1049. Metallogenic epoch of the Jiapigou gold belt, Jilin. Province, China: Constrains from rare earth element, fluid inclusion geochemistry and geochronology. 1401. Ninety million years of orogenesis, 250 million years of quiescence and then further ...
Role of Gas Dynamical Friction in the Evolution of Embedded Stellar Clusters (K. Indulekha), 207. Puzzling Origin of CEMP-r/s Stars: An Interpretation of Abundance and Enrichment of s- and r-Process Elements from Asymptotic Giant Branch Supernovae. (Jiang Zhang, Fang Zhao, Yanping Chen, Wenyuan Cui & Bo Zhang) ...
A solid-polymer-electrolyte direct methanol fuel cell. (DMFC) with Pt–Ru nanoparticles supported onto poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) and polystyrene sulphonic acid polymer composite as anode. 381. CD spectroscopy. Studies on interaction between CdTe quantum dots and α-chymotrypsin by molecular spectroscopy ...
Peter A. Gilman), 29. Prediction of Peaks in Wolf Numbers in Cycle 24 according to Actual Numbers of. Polar Faculae (D. K. Callebaut & V. V. Makarova), 69. Prospects for Predicting Cycle 24 (Arnab Rai Choudhuri), 41. Solar Astronomy. Keynote Address: Outstanding Problems in Solar Physics (Markus J. Aschwanden), 3.
inflammatory activity. Solvent-free microwave-assisted synthesis of oxadia- zoles containing imidazole moiety. 41. Antimicrobial activity. Synthesis, spectral characterization of Schiff base transition metal complexes: DNA cleavage and anti- microbial ...
Generalized density-functional theory: Conquering the N-representability problem with exact functionals for the electron pair density and the second-order re- duced density matrix. 507. Chemical reactivity of hypervalent silicon com- pounds: The local hard and soft acids and bases prin- ciple viewpoint. 525. A philicity based ...
R. Narasimhan (Krishtel eMaging) 1461 1996 Oct 15 13:05:22
Photometric Variability of Four Coronally Active Stars (J. C. Pandey, K. P. Singh,. R. Sagar & S. A. Drake), 9. The Investigation of Nova-like Variable MV Lyr during the 1999–2001 Years. (N. A. Katysheva, S. Yu. Shugarov, E. P. Pavlenko & P. V. Abolmasov), 15. Sun, interior. Seismic View of the Solar Interior (H. M. Antia), 3.
Creative research in the chemical industry – Four decades in retrospect. 291. Crystal structure. Two new polyoxovanadate clusters templated through cysteamine. 159. A chiral Mn(IV) complex and its supramolecular as- sembly: Synthesis, characterization and properties 311 meso-Tetrathienylporphyrins: Steady-state ...
Precipitation reconstruction using ring-width chronology of Himalayan cedar from western Himalaya: ... Fishery industry. Seasonal variability of sea surface chlorophyll-a of waters around Sri Lanka. 427. Fluorescence. Bio-optical properties of gelbstoff in the Arabian Sea at the onset of the southwest monsoon. 415. Flux.
Cu/SiO2 catalysts that contain copper phyllosilicate 1013. Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. Functionalization of lambda-zirconium phosphate with ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid: Synthesis, characteriza- tion and applications. 1721. Expanded porphyrins. Sulfonated graphenes catalyzed synthesis of expanded porphyrins ...
Some Doubts on the Validity of the Foreground Galactic Contribution Subtraction from Microwave Anisotropies (Martın López-Corredoira), 101. Effects of the Size of Cosmological N-body Simulations on Physical Quantities – II: Halo Formation and Destruction Rate (Jayanti Prasad), 117. Extragalactic Astronomy. Kinematical ...
... Spectra Variability of BL Lacertae Object S5 0716+714 (Zhang Hao. Jing, Zhao Gang, Zhang Xiong, Bai Jing Ming, Tang Ling & Xu Yun Bing), 131. Part 3. Blazar Observations in High Energy Bands. Gamma-Ray and Multiwavelength Emission from Blazars (Meg Urry), 139. Quasi-Periodic Oscillations in the X-ray Light ...
R. Narasimhan (Krishtel eMaging) 1461 1996 Oct 15 13:05:22
GMRT detection of HI 21 cm-line Absorption from the Peculiar Galaxy in Abell 2125. (K. S. Dwarakanath & F. N. Owen), 1. Hard X-ray Spectrum of Mkn 421 during the Active Phase (R. K. Manchanda), 145. Hα Emission Line Morphologies in Markarian Starburst Galaxies (A. Chitre &. U. C. Joshi), 155. Soft X-ray variability of ...
resolution satellite image segmentation using. Hölder exponents. 609. Coal ... satellite observations. 441. Eastern continental margin of India. Magnetic anomalies of offshore Krishna–Godavari basin, eastern continental margin of India. 405. Ecology.
Cyclodextrin. Regioselective photamination of 4-nitrovera- trole upon cyclodextrin complexation. 273. Cyclohexanone. Hydrogen transfer reaction of cyclohexanone with 2-propanol catalysed by CeO2-ZnO materials: Promoting effect of ceria. 561. DFT. Measures to evaluate heteroaromaticity and their limitations: Story of ...
Microdetermination of human serum albumin by dif- ferential pulse voltammetry at a L-cysteine modified silver electrode. 419 β-Cyclodextrin. Guest–host interactions in the cleavage of phenyl- phenyl acetates by β-cyclodextrin in alkaline medium. 325 a-Diketones. Microwave-assisted efficient oxidation of internal al-.
Dynamical processes in flux tubes and their role in chromospheric heating. (S. S. Hasan), 283. Models of flux tubes from constrained relaxation. (A. Mangalam & V. Krishan), 299. Magnetoconvection and the solar dynamo (A. Nordlund, S. B. F. Dorch &. R. F. Stein), 307. Large scale flow and transport of magnetic flux in the ...
Fluorescence studies. Covalently linked bisporphyrins bearing tetraphenyl- porphyrin and perbromoporphyrin units: Synthesis and their properities. 71. Fraction of adsorption. Adsorption dynamics ans equilibrium studies of Zn(II) onto chitosan. 119. Furan amino acids. Sugar amino acids and related molecules: Some recent.
ray. Spectrometer (SOXS) Mission ... Luminosity Dependent Study of the High Mass X-ray Binary Pulsar 4U 0114 + 65 with ASCA (U. Mukherjee & B. ... Magnetic Source Regions of Coronal Mass Ejections (Brigitte Schmieder), 139. North–South ...
protected areas of Rajasthan, India. 467. Geochemistry. Geochemical constraints on the evolution of mafic and felsic rocks in the Bathani volcanic and volcano- sedimentary sequence of Chotanagpur Granite Gneiss. Complex. 959. Identification and characterization of tsunami deposits off southeast coast of India from the ...
high average power TEA CO2 laser. 659. Carpaine. Five decades ... cal properties of transition metal complexes containing semiquinonate .... (5HI): Laser flash photolysis study. 547. Five-membered chelate ring. Thiosemicarbozene complexes of platinum metals. A story of variable coordination modes. 255. Fluorescence.
Conservation biology (7) 627 (GA). Controllability (11) 1009 (SA). Convection (7) 638 (GA). Correlation coefficient (10) 978 (TIO). Cosmology (4) 319 (GA) ..... Thiazolium salt catalysis (4) 355 (GA). Thomas precession (8) 706 (SA). Tiliacorine (6) 520 (GA). Tilt rotor (9) 836 (SA). Time (9) 844 (GA). Time, Love, Memory: A ...
Water purification (12) 1330 (GA). Water structure (12) 1307 (GA). Weak interactions (9) 802 (GA). Weierstrass approximation (4) 341 (GA). What is Science? (9) 860 (RF). Why the Universe is Expanding (5) 480 (CL). Wiles (10) 950 (SA). Wiesel Torsten (1) 88 (FF). Woodward–Hoffmann rules (12) 1211 (GA). World War I (7) ...
M. Senthilkumar (Newgen Imaging) 1461 1996 Oct 15 13:05:22
Ocean-atmosphere interaction and synoptic weather conditions in association with the two contrasting phases of monsoon during BOBMEX-1999. 283. Baseline lengths. Pre-seismic, co-seismic and post-seismic displace- ments associated with the Bhuj 2001 earthquake derived from recent and historic geodetic data 331.
Macrocyclic effects upon isomeric CuIIMII and MIICuII cores. Formation with unsymme- tric phenol-based macrocyclic ligands 291. Corrosion inhibition. Effect of piperidones on hydrogen permeation and corrosion inhibition of mild steel in acidic solutions. 127. Crosslinked oxalates. Inorganic-organic hybrid framework solids.
Vindhyan basin, India. 61. Blind fault. 2-D deformation of two welded half-spaces due to a blind dip-slip fault. 277. Calibration. Modeling of groundwater flow for Mujib aquifer,. Jordan ... Marine boundary layer characteristics during a cyclonic storm over the .... India, under different synoptic flow situations 557. Meteoric water.
bdenum(IV) and tungsten(IV) with N- alkylphenothiazines and their interactions with L-cysteine and L-histidine. 165. Allyl and benzyl ethers. A convenient procedure for the synthesis of allyl and benzyl ethers from alcohols and phenols. 191. Ambient temperature. New mesogenic homologous series of α- methylcinnamates.
R.Narasimhan(krishtel emaging)1461 1996 Oct 15 13:05:22
accumulation rates. Records of climatic changes and volcanic events in an ice core from Central Dronning Maud Land (East. Antarctica) during the past century. 39. ADEOS-I. Variability of photosynthetic pigments in the Colom- bian Pacific Ocean and its relationship with the wind field using ADEOS-I data. 227. Adriatic Sea.
flow deposit in Miocene-sediments of Andaman-Java subduction complex. 19. Antarctica. Influence of climatic teleconnections on the temporal isotopic variability as recorded in a firn core from the coastal Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica. 41. Apatite fission track (AFT). Detrital zircon and apatite fission track data in the.
in the Deccan Volcanic Province. 505. Ascent trajectory. Launch strategy for Indian lunar mission and precision injection to the Moon using genetic algorithm. 711 ... Space operation system for Chang'E program and its capability evaluation. 795. Chang'E-1. Scientific objectives and payloads of Chang'E-1 lunar satellite.
Trubey, D.K.; Roussin, R.W.; Gustin, A.B.
An indexed bibliography of open literature selected by the Radiation Shielding Information Center since the previous volume was published in 1980 is presented in the area of radiation transport and shielding against radiation from nuclear reactors (fission and fusion), x-ray machines, radioisotopes, nuclear weapons (including fallout, and low energy accelerators (e.g., neutron generators). The bibliography was typeset from computer files constituting the RSIC Storage and Retrieval Information System. In addition to lists of literature titles by subject categories (accessions 6201-10156), an author index is given. Most of the literature selected for Volume VII was published in the years 1977 to 1981.
Garafalo, Steven D; Luth, Eric S; Moss, Benjamin J; Monteiro, Michael I; Malkin, Emily; Juo, Peter
Regulation of glutamate receptor (GluR) abundance at synapses by clathrin-mediated endocytosis can control synaptic strength and plasticity. We take advantage of viable, null mutations in subunits of the clathrin adaptor protein 2 (AP2) complex in Caenorhabditis elegans to characterize the in vivo role of AP2 in GluR trafficking. In contrast to our predictions for an endocytic adaptor, we found that levels of the GluR GLR-1 are decreased at synapses in the ventral nerve cord (VNC) of animals with mutations in the AP2 subunits APM-2/μ2, APA-2/α, or APS-2/σ2. Rescue experiments indicate that APM-2/μ2 functions in glr-1-expressing interneurons and the mature nervous system to promote GLR-1 levels in the VNC. Genetic analyses suggest that APM-2/μ2 acts upstream of GLR-1 endocytosis in the VNC. Consistent with this, GLR-1 accumulates in cell bodies of apm-2 mutants. However, GLR-1 does not appear to accumulate at the plasma membrane of the cell body as expected, but instead accumulates in intracellular compartments including Syntaxin-13- and RAB-14-labeled endosomes. This study reveals a novel role for the AP2 clathrin adaptor in promoting the abundance of GluRs at synapses in vivo, and implicates AP2 in the regulation of GluR trafficking at an early step in the secretory pathway. © 2015 Garafalo et al. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). Two months after publication it is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).
Adiyaman, Ahmet; Dechering, Dirk G; Boggia, José
The ambulatory arterial stiffness index (AASI) is derived from 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure recordings. We investigated whether the goodness-of-fit of the AASI regression line in individual subjects (r(2)) impacts on the association of AASI with established determinants of the relation betwe...
Hout, Michael; Goldstein, Joshua R.
Examines the influences contributing to greater population increases in some ethnic groups than natural increases would normally determine. The influences of interaction among time of arrival, overall fertility and mortality trends, differential fertility, intermarriage, and subjective identification are explored. (GLR)
Kumar, Pradeep R; John, Joseph
To determine the periodontal status and treatment needs among dental fluorosis subjects residing in Ennore, Chennai, using Community Periodontal Index of Treatment Needs (CPITN). All the subjects with dental fluorosis above 15 years of age, permanent residents of Ennore, were included in the study. Subjects with known systemic diseases and subjects with other intrinsic dental stains were excluded from the study. Periodontal status was estimated using CPITN and Dental fluorosis was recorded using Dean's Dental Fluorosis Index. The total number of study subjects was 1075, of which 489 were males and 586 were females. Males were predominantly affected with periodontal disease than females. This was found to be statistically significant (P=0.000). The association between Degree of Fluorosis and Periodontal Status is statistically significant (P=0.000). There was statistically significant difference in mean number of sextants between the degree of fluorosis in each of the periodontal status (P=0.000). The finding that the lower prevalence of shallow pockets in the study area, where the fluoride level in the drinking water ranges from 1.83 to 2.01 ppm, indicates that the use of fluoride in water is beneficial to the periodontal tissues.
Tomyn, Adrian J.; Cummins, Robert A.
The Personal Wellbeing Index-School Children (PWI-SC) is designed as a parallel form of the adult PWI-A, to measure subjective wellbeing. This study examines the psychometric properties of the PWI-SC. Data from 351 students, aged between 12 and 20 years, were collected by two independent studies over the years 2005-2006. Using the combined data,…
Wang, Hongyu; Liu, Jinbo; Zhao, Hongwei; Fu, Xiaobao; Shang, Guangyun; Zhou, Yingyan; Yu, Xiaolan; Zhao, Xujing; Wang, Guang; Shi, Hongyan
Arterial stiffness is an independent predictor for vascular diseases. Cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI) is a new index of arterial stiffness. In the present study, we investigated the possible risk factors involving CAVI in hypertension and diabetes mellitus (DM) subjects. One thousand sixty-three subjects (M/F 533/530) from Shougang Corporation Examination Center were divided into four groups: healthy group (n = 639); hypertension group (n = 312); DM group (n = 58); and hypertension with DM group (n = 54). CAVI was measured by VS-1000 apparatus. Our results showed that CAVI was significantly higher in hypertension subjects with DM than in healthy and hypertension group, respectively (8.59 ± 1.08 vs 7.23 ± 1.10; 8.59 ± 1.08 vs 7.94 ± 1.33; both P hypertension subjects with DM compared with healthy and hypertension groups. Copyright © 2013 American Society of Hypertension. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Elizondo-Montemayor, Leticia; Hernández-Brenes, Carmen; Ramos-Parra, Perla A; Moreno-Sánchez, Diana; Nieblas, Bianca; Rosas-Pérez, Aratza M; Lamadrid-Zertuche, Ana C
Dietary guidelines recommend the daily consumption of fruits; however, healthy and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) subjects receive conflicting messages regarding ingestion of fruits, such as mango, because of its sugar content. We investigated the effects of high hydrostatic pressure (HHP) processing of fresh mango puree (MP) on the glycemic indexes (GIs) and postprandial glycemic responses of 38 healthy Mexican subjects in a randomized cross-over clinical trial. Physicochemical characterization of MP included sugar profiles by HPLC-ELSD, starch, fibers, moisture, viscosity, swelling capacity and solubility properties of alcohol insoluble residue (AIR). The mean GI for HHP-MP was significantly lower (32.7 ± 13.4) than that of unprocessed-MP (42.7 ± 19.5). A significantly higher proportion of subjects showed a low GI following the consumption of HHP-MP compared to unprocessed-MP and none of them showed a high GI for the HHP-MP, compared to a significantly higher proportion for the unprocessed-MP. The viscosity and AIR solubility values of HHP-MP samples were significantly higher, which influenced glucose peaking later (Tmax) at 45 minutes and induced 20% lower AUC values than unprocessed-MP, corresponding to greater retardation indexes. The study findings support data stating that low GI fruits are appropriate for glycemic control and that mango may be included as part of healthy subjects' diets and potentially T2DM subjects' diets. Furthermore, HHP processing of mango may offer additional benefits for glycemic control, as its performance regarding GI, AUC and Tmax was significantly better than that of the unprocessed-MP. To our knowledge, this is the first report on the impact of this commercial non-thermal pasteurization technology on glucose metabolism.
Chaturvedi, A; Sarojini, G; Nirmala, G; Nirmalamma, N; Satyanarayana, D
Glycemic index of grain amaranth, wheat and rice preparations was studied in non-insulin dependent diabetic subjects. Diets containing 50 g carbohydrate equivalent were given and post-prandial blood glucose estimated at different intervals. Glycemic index calculated for different experimental diets showed that GI of amaranth-wheat composite flour diet (25:75) was the least (65.6%) followed by wheat diet (65.7%), rice diet (69.2%), amaranth-wheat flour 50:50 (75.5%), and popped amaranth in milk (97.3%). Therefore 25:75 combination of amaranth and wheat, wheat and rice can be considered low GI food, 50:50 grain amaranth and wheat medium GI food and popped amaranth and milk combination high GI food.
Wang, Hongyu; Shirai, Kohji; Liu, Jinbo; Lu, Na; Wang, Min; Zhao, Hongwei; Xie, Jun; Yu, Xiaolan; Fu, Xiaobao; Shi, Hongyan; Li, Lihong
Arterial stiffness is an independent predictor for vascular diseases. Cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI) is a new index of arterial stiffness. However, there was little research about the CAVI value between different countries. The aim of the present study was to compare CAVI between Chinese and Japanese subjects and to assess related factors. 2519 healthy persons [1245 Chinese (M/F, 524/721) and 1274 Japanese (M/F, 534/740)] from the Department of Physical Examination were enrolled into our study. CAVI was recorded using a VaseraVS-1000 vascular screening system. CAVI was increasing with aging in all subjects. CAVI was significantly lower in Chinese compared with Japanese both in male and female. There was difference in lipid metabolism between these two groups. Multivariate analysis showed that age, systolic blood pressure (SBP), fasting plasma glucose (FPG), plasma creatinine (Cr) were significant independent associating factors of CAVI in Chinese persons (β = 0.548, p < 0.001; β = 0.129, p = 0.001; β = 0.105, p = 0.006; and β = 0.100, p = 0.012, respectively), whereas age, SBP, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), Cr, body mass index (BMI), FPG were significant independent associating factors of CAVI in Japanese subjects (β = 0.669, p < 0.001; β = 0.198, p < 0.001; β = -0.079, p < 0.001; β = 0.090, p < 0.001; β = -0.124, p < 0.001; β = 0.055, p=0.009; respectively). CAVI was increasing with aging in both Chinese and Japanese subjects. CAVI was significantly lower in Chinese than in Japanese subjects. Age, SBP, FPG and creatinine were independently associated with CAVI in both Chinese and Japanese subjects.
Chang, Yi-Cheng; Chiu, Yen-Feng; Liu, Pi-Hua; Hee, Siow Wei; Chang, Tien-Jyun; Jiang, Yi-Der; Lee, Wei-Jei; Lee, Po-Chu; Kao, Hui-Yi; Hwang, Juey-Jen; Chuang, Lee-Ming
Circadian clock genes are critical regulators of energy homeostasis and metabolism. However, whether variation in the circadian genes is associated with metabolic phenotypes in humans remains to be explored. In this study, we systemically genotyped 20 tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 8 candidate genes involved in circadian clock, including CLOCK, BMAL1(ARNTL), PER1, PER2, CRY1, CRY2, CSNK1E,, and NOC(CCRN4L) in 1,510 non-diabetic Chinese subjects in Taipei and Yunlin populations in Taiwan. Their associations with metabolic phenotypes were analyzed. We found that genetic variation in the NOC gene, rs9684900 was associated with body mass index (BMI) (P = 0.0016, Bonferroni corrected P = 0.032). Another variant, rs135764 in the CSNK1E gene was associated with fasting glucose (P = 0.0023, Bonferroni corrected P = 0.046). These associations were consistent in both Taipei and Yunlin populations. Significant epistatic and joint effects between SNPs on BMI and related phenotypes were observed. Furthermore, NOC mRNA levels in human abdominal adipose tissue were significantly increased in obese subjects compared to non-obese controls. Genetic variation in the NOC gene is associated with BMI in Chinese subjects.
CONCLUSION: Obese subjects have low fasting ghrelin levels that they are significantly related to insulin resistance and body mass index. More prospective studies are needed to establish the role of ghrelin in the pathogenesis of human obesity.
Full Text Available Since 2009, the German National Library for Economics (ZBW supports both indexing and retrieval of Open Access scientific publications like working papers, postprint articles and conference papers by means of a terminology web service. This web service is based on concepts organized as a ‘Standard Thesaurus for Economics’ (STW, which is modelled and regularly published as Linked Open Data. Moreover, it is integrated into the institution’s subject repository for automatically suggesting appropriate key words while indexing and retrieving documents, and for automatically expanding search queries on demand to gain better search results. While this approach looks promising to augment ‘off the shelf’ repository software systems in a lightweight manner with a disciplinary profile, there is still significant uncertainty about the effective usage and impact of controlled terms in the realm of these systems. To cope with this, we analyze the repository’s logfiles to get evidence of search behaviour which is potentially influenced by auto suggestion and expansion of scientific terms derived from a discipline’s literature.
G.R. Economopoulos (Giorgos Robert); P. Klint (Paul); J.J. Vinju (Jurgen); O. de Moor; M.I. Schwartzbach
textabstractAnalysis and renovation of large software portfolios requires syntax analysis of multiple, usually embedded, languages and this is beyond the capabilities of many standard parsing techniques. The traditional separation between lexer and parser falls short due to the limitations of
J.J. Vinju (Jurgen); G.R. Economopoulos (Giorgos Robert); P. Klint (Paul)
textabstractAnalysis and renovation of large software portfolios requires syntax analysis of multiple, usually embedded, languages and this is beyond the capabilities of many standard parsing techniques. The traditional separation between lexer and parser falls short due to the limitations of
Miguel A Martínez-González
Full Text Available Different indexes of regional adiposity have been proposed for identifying persons at higher risk of death. Studies specifically assessing these indexes in large cohorts are scarce. It would also be interesting to know whether a dietary intervention may counterbalance the adverse effects of adiposity on mortality.We assessed the association of four different anthropometric indexes (waist-to-height ratio (WHtR, waist circumference (WC, body mass index (BMI and height with all-cause mortality in 7447 participants at high cardiovascular risk from the PREDIMED trial. Forty three percent of them were men (55 to 80 years and 57% were women (60 to 80 years. All of them were initially free of cardiovascular disease. The recruitment took place in 11 recruiting centers between 2003 and 2009.After adjusting for age, sex, smoking, diabetes, hypertension, intervention group, family history of coronary heart disease, and leisure-time physical activity, WC and WHtR were found to be directly associated with a higher mortality after 4.8 years median follow-up. The multivariable-adjusted HRs for mortality of WHtR (cut-off points: 0.60, 0.65, 0.70 were 1.02 (0.78-1.34, 1.30 (0.97-1.75 and 1.55 (1.06-2.26. When we used WC (cut-off points: 100, 105 and 110 cm, the multivariable adjusted Hazard Ratios (HRs for mortality were 1.18 (0.88-1.59, 1.02 (0.74-1.41 and 1.57 (1.19-2.08. In all analyses, BMI exhibited weaker associations with mortality than WC or WHtR. The direct association between WHtR and overall mortality was consistent within each of the three intervention arms of the trial.Our study adds further support to a stronger association of abdominal obesity than BMI with total mortality among elderly subjects at high risk of cardiovascular disease. We did not find evidence to support that the PREDIMED intervention was able to counterbalance the harmful effects of increased adiposity on total mortality.Controlled-Trials.com ISRCTN35739639.
Martínez-González, Miguel A.; García-Arellano, Ana; Toledo, Estefanía; Bes-Rastrollo, Maira; Bulló, Mónica; Corella, Dolores; Fito, Montserrat; Ros, Emilio; Lamuela-Raventós, Rosa Maria; Rekondo, Javier; Gómez-Gracia, Enrique; Fiol, Miquel; Santos-Lozano, Jose Manuel; Serra-Majem, Lluis; Martínez, J. Alfredo; Eguaras, Sonia; Sáez-Tormo, Guillermo; Pintó, Xavier; Estruch, Ramon
Background Different indexes of regional adiposity have been proposed for identifying persons at higher risk of death. Studies specifically assessing these indexes in large cohorts are scarce. It would also be interesting to know whether a dietary intervention may counterbalance the adverse effects of adiposity on mortality. Methods We assessed the association of four different anthropometric indexes (waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), waist circumference (WC), body mass index (BMI) and height) with all-cause mortality in 7447 participants at high cardiovascular risk from the PREDIMED trial. Forty three percent of them were men (55 to 80 years) and 57% were women (60 to 80 years). All of them were initially free of cardiovascular disease. The recruitment took place in 11 recruiting centers between 2003 and 2009. Results After adjusting for age, sex, smoking, diabetes, hypertension, intervention group, family history of coronary heart disease, and leisure-time physical activity, WC and WHtR were found to be directly associated with a higher mortality after 4.8 years median follow-up. The multivariable-adjusted HRs for mortality of WHtR (cut-off points: 0.60, 0.65, 0.70) were 1.02 (0.78–1.34), 1.30 (0.97–1.75) and 1.55 (1.06–2.26). When we used WC (cut-off points: 100, 105 and 110 cm), the multivariable adjusted Hazard Ratios (HRs) for mortality were 1.18 (0.88–1.59), 1.02 (0.74–1.41) and 1.57 (1.19–2.08). In all analyses, BMI exhibited weaker associations with mortality than WC or WHtR. The direct association between WHtR and overall mortality was consistent within each of the three intervention arms of the trial. Conclusions Our study adds further support to a stronger association of abdominal obesity than BMI with total mortality among elderly subjects at high risk of cardiovascular disease. We did not find evidence to support that the PREDIMED intervention was able to counterbalance the harmful effects of increased adiposity on total mortality. Trial
Puhan, Milo A; Hansel, Nadia N; Sobradillo, Patricia; Enright, Paul; Lange, Peter; Hickson, DeMarc; Menezes, Ana M; ter Riet, Gerben; Held, Ulrike; Domingo-Salvany, Antonia; Mosenifar, Zab; Antó, Josep M; Moons, Karel G M; Kessels, Alphons; Garcia-Aymerich, Judith
Background Little evidence on the validity of simple and widely applicable tools to predict mortality in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exists. Objective To conduct a large international study to validate the ADO index that uses age, dyspnoea and FEV1 to predict 3-year mortality and to update it in order to make prediction of mortality in COPD patients as generalisable as possible. Design Individual subject data analysis of 10 European and American cohorts (n=13 914). Setting Population-based, primary, secondary and tertiary care. Patients COPD GOLD stages I–IV. Measurements We validated the original ADO index. We then obtained an updated ADO index in half of our cohorts to improve its predictive accuracy, which in turn was validated comprehensively in the remaining cohorts using discrimination, calibration and decision curve analysis and a number of sensitivity analyses. Results 1350 (9.7%) of all subjects with COPD (60% male, mean age 61 years, mean FEV1 66% predicted) had died at 3 years. The original ADO index showed high discrimination but poor calibration (p<0.001 for difference between predicted and observed risk). The updated ADO index (scores from 0 to 14) preserved excellent discrimination (area under curve 0.81, 95% CI 0.80 to 0.82) but showed much improved calibration with predicted 3-year risks from 0.7% (95% CI 0.6% to 0.9%, score of 0) to 64.5% (61.2% to 67.7%, score of 14). The ADO index showed higher net benefit in subjects at low-to-moderate risk of 3-year mortality than FEV1 alone. Interpretation The updated 15-point ADO index accurately predicts 3-year mortality across the COPD severity spectrum and can be used to inform patients about their prognosis, clinical trial study design or benefit harm assessment of medical interventions. PMID:23242246
Ignatio Rika Haryono
Full Text Available Exercise training can improve blood pressure in normotensive, prehypertensive, and hypertensive subjects. One of the mechanisms of blood pressure reduction in hypertensive patients with obesity is through weight loss. This study aimed to examine the effect of exercise training on bodyweight and the relationship between weight loss and reduction of blood pressure. An experimental pre-post test design without controls was used to evaluate the effect of exercise training on weight loss. The study involved 89 elderly aged 50 years or more, consisting of 40 men and 49 women, who were members of Senayan Sport Fitness Club and had been exercising for at least three months. Exercise training was programmed and performed three times a week, consisting of aerobic (walking, jogging, static cycling, and resistance exercise. All exercise was performed for one to two hours with mild to moderate intensity. Blood pressure and body weight were obtained from medical records. Paired t-test showed that systolic blood pressure (SBP, diastolic blood pressure (DBP, mean arterial pressure (MAP, pulse pressure (PP, and body mass index (BMI were significantly lower after training [(systolic, 126.3 ± 2.9 vs 122.3 ± 2.7, p=0.02, (diastolic, 80.2 ± 3.1 vs 77.2 ± 2.4, p=0.00, (MAP, 95.6 ± 4.6 vs 92.2 ± 3.4, p=0.00, (PP, 46.1 ± 4.2 vs 45.1 ± 3.6, p=0.04, (BMI, 24.5 ± 2.9 vs 23.6 ± 2.9, p=0.04]. Duration of training was the most influential factor affecting rBMI, (Beta = 0.38; p=0.00. Exercise training could lower BMI and the reduction in diastolic blood pressure was higher for the subjects aged 70 years and over.
Ignatio Rika Haryono
Full Text Available Exercise training can improve blood pressure in normotensive, prehypertensive, and hypertensive subjects. One of the mechanisms of blood pressure reduction in hypertensive patients with obesity is through weight loss. This study aimed to examine the effect of exercise training on bodyweight and the relationship between weight loss and reduction of blood pressure. An experimental pre-post test design without controls was used to evaluate the effect of exercise training on weight loss. The study involved 89 elderly aged 50 years or more, consisting of 40 men and 49 women, who were members of Senayan Sport Fitness Club and had been exercising for at least three months. Exercise training was programmed and performed three times a week, consisting of aerobic (walking, jogging, static cycling, and resistance exercise. All exercise was performed for one to two hours with mild to moderate intensity. Blood pressure and body weight were obtained from medical records. Paired t-test showed that systolic blood pressure (SBP, diastolic blood pressure (DBP, mean arterial pressure (MAP, pulse pressure (PP, and body mass index (BMI were significantly lower after training [(systolic, 126.3 ± 2.9 vs 122.3 ± 2.7, p=0.02, (diastolic, 80.2 ± 3.1 vs 77.2 ± 2.4, p=0.00, (MAP, 95.6 ± 4.6 vs 92.2 ± 3.4, p=0.00, (PP, 46.1 ± 4.2 vs 45.1 ± 3.6, p=0.04, (BMI, 24.5 ± 2.9 vs 23.6 ± 2.9, p=0.04]. Duration of training was the most influential factor affecting rBMI, (Beta = 0.38; p=0.00. Exercise training could lower BMI and the reduction in diastolic blood pressure was higher for the subjects aged 70 years and over.
Fuentes Valdes, Gabriel; del Valle Flores, Miguel; Vega Soto, Claudia
The laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) is a successful surgical procedure for morbid obesity. However, post surgery weight regain is usual, thus applying the glycemic index could promote good weight control. To compare the glycemic index (GI) and glycemic response (GR) obtained of instant mashed potatoes in individuals subjected to LSG versus control subjects. GI and GR were assessed in 10 LSG subjects and compared with 10 controls. GI methodology proposed by FAO/WHO was used; instant mashed potatoes as test food and white bread as standard food (50g available CHO). Capillary blood sample 0 (fasting), 30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes. The GI was determined by trapezoidal method. ANOVA was used to compare a factor between RG and IG groups; t-student to compare RG between foods. Statistical significance pglycemic responses in LSG group, and its consumption possibly favoring weight regain. Copyright AULA MEDICA EDICIONES 2014. Published by AULA MEDICA. All rights reserved.
Full Text Available Abstract Background Short and valid measures of the impact of a stroke on integration are required in health and social settings. The Subjective Index of Physical and Social Outcome (SIPSO is one such measure. However, there are questions whether scores can be summed into a total score or whether subscale scores should be calculated. This paper aims to provide clarity on the internal construct validity of the subscales and the total scale. Methods SIPSO data were collected as part of two parallel surveys of the met and unmet needs of 445 younger people (aged 18-65 with non-recent stroke (at least one year and living at home. Factor, Mokken and Rasch analysis were used. Results Factor analysis supported a two factor structure (explaining 68% of the variance as did the Mokken analysis (overall Loevinger coefficient 0.77 for the Physical Integration subscale; 0.51 for the Social Integration subscale. Both subscales fitted the Rasch model (P > 0.01 after adjusting for some observed differential item functioning. The 10-items together did not fit the Rasch model. Conclusions The SIPSO subscales are valid for use with stroke patients of working age but the total SIPSO is not. The conversion table can be used by clinicians and researchers to convert ordinal data to interval level prior to mathematical operations and other parametric procedures. Further work is required to explore the occurrence of bias by gender for some of the items.
Althoff, Donald P.; Althoff, P.S.; Lambrecht, N.D.; Gipson, P.S.; Pontius, J.S.; Woodford, P.B.
Mechanized maneuver training impacts the landscape by creating depressions, compacting soils, producing bare ground areas, transporting seeds of invasive plants, and crushing vegetation. We measured 3 physical, 13 chemical, and 2 biological soil properties and used a disturbance index (DI) based on perceptions of soil conditions on a military installation to assess the condition of 100 ?? 100 m plots (1 ha): 10 in 2002 and 10 in 2004. Potential DI scores range from 0 (no appreciable evidence of disturbance) to 1 (>95 per cent of the plot disturbed). Bulk density, porosity (%), and water content (%) - all at 5-1-10-0cm depth, and nematode family richness (NFR) were significantly, negatively correlated (Spearman coefficients, rs) with the DI of both years. The strong negative correlation (rs., = -0.69 in 2002, -0.79 in 2004) of NFR with the DI appears to reflect the status of nematode diversity and, therefore, may serve as a useful, inexpensive approach to rapidly assessing grasslands subjected to mechanized military training. Copyright ?? 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Jesús Vega Encabo
Full Text Available In this paper, I claim that subjectivity is a way of being that is constituted through a set of practices in which the self is subject to the dangers of fictionalizing and plotting her life and self-image. I examine some ways of becoming subject through narratives and through theatrical performance before others. Through these practices, a real and active subjectivity is revealed, capable of self-knowledge and self-transformation.
Lalung, M.; Phukan, P.; Sarma, J. K.
In this work we have solved the nonlinear GLR-MQ evolution equation upto next-to-leading order (NLO) by considering NLO terms of the gluon-gluon splitting functions and running coupling constant α s ( Q 2). Here, we have incorporated a Regge-like behaviour of gluon distribution in order to obtain a solution of the GLR-MQ equation in the range of 5 G e V 2 ≤ Q 2 ≤ 25 G e V 2. We have studied the Q 2 evolution of the gluon distribution function G( x, Q 2) and its nonlinear effects at small-x. It can be observed from our analysis that the nonlinearities increase with decrease in the correlation radius R of two interacting gluons, as expected. We have compared our result of G( x, Q 2) as Q 2 increases and x decreases, for two different values of R, viz. R = 2 G e V -1 and 5 G e V -1. We have also checked the sensitivity of the Regge intercept λ G on our results. We compare our computed results with those obtained by the global analysis to parton distribution functions (PDFs) by various collaborations where LHC data have been included viz. ABM12, CT14, MMHT14, PDF4LHC15, NNPDF3.0 and CJ15. Besides we have also shown comparison of our results with HERA PDF data viz. HERAPDF15.
An indexed bibliography is presented of literature selected by the Radiation Shielding Information Center since the previous volume was published in 1974 in the area of radiation transport and shielding against radiation from nuclear reactors, x-ray machines, radioisotopes, nuclear weapons (including fallout), and low-energy accelerators (e.g., neutron generators). In addition to lists of literature titles by subject categories (accessions 3501-4950), author and keyword indexes are given. Most of the literature selected for Vol. V was published in the years 1973 to 1976.
An indexed bibliography is presented of literature selected by the Radiation Shielding Information Center since the previous volume was published in 1978 in the area of radiation transport and shielding against radiation from nuclear reactors, x-ray machines, radioisotopes, nuclear weapons (including fallout), and low energy accelerators (e.g., neutron generators). The bibliography was typeset from data processed by computer from magnetic tape files. In addition to lists of literature titles by subject categories (accessions 4951-6200), an author index is given.
Milek Dos Santos, Luciana; Tomzack Tulio, Lindamir; Fuganti Campos, Leticia; Ramos Dorneles, Marcelo; Carneiro Hecke Krüger, Claudia
The purpose of this study was to determine the in vivo glycemic index of carob tablets with healthy subjects and to determine the in vitro glycemic index of carob tablets and carob flour by the hydrolysis index. Seven healthy volunteers consumed portions of carob tablets containing 26g of available carbohydrate. Their capillary blood was taken at intervals after carob or glucose consumption. The glycemic hydrolysis index by an in vitro technique was based in the release of glucose after enzymatic treatment of carob tablets and carob flour. The determination of the fiber content was performed using the enzymatic- gravimetric method. By the in vivo determination, the estimated glycemic index of carob tablets could be considered low (≤ 55). By the in vitro determination, the estimated glycemic index ranged from 40.1+0.02 of carob tablets to 40.6+0.05 of carob flour. The total fiber values obtained for carob flour samples were from 42.6% ± 0.49 to 42.9% ± 0.68 with no statistical significant differences between samples. Carob tablets and carob flour could be classified as low glycemic index food and low glycemic load food. Carob flour is a high fiber food, containing mainly high levels of insoluble fiber. Copyright AULA MEDICA EDICIONES 2014. Published by AULA MEDICA. All rights reserved.
Bajorek, Sarah A; Morello, Candis M
To review the effects of dietary fiber and a low glycemic index diet on glycemic risk factors in people with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) or T2DM and dyslipidemia. Literature search was conducted using PubMed, Cochrane Library, The Natural Standard, and The Natural Medicines through July 2010 using the terms type 2 diabetes mellitus, dietary fiber, psyllium, and glycemic index. Articles included were randomized controlled studies or meta-analyses examining the effects of dietary interventions (dietary fiber, low glycemic index diet, or psyllium) on glycemic risk factors (glycosylated hemoglobin A₁(c) [A1C] or postprandial plasma glucose [PPG] concentrations) in subjects with T2DM or T2DM and dyslipidemia. Both psyllium supplementation and low glycemic index diets have been studied as monotherapy in the treatment of T2DM. Seven studies were reviewed (3 randomized crossover studies, 1 randomized parallel study, 3 randomized blinded parallel studies). Individually, psyllium supplementation and a low glycemic index diet improved glycemic risk factors. PPG and A1C decreased with psyllium 10.2 g per day, while A1C decreased with a low glycemic index diet (average glycemic index 59). However, the results for the low glycemic index diet are controversial. One study was underpowered to detect changes in A1C, while another study had psyllium fiber as a confounding variable. Psyllium supplementation might be an additional therapeutic option for people with T2DM who are already receiving diabetes medication and who still experience elevated PPG concentrations. Further well-designed clinical trials and adjustment for confounding variables are needed to determine the role of a low glycemic index diet in the treatment of T2DM.
Day, Ronald E
In this book, Ronald Day offers a critical history of the modern tradition of documentation. Focusing on the documentary index (understood as a mode of social positioning), and drawing on the work of the French documentalist Suzanne Briet, Day explores the understanding and uses of indexicality. He examines the transition as indexes went from being explicit professional structures that mediated users and documents to being implicit infrastructural devices used in everyday information and communication acts. Doing so, he also traces three epistemic eras in the representation of individuals and groups, first in the forms of documents, then information, then data. Day investigates five cases from the modern tradition of documentation. He considers the socio-technical instrumentalism of Paul Otlet, "the father of European documentation" (contrasting it to the hermeneutic perspective of Martin Heidegger); the shift from documentation to information science and the accompanying transformation of persons and texts i...
We propose a semiparametric estimator for single-index models with censored responses due to detection limits. In the presence of left censoring, the mean function cannot be identified without any parametric distributional assumptions, but the quantile function is still identifiable at upper quantile levels. To avoid parametric distributional assumption, we propose to fit censored quantile regression and combine information across quantile levels to estimate the unknown smooth link function and the index parameter. Under some regularity conditions, we show that the estimated link function achieves the non-parametric optimal convergence rate, and the estimated index parameter is asymptotically normal. The simulation study shows that the proposed estimator is competitive with the omniscient least squares estimator based on the latent uncensored responses for data with normal errors but much more efficient for heavy-tailed data under light and moderate censoring. The practical value of the proposed method is demonstrated through the analysis of a human immunodeficiency virus antibody data set.
Jason C Campbell
Full Text Available C. elegans inhabit environments that require detection of diverse stimuli to modulate locomotion in order to avoid unfavourable conditions. In a mammalian context, a failure to appropriately integrate environmental signals can lead to Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and epilepsy. Provided that the circuitry underlying mammalian sensory integration can be prohibitively complex, we analyzed nematode behavioral responses in differing environmental contexts to evaluate the regulation of context dependent circuit reconfiguration and sensorimotor control. Our work has added to the complexity of a known parallel circuit, mediated by interneurons AVA and AIB, that integrates sensory cues and is responsible for the initiation of backwards locomotion. Our analysis of the galanin-like G-protein coupled receptor NPR-9 in C. elegans revealed that upregulation of galanin signaling impedes the integration of sensory evoked neuronal signals. Although the expression pattern of npr-9 is limited to AIB, upregulation of the receptor appears to impede AIB and AVA circuits to broadly prevent backwards locomotion, i.e. reversals, suggesting that these two pathways functionally interact. Galanin signaling similarly plays a broadly inhibitory role in mammalian models. Moreover, our identification of a mutant, which rarely initiates backwards movement, allowed us to interrogate locomotory mechanisms underlying chemotaxis. In support of the pirouette model of chemotaxis, organisms that did not exhibit reversal behavior were unable to navigate towards an attractant peak. We also assessed ionotropic glutamate receptor GLR-1 cell-specifically within AIB and determined that GLR-1 fine-tunes AIB activity to modify locomotion following reversal events. Our research highlights that signal integration underlying the initiation and fine-tuning of backwards locomotion is AIB and NPR-9 dependent, and has demonstrated the suitability of C. elegans for analysis of multisensory integration
de La Guéronnière, Viviane; Le Bellego, Laurent; Jimenez, Inmaculada Buendia; Dohein, Oriane; Tack, Ivan; Daudon, Michel
The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effects of drinking 2 additional litres of water/day on several urinary risk factors for lithiasis in healthy subjects, through measurement of crystallization risk indices (Tiselius CRI). 48 healthy subjects, aged 25 to 50 were studied for urinary parameters including CRI in the laboratory ward, for 24 hours. After this first period, they were randomized either to a 2L/d additional water intake (treated group) or usual fluid consumption (control group) for a 6 days period, which ended by a second measurement period in the laboratory ward for 24 hours. Total additional water intake was actually 1.3L/d on average in treated subjects, because subjects decreased other usual sources of fluid intake. In 24 hour urine, Tiselius CRI varied differently among treated subjects and controls between the 2 periods; male controls subjects experienced much higher values (above 2 in average in first morning urine sample) in the second period (p = 0.05). Of interest, in a transversal analysis, we observed a positive relation between BMI or waist circumference on the one hand, and with 24 hour urea excretion or osmotic load on the other hand. These results show a beneficial effect of a final 1.3L additional water intake on Tiselius CRI in healthy subjects.
Lerchbaum, E.; Pilz, S.; Grammer, T.B.; Boehm, B.O.; Stojakovic, T.; Obermayer-Pietsch, B.; Marz, W.
Background and aims: Fatty liver index (FLI), a surrogate parameter for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, is an emerging risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and mortality. We aimed to evaluate whether FLI is associated with all-cause, cardiovascular, and non-cardiovascular mortality as well as
Sung, Paul S; Danial, Pamela
Although subjects with recurrent low back pain (LBP) demonstrate altered postural control, their postural steadiness during one leg standing is unknown. The purpose of this study was to investigate postural steadiness based on relative kinematic index of the lower limbs and trunk with normalized standing time in subjects with recurrent LBP during dominant and non-dominant leg standing. Sixty individuals participated in the study, including 29 subjects in the control group (18 male, 11 female) and 31 subjects with recurrent LBP (21 male, 10 female). The outcome measures included relative kinematic index of the body regions and normalized standing time during the one leg standing test. The relative kinematic index was the ratio between standstill time and successful standing time. The normalized standing time was defined as a ratio between the successful standing time and the requested standing time. The control group demonstrated significantly longer normalized standing time on the dominant (t = -2.57, p = 0.013) and non-dominant (t = -2.78, p = 0.007) legs than the LBP group. The relative kinematic index of the core spine model significantly decreased for the dominant (t = -3.01, p = 0.004) and non-dominant (t = -3.06, p = 0.003) legs in the LBP group. In addition, the kinematic index indicated pelvis and non-dominant shank during dominant leg standing (R 2 = 0.97) in the LBP group. In the control group, the pelvis was significantly correlated with the core spine model during standing on the dominant (R 2 = 0.95) and non-dominant (R 2 = 0.97) legs. The relative kinematic index of the pelvis was found to be most significant for longer standing durations in both groups. In the LBP group, the shank and foot were significantly higher in addition to the pelvis due to possible compensatory motion. The control group took advantage of pelvic control with the core spine to minimize lower limb movements. Clinicians need to consider the core spine for
Title: Comparison of the effects of various types anaerobic trainings in subjects with body mass index values over 25 Abstract This thesis describes the mechanisms of anaerobic training, especially focused on high interval training, defines the basic concepts associated with anaerobic activity and focuses on workouts that have excellent benefits for the human body. The core theme of this thesis are HIIT workouts - High Intensity Interval Training, which relate to concepts such as EPOC effect ...
Puhan, Milo A; Hansel, Nadia N; Sobradillo, Patricia
-year mortality and to update it in order to make prediction of mortality in COPD patients as generalisable as possible. DESIGN: Individual subject data analysis of 10 European and American cohorts (n=13 914). SETTING: Population-based, primary, secondary and tertiary care. PATIENTS: COPD GOLD stages I...
Marc, David T; Khairat, Saif S
The US federal government initiated the Open Government Directive where federal agencies are required to publish high value datasets so that they are available to the public. Data.gov and the community site Healthdata.gov were initiated to disperse such datasets. However, data searches and retrieval for these sites are keyword driven and severely limited in performance. The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of extracting relevant open-source data by proposing a method of adopting the MeSH framework for indexing and data retrieval. A pilot study was conducted to compare the performance of traditional keywords to MeSH terms for retrieving relevant open-source datasets related to "mortality". The MeSH framework resulted in greater sensitivity with comparable specificity to the keyword search. MeSH showed promise as a method for indexing and retrieving data, yet future research should conduct a larger scale evaluation of the performance of the MeSH framework for retrieving relevant open-source healthcare datasets.
Nagayama, Daiji; Imamura, Haruki; Sato, Yuta; Yamaguchi, Takashi; Ban, Noriko; Kawana, Hidetoshi; Ohira, Masahiro; Saiki, Atsuhito; Shirai, Kohji; Tatsuno, Ichiro
The objective of this study is to investigate the association of body mass index (BMI) with arterial stiffness assessed by cardioankle vascular index (CAVI). A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted in 23,257 healthy Japanese subjects (12,729 men and 10,528 women, aged 47.1 ± 12.5 years, BMI 22.9 ± 3.4 kg/m(2)) who underwent health screening between 2004 and 2006 in Japan. Exclusion criteria were current medication use and a past history of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, and nephritis. Male subjects showed significantly higher BMI, CAVI, and triglycerides and lower high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol compared with female subjects. Next, the subjects were divided into tertiles of BMI: lower, middle, and upper, in a gender-specific manner. After adjusting for confounders including age, systolic blood pressure, and HDL-cholesterol identified by multiple regression analysis, the mean CAVI decreased progressively as BMI tertile increased in both genders. Furthermore, a negative inverse relationship between BMI and adjusted CAVI was observed throughout the BMI distribution. Multivariate logistic regression model for contributors of high CAVI (≥90th percentile) identified obesity (odds ratios (95% confidence interval): 0.804 (0.720-0.899)], older age [15.6 (14.0-17.4)], male gender [2.26 (2.03-2.51)], hypertension [2.28 (2.06-2.54)], impaired fasting glucose [1.17 (1.01-1.37)], and low HDL-cholesterol [0.843 (0.669-1.06)] as independent factors. We demonstrated an inverse relationship between CAVI and BMI in healthy Japanese subjects, suggesting that systemic accumulation of adipose tissue per se may lead to a linear decrease of arterial stiffness in nonobese and obese subjects without metabolic disorders.
Chen, Tong; Xu, Feng; Su, Jian-Bin; Wang, Xue-Qin; Chen, Jin-Feng; Wu, Gang; Jin, Yan; Wang, Xiao-Hua
Glucose variability could be an independent risk factor for diabetes complications in addition to average glucose. The deficiency in islet β cell secretion and insulin sensitivity, the two important pathophysiological mechanisms of diabetes, are responsible for glycemic disorders. The oral disposition index evaluated by product of insulin secretion and sensitivity is a useful marker of islet β cell function. The aim of the study is to investigate glycemic variability in relation to oral disposition index in the subjects across a range of glucose tolerance from the normal to overt type 2 diabetes. 75-g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was performed in total 220 subjects: 47 with normal glucose regulation (NGR), 52 with impaired glucose metabolism (IGM, 8 with isolated impaired fasting glucose [IFG], 18 with isolated impaired glucose tolerance [IGT] and 26 with combined IFG and IGT), 61 screen-diagnosed diabetes by isolated 2-h glucose (DM2h) and 60 newly diagnosed diabetes by both fasting and 2-h glucose (DM). Insulin sensitivity index (Matsuda index, ISI), insulin secretion index (ΔI30/ΔG30), and integrated β cell function measured by the oral disposition index (ΔI30/ΔG30 multiplied by the ISI) were derived from OGTT. All subjects were monitored using the continuous glucose monitoring system for consecutive 72 hours. The multiple parameters of glycemic variability included the standard deviation of blood glucose (SD), mean of blood glucose (MBG), high blood glucose index (HBGI), continuous overlapping net glycemic action calculated every 1 h (CONGA1), mean of daily differences (MODD) and mean amplitude of glycemic excursions (MAGE). From the NGR to IGM to DM2h to DM group, the respective values of SD (mean ± SD) (0.9 ± 0.3, 1.5 ± 0.5, 1.9 ± 0.6 and 2.2 ± 0.6 mmol/), MBG (5.9 ± 0.5, 6.7 ± 0.7, 7.7 ± 1.0 and 8.7 ± 1.5 mmol/L), HGBI [median(Q1-Q3)][0.8(0.2-1.2), 2.0(1.2-3.7), 3.8(2.4-5.6) and 6
Minguet, Fernando; Salgado, Teresa M; van den Boogerd, Lucienne; Fernandez-Llimos, Fernando
The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is the National Library of Medicine (NLM) controlled vocabulary for indexing articles. Inaccuracies in the MeSH thesaurus have been reported for several areas including pharmacy. To assess the quality of pharmacy-specific MeSH assignment to articles indexed in pharmacy journals. The 10 journals containing the highest number of articles published in 2012 indexed under the MeSH 'Pharmacists' were identified. All articles published over a 5-year period (2008-2012) in the 10 previously selected journals were retrieved from PubMed. MeSH terms used to index these articles were extracted and pharmacy-specific MeSH terms were identified. The frequency of use of pharmacy-specific MeSH terms was calculated across journals. A total of 6989 articles were retrieved from the 10 pharmacy journals, of which 328 (4.7%) were articles not fully indexed and therefore did not contain any MeSH terms assigned. Among the 6661 articles fully indexed, the mean number of MeSH terms was 10.1 (SD = 4.0), being 1.0 (SD = 1.3) considered as Major MeSH. Both values significantly varied across journals. The mean number of pharmacy-specific MeSH terms per article was 0.9 (SD = 1.2). A total of 3490 (52.4%) of the 6661 articles were indexed in pharmacy journals without a single pharmacy-specific MeSH. Of the total 67193 MeSH terms assigned to articles, on average 10.5% (SD = 13.9) were pharmacy-specific MeSH. A statistically significant different pattern of pharmacy-specific MeSH assignment was identified across journals (Kruskal-Wallis P MeSH terms to articles indexed in pharmacy journals can be improved to further enhance evidence gathering in pharmacy. Over half of the articles published in the top-10 journals publishing pharmacy literature were indexed without a single pharmacy-specific MeSH. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Full Text Available Daiji Nagayama,1,2 Haruki Imamura,2 Yuta Sato,2 Takashi Yamaguchi,2 Noriko Ban,2 Hidetoshi Kawana,2 Masahiro Ohira,2 Atsuhito Saiki,2 Kohji Shirai,3 Ichiro Tatsuno2 1Center of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Shin-Oyama City Hospital, Oyama-City, 2Center of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, 3Department of Vascular Function, Sakura Medical Center, Toho University, Sakura-City, Japan Objective: The objective of this study is to investigate the association of body mass index (BMI with arterial stiffness assessed by cardioankle vascular index (CAVI. Subjects and methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted in 23,257 healthy Japanese subjects (12,729 men and 10,528 women, aged 47.1 ± 12.5 years, BMI 22.9 ± 3.4 kg/m2 who underwent health screening between 2004 and 2006 in Japan. Exclusion criteria were current medication use and a past history of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, and nephritis. Results: Male subjects showed significantly higher BMI, CAVI, and triglycerides and lower high-density lipoprotein (HDL-cholesterol compared with female subjects. Next, the subjects were divided into tertiles of BMI: lower, middle, and upper, in a gender-specific manner. After adjusting for confounders including age, systolic blood pressure, and HDL-cholesterol identified by multiple regression analysis, the mean CAVI decreased progressively as BMI tertile increased in both genders. Furthermore, a negative inverse relationship between BMI and adjusted CAVI was observed throughout the BMI distribution. Multivariate logistic regression model for contributors of high CAVI (≥90th percentile identified obesity (odds ratios (95% confidence interval: 0.804 (0.720–0.899], older age [15.6 (14.0–17.4], male gender [2.26 (2.03–2.51], hypertension [2.28 (2.06–2.54], impaired fasting glucose [1.17 (1.01–1.37], and low HDL-cholesterol [0.843 (0.669–1.06] as independent factors. Conclusion: We demonstrated an
Jessica Hagy is a different kind of thinker. She has an astonishing talent for visualizing relationships, capturing in pictures what is difficult for most of us to express in words. At indexed.blogspot.com, she posts charts, graphs, and Venn diagrams drawn on index cards that reveal in a simple and intuitive way the large and small truths of modern life. Praised throughout the blogosphere as “brilliant,” “incredibly creative,” and “comic genius,” Jessica turns her incisive, deadpan sense of humor on everything from office politics to relationships to religion. With new material along with some of Jessica’s greatest hits, this utterly unique book will thrill readers who demand humor that makes them both laugh and think.
Abdul Rahim, Farah S; Mohamed, Alizae M; Nor, Murshida Marizan; Saub, Roslan
To determine the prevalence of malocclusion and need for orthodontic treatment among persons with Down Syndrome (DS). Study participants were 113 persons with DS from the selected community-based rehabilitation center who fulfilled the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Ten occlusal characteristics of the Dental Aesthetic Index (DAI) were measured on study models to determine the degree of malocclusion. A single score represented the dentofacial anomalies, determined the level of severity, and determined the need for orthodontic treatment. Crowding in the anterior maxillary and mandibular arch was the main malocclusion problems among the subjects with DS. Comparison between age group and genders revealed no significant differences in four categories of orthodontic treatment need (P > .05). Most of the subjects with DS (94; 83.2%) had severe and very severe malocclusion, which indicated a desirable and mandatory need for orthodontic treatment.
Full Text Available Objective. The aims of this study were to (1 assess physical activity and weight status differences and (2 explore the direction and shape of subjective social status (SSS association with physical activity and weight status within four Asian countries. Methods. Cross section data of adult respondents from the nationally representative East Asian Social Survey were used for analyses. Logistic regression stratified by gender was conducted for the first aim, and simple and quadratic logistic regression models were used for the second. Results. SSS was significantly associated with odds of weekly or daily physical activity across all countries and genders, except for South Korean and Japanese females. Quadratic models provided significantly better fit for Chinese males (LR (d.f. = 1 = 6.51, P value <.05 and females (LR (d.f. = 1 = 7.36, P value <.01, South Korean males (LR (d.f. = 1 = 4.40, P value <.05, and Taiwanese females (LR (d.f. = 1 = 4.87, P value <.05. Conclusions. This study provides a comparable cross Asian country measure of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and new findings that a connection exists between SSS and physical activity. Differences of class distinction help explain the different shaped SSS relationships.
Full Text Available Gianfranco Piccirillo,1 Cristina Ottaviani,2 Claudia Fiorucci,1 Nicola Petrocchi,2 Federica Moscucci,1 Claudia Di Iorio,1 Fabiola Mastropietri,1 Ilaria Parrotta,1 Matteo Pascucci,1 Damiano Magrì3 1Department of Cardiovascular, Respiratory, Nephrological, Anestesiological and Geriatric Sciences, “Sapienza” University, 2Neuroimaging Laboratory, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, 3Department of Clinical and Molecular Medicine, University of Rome “Sapienza”, Rome, Italy Background: Noninvasive brain stimulation technique is an interesting tool to investigate the causal relation between cortical functioning and autonomic nervous system (ANS responses. Objective: The objective of this report is to evaluate whether anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS over the temporal cortex influences short-period temporal ventricular repolarization dispersion and cardiovascular ANS control in elderly subjects. Subjects and methods: In 50 healthy subjects (29 subjects younger than 60 years and 21 subjects older than 60 years matched for gender, short-period RR and systolic blood pressure spectral variability, QT variability index (QTVI, and noninvasive hemodynamic data were obtained during anodal tDCS or sham stimulation. Results: In the older group, the QTVI, low-frequency (LF power expressed in normalized units, the ratio between LF and high-frequency (HF power, and systemic peripheral resistances decreased, whereas HF power expressed in normalized units and α HF power increased during the active compared to the sham condition (P<0.05. Conclusion: In healthy subjects older than 60 years, tDCS elicits cardiovascular and autonomic changes. Particularly, it improves temporal ventricular repolarization dispersion, reduces sinus sympathetic activity and systemic peripheral resistance, and increases vagal sinus activity and baroreflex sensitivity. Keywords: transcranial direct current stimulation, QT variability, heart rate variability
Faghri Pouran D
Full Text Available Abstract Background The purpose of this study was to investigate the biomechanics of the hip, knee and ankle during a progressive resistance cycling protocol in an effort to detect and measure the presence of muscle fatigue. It was hypothesized that knee power output can be used as an indicator of fatigue in order to assess the cycling performance of SCI subjects. Methods Six spinal cord injured subjects (2 incomplete, 4 complete between the ages of twenty and fifty years old and possessing either a complete or incomplete spinal cord injury at or below the fourth cervical vertebra participated in this study. Kinematic data and pedal forces were recorded during cycling at increasing levels of resistance. Ankle, knee and hip power outputs and resultant pedal force were calculated. Ergometer cadence and muscle stimulation intensity were also recorded. Results The main findings of this study were: (a ankle and knee power outputs decreased, whereas hip power output increased with increasing resistance, (b cadence, stimulation intensity and resultant pedal force in that combined order were significant predictors of knee power output and (c knowing the value of these combined predictors at 10 rpm, an index of fatigue can be developed, quantitatively expressing the power capacity of the knee joint with respect to a baseline power level defined as fatigue. Conclusion An index of fatigue was successfully developed, proportionalizing knee power capacity during cycling to a predetermined value of fatigue. The fatigue index value at 0/8th kp, measured 90 seconds into active, unassisted pedaling was 1.6. This indicates initial power capacity at the knee to be 1.6 times greater than fatigue. The fatigue index decreased to 1.1 at 2/8th kp, representing approximately a 30% decrease in the knee's power capacity within a 4 minute timespan. These findings suggest that the present cycling protocol is not sufficient for a rider to gain the benefits of FES and thus
Sung, Paul S; Danial, Pamela; Lee, Dongchul C
To assess the reliability of standing time and the Kinematic Steadiness Index (KSI) in one-leg standing compared with the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test while considering anthropometric factors in subjects with recurrent low back pain (LBP). Sixty-six individuals participated in the study. The data were collected on two different days, 1 week apart. The KSI of the core spine, using video motion-capture techniques, was based on the relative standing time and relative standstill time. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC2,1) was compared for the reliability between measures. The covariates, such as age, Body Mass Index, and the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), were analyzed for any interactions based on these measures. The standing time (t = - 1.01, p = 0.32) and the KSI (t = - 1.70, p = 0.09) were not significantly different between measures. The TUG results were not different between measures (t = 1.01, p = 0.32). The Cronbach's alpha for the standing time was 0.84, for KSI was 0.89, and for TUG was 0.76. The standing time and KSI demonstrated an interaction with age, while the TUG demonstrated an interaction with the ODI score. The KSI during one-leg standing could help to develop a practical tool to justify quantity and quality of balance outcome measures, which identify balance deficits and core spine rehabilitation strategies in subjects with recurrent LBP.
Full Text Available Equal amounts of carbohydrates from various foodstuffs do not increase blood glucose to the same extent. This study was carried out, therefore, in 1996 at the National Nutrition and Food Technology Research institute in Tehran to determine the glycemic index of split pease, rice (Binam, kidney beans, green peas, “Lavash” bread and broad bean kernels. Diabetic subjects were studied in a clinical trial. The exact amount of cabohydrate in foodstuffs was determined using AOAC. Methods. White bread was used as the reference food. After a 12-hour overnight fast on seven separate days each subject was given the test food in an amount to provide 25 g of carbohydrate. Blood glucose was determined after 0, 60, 120 minutes using orthotouidine method. Glycemi response in each individual was calculated as the area under the 2- hour glucose individual was calculated as the area under the test food glucose curve as a percentage of the mean area under the whith bread glucose curve. Glycemic indices of the test foods were 31± 8.5 for split peas, 42.9±3 for rice, 44±9 for kidney beans, 57±7 for green peas, 69±8.5 for “Lavash” bread, and 96±14 for broad bean kernels .Legumes and rice (Binam can be used efficiently in meal planning for the diabetic subjects.
Directory of Book Trade and Related Organizations. Books Trade Associations, United States and Canada; International and Foreign Book Trade Associations; National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Standards; Calendar, 2003-2012; Acronyms; Index of Organizations; Subject Index.
Bowker Annual Library and Book Trade Almanac, 2003
Includes two lists: one of book trade associations in the United States and Canada, and one of international and foreign book trade associations. Concludes with National Information Standards Organization (NISO) standards; calendar, 2003-2012; acronyms; index of organizations; and subject index. (LRW)
Maryn, Youri; De Bodt, Marc; Barsties, Ben; Roy, Nelson
The Acoustic Voice Quality Index (AVQI) is a relatively new clinical method to quantify dysphonia severity. Since it partially relies on continuous speech, its performance may vary with voice-related phonetic differences and thus across languages. The present investigation therefore assessed the AVQI's performance in English, Dutch, German, and French. Fifty subjects were recorded reading sentences in the four languages, as well as producing a sustained vowel. These recordings were later edited to calculate the AVQI. The samples were also perceptually rated on overall dysphonia severity by three experienced voice clinicians. The AVQI's cross-linguistic concurrent validity and diagnostic precision were assessed. The results support earlier data, and confirm good cross-linguistic validity and diagnostic accuracy. Although no statistical differences were observed between languages, the AVQI performed better in English and German and less well in French. These results validate the AVQI as a potentially robust and objective dysphonia severity measure across languages.
Jensen, Mette Kamp; Nielsen, Morten; Koefoed, Pernille
Several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been identified in the beta(2)-adrenergic receptor gene (ADRB2). By the use of five SNPs (G46A, C79G, C491T, C523A, G1053C) for identification of ADRB2 haplotypes in 814 Danish Caucasians, we investigated whether ADRB2 haplotypes are associated...... with body mass index (BMI). The SNPs showed organization into 13 distinct haplotypes and 41 haplotype pairs. The study identified four common haplotypes: ACCCC (10.1 +/- 0.3 %), ACCCG (27.9 +/- 0.3 %), GCCAC (10.8 +/- 0.1 %) and GGCCG (41.0 +/- 0.2 %) (frequencies (SD), seen in 91 % of the population....... In the total population (mean age +/- SD: 50 +/- 16 years), BMI was not related to haplotype pairs, individual SNPs or allelic haplotypes. However, in subjects haplotype groups (p = 0.014) but were not related...
Lavi, Talya; Karasik, Avraham; Koren-Morag, Nira; Kanety, Hannah; Feinberg, Micha S; Shechter, Michael
This study sought to explore the effect of glycemic-index dietary carbohydrates on endothelium-dependent flow-mediated dilation (FMD) in overweight and obese nondiabetic volunteers. Post-prandial hyperglycemia has been recognized as a cardiovascular risk factor in both the diabetic and the general population. Endothelial dysfunction has been shown to occur in diabetic and hyperglycemic patients. We prospectively assessed brachial artery FMD in 56 healthy overweight and obese nondiabetic volunteers (38 [67.9%] men, mean age 48 +/- 6 years) on 4 separate mornings, 1 to 2 weeks apart. After overnight fasting, the percent FMD (%FMD) improvement and endothelium-independent nitroglycerin-mediated dilation (%NTG) were assessed, after which subjects received 1 of 4 group meals at each visit (placebo [water] or a carbohydrate meal of glucose, cornflakes, or high-fiber cereal). Meals were distributed in a rotating randomized fashion, such that each subject received all 4 meals once throughout the study period. Fasting and 2-h post-prandial serum glucose levels were similar in all 3 meals, whereas at 30 to 90 min, serum glucose levels were significantly higher after glucose and cornflakes (high glycemic) compared with fiber (low glycemic). Baseline %FMD, not significantly different in the 3 carbohydrate-based meals, was reduced 2 h post-prandially in all groups, showing statistical significance in only high-glycemic index meals: glucose (15 +/- 9% vs. 10 +/- 8%, p glycemic carbohydrate consumption significantly suppresses FMD in nondiabetic overweight and obese volunteers, suggesting a mechanism whereby high-glycemic meals may enhance cardiovascular risk.
Miguel Angel Martínez-González
Full Text Available OBJECTIVE: Independently of total caloric intake, a better quality of the diet (for example, conformity to the Mediterranean diet is associated with lower obesity risk. It is unclear whether a brief dietary assessment tool, instead of full-length comprehensive methods, can also capture this association. In addition to reduced costs, a brief tool has the interesting advantage of allowing immediate feedback to participants in interventional studies. Another relevant question is which individual items of such a brief tool are responsible for this association. We examined these associations using a 14-item tool of adherence to the Mediterranean diet as exposure and body mass index, waist circumference and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR as outcomes. DESIGN: Cross-sectional assessment of all participants in the "PREvención con DIeta MEDiterránea" (PREDIMED trial. SUBJECTS: 7,447 participants (55-80 years, 57% women free of cardiovascular disease, but with either type 2 diabetes or ≥ 3 cardiovascular risk factors. Trained dietitians used both a validated 14-item questionnaire and a full-length validated 137-item food frequency questionnaire to assess dietary habits. Trained nurses measured weight, height and waist circumference. RESULTS: Strong inverse linear associations between the 14-item tool and all adiposity indexes were found. For a two-point increment in the 14-item score, the multivariable-adjusted differences in WHtR were -0.0066 (95% confidence interval, -0.0088 to -0.0049 for women and -0.0059 (-0.0079 to -0.0038 for men. The multivariable-adjusted odds ratio for a WHtR>0.6 in participants scoring ≥ 10 points versus ≤ 7 points was 0.68 (0.57 to 0.80 for women and 0.66 (0.54 to 0.80 for men. High consumption of nuts and low consumption of sweetened/carbonated beverages presented the strongest inverse associations with abdominal obesity. CONCLUSIONS: A brief 14-item tool was able to capture a strong monotonic inverse association between
Martínez-González, Miguel Angel; García-Arellano, Ana; Toledo, Estefanía; Salas-Salvadó, Jordi; Buil-Cosiales, Pilar; Corella, Dolores; Covas, Maria Isabel; Schröder, Helmut; Arós, Fernando; Gómez-Gracia, Enrique; Fiol, Miquel; Ruiz-Gutiérrez, Valentina; Lapetra, José; Lamuela-Raventos, Rosa Maria; Serra-Majem, Lluís; Pintó, Xavier; Muñoz, Miguel Angel; Wärnberg, Julia; Ros, Emilio; Estruch, Ramón
Objective Independently of total caloric intake, a better quality of the diet (for example, conformity to the Mediterranean diet) is associated with lower obesity risk. It is unclear whether a brief dietary assessment tool, instead of full-length comprehensive methods, can also capture this association. In addition to reduced costs, a brief tool has the interesting advantage of allowing immediate feedback to participants in interventional studies. Another relevant question is which individual items of such a brief tool are responsible for this association. We examined these associations using a 14-item tool of adherence to the Mediterranean diet as exposure and body mass index, waist circumference and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) as outcomes. Design Cross-sectional assessment of all participants in the “PREvención con DIeta MEDiterránea” (PREDIMED) trial. Subjects 7,447 participants (55–80 years, 57% women) free of cardiovascular disease, but with either type 2 diabetes or ≥3 cardiovascular risk factors. Trained dietitians used both a validated 14-item questionnaire and a full-length validated 137-item food frequency questionnaire to assess dietary habits. Trained nurses measured weight, height and waist circumference. Results Strong inverse linear associations between the 14-item tool and all adiposity indexes were found. For a two-point increment in the 14-item score, the multivariable-adjusted differences in WHtR were −0.0066 (95% confidence interval, –0.0088 to −0.0049) for women and –0.0059 (–0.0079 to –0.0038) for men. The multivariable-adjusted odds ratio for a WHtR>0.6 in participants scoring ≥10 points versus ≤7 points was 0.68 (0.57 to 0.80) for women and 0.66 (0.54 to 0.80) for men. High consumption of nuts and low consumption of sweetened/carbonated beverages presented the strongest inverse associations with abdominal obesity. Conclusions A brief 14-item tool was able to capture a strong monotonic inverse association between
Mandalos, Achilleas; Anastasopoulos, Eleftherios; Makris, Leonidas; Dervenis, Nikolaos; Kilintzis, Vasilis; Topouzis, Fotis
To evaluate the inter-examiner reproducibility of Ocular Response Analyzer (ORA) parameters in healthy subjects using the waveform score (WS) for quality control of acquisition. Fifteen healthy subjects had their intraocular pressure (IOP) measured with ORA by 2 masked examiners. An acquisition protocol that aimed at obtaining 4 reliable measurements in each eye with WS≥6 and with as few repeated measurements as possible was employed, whereas a maximum of 8 measurements per eye was allowed. Additional good quality criteria included symmetrical force-in and force-out applanation signal peaks on the ORA waveform and few or no distortions of the applanation signal curve. Only the right eyes were included in the analysis. Examiners were trained but not experienced. The inter-examiner reproducibility of ORA parameters was assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Mean values of the best 4 measurements were considered in analysis. ICC including the best 4 measurements per eye was high for all ORA parameters. Specifically, ICC for Goldmann-correlated IOP was 0.961, for corneal-compensated IOP was 0.962, for corneal resistance factor was 0.987, and for corneal hysteresis was 0.988. Similar reproducibility was found when only the 3 best measurements per eye were included in the analysis. The protocol for IOP measurement with ORA using the WS ≥6 as quality index achieved high inter-examiner reproducibility for all ORA parameters. High reproducibility was obtained even by inexperienced examiners when considering the mean of the best 3 measurements per eye.
Puhan, Milo A; Hansel, Nadia N; Sobradillo, Patricia
Background: Little evidence on the validity of simple and widely applicable tools to predict mortality in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exists.Objective: To conduct a large international study to validate the ADO index that uses age, dyspnoea and FEV1 to predict 3-yea...
Clausen, Brian; Andriacchi, Tom; Nielsen, Dennis Brandborg
osteoarthritis according to the ACR criteria. Three dimensional gait analysis was performed. Subjects walked barefoot at self-selected walking speed. The first peak magnitude KI from all three planes were calculated using inverse dynamics. Results Frontal plane kinematics contributed with 59.3% (SD 25.6) of KI...... while sagittal plane kinematics contributed with 40.5% (SD 26.1). A substantial inter-subject variation in the relative contribution of the flexion and extension moment components to KI was observed. Conclusion Our findings support the notion that the primary contributor to KI is the frontal plane...... kinematics (i.e. the knee adduction moment), and secondarily the sagittal plane kinematics (i.e. the knee flexion moment). This holds promise for using KI in clinical trials since both frontal and sagittal knee joint moments have been suggested to be associated with the knee osteoarthritis disease...
Cho, Hae Young; Grunstein, Ronald R; Yee, Brendon
Acoustic pharyngometry is a relatively new noninvasive method that quantifies geometrically complexed pharyngeal dimensions. Our study aimed to investigate the predictability and usefulness of acoustic pharyngometry in diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and we developed a prospective clinical trial in 16 subjects without apnea and 54 subjects with apnea. All seventy subjects received polysomnography (PSG) to assess the sleep architecture, including breathing and the degree of apnea hypopnea index. Acoustic pharyngometry was performed in four body positions (sitting, supine, right and left lateral) while awake with tidal breathing in addition to morphometric measurements (Kushida index) of oral cavity. This study shows that the cross-sectional area and volume of the upper airway is smaller in the supine position than any other positions. As well, the oropharyngeal junction area of the supine position is the most predictive parameter to discriminate between subjects with or without OSA. Acoustic pharyngometry can be a clinically useful tool for localizing the narrowed portion of the upper airway and predicting obstructive sleep apnea. PMID:15483340
Larsen, H. N.; Rasmussen, O. W.; Rasmussen, Peter Have
diabetic subjects ingested four test meals: white bread (WB) and three meals of cooked polished rice of the same variety being non-parboiled (NP), mildly traditionally parboiled (TP) and severely pressure parboiled (PP). The participants ingested the test meals (50 g available carbohydrates) on separate...... white bread (626 +/- 80; P ... that to white bread (P
Aller, E E J G; Larsen, Thomas Meinert; Holst, Claus
-month intervention period.Results:During the LCD period subjects lost 11.2 (10.8, 12.0) kg (mean (95% CI)). Average weight regain over the 12-month intervention period was 3.9 (95% CI 3.0 to 4.8) kg. Subjects on the HP diets regained less weight than subjects on the LP diets. The difference in weight......Background:A high dietary protein (P) content and low glycemic index (GI) have been suggested to be beneficial for weight management, but long-term studies are scarce.Objective:The DIOGENES randomized clinical trial investigated the effect of P and GI on weight loss maintenance in overweight...
Romaniuk, Romina; Lidia, Giuffre; Alejandro, Costantini; Norberto, Bartoloni; Paolo, Nannipieri
Soil quality assessment is needed to evaluate the soil conditions and sustainability of soil and crop management properties, and thus requires a systematic approach to select and interpret soil properties to be used as indicators. The aim of this work was to evaluate and compare different indexing methods to assess quality of an undisturbed grassland soil (UN), a degraded pasture soil (GL) and a no tilled soil (NT) with four different A horizon depths (25, 23, 19 and 14 cm) reflecting a diverse erosion. Twenty four soil properties were measured from 0 to10 (1) and 10 to 20 cm. (2) and a minimum data set was chosen by multivariate principal component analysis (PCA) considering all measured soil properties together (A), or according to their classification in physical, chemical or microbiological (B) properties. The measured soil properties involved either inexpensive or not laborious standard protocols, to be used in routine laboratory analysis (simple soil quality index - SSQI), or a more laborious, time consuming and expensive protocols to determine microbial diversity and microbial functionality by methyl ester fatty acids (PLFA) and catabolic response profiles (CRP), respectively (complex soil quality index - CSQI). The selected properties were linearly normalized and integrated by the weight additive method to calculate SSQI A, SSQI B, CSQI A and CSQI B indices. Two microbiological soil quality indices (MSQI) were also calculated: the MSQI 1 only considered microbiological properties according to the procedure used for calculating SQI; the MSQI 2 was calculated by considering microbial carbon biomass (MCB), microbial activity (Resp) and functional diversity determined by CPR (E). The soil quality indices were SSQI A = MCB 1 + Particulate Organic Carbon (POC)1 + Mean Weight Diameter (MWD)1; SSQI B = Saturated hydraulic conductivity (K) 1 + Total Organic Carbon (TOC) 1 + MCB 1; CSQI A = MCB 1 + POC 1 + MWD 1; CSQI B = K 1+ TOC 1+ 0.3 * (MCB 1+ i/a +POC 1) + 0
A comparative study of the origin, structure, and indexing language of the Persian and English keywords of articles indexed in the IranMedex database and their compliance with the Persian medical thesaurus and Medical Subject Headings.
Parsaei-Mohammadi, Parastoo; Ghasemi, Ali Hossein; Hassanzadeh-Beheshtabad, Raziyeh
In the present era, thesauri as tools in indexing play an effective role in integrating retrieval preventing fragmentation as well as a multiplicity of terminologies and also in providing information content of documents. This study aimed to investigate the keywords of articles indexed in IranMedex in terms of origin, structure and indexing situation and their Compliance with the Persian Medical Thesaurus and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). This study is an applied research, and a survey has been conducted. Statistical population includes 32,850 Persian articles which are indexed in the IranMedex during the years 1385-1391. 379 cases were selected as sample of the study. Data collection was done using a checklist. In analyzing the findings, the SPSS Software were used. Although there was no significant difference in terms of indexing origin between the proportion of different types of the Persian and English keywords of articles indexed in the IranMedex, the compliance rates of the Persian and English keywords with the Persian medical thesaurus and MeSH were different in different years. In the meantime, the structure of keywords is leaning more towards phrase structure, and a single word structure and the majority of keywords are selected from the titles and abstracts. The authors' familiarity with the thesauri and controlled tools causes homogeneity in assigning keywords and also provides more precise, faster, and easier retrieval of the keywords. It's suggested that a mixture of natural and control languages to be used in this database in order to reach more comprehensive results.
Wang, Hongyu; Liu, Jinbo; Zhao, Hongwei; Zhou, Yingyan; Zhao, Xujing; Song, Yuejie; Li, Lihong; Shi, Hongyan
Arterial stiffness is an independent predictor for vascular diseases. Cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI) is a new index of arterial stiffness. N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) is a strong prognostic marker in advanced stage of coronary heart disease (CHD). In the present study, we investigated the relationship between CAVI and NT-proBNP in hypertension and CHD subjects. Five hundred one subjects (male/female, 209/292) from Vascular Medicine of Peking University Shougang Hospital were divided into four groups: healthy group (n = 186), hypertension group (n = 159), CHD group (n = 45), and hypertension with CHD group (n = 111). CAVI was measured using VS-1000 apparatus. Our results showed that CAVI was significantly higher in hypertension subjects with CHD than in healthy and hypertension group, respectively (8.42 ± 1.51 vs. 7.77 ± 1.19; 8.42 ± 1.51 vs. 7.92 ± 1.11; both P vascular-related diseases. Crown Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Ohashi, Norihiko; Ito, Chikako; Fujikawa, Rumi; Yamamoto, Hideya; Kihara, Yasuki; Kohno, Nobuoki
Few studies addressed the relation of visceral adiposity and high-molecular weight (HMW) adiponectin to arterial stiffness. We investigated the impact of visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and HMW adiponectin on cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI) in asymptomatic Japanese subjects. We studied 487 consecutive subjects (271 men and 216 women) who underwent general health examination between October 2005 and May 2008. The abdominal, visceral, and subcutaneous adipose tissue areas were determined by low-dose x-ray computed tomography. Serum levels of total and HMW adiponectin were measured using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay system based on a monoclonal antibody to humans. Cardio-ankle vascular index was positively correlated with VAT area and negatively correlated with HMW adiponectin levels. We also found the positive association of the number of metabolic syndrome components with CAVI in both sexes. A stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that age, VAT area, serum HMW adiponectin levels, and homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance were independent determinants of CAVI. Receiver operating characteristic analyses demonstrated that the predictive value of the VAT area for the extent of CAVI (mild: 75th percentile) exceeded that of total or HMW adiponectin levels in both sexes. In conclusion, increased CAVI is associated with both amounts of VAT measured by computed tomography and serum HMW adiponectin levels in asymptomatic Japanese subjects. Receiver operating characteristic analysis indicates that the VAT area is a lot better predictor of arterial stiffness than adiponectin levels.
Shin, Jaeyong; Choi, Young; Han, Kyu-Tae; Cheon, Sung-Youn; Kim, Jae-Hyun; Lee, Sang Gyu; Park, Eun-Cheol
Mental health disorders and suicide are an important and growing public health concern in Korea. Evidence has shown that both globally and in Korea, obesity is associated with an increased risk of developing some psychiatric disorders. Therefore, we examined the association between distorted body weight perception (BWP) and suicidal ideation. Data were obtained from the 2007-2012 Korea National Health and Nutritional Evaluation Survey (KNHANES), an annual cross-sectional nationwide survey that included 14 276 men and 19 428 women. Multiple logistic regression analyses were conducted to investigate the associations between nine BWP categories, which combined body image (BI) and body mass index (BMI) categories, and suicidal ideation. Moreover, the fitness of our models was verified using the Akaike information criterion. Consistent with previous studies, suicidal ideation was associated with marital status, household income, education level, and perceived health status in both genders. Only women were significantly more likely to have distorted BWP; there was no relationship among men. In category B1 (low BMI and normal BI), women (odds ratio [OR], 2.25; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.48 to 3.42) were more likely to express suicidal ideation than women in category B2 (normal BMI and normal BI) were. Women in overweight BWP category C2 (normal BMI and fat BI) also had an increased OR for suicidal ideation (OR, 2.25; 95% CI, 1.48 to 3.42). Those in normal BWP categories were not likely to have suicidal ideation. Among women in the underweight BWP categories, only the OR for those in category A2 (normal BMI and thin BI) was significant (OR, 1.34; 95% CI, 1.13 to 1.59). Distorted BWP should be considered an important factor in the prevention of suicide and for the improvement of mental health among Korean adults, especially Korean women with distorted BWPs.
Full Text Available Objectives: Mental health disorders and suicide are an important and growing public health concern in Korea. Evidence has shown that both globally and in Korea, obesity is associated with an increased risk of developing some psychiatric disorders. Therefore, we examined the association between distorted body weight perception (BWP and suicidal ideation. Methods: Data were obtained from the 2007-2012 Korea National Health and Nutritional Evaluation Survey (KNHANES, an annual cross-sectional nationwide survey that included 14 276 men and 19 428 women. Multiple logistic regression analyses were conducted to investigate the associations between nine BWP categories, which combined body image (BI and body mass index (BMI categories, and suicidal ideation. Moreover, the fitness of our models was verified using the Akaike information criterion. Results: Consistent with previous studies, suicidal ideation was associated with marital status, household income, education level, and perceived health status in both genders. Only women were significantly more likely to have distorted BWP; there was no relationship among men. In category B1 (low BMI and normal BI, women (odds ratio [OR], 2.25; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.48 to 3.42 were more likely to express suicidal ideation than women in category B2 (normal BMI and normal BI were. Women in overweight BWP category C2 (normal BMI and fat BI also had an increased OR for suicidal ideation (OR, 2.25; 95% CI, 1.48 to 3.42. Those in normal BWP categories were not likely to have suicidal ideation. Among women in the underweight BWP categories, only the OR for those in category A2 (normal BMI and thin BI was significant (OR, 1.34; 95% CI, 1.13 to 1.59. Conclusions: Distorted BWP should be considered an important factor in the prevention of suicide and for the improvement of mental health among Korean adults, especially Korean women with distorted BWPs.
Balducci, Stefano; Cardelli, Patrizia; Pugliese, Luca; D'Errico, Valeria; Haxhi, Jonida; Alessi, Elena; Iacobini, Carla; Menini, Stefano; Bollanti, Lucilla; Conti, Francesco G; Nicolucci, Antonio; Pugliese, Giuseppe
This study evaluated the effect of supervised exercise training on liver enzymes and two surrogate measures of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in subjects with type 2 diabetes. Sedentary patients from 22 outpatient diabetes clinics were randomized by center, age and treatment to twice-a-week supervised aerobic and resistance training plus structured exercise counseling (exercise group, EXE; n=303) versus counseling alone (control group, CON; n=303) for 12 months. EXE participants were further randomized to low-to-moderate (n=142) or moderate-to-high (n=161) intensity training of equal energy cost. Baseline and end-of-study levels of liver enzymes, fatty liver index (FLI) and visceral adiposity index (VAI) were obtained. Enzyme levels did not change, whereas FLI and VAI decreased significantly in EXE, but not CON participants. Physical activity (PA) volume was an independent predictor of both FLI and VAI reductions, the extent of which increased from the 1st to the 4th quintile of PA volume and baseline to end-of-study changes in fitness parameters. Differences in the effect of LI versus HI training were negligible. Data from this large cohort of subjects with type 2 diabetes indicate that FLI and VAI decrease with supervised training in a volume-dependent manner. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
Neuwirth, Christoph; Burkhardt, Christian; Alix, James; Castro, José; de Carvalho, Mamede; Gawel, Malgorzata; Goedee, Stephan; Grosskreutz, Julian; Lenglet, Timothée; Moglia, Cristina; Omer, Taha; Schrooten, Maarten; Weber, Markus
Motor Unit Number Index (MUNIX) is a neurophysiological measure that provides an index of the number of lower motor neurons in a muscle. Its performance across centres in healthy subjects and patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) has been established, but inter-rater variability between multiple raters in one single subject has not been investigated. To assess reliability in a set of 6 muscles in a single subject among 12 examiners (6 experienced with MUNIX, 6 less experienced) and to determine variables associated with variability of measurements. Twelve raters applied MUNIX in six different muscles (abductor pollicis brevis (APB), abductor digiti minimi (ADM), biceps brachii (BB), tibialis anterior (TA), extensor dig. brevis (EDB), abductor hallucis (AH)) twice in one single volunteer on consecutive days. All raters visited at least one training course prior to measurements. Intra- and inter-rater variability as determined by the coefficient of variation (COV) between different raters and their levels of experience with MUNIX were compared. Mean intra-rater COV of MUNIX was 14.0% (±6.4) ranging from 5.8 (APB) to 30.3% (EDB). Mean inter-rater COV was 18.1 (±5.4) ranging from 8.0 (BB) to 31.7 (AH). No significant differences of variability between experienced and less experienced raters were detected. We provide evidence that quality control for neurophysiological methods can be performed with similar standards as in laboratory medicine. Intra- and inter-rater variability of MUNIX is muscle-dependent and mainly below 20%. Experienced neurophysiologists can easily adopt MUNIX and adequate teaching ensures reliable utilization of this method.
Utzschneider, Kristina M; Bayer-Carter, Jennifer L; Arbuckle, Matthew D; Tidwell, Jaime M; Richards, Todd L; Craft, Suzanne
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is associated with insulin resistance and dyslipidaemia and can progress to steatohepatitis and cirrhosis. We sought to determine whether dietary fat and saturated fat content alter liver fat in the absence of weight change in an older population. Liver fat was quantified by magnetic resonance spectroscopy before and after 4 weeks on an isoenergetic low-fat/low-saturated fat/low-glycaemic index (LGI) (LSAT: 23 % fat/7 % saturated fat/GI 70) diet in older subjects. In the present study, twenty subjects (seven males/thirteen females; age 69.3 (SEM 1.6) years, BMI 26.9 (SEM 0.8) kg/m2) were randomised to the LSAT diet and fifteen subjects (six males/nine females; age 68.6 (SEM 1.8) years, BMI 28.1 (SEM 0.9) kg/m2) to the HSAT diet. Weight remained stable. Liver fat decreased significantly on the LSAT diet (median 2.2 (interquartile range (IQR) 3.1) to 1.7 (IQR 1.8) %, P= 0.002) but did not change on the HSAT diet (median 1.2 (IQR 4.1) to 1.6 (IQR 3.9) %). The LSAT diet lowered fasting glucose and total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol and raised TAG (Pdiet had no effect on glucose or HDL-cholesterol but increased total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol (Pdiet, but the Matsuda index of insulin sensitivity improved on the LSAT diet (Pdiet was a predictor of changes in lipid parameters but not liver fat. We conclude that diet composition may be an important factor in the accumulation of liver fat, with a low-fat/low-saturated fat/LGI diet being beneficial.
Dias, Cintia B; Amigó, Núria; Wood, Lisa G; Mallol, Roger; Correig, Xavier; Garg, Manohar L
Dietary fat composition is known to modulate circulating lipid and lipoprotein levels. Although supplementation with long chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCn-3PUFA) has been shown to reduce plasma triglyceride levels, the effect of the interactions between LCn-3PUFA and the major dietary fats consumed has not been previously investigated. In a randomized controlled parallel design clinical intervention, we examined the effect of diets rich in either saturated fatty acids (SFA) or omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-6PUFA) on plasma lipid levels and lipoprotein profiles (lipoprotein size, concentration and distribution in subclasses) in subjects with an adequate omega 3 index. Twenty six healthy subjects went through a four-week pre-supplementation period with LCn-3PUFA and were then randomized to diets rich in either n-6PUFA or SFA both supplemented with LCn-3PUFA. The diet rich in n-6PUFA decreased low density lipoprotein (LDL) particle concentration (-8%, p=0.013) and LDL cholesterol (LDL-C) level (-8%, p=0.021), while the saturated fat rich diet did not affect LDL particle concentration or LDL-C levels significantly. Nevertheless, dietary saturated fatty acids increased LCn-3PUFA in plasma and tissue lipids compared with n-6PUFA, potentially reducing other cardiovascular risk factors such as inflammation and clotting tendency. Improvement on the omega 3 index of healthy subjects did not alter the known effects of dietary saturated fats and n-6PUFA on LDL profiles. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Duzenli, Mehmet Akif; Ozdemir, Kurtulus; Aygul, Nazif; Soylu, Ahmet; Aygul, Meryem Ulku; Gök, Hasan
This study was planned to investigate the normal reference values of myocardial performance index (MPI) obtained by tissue Doppler echocardiography (TDE) and the agreement between MPI measured by TDE and conventional MPI measured by pulsed-wave Doppler (PWD) in healthy subjects and patients with heart failure (HF). Two hundred and three patients with HF and 190 healthy subjects were enrolled in this study. Isovolumic contraction and relaxation time (ICT and IRT) and ejection time (ET) were measured from mitral inflow and left ventricular (LV) outflow. Tissue Doppler echocardiography recordings were obtained at the septal, lateral, inferior, and anterior of the mitral annulus and same time intervals were measured. Myocardial performance index was calculated. The functional capacity of the patients with HF was determined according to New York Heart Association classification. TDE-MPI values were higher than conventional PWD-MPI values in both groups (53%+/-8% vs 48%+/-11%, P<0.0001 in the healthy subjects; 84%+/-21% vs 72%+/-19%, P<0.0001 in the patients with HF). Moderate agreement was found between PWD-MPI and LV mean TDE-MPI in both groups. In identifying patients with moderately or severely decreased LV ejection fraction, TDE-MPI had higher cutoff values than conventional PWD-MPI, and TDE-MPI had higher specificity, sensitivity, negative predictive value, and diagnostic accuracy. In patients with HF, TDE-MPI had a stronger correlation with LV ejection fraction and functional capacity than did PWD-MPI. TDE-MPI is an alternative to conventional PWD-MPI in assessment of cardiac function. However, the higher MPI cutoff points should be considered when this method is used for the evaluation of cardiac function.
Full Text Available BackgroundWe performed a retrospective longitudinal study on the effects of changes in weight, body composition, and homeostasis model assessment (HOMA indices on glycemic progression in subjects without diabetes during a four-year follow-up period in a community cohort without intentional intervention.MethodsFrom 28,440 non-diabetic subjects who participated in a medical check-up program in 2004, data on anthropometric and metabolic parameters were obtained after four years in 2008. Body composition analyses were performed with a bioelectrical impedance analyzer. Skeletal muscle index (SMI, % was calculated with lean mass/weight×100. Subjects were divided into three groups according to weight change status in four years: weight loss (≤-5.0%, stable weight (-5.0 to 5.0%, weight gain (≥5.0%. Progressors were defined as the subjects who progressed to impaired fasting glucose or diabetes.ResultsProgressors showed worse baseline metabolic profiles compared with non-progressors. In logistic regression analyses, the increase in changes of HOMA-insulin resistance (HOMA-IR in four years presented higher odds ratios for glycemic progression compared with other changes during that period. Among the components of body composition, a change in waist-hip ratio was the strongest predictor, and SMI change in four years was a significant negative predictor for glycemic progression. Changes in HOMA β-cell function in four years was a negative predictor for glycemic progression.ConclusionIncreased interval changes in HOMA-IR, weight gain and waist-hip ratio was associated with glycemic progression during a four-year period without intentional intervention in non-diabetic Korean subjects.
Comparison of Physiological and Psychological Relaxation Using Measurements of Heart Rate Variability, Prefrontal Cortex Activity, and Subjective Indexes after Completing Tasks with and without Foliage Plants.
Park, Sin-Ae; Song, Chorong; Oh, Yun-Ah; Miyazaki, Yoshifumi; Son, Ki-Cheol
The objective of this study was to compare physiological and psychological relaxation by assessing heart rate variability (HRV), prefrontal cortex activity, and subjective indexes while subjects performed a task with and without foliage plants. In a crossover experimental design, 24 university students performed a task transferring pots with and without a foliage plant for 3 min. HRV and oxyhemoglobin (oxy-Hb) concentration in the prefrontal cortex were continuously measured. Immediately thereafter, subjective evaluation of emotions was performed using a modified semantic differential (SD) method and a profile of mood state questionnaire (POMS). Results showed that the natural logarithmic (ln) ratio of low frequency/high frequency, as an estimate of sympathetic nerve activity, was significantly lower while performing the task with foliage plants for the average 3 min measurement interval. Oxy-Hb concentration in the left prefrontal cortex showed a tendency to decrease in the 2-3 min interval in the task with foliage plants compared to the task without plants. Moreover, significant psychological relaxation according to POMS score and SD was demonstrated when the task involved foliage plants. In conclusion, the task involving foliage plants led to more physiological and psychological relaxation compared with the task without foliage plants.
Full Text Available Abstract Background Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR enables non-invasive quantification of cardiac output (CO and thereby cardiac index (CI, CO indexed to body surface area. The aim of this study was to establish if CI decreases with age and compare the values to CI for athletes and for patients with congestive heart failure (CHF. Methods CI was measured in 144 healthy volunteers (39 ± 16 years, range 21–81 years, 68 females, in 60 athletes (29 ± 6 years, 30 females and in 157 CHF patients with ejection fraction (EF below 40% (60 ± 13 years, 33 females. CI was calculated using aortic flow by velocity-encoded CMR and is presented as mean ± SD. Flow was validated in vitro using a flow phantom and in 25 subjects with aorta and pulmonary flow measurements. Results There was a slight decrease of CI with age in healthy subjects (8 ml/min/m2 per year, r2 = 0.07, p = 0.001. CI in males (3.2 ± 0.5 l/min/m2 and females (3.1 ± 0.4 l/min/m2 did not differ (p = 0.64. The mean ± SD of CI in healthy subjects in the age range of 20–29 was 3.3 ± 0.4 l/min/m2, in 30–39 years 3.3 ± 0.5 l/min/m2, in 40–49 years 3.1 ± 0.5 l/min/m2, 50–59 years 3.0 ± 0.4 l/min/m2 and >60 years 3.0 ± 0.4 l/min/m2. There was no difference in CI between athletes and age-controlled healthy subjects but HR was lower and indexed SV higher in athletes. CI in CHF patients (2.3 ± 0.6 l/min/m2 was lower compared to the healthy population (p 2 = 0.07, p Conclusions CI decreases in healthy subjects with age but does not differ between males and females. We found no difference in CI between athletes and healthy subjects at rest but CI was lower in patients with congestive heart failure. The presented values can be used as reference values for flow velocity mapping CMR.
Tsuboi, Atsuko; Ito, Chikako; Fujikawa, Rumi; Yamamoto, Hideya; Kihara, Yasuki
Although a relationship between post-challenge hyperglycemia and arterial stiffness has been reported, the relationship between the postprandial glucose levels and cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI) in non-diabetic subjects is not clear. This study thus evaluated the association between the postprandial glucose levels after a composite meal and the degree of arterial stiffness measured according to CAVI in non-diabetic subjects. The subjects included 1,291 individuals (655 men and 636 women; mean age, 48.6 years; range, 23-85 years) who underwent medical examinations, including blood tests and CAVI assessments, between October 2005 and April 2012. The 1-hour postprandial glucose levels were determined after a 600-kcal traditional Japanese meal. The CAVI values were significantly higher in the subjects with higher 1-hour postprandial glucose levels (≥140 mg/dL in men; ≥158 mg/dL in women). A simple regression analysis indicated that the CAVI values were significantly correlated with the 1-hour postprandial glucose levels in men (r=0.286, pblood pressure, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, 1-hour postprandial glucose, homeostatis model assessment of insulin resistance, estimated glemerular filtration rate, and high sensitive C-reactive protein, stepwise multiple regression analysis demonstrated that the 1-hour postprandial glucose level was an independent predictor associated with the CAVI in men (p=0.003) and older women 50 years of age or older (p=0.003). This study demonstrated that the 1-hour postprandial glucose levels are associated with increased CAVI values in non-diabetic men and older women 50 years of age or older.
Lobos, Daniela R; Vicuña, Isabella A; Novik, Victoria; Vega, Claudia A
The results of studies evaluating the metabolic effects of glycemic index (GI) in subjects with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM2) have been contradictory. Consequently, the benefits of its application are controversial and polarized opinions of international organizations have been disclosed. The above situation leads this study to evaluate the acute effect of low and high GI breakfast on the glycemic response and satiety in subjects with DM2 under intensive insulin therapy (IIT). A controlled, crossover and single-blind clinical trial was developed involving 10 obese subjects with DM2 under IIT, with a period of at least six months under IIT and with fast insulin prescription before breakfast. Subjects ingested on two different occasions a high or low GI breakfast. In both stages, glycemia was evaluated at 0 (basal), 30, 60 and 120 min, and satiety and satiation were evaluated through a visual analogue scale. In contrast to high GI breakfast, the low GI meal generated a significant decrease of 46% for the area under the curve of glucose (Δ 1940 mg/dL × 120 min, p = 0.022) and in mean glycemia evaluated at 30, 60 and 120 min. Moreover, in the low GI stage 8 of 10 patients achieved a 2 h postprandial glycemia lower than 180 mg/dL, without statistical significance. A nonsignificant increase of 12.7% (Δ 1.06 cm, p = 0.271) in satiety at 120 min in the low GI stage was observed. In contrast to high GI breakfast, the low GI breakfast generated a significantly lower glycemic response. This assay allowed for the contribution of more in depth nutritional recommendations for this group of patients. Registered under ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier no. NCT02881164. Copyright © 2017 European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Rasolofoson, Ranaivo Andriarilala; Nielsen, Martin Reinhardt; Jones, Julia P.G.
There is growing interest in the importance of ensuring that biodiversity conservation is not achieved at the expense of local people’s well-being. It has been suggested that when evaluating the impact of an intervention, the affected population should be allowed to define well-being (requiring...... a subjective measure), and impacts (requiring a participatory approach), but very few, if any, conservation evaluations live up to these standards. We used a participatory impact evaluation approach with the Global Person Generated Index (GPGI) to investigate the relative impacts of strict protection......, and the relative importance of the five identified domains. Participatory impact evaluation establishes local perceptions of the cause-effect relationship between an intervention and respondents’ performance in each domain. Over half the respondents perceived no positive or negative impacts from the conservation...
Takeda, Yasutaka; Fujita, Yukihiro; Yanagimachi, Tsuyoshi; Honjo, Jun; Abiko, Atsuko; Asai, Mahito; Haneda, Masakazu
Prediabetes, defined as impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), likely develops to type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) and independently increases cardiovascular risk. We employed disposition index (DI), a new metabolic parameter indicating the pancreatic beta cell function adjusted for insulin resistance, and investigated whether it could be altered in Japanese population with prediabetes and associated with early glucose intolerance. A total of 102 adults who underwent an oral glucose tolerance test at the medical screening were designated to normal glucose tolerance (NGT), IFG, IGT, and DM. We calculated insulinogenic index (IGI) and homeostasis model assessment (HOMA) of β cell function (HOMA-β) as insulin secretory function, HOMA-insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), and quantitative insulin sensitivity check index (QUICKI) as insulin resistance and DI, and assessed correlations between these indices and glycemic parameters. We observed graded increase of glycemic parameters in the order of NGT, IFG, IGT, and DM. HOMA-IR was significantly higher only in DM compared with NGT, although HOMA-β, IGI, and QUICKI showed no significant differences among the groups. In contrast, DI was significantly lower in IFG, IGT, and DM compared with NGT. In correlation analysis, glycemic parameters related positively to HOMA-IR, but inversely to DI. Only two parameters, IGI and particularly DI, were significantly decreased in the subjects with 1-hr postload glucose >8.6 mmol/L previously proposed as a predictor of type 2 diabetes. Our results suggest that reduction of DI promptly reflects the alteration of early glucose intolerance in Japanese population presenting with prediabetes.
Sobolev spaces associated to the harmonic oscillator. 337. Hilbert matrix. Inequalities involving upper bounds for certain matrix operators. 325. Hilbert modules. Generalized unitaries and the Picard group. 429. Hilbert space. On Nyman, Beurling and Baez-Duarte's. Hilbert space reformulation of the Rie- mann hypothesis.
R. Narasimhan (Krishtel eMaging) 1461 1996 Oct 15 13:05:22
perforated domain with Dirichlet boundary condition. 425. Deformed sphere. Stokes flow with slip and Kuwabara bound- ary conditions. 463. Degree of a map. Two-dimensional weak pseudomanifolds on eight vertices. 257. δM -invariant. A basic inequality for submanifolds in locally conformal almost cosymplectic manifolds.
R. Narasimhan (Krishtel eMaging) 1461 1996 Oct 15 13:05:22
Some approximation theorems. 87. Automorphic form. Reduction theory for a rational function field. 153. Banach algebra. Questions concerning matrix algebras and ... Euler–Maclaurin summation formula. Analogues of Euler and Poisson summa- tion formulae. 213. Exponential energy decay. Uniform stability of damped ...
Abelian groups. A variant of Davenport's constant. 147. Additive mapping. On the stability of Jensen's functional equation on groups. 31. Analytic functions. On Eneström–Kakeya theorem and related analytic functions. 359. A-net. On the problem of isometry of a hypersur- face preserving mean curvature. 49. Arithmetical ...
67. Explicit formula. Large time behaviour of solutions of a sys- tem of generalized Burgers equation 509. Extension spaces. Fixed point theory for composite maps on almost dominating extension spaces 339. Fatou property. Basic topological and geometric properties of Ces`aro–Orlicz spaces. 461. Finite amplitude motions.
New inequalities for the Hurwitz zeta func- tion. 495. Dirichlet problem. On existence and stability of solutions for higher order semilinear Dirichlet problems. 627. Discrete approximation. Approximation of quantum Lévy processes by quantum random walks. 281. Distance condition. Decomposition and removability proper-.
metric sums. 411. Asymptotics. A further note on the force discrepancy for wing theory in Euler flow. 679. Atkin–Lehner theory. Orthogonality and Hecke operators .... synectic lift of a Riemannian metric 345. Injective tensor products. Riesz isomorphisms of tensor products of order unit Banach spaces. 383. Integral transforms.
Dry heat. Response surface method applied to optimization of estradiol permeation in chitosan membranes. 481. DTA/TG. Synthesis and luminescence properties of BaTiO3:RE (RE = Gd3+, Dy3+, Tb3+, Lu3+) phosphors. 1011. Duplex stainless steel. Effect of rolling deformation and solution treatment on microstructure and ...
Rigidity of minimal submanifolds with flat normal bundle. 457. Min-max property. John disks, the Apollonian metric, and min-max properties. 83. Mixed norm. Mixed norm estimate for Radon transform on weighted Lp spaces. 441. Modular equation. Theta function identities associated with Ramanujan's modular equations of.
C*-enveloping algebra. Topological *-algebras with C*-enveloping algebras II. 65. Calderón–Lozanowski space. On property (β) in Banach lattices, Calderón–. Lozanowskii and Orlicz–Lorentz spaces. 319. Caratheodory function. Periodic and boundary value problems for second order differential equations. 107. Character.
Di Raimondo, Domenico; Casuccio, Alessandra; Di Liberti, Rosangela; Musiari, Gaia; Zappulla, Valentina; D'Angelo, Alessandra; Pinto, Antonio
Ambulatory Arterial Stiffness Index (AASI) has been proposed as an indirect and simpler method to estimate the Arterial Stiffness (AS). AASI, calculated from a set of data collected during a 24-hours ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM), is defined as 1 minus the regression slope of diastolic on systolic blood pressure (BP) values. For a given increase in diastolic BP, the increase in systolic BP is smaller in a compliant compared to a stiff artery; the stiffer the arterial tree, the closer AASI is to 1. AASI was demonstrated to predict cardiovascular mortality, cerebrovascular events and to be associated with target organ damage. Taking into account the almost complete absence of data regarding the ability of AASI to predict the different degree of AS when hypertensives are divided into four classes of dipping in relation to the extent of the nocturnal reduction of BP (extreme dippers, dippers, mild dippers and reverse dippers) aim to clarify the ability of AASI to estimate the different degree of AS of hypertensive subjects with different nocturnal BP profile and resulting in different extent of organ damage. We enrolled 816 subjects (403 men and 413 women) with essential hypertension, referred to the U.O.C of Medicina Interna e Cardioangiologia of the University of Palermo; 173 subjects (71 men and 102 women, mean age 44.4 ± 14.6 years) without a history of hypertension were enrolled as controls. The analysis of data was performed by dividing the population into four categories in relation to the extent of the nocturnal decline of BP: 124 extreme dipper (mean age 54,8 ± 12,4 years, men 46.8 %); 287 dipper (mean age 55,9 ± 14,2 years, men 54,0 %); 271 mild dipper (mean age 61,5 ± 14,7 years, men 52,0 %); 134 reverse dipper (mean age 61,5 ± 14,7 years, men 33.6 %). The mean value of AASI was significantly higher for mild and reverse dippers versus control patients and versus the other categories of dipping. The multiple regression analysis with AASI as
Monticone, Marco; Ambrosini, Emilia; Secci, Claudio; Rocca, Barbara; Ferrante, Simona; Capone, Antonio
To evaluate the responsiveness and minimal important changes (MICs) for the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) and its subscales in subjects with hip fractures. At the beginning and end of a 2-month rehabilitation program, 106 patients completed the WOMAC. After the program, the global perceived effect (GPE) was analyzed to produce a dichotomous outcome (improved vs. stable). Responsiveness for the WOMAC and its subscales were calculated by distribution (effect size; standardized response mean) and anchor-based methods (receiver operating characteristic curves; correlations between change scores of the WOMAC and its subscales and GPE). Receiver operating characteristic curves were also used in order to compute the best cutoff levels between improved and stable subjects (MICs). The effect size ranged from 0.64 to 11.10 and the standardized response mean from 0.79 to 2.65. The receiver operating characteristic analyses revealed an MIC value (area under the curve, sensitivity, specificity) for the WOMAC of 29 (0.817, 92, 78); values of 35 (0.820, 77, 76) 44 (0.625, 25, 95), and 24 (0.707, 100, 76) were found for pain, stiffness, and physical function subscales, respectively. Correlations between change scores of the WOMAC and its subscales and GPE were low (0.240, for stiffness subscale) to moderate (0.438-0.570 for the other subscales and the WOMAC). The WOMAC and its subscales (all but stiffness) were sensitive in detecting clinical changes in subjects with hip fracture undergoing rehabilitation. We recommend taking the MICs provided into account when assessing patients' improvement or planning studies in this clinical context.
Utzschneider, Kristina M.; Bayer-Carter, Jennifer L.; Arbuckle, Matthew D.; Tidwell, Jaime M.; Richards, Todd L.; Craft, Suzanne
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is associated with insulin resistance and dyslipidaemia and can progress to steatohepatitis and cirrhosis. We sought to determine whether dietary fat and saturated fat content alter liver fat in the absence of weight change in an older population. Liver fat was quantified by magnetic resonance spectroscopy before and after 4 weeks on an isoenergetic low-fat/low-saturated fat/low-glycaemic index (LGI) (LSAT: 23% fat/7% saturated fat/GI fat/high-saturated fat/high-GI (HSAT: 43% fat/24% saturated fat/GI > 70) diet in older subjects. In the present study, twenty subjects (seven males/thirteen females; age 69·3 (sem 1·6) years, BMI 26·9 (sem 0·8) kg/m2) were randomised to the LSAT diet and fifteen subjects (six males/nine females; age 68·6 (sem 1·8) years, BMI 28·1 (sem 0·9) kg/m2) to the HSAT diet. Weight remained stable. Liver fat decreased significantly on the LSAT diet (median 2·2 (interquartile range (IQR) 3·1) to 1·7 (IQR 1·8) %, P=0·002) but did not change on the HSAT diet (median 1·2 (IQR 4·1) to 1·6 (IQR 3·9) %). The LSAT diet lowered fasting glucose and total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol and raised TAG (Peffect on glucose or HDL-cholesterol but increased total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol (Pfat. We conclude that diet composition may be an important factor in the accumulation of liver fat, with a low-fat/low-saturated fat/LGI diet being beneficial. PMID:22849970
Previous studies have shown that grounding produces quantifiable physiologic changes. This study was set up to reproduce and expand earlier electrophysiologic and physiologic parameters measured immediately after grounding with improved methodology and state-of-the-art equipment. A multiparameter double-blind experiment was conducted with 14 men and 14 women (age range: 18-80) in relatively good health. Subjects were screened for health problems using a commonly used health questionnaire. They were seated in a comfortable recliner and measured during 2-hour grounding sessions, leaving time for signals to stabilize before, during, and after grounding (40 minutes for each period). Sham 2-hour grounding sessions were also recorded with the same subjects as controls. This report presents results for 5 of the 18 parameters measured. The parameters reported here are: skin conductance (SC), blood oxygenation (BO), respiratory rate (RR), pulse rate (PR), and perfusion index (PI). This study was performed in a rented facility in Encinitas, California. The facility was chosen in a quiet area for its very low electromagnetic noise. For each session, statistical analyses were performed on four 10-minute segments: before and after grounding (sham grounding for control session) and before and after ungrounding (sham ungrounding). There was an immediate decrease in SC at grounding and an immediate increase at ungrounding on all subjects. RR increased during grounding, and the effect lasted after ungrounding. RR variance increased immediately after grounding then decreased. BO variance decreased during grounding, followed by a dramatic increase after ungrounding. PR and PI variances increased toward the end of the grounding period, and this change persisted after ungrounding. These results warrant further research to determine how grounding affects the body. Grounding could become important for relaxation, health maintenance and disease prevention.
Nam Hoon Kim
Full Text Available The association between body mass index (BMI and mortality is not conclusive, especially in East Asian populations. Furthermore, the association has been neither supported by recent data, nor assessed after controlling for weight changes.We evaluated the relationship between BMI and all-cause or cause-specific mortality, using prospective cohort data by the National Health Insurance Service in Korea, which consisted of more than one million subjects. A total of 153,484 Korean adults over 30 years of age without pre-existing cardiovascular disease or cancer at baseline were followed-up until 2010 (mean follow-up period = 7.91 ± 0.59 years. Study subjects repeatedly measured body weight 3.99 times, on average.During follow-up, 3,937 total deaths occurred; 557 deaths from cardiovascular disease, and 1,224 from cancer. In multiple-adjusted analyses, U-shaped associations were found between BMI and mortality from any cause, cardiovascular disease, and cancer after adjustment for age, sex, smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity, socioeconomic status, and weight change. Subjects with a BMI < 23 kg/m2 and ≥ 30 kg/m2 had higher risks of all-cause and cause-specific mortality compared with the reference group (BMI 23-24.9 kg/m2. The lowest risk of all-cause mortality was observed in subjects with a BMI of 25-26.4 kg/m2 (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 0.86; 95% CI 0.77 to 0.97. In subgroup analyses, including the elderly and those with chronic diseases (diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and chronic kidney disease, subjects with a BMI of 25-29.9 kg/m2 (moderate obesity had a lower risk of mortality compared with the reference. However, this association has been attenuated in younger individuals, in those with higher socioeconomic status, and those without chronic diseases.Moderate obesity was associated more strongly with a lower risk of mortality than with normal, underweight, and overweight groups in the general population of South Korea
Pétré, Benoit; Scheen, André J; Ziegler, Olivier; Donneau, Anne-Françoise; Dardenne, Nadia; Husson, Eddy; Albert, Adelin; Guillaume, Michèle
Background and objective Despite the strength and consistency of the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and quality of life (QoL), a reduction in BMI does not necessarily lead to an improvement in QoL. Between-subject variability indicates the presence of mediators and moderators in the BMI–QoL association. This study aimed to examine the roles of body image discrepancy (BID) and subjective norm (SN) as potential mediators and moderators. Subjects and methods In 2012, 3,016 volunteers (aged ≥18 years) participated in a community-based survey conducted in the French-speaking region of Belgium. Participation was enhanced using a large multimedia campaign (which was supported by a large network of recruiters) that employed the nonstigmatizing slogan, “Whatever your weight, your opinion will count”. Participants were invited to complete a web-based questionnaire on their weight-related experiences. Self-reported measures were used to calculate each participant’s BMI, BID, SN, and QoL (a French obesity-specific QoL questionnaire was used to calculate the participants’ physical dimension of QoL scores [PHY-QoL], psychosocial dimension of QoL scores [PSY/SOC-QoL], and their total scores). The covariates included gender, age, subjective economic status, level of education, household size, and perceived health. The mediation/moderation tests were based on Hayes’ method. Results Tests showed that the relationships between BMI and PHY-QoL, PSY/SOC-QoL, and TOT-QoL were partially mediated by BID in both males and females and by SN in females. Moreover, BID was a moderator of the relationship between BMI and PSY/SOC-QoL in males and females. SN was a moderator of the relationship between BMI and PSY/SOC-QoL in males and between BMI and total scores in males (when used without BID in the models). Conclusion BID and SN should be considered as important factors in obesity management strategies. The study shows that targeting BMI only is not sufficient to
Pétré, Benoit; Scheen, André J; Ziegler, Olivier; Donneau, Anne-Françoise; Dardenne, Nadia; Husson, Eddy; Albert, Adelin; Guillaume, Michèle
Despite the strength and consistency of the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and quality of life (QoL), a reduction in BMI does not necessarily lead to an improvement in QoL. Between-subject variability indicates the presence of mediators and moderators in the BMI-QoL association. This study aimed to examine the roles of body image discrepancy (BID) and subjective norm (SN) as potential mediators and moderators. In 2012, 3,016 volunteers (aged ≥18 years) participated in a community-based survey conducted in the French-speaking region of Belgium. Participation was enhanced using a large multimedia campaign (which was supported by a large network of recruiters) that employed the nonstigmatizing slogan, "Whatever your weight, your opinion will count". Participants were invited to complete a web-based questionnaire on their weight-related experiences. Self-reported measures were used to calculate each participant's BMI, BID, SN, and QoL (a French obesity-specific QoL questionnaire was used to calculate the participants' physical dimension of QoL scores [PHY-QoL], psychosocial dimension of QoL scores [PSY/SOC-QoL], and their total scores). The covariates included gender, age, subjective economic status, level of education, household size, and perceived health. The mediation/moderation tests were based on Hayes' method. Tests showed that the relationships between BMI and PHY-QoL, PSY/SOC-QoL, and TOT-QoL were partially mediated by BID in both males and females and by SN in females. Moreover, BID was a moderator of the relationship between BMI and PSY/SOC-QoL in males and females. SN was a moderator of the relationship between BMI and PSY/SOC-QoL in males and between BMI and total scores in males (when used without BID in the models). BID and SN should be considered as important factors in obesity management strategies. The study shows that targeting BMI only is not sufficient to improve the QoL of overweight and obese subjects, and that other variables
Full Text Available Lydia Foucan1,2, Kheira Hue3, Jocelyn Inamo1, Jacqueline Deloumeaux1,2, Anne Blanchet-Deverly, et al1Research group Clinical Epidemiology and Medicine of the University of Antilles and Guyane, French West Indies; 2Department of Medical Information and Public Health; 3Nephrology and hemodialysis Unit; 4Cardiology Unit, CHU of Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, French West Indies; 5Hemodialysis Unit, Clinic of Choisy Sainte Anne, Guadeloupe, French West IndiesBackground: Inverse associations between risk factors and mortality have been reported in epidemiological studies of patients on maintenance hemodialysis (MHD.Objective: The aim of this prospective study was to estimate the effect of the dual variable pulse pressure (PP – body mass index (BMI on cardiovascular (CV events and death in type 2 diabetic (T2D subjects on MHD in a Caribbean population.Methods: Eighty Afro-Caribbean T2D patients on MHD were studied prospectively from 2003 to 2006. Proportional-hazard modeling was used.Results: Of all, 23.8% had a high PP (PP ≥ 75th percentile, 76.3% had BMI < 30 Kg/m2, 21.3% had the dual factor high PP – absence of obesity. During the study period, 23 patients died and 13 CV events occurred. In the presence of the dual variable and after adjustment for age, gender, duration of MHD, and pre-existing CV complications, the adjusted hazard ratio (HR (95% CI of CV events and death were respectively 2.7 (0.8–8.3; P = 0.09 and 2.4 (1.1–5.9; P = 0.04.Conclusions: The dual factor, high PP – absence of obesity, is a prognosis factor of outcome. In type 2 diabetics on MHD, a specific management strategy should be proposed in nonobese subjects with wide pulse pressure in order to decrease or prevent the incidence of fatal and nonfatal events.Keywords: dual factor, pulse pressure, body mass index, type 2 diabetes, outcome
Ceccarini, J; Weltens, N; Ly, H G; Tack, J; Van Oudenhove, L; Van Laere, K
Although of great public health relevance, the mechanisms underlying disordered eating behavior and body weight regulation remain insufficiently understood. Compelling preclinical evidence corroborates a critical role of the endocannabinoid system (ECS) in the central regulation of appetite and food intake. However, in vivo human evidence on ECS functioning in brain circuits involved in food intake regulation as well as its relationship with body weight is lacking, both in health and disease. Here, we measured cannabinoid 1 receptor (CB1R) availability using positron emission tomography (PET) with [(18)F]MK-9470 in 54 patients with food intake disorders (FID) covering a wide body mass index (BMI) range (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, functional dyspepsia with weight loss and obesity; BMI range=12.5-40.6 kg/m(2)) and 26 age-, gender- and average BMI-matched healthy subjects (BMI range=18.5-26.6 kg/m(2)). The association between regional CB1R availability and BMI was assessed within predefined homeostatic and reward-related regions of interest using voxel-based linear regression analyses. CB1R availability was inversely associated with BMI in homeostatic brain regions such as the hypothalamus and brainstem areas in both patients with FID and healthy subjects. However, in FID patients, CB1R availability was also negatively correlated with BMI throughout the mesolimbic reward system (midbrain, striatum, insula, amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex), which constitutes the key circuit implicated in processing appetitive motivation and hedonic value of perceived food rewards. Our results indicate that the cerebral homeostatic CB1R system is inextricably linked to BMI, with additional involvement of reward areas under conditions of disordered body weight.
Full Text Available Benoit Pétré,1 André J Scheen,2 Olivier Ziegler,3 Anne-Françoise Donneau,1 Nadia Dardenne,1 Eddy Husson,1 Adelin Albert,1 Michèle Guillaume1 1Department of Public Health, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium; 2Division of Diabetes, Nutrition and Metabolic Disorders, Department of Medicine, CHU Sart Tilman, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium; 3Department of Diabetes, Metabolic Diseases and Nutrition, Nancy University Hospital, Nancy, France Background and objective: Despite the strength and consistency of the relationship between body mass index (BMI and quality of life (QoL, a reduction in BMI does not necessarily lead to an improvement in QoL. Between-subject variability indicates the presence of mediators and moderators in the BMI–QoL association. This study aimed to examine the roles of body image discrepancy (BID and subjective norm (SN as potential mediators and moderators. Subjects and methods: In 2012, 3,016 volunteers (aged ≥18 years participated in a community-based survey conducted in the French-speaking region of Belgium. Participation was enhanced using a large multimedia campaign (which was supported by a large network of recruiters that employed the nonstigmatizing slogan, “Whatever your weight, your opinion will count”. Participants were invited to complete a web-based questionnaire on their weight-related experiences. Self-reported measures were used to calculate each participant’s BMI, BID, SN, and QoL (a French obesity-specific QoL questionnaire was used to calculate the participants’ physical dimension of QoL scores [PHY-QoL], psychosocial dimension of QoL scores [PSY/SOC-QoL], and their total scores. The covariates included gender, age, subjective economic status, level of education, household size, and perceived health. The mediation/moderation tests were based on Hayes’ method. Results: Tests showed that the relationships between BMI and PHY-QoL, PSY/SOC-QoL, and TOT-QoL were partially mediated by BID
Projective drawings for assessing stress among subjects with medical symptoms compatible with sick building syndrome, and validation of a modified version of the Stress Load Index from the Drawing Personality Profile: a pilot study.
Runeson, Roma; Wahlstedt, Kurt; Norbäck, Dan
It was hypothesized that subjects with medical symptoms would show more signs of stress in projective drawings. A Stress Load Index, including five signs of stress in drawings, was evaluated. A questionnaire with an instruction to draw "a person in the rain" was sent to a cohort of 195 subjects, and the drawings were analysed blindly for eight stress items. Men had a higher index than women (p sick building syndrome symptoms (p < .05). In conclusion, a nonverbal projective drawing test detected sex differences which represent directions opposite to those with verbal methods. These need empirical assessment.
Full Text Available Plasma fibrinogen is an acute phase protein playing an important role in the blood coagulation cascade having strong associations with smoking, alcohol consumption and body mass index (BMI. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS have identified a variety of gene regions associated with elevated plasma fibrinogen concentrations. However, little is yet known about how associations between environmental factors and fibrinogen might be modified by genetic variation. Therefore, we conducted large-scale meta-analyses of genome-wide interaction studies to identify possible interactions of genetic variants and smoking status, alcohol consumption or BMI on fibrinogen concentration. The present study included 80,607 subjects of European ancestry from 22 studies. Genome-wide interaction analyses were performed separately in each study for about 2.6 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs across the 22 autosomal chromosomes. For each SNP and risk factor, we performed a linear regression under an additive genetic model including an interaction term between SNP and risk factor. Interaction estimates were meta-analysed using a fixed-effects model. No genome-wide significant interaction with smoking status, alcohol consumption or BMI was observed in the meta-analyses. The most suggestive interaction was found for smoking and rs10519203, located in the LOC123688 region on chromosome 15, with a p value of 6.2 × 10(-8. This large genome-wide interaction study including 80,607 participants found no strong evidence of interaction between genetic variants and smoking status, alcohol consumption or BMI on fibrinogen concentrations. Further studies are needed to yield deeper insight in the interplay between environmental factors and gene variants on the regulation of fibrinogen concentrations.
Marcus Carlsson; Ruslana Andersson; Karin Markenroth Bloch; Katarina Steding-Ehrenborg; Henrik Mosén; Freddy Stahlberg; Bjorn Ekmehag; Hakan Arheden
...) and thereby cardiac index (CI, CO indexed to body surface area). The aim of this study was to establish if CI decreases with age and compare the values to CI for athletes and for patients with congestive heart failure (CHF). Methods...
Yogananda C S (6) 51 (GA); (7) 86 (BR). SUBJECT INDEX. A Nephew Remembers (12) 78 (PR). A Personal Memoir of Dr Beatrice Tinsley,. Astronomer (5) 84 (BR). Abelian groups (7) 70 (CR). Accelerograms (8) 79 (CR). Action potential (2) 72 (GA). Alcohol (10) 41 (GA). Algae (5) 33 (GA). Algebraic Topology (10) 86 (BR).
Full Text Available Entrepreneurship research is progressing towards the construction of indexes that integrate the information of the three predominant approaches: the entrepreneurial activity output; the population’s entrepreneurial behavior, values and aspirations; and the context in which entrepreneurship takes place. In this study we compare the Global Competitiveness Index data, one of the objective sources of information selected among those recognized as descriptors of national contexts, with the national entrepreneurial context qualitative information provided by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The main purpose of this research is to contribute to the knowledge of entrepreneurial context sources of information by opening a discussion around the usefulness and contribution that could make the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor source in this field, and to determine if it is recommendable to proceed to its formal validation in the short time. The obtained results evidence that the two sources do not overlap to the degree of substituting one by the other and that the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor provides relevant qualitative details about the state of entrepreneurial context that are interesting to complement the Global Competitiveness Index information. The conclusion is to recommend the formal validation of this source, being also necessary to make comparisons with other relevant sources and to clear up its role in the progress of the integrated indexes construction.
Dahlen, Sarah P. C.; Hanson, Kathlene
Discovery layers provide a simplified interface for searching library resources. Libraries with limited finances make decisions about retaining indexing and abstracting databases when similar information is available in discovery layers. These decisions should be informed by student success at finding quality information as well as satisfaction…
Conclusions: The low-frequency and low-intensity ultrasound irradiation to the forearm for 10 min might be useful as a preventive application for arterial stiffness in subjects with type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
Roos, Ewa M.; Roos, H P; Lohmander, L S
To compare the sensitivity of WOMAC and the two added dimensions Sport and Recreation Function and Knee Related Quality of Life in subjects with radiographic knee OA to that in controls. To study the influence of age on the reported outcomes....
Full Text Available The aim of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Slovak and Czech versions of the Personal Well-beingIndex (PWI in population of nurses. The sample for study consisted of 1043 hospital staff nurses from 12 hospitals in the Czechand Slovak Republics. The data were collected using a set of questionnaires that included the Positive Affect Scale, the NegativeAffect Scale, and PWI. The PWI demonstrated good psychometric properties in terms of its factor structure, reliability, convergentand construct validity.
Full Text Available Proponents of the efficient market hypothesis believe that active portfolio management is largely wasted effort and unlikely to justify the expenses incurred. Therefore, they advocate a passive investment strategy that makes no attempt to outsmart the market. One common strategy for passive management is indexing where a fund is designed to replicate the performance of a broad-based index of stocks and bonds. Traditionally, indexing was used by institutional investors, but today, the use of index funds proliferated among individual investors. Over the years, both international and domestic index funds have disproportionately outperformed the market more than the actively managed funds have.
van Poppel, P C M; van Asseldonk, E J P; Holst, Jens Juul
Inflammation at the level of the β cell appears to be involved in progressive β-cell dysfunction in type 2 diabetes. We assessed the effect of blocking interleukin-1 (IL-1) by anakinra [recombinant human interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra)] on β-cell function. Sixteen participants with imp......Inflammation at the level of the β cell appears to be involved in progressive β-cell dysfunction in type 2 diabetes. We assessed the effect of blocking interleukin-1 (IL-1) by anakinra [recombinant human interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra)] on β-cell function. Sixteen participants......-phase insulin secretion improved after anakinra treatment compared with placebo, 148 ± 20 versus 123 ± 14 mU/l, respectively (p = 0.03), and the insulinogenic index was higher after anakinra treatment. These results support the concept of involvement of IL-1β in the (progressive) decrease of insulin secretion...
Kerimi, Asimina; Nyambe-Silavwe, Hilda; Gauer, Julia S; Tomás-Barberán, Francisco A; Williamson, Gary
Background: Low-glycemic index diets have demonstrated health benefits associated with a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes.Objectives: We tested whether pomegranate polyphenols could lower the glycemic response of a high-glycemic index food when consumed together and the mechanism by which this might occur.Design: We compared the acute effect of a pomegranate juice and a polyphenol-rich extract from pomegranate (supplement) on the bread-derived postprandial blood glucose concentration in 2 randomized, crossover, controlled studies (double-blinded for the supplements), each on 16 healthy volunteers. An additional randomized, crossover, controlled study on 16 volunteers consuming constituent fruit acids in a pH-balanced solution (same pH as pomegranate) and bread was conducted to determine any contributions to postprandial responses caused by acidic beverages.Results: As primary outcome, the incremental area under the curve for bread-derived blood glucose (-33.1% ± 18.1%, P = 0.000005) and peak blood glucose (25.4% ± 19.3%, P = 0.0004) were attenuated by pomegranate juice, compared with a control solution containing the equivalent amount of sugars. In contrast, the pomegranate supplement, or a solution containing the malic and citric acid components of the juice, was ineffective. The pomegranate polyphenol punicalagin was a very effective inhibitor of human α-amylase in vitro, comparable to the drug acarbose. Neither the pomegranate extract nor the individual component polyphenols inhibited 14C-D-glucose transport across differentiated Caco-2/TC7 cell monolayers, but they inhibited uptake of 14C-glucose into Xenopus oocytes expressing the human glucose transporter type 2. Further, some of the predicted pomegranate gut microbiota metabolites modulated 14C-D-glucose and 14C-deoxy-D-glucose uptake into hepatic HepG2 cells.Conclusions: These data indicate that pomegranate polyphenols, when present in a beverage but not in a supplement, can reduce the
Full Text Available Indexing is one of the most important methods of content representation where by assigning descriptors to the documents, their subject content are made known. Since index and indexing are remarkably significant in information retrieval, its quality and evaluation and provision of criteria and standards had always been the mainstay of researchers in this field. Given the fact that Indexing is a complex process, offering definitions, principles and methods could be step towards optimal use of the information. The present study, while offering a capsule definition of index, will investigate the indexing evaluation criteria and would follow it up with a definition of indexing. Finally a number of standards in the field of indexing are presented and would make its conclusions.
Yazdi, Hossein S.; O'Sullivan, Thomas D.; Leproux, Anais; Hill, Brian; Durkin, Amanda; Telep, Seraphim; Lam, Jesse; Yazdi, Siavash S.; Police, Alice M.; Carroll, Robert M.; Combs, Freddie J.; Strömberg, Tomas; Yodh, Arjun G.; Tromberg, Bruce J.
Diffuse optical spectroscopic imaging (DOSI) and diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) are model-based near-infrared (NIR) methods that measure tissue optical properties (broadband absorption, μa, and reduced scattering, μs‧) and blood flow (blood flow index, BFI), respectively. DOSI-derived μa values are used to determine composition by calculating the tissue concentration of oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin (HbO2, HbR), water, and lipid. We developed and evaluated a combined, coregistered DOSI/DCS handheld probe for mapping and imaging these parameters. We show that uncertainties of 0.3 mm-1 (37%) in μs‧ and 0.003 mm-1 (33%) in μa lead to ˜53% and 9% errors in BFI, respectively. DOSI/DCS imaging of a solid tissue-simulating flow phantom and a breast cancer patient reveals well-defined spatial distributions of BFI and composition that clearly delineates both the flow channel and the tumor. BFI reconstructed with DOSI-corrected μa and μs‧ values had a tumor/normal contrast of 2.7, 50% higher than the contrast using commonly assumed fixed optical properties. In conclusion, spatially coregistered imaging of DOSI and DCS enhances intrinsic tumor contrast and information content. This is particularly important for imaging diseased tissues where there are significant spatial variations in μa and μs‧ as well as potential uncoupling between flow and metabolism.
Twells, Laurie K; Knight, John; Alaghehbandan, Reza
The purpose of the study was to examine the association of body mass index (BMI) with the prevalence of chronic disease and health services use in adults living in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL). A cross-sectional analysis of 2345 adult respondents to the 2001 Canadian Community Health Survey was performed. Outcome measures included the prevalence of chronic disease and health services use. The sample comprised normal (37%), overweight (39%), obese (17%), and morbidly obese (6%) individuals. Obese and morbidly obese individuals were more likely to report the presence of a chronic disease. Adjusting for age and sex, increasing BMI category was significantly associated with a greater likelihood of cardiovascular, endocrine, and pulmonary diseases (excluding asthma). The majority of survey respondents in each category reported having a regular doctor (>75%), and there were no significant differences across categories. Compared to those with a normal BMI, obese and morbidly obese individuals reported a significantly higher number of visits to a family physician. There were no differences across BMI categories and the use of specialist or hospital services. Almost a quarter of the study sample in NL was classified as morbidly obese or obese. These individuals reported more chronic conditions and more visits to a family physician than the normal-weight group. The greater morbidity and the increased frequency of visits to family physicians suggests greater consideration should be given to channeling financial and human resources to the primary health care of this high-risk population.
The E-wave propagation index (EPI): A novel echocardiographic parameter for prediction of left ventricular thrombus. Derivation from computational fluid dynamic modeling and validation on human subjects.
Harfi, Thura T; Seo, Jung-Hee; Yasir, Hayder S; Welsh, Nathaniel; Mayer, Susan A; Abraham, Theodore P; George, Richard T; Mittal, Rajat
To describe the derivation and validation of a novel echocardiographic metric for prediction of left ventricle thrombus (LVT). Computational fluid dynamic modeling using cardiac CT images was used to derive a novel echocardiography-based metric to predict the presence of LVT. We retrospectively reviewed 25 transthoracic echocardiograms showing definite LVT (LVT group). We then randomly selected 25 patients with LVEF ≥55% (Normal EF group) and 25 patients with severe cardiomyopathy (CMP) with LVEF ≤40% without evidence of LVT (CMP group). The E-wave Propagation Index (EPI) was measured as the E-wave velocity time-integral divided by the LV length. An EPI>1 indicates penetration of the mitral jet into the apex whereas an EPIEPI was compared between the three groups. Crude and adjusted odd ratios of EPI and LVT association were also measured. Mean EPI was highest for the normal EF group and lowest in the LVT group (1.7 vs. 0.8; pEPI also differed significantly between LVT and CMP groups (0.8 vs. 1.2; pEPI EPI EPI of less than 1 is an independent predictor of LVT formation. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
Chakraborty, Ujjwal; Ghosh, Tusharkanti
The gravitational pull of the moon on the earth is not the same in all phases of the lunar month, i.e. new moon (NM), first quarter (FQ), full moon (FM) and third quarter (TQ), and as a result the amplitude of tide differs in different phases. The gravitational pull of the moon may have effects on the fluid compartments of the human body and hence the cardiovascular system may be affected differentially in the different phases of the lunar month. In the present study resting heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP), physical fitness index (PFI), peak HR and BP immediately after step test, and recovery HR and BP after step test were measured during different phases of the lunar month in 76 male university students (age 23.7 ± 1.7 years). At rest, both systolic and mean arterial BP were ˜5 mmHg lower in NM and FM compared to FQ and TQ, but resting HR was not significantly different between phases. Further, peak HR and peak systolic BP after step test were lower (˜4 beat/min and ˜5 mmHg, respectively) in NM and FM compared to FQ and TQ. PFI was also higher (˜5) in NM and FM compared to FQ and TQ. Recovery of HR after step test was quicker in NM and FM compared to that of FQ and TQ. It appears from this study that gravitational pull of the moon may affect the cardiovascular functions of the human body. Moreover, the physical efficiency of humans is increased in NM and FM due to these altered cardiovascular regulations.
Items 1 - 16 of 16 ... A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z All. H. Habib, Adam · Hart, Tim · Hattingh, A · Herbst, A · Higgs, Leonie G · Higgs, P · Higgs, P · Higgs, P · Higgs, Philip · Higgs, Phillip · Hlongwane, M · Hlongwane, M · Hlongwane, Mandla · Hoskins, Ruth · Houessou, GLR · Hunter, Joshua 1 - 16 of 16 ...
White Spot Syndrome Virus infection in Penaeus monodon is facilitated by housekeeping molecules. 917. Auditory pathway. Role of sound stimulation in reprogramming brain connectivity. 605. Autism Spectrum Disorder. Maternal hormonal interventions as a risk factor for Autism Spectrum Disorder: An epidemiological.
-geological potential of Varanasi area, U.P.,. India. 489. Characteristic period. Considerations on seismic microzonation in areas with two-dimensional hills. 783. Characteristic site period. Seismic hazard assessment of Chennai city consider-.
processed images. 37. High speed preprocessing system. 511. Incompressibility constraint. Behaviour of Lagrangian triangular mixed fluid finite elements. 21. Inductively coupled plasma. Design, fabrication and performance evaluation of a 22-channel direct reading atomic emission spectrometer using inductively coupled ...
25 E) India. 229. Atmospheric composition, physics and chemistry. An experimental set-up for carbon isotopic analysis of atmospheric CO2 and an example of ecosystem response during solar eclipse 2010. 623. Diurnal and semi-diurnal tidal structures due to O2, O3 and H2O heating. 1207. Atmospheric Sciences. A simple ...
Borrego-Soto, Gissela; Costilla-Esquivel, Antonio; Padilla-Rivas, Gerardo Raymundo; Cázares-Samaniego, Paulina Janeth; Posadas-Valay, Rodolfo; Velasco-Castañón, José Gerardo; Mercado-Longoria, Roberto; Ortiz-López, Rocío; Rojas-Martínez, Augusto
Several studies have reported that variants rs16969968 G>A of the CHRNA5 gene and CYP2A6*12 of the CYP2A6 gene are associated with smoking and smoking refusal, respectively. In addition, some studies report that a higher cigarette consumption is associated with low body mass index (BMI). To analyze the allele and genotypic frequencies of these variants and their impact on smoking and BMI. A blood sample was obtained and a survey about smoking habits was answered by 319 university students aged 18 to 35 years (127 women, 171 smokers), living in Northeastern Mexico. Genetic variants were studied by polymerase chain reaction/restriction fragment length polymorphism and their frequencies were associated with smoking and BMI. No associations were found between the analyzed variants and smoking in the study groups. However, there was an association among non-smoking subjects between the A allele of rs16969968 and high a BMI (p food-addiction disorders.
Recent trends in indexing emphasize mechanical, not intellectual, developments. Mechanized operations have produced indexes in depth (1) of information on limited areas of science or (2) utilizing limited parameters for analysis. These indexes may include only citations or both useful data and citations of source literature. Both keyword-in-context and citation indexing seem to be passing the test of the marketplace. Mechanical equipment has also been successfully used to manipulate EAM cards for production of index copy. Information centers are increasingly being used as control devices in narrowly defined subject areas. Authors meet growing pressures to participate in information control work by preparing abstracts of their own articles. Mechanized image systems persist, although large systems are scarce and the many small systems may bring only limited relief for information control and retrieval problems. Experimentation and limited development continue on theory and technique of automatic indexing and abstracting. PMID:14306025
Comportamiento de proporciones divinas e índice de Bolton en mediciones dentales de individuos con maloclusión Behavior of "divine" proportions and the Bolton's index in dental measurements of subjects with malocclusion
Adriana Lorenzo Uribazo
Full Text Available Los pacientes acuden cada vez con más frecuencia a los servicios estomatológicos en busca de mejorar su aspecto estético. Uno de los métodos más polémicos para el examen de la estética lo constituyen aquellos que se basan en el empleo de la proporción divina, esto motivó a la realización de este trabajo. Se evaluó el comportamiento de las proporciones divinas en mediciones dentales de individuos con maloclusión, mediante el empleo del índice de Bolton. Se realizó un estudio descriptivo transversal en estudiantes del segundo al quinto años de la Facultad de Estomatología de La Habana, Cuba, desde el mes de enero del año 2009 al mes de enero del año 2010. Se emplearon modelos de yeso pertenecientes a 80 estudiantes de 18 a 25 años de edad. Se efectuaron mediciones de los anchos mesiodistales de los dientes y se relacionaron algunas secciones de dientes donde se identificaron los que guardaron relación de proporción divina, según la variable oclusión. Los estudiantes que presentaron maloclusión se estudiaron según la variación del índice de Bolton. En los estudiantes con maloclusión el índice de Bolton que predominó fue a favor de un mayor tamaño de los dientes anteroinferiores, con rangos de proporción divina menores de 1,60.Patients came more and more frequently to Stomatology services to improve the esthetic feature. Among the more polemic methods for esthetics examination are those based on the use of divine proportion, leading to carrying out of present paper to assess the behavior of divine proportions in the dental measurements of subjects with malocclusion using the Bolton's index. A cross-sectional and descriptive study was conducted in second to fifth years students of the Stomatology Faculty of La Habana from January, 2009 to January, 2010 using the plaster casts in 80 students aged 18 to 25. Measurements of the mesio-distal width of teeth relating some sections of them where were identified those en
Delacrétaz, Aurélie; Preisig, Martin; Vandenberghe, Frederik; Saigi Morgui, Nuria; Quteineh, Lina; Choong, Eva; Gholam-Rezaee, Mehdi; Kutalik, Zoltan; Magistretti, Pierre; Aubry, Jean-Michel; von Gunten, Armin; Castelao, Enrique; Vollenweider, Peter; Waeber, Gerard; Conus, Philippe; Eap, Chin B
Obesity development during psychotropic treatments represents a major health issue in psychiatry. Melanin-concentrating hormone receptor 2 (MCHR2) is a central receptor involved in energy homeostasis. MCHR2 shares its promoter region with MCHR2-AS1, a long antisense non-coding RNA. The aim of this study was to determine whether tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (tSNPs) of MCHR2 and MCHR2-AS1 are associated with the body mass index (BMI) in the psychiatric and in the general population. The influence of MCHR2 and MCHR2-AS1 tSNPs on BMI was firstly investigated in a discovery psychiatric sample (n1 = 474). Positive results were tested for replication in two other psychiatric samples (n2 = 164, n3 = 178) and in two population-based samples (CoLaus, n4 = 5409; GIANT, n5 = 113809). In the discovery sample, TT carriers of rs7754794C>T had 1.08 kg/m2 (p = 0.04) lower BMI as compared to C-allele carriers. This observation was replicated in an independent psychiatric sample (-2.18 kg/m2; p = 0.009). The association of rs7754794C>T and BMI seemed stronger in subjects younger than 45 years (median of age). In the population-based sample, a moderate association was observed (-0.17 kg/m2; p = 0.02) among younger individuals (influence of MCHR2 and/or MCHR2-AS1 on obesity in psychiatric patients and on the pathophysiology of atypical depression.
...]; 106.41 Adjustment period, ; 106.41(d) Contact sport defined, 106.41(d) Equal opportunity, [76, 77... Offerings Adjustment period, ; 106.34(a) (i) General, [7, 43]; 106.34 Music classes, ; 106.34(f...
... obligation, 86.4(b) Form, 86.4(c) Athletics, ; 86.41 Adjustment period, ; 86.41(d) Contact sport defined, 86...) Course Offerings Adjustment period, ; 86.34(a) (i) General, ; 86.34 Music classes, ; 86.34(f) Physical...
The Walkability Index dataset characterizes every Census 2010 block group in the U.S. based on its relative walkability. Walkability depends upon characteristics of the built environment that influence the likelihood of walking being used as a mode of travel. The Walkability Index is based on the EPA's previous data product, the Smart Location Database (SLD). Block group data from the SLD was the only input into the Walkability Index, and consisted of four variables from the SLD weighted in a formula to create the new Walkability Index. This dataset shares the SLD's block group boundary definitions from Census 2010. The methodology describing the process of creating the Walkability Index can be found in the documents located at ftp://newftp.epa.gov/EPADataCommons/OP/WalkabilityIndex.zip. You can also learn more about the Smart Location Database at https://edg.epa.gov/data/Public/OP/Smart_Location_DB_v02b.zip.
Linnet, Poul Martin
The Afghanistan index is a compilation of quantitative and qualitative data on the reconstruction and security effort in Afghanistan. The index aims at providing data for benchmarking of the international performance and thus provides the reader with a quick possibility to retrieve valid...... information on progress or lack of progress in the reconstruction of the post Taliban Afghanistan. The index is mainly based on information collected on the internet in order to provide quick access to the original source. The index is under development and thus new information will be added on a continuous...
García-Calzón, Sonia; Zalba, Guillermo; Ruiz-Canela, Miguel; Shivappa, Nitin; Hébert, James R; Martínez, J Alfredo; Fitó, Montserrat; Gómez-Gracia, Enrique; Martínez-González, Miguel A; Marti, Amelia
Background: Dietary factors can affect telomere length (TL), a biomarker of aging, through oxidation and inflammation-related mechanisms. A Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII) could help to understand the effect of the inflammatory potential of the diet on telomere shortening. Objective: This study aimed to determine the association of the DII with TL and to examine whether diet-associated inflammation could modify the telomere attrition rate after a 5-y follow-up of a Mediterranean dietary intervention. Design: This was a prospective study of 520 participants at high cardiovascular disease risk (mean ± SD age: 67.0 ± 6.0 y, 45% males) from the PREDIMED-NAVARRA (PREvención con DIeta MEDiterránea-NAVARRA) trial. Leukocyte TL was measured by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction at baseline and after 5 y of follow-up. The DII was calculated from self-reported data by using a validated 137-item food-frequency questionnaire. Results: Longer telomeres at baseline were found in participants who had a more anti-inflammatory diet (lowest DII score) (P-trend = 0.012). Longitudinal analyses further showed that a greater anti-inflammatory potential of the diet (i.e., a decrease in the DII) could significantly slow down the rate of telomere shortening. Moreover, the multivariable-adjusted OR for short telomeres (z score ≤20th percentile) was 1.80 (95% CI: 1.03, 3.17) in a comparison between the highest (proinflammatory) and the lowest (anti-inflammatory) DII tertiles. Similarly, a greater DII (greatest proinflammatory values) after a 5-y follow-up was associated with almost a 2-fold higher risk of accelerated telomere attrition compared with the highest decrease in DII (greatest anti-inflammatory values) during this period (P-trend = 0.025). Conclusions: This study showed both cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between the inflammatory potential of the diet and telomere shortening in subjects with a high cardiovascular disease risk. Our findings are
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — Planetary Amplitude index - Bartels 1951. The a-index ranges from 0 to 400 and represents a K-value converted to a linear scale in gammas (nanoTeslas)--a scale that...
Lundgaard Andersen, Linda; Soldz, Stephen
A major theme in recent psychoanalytic thinking concerns the use of therapist subjectivity, especially “countertransference,” in understanding patients. This thinking converges with and expands developments in qualitative research regarding the use of researcher subjectivity as a tool to understa...
Subject Index. 971. Magnetic response of split-ring resonator metamaterials: From effective medium dispersion to photonic band gaps. Sangeeta Chakrabarti and S Anantha Ramakrishna. 483–492. Determination of the optimal parameters for the fabrication of ZnO thin films prepared by spray pyrolysis method. M Ardyanian ...
Subject Index. Tau reconstruction, energy calibration and identification at ATLAS. Michel Trottier-McDonald. 1337–1340. Search for a Higgs boson decaying into two photons in the CMS detector. Roberta Volpe. 1341–1344. Open flavour charmed mesons in a quantum chromodynamics potential model. Krishna Kingkar ...
Greenberg, Stephen J; Gallagher, Patricia E
The systematic indexing of medical literature by the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office (now the National Library of Medicine) has been called "America's greatest contribution to medical knowledge." In the 1870s, the library launched two indexes: the Index Medicus and the Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office. Index Medicus is better remembered today as the forerunner of MEDLINE, but Index Medicus began as the junior partner of what the library saw as its major publication, the Index-Catalogue. However, the Index-Catalogue had been largely overlooked by many medical librarians until 2004, when the National Library of Medicine released IndexCat, the online version of Index-Catalogue. Access to this huge amount of material raised new questions: What was the coverage of the Index-Catalogue? How did it compare and overlap with the Index Medicus? Over 1,000 randomly generated Index Medicus citations were cross-referenced in IndexCat. Inclusion, form, content, authority control, and subject headings were evaluated, revealing that the relationship between the two publications was neither simple nor static through time. In addition, the authors found interesting anomalies that shed light on how medical literature was selected and indexed in "America's greatest contribution to medical knowledge."
de Keyser, Piet
Indexing consists of both novel and more traditional techniques. Cutting-edge indexing techniques, such as automatic indexing, ontologies, and topic maps, were developed independently of older techniques such as thesauri, but it is now recognized that these older methods also hold expertise. Indexing describes various traditional and novel indexing techniques, giving information professionals and students of library and information sciences a broad and comprehensible introduction to indexing. This title consists of twelve chapters: an Introduction to subject readings and theasauri; Automatic i
Hasan Ashrafi Rizi
Full Text Available Indexers often disagree on judging terms that best reflect the content of a document. Difference of opinion highlights one of the characteristics of indexing which is indexing cohesion. Also known as consistency, little study of the subject matter has been undertaken in the past few years. However, its importance has been recently acknowledged in effective information retrieval and expansion of access points to the document content. The present paper investigates cohesion in indexing. In addition of presenting the definitions offered by experts, it takes note of the factors influencing indexing cohesion. Methods for measuring cohesion are offered.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — The Walkability Index dataset characterizes every Census 2010 block group in the U.S. based on its relative walkability. Walkability depends upon characteristics of...
Town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina — This map service summarizes racial and ethnic diversity in the United States in 2012.The Diversity Index shows the likelihood that two persons chosen at random from...
/reading subject) manifests itself in the material mark on the page. The study shows how this indexical reference to a ‘subject’ is manipulated and used as a mask through which a writer/painter can perform a certain ‘subject’. Through analyses of the various levels on which the ‘subject’ is represented...... in the early as well as the contemporary avant-garde, it becomes clear that the ‘subject’ is an unstable category that can be exposed to manipulation and play. Handwriting is performing as a signature (as an index), but is at the same time similar to the signature of a subject (an icon) and a verbal construct...
The KWIC Index is an alphabetical listing that provides rapid identification of NE standards based upon the specific subject areas. This index facilitates identification of a NE standard by major or key words located in the center of the alphabetical index listing. Alphanumerical designations for specific NE standards are shown in the right-hand column. Standards referenced in this listing include those that are active, inactive, or discontinued.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — This data set contains vector polygons representing the boundaries of all hardcopy cartographic products produced as part of the Environmental Sensitivity Index...
Astr. (2010) 31, 221–222. Author Index. Aggarwal Malini see Jain Rajmal, 155. Aghaee, A. Determination of the Mean Hi Absorption of the Intergalactic. Medium, 59. Agrawal, S. P. see Singh Ambika, 89. Biesiada Marek Could the Optical Transient SCP 06F6 be due to Micro- lensing?, 213. C¸ aliskan, S . see Küçük, ˙I., 135.
A device is presented for loading and unloading fuel elements containing material fissionable by neutrons of thermal energy. The device comprises a combination of mechanical features Including a base, a lever pivotally attached to the base, an Indexing plate on the base parallel to the plane of lever rotation and having a plurality of apertures, the apertures being disposed In rows, each aperture having a keyway, an Index pin movably disposed to the plane of lever rotation and having a plurality of apertures, the apertures being disposed in rows, each aperture having a keyway, an index pin movably disposed on the lever normal to the plane rotation, a key on the pin, a sleeve on the lever spaced from and parallel to the index pin, a pair of pulleys and a cable disposed between them, an open collar rotatably attached to the sleeve and linked to one of the pulleys, a pin extending from the collar, and a bearing movably mounted in the sleeve and having at least two longitudinal grooves in the outside surface.
AUTHOR INDEX. Abtahi Fatemeh. Completely continuous and weakly co- mpletely continuous abstract Segal algebras. 539. Afrouzi G A. Remark on an infinite semipositone prob- lem with indefinite weight and falling zeros. 145. Balasubramanian R. Density of primes in l-th power residues. 19. Banerjee Pradipto. Divisibility ...
AUTHOR INDEX. Abada Asmaa see Das Debottam. 867. Abbas Gauhar. Constraints on the Kl3 form factors from analyticity and unitarity. 891. Abou El-Ela F M. Electron transport in wurtzite InN. 125. Adachi M M see Kumar Sunil ..... Trottier-McDonald Michel. Tau reconstruction, energy calibration and identification at ATLAS.
Permanent link: http://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/reso/011/10/0069-0077. Keywords. Index fossil; guide fossil; correlation; age determination; Dicroidium; Glossopteris. Author Affiliations. Dipanjan Ghosh1. Biological Science Department Kirnahar Shib Chandra High School Kirnahar, Birbhum 731302, West Bengal, India.
Digests and indexes for issuances of the Commission (CLI), the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (LBP), the Administrative Law Judges (ALJ), the directors` Decisions (DD), and the Denials of Petitions for rulemaking (DPRM) are presented in this document. These digests and indexes are intended to serve as a guide to the issuances. The information elements are displayed in one or more of five separate formats arranged as follows: Case name index; digests and headers; legal citations index; subject index; and facility index.
Digests and indexes for issuances of the Commission (CLI), the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (LBP), the Administrative Law Judges (ALJ), the Directors` Decisions (DD), and the Denials of Petitions for Rulemaking (DPRM) are presented in this document. These digests and indexes are intended to serve as a guide to the issuances. These information elements are displayed in one or more of five separate formats arranged as follows: Case Name Index; Digests and Headers; Legal Citations Index; Subject Index, and Facility Index.
Raridon, M.H. (ed.)
The International Energy Subject Thesaurus contains the standard vocabulary to indexing terms (descriptors) developed and structured to build and maintain energy information databases. Involved in this cooperative task are (1) the technical staff of the USDOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) in cooperation with the member countries of the Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDE) and (2) the International Nuclear Information System (INIS) staff representing the more than ninety countries and organizations recording and indexing information for the international nuclear information community. ETDE member countries are also members of the International Nuclear Information System (INIS). Nuclear information indexed and recorded for INIS by these ETDE member countries is also included in the ETDE Energy Data Base, and indexing terminology is therefore cooperatively standardized for use in both information systems. This structured vocabulary reflects the scope of international energy research, development, and technological programs and encompasses terminology derived not only from the basic sciences but also from the areas of energy resources, conservation, safety, environmental impact, and regulation.
Orsini, A; Pezzuti, L; Hulbert, S
It is now widely known that children with severe intellectual disability show a 'floor effect' on the Wechsler scales. This effect emerges because the practice of transforming raw scores into scaled scores eliminates any variability present in participants with low intellectual ability and because intelligence quotient (IQ) scores are limited insofar as they do not measure scores lower than 40. Following Hessl et al.'s results, the present authors propose a method for the computation of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--4th Ed. (WISC-IV)'s IQ and Indexes in intellectually disabled participants affected by a floored pattern of results. The Italian standardization sample (n = 2200) for the WISC-IV was used. The method presented in this study highlights the limits of the 'floor effect' of the WISC-IV in children with serious intellectual disability who present a profile with weighted scores of 1 in all the subtests despite some variability in the raw scores. Such method eliminates the floor effect of the scale and therefore makes it possible to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the WISC-IV's Indexes in these participants. The Authors reflect on clinical utility of this method and on the meaning of raw score of 0 on subtest. © 2014 MENCAP and International Association of the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Redford, J.S. (ed.)
The technical staff of the DOE Technical Information Center, during its subject indexing activities, develops and structures a vocabulary that allows consistent machine storage and retrieval of information necessary to the accomplishment of the DOE mission. This thesaurus incorporates that structured vocabulary. The terminology of this thesaurus is used for the subject control of information announced in DOE Energy Research Abstracts, Energy Abstracts for Policy Analysis, and various update journals and bulletins in specialized areas. This terminology also facilitates subject searching of the DOE Energy Data Base on the DOE/RECON on-line retrieval system and on other commercial retrieval systems. The rapid expansion of the DOE's activities will result in a commitant thesaurus expansion as information relating to new activities is indexed. Only the terms used in the indexing of documents at the Technical Information Center to date are included. (JSR)
Bureau of Outdoor Recreation (Dept. of Interior), Washington, DC.
A partial index to selected outdoor recreation literature received by the Department of the Interior Library during 1966 provides 991 abstracts retrievable by subject index, name index, geographic index, and publications appendices. Subject categories include outdoor recreation resources, administration of resources and programs, recreation users'…
Shooshan Sonya E
Full Text Available Abstract Background: Indexing is a crucial step in any information retrieval system. In MEDLINE, a widely used database of the biomedical literature, the indexing process involves the selection of Medical Subject Headings in order to describe the subject matter of articles. The need for automatic tools to assist MEDLINE indexers in this task is growing with the increasing number of publications being added to MEDLINE. Methods: In this paper, we describe the use and the customization of Inductive Logic Programming (ILP to infer indexing rules that may be used to produce automatic indexing recommendations for MEDLINE indexers. Results: Our results show that this original ILP-based approach outperforms manual rules when they exist. In addition, the use of ILP rules also improves the overall performance of the Medical Text Indexer (MTI, a system producing automatic indexing recommendations for MEDLINE. Conclusion: We expect the sets of ILP rules obtained in this experiment to be integrated into MTI.
Névéol, Aurélie; Shooshan, Sonya E; Claveau, Vincent
Indexing is a crucial step in any information retrieval system. In MEDLINE, a widely used database of the biomedical literature, the indexing process involves the selection of Medical Subject Headings in order to describe the subject matter of articles. The need for automatic tools to assist MEDLINE indexers in this task is growing with the increasing number of publications being added to MEDLINE. In this paper, we describe the use and the customization of Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) to infer indexing rules that may be used to produce automatic indexing recommendations for MEDLINE indexers. Our results show that this original ILP-based approach outperforms manual rules when they exist. In addition, the use of ILP rules also improves the overall performance of the Medical Text Indexer (MTI), a system producing automatic indexing recommendations for MEDLINE. We expect the sets of ILP rules obtained in this experiment to be integrated into MTI.
Bergamini, L; Finelli, M E; Bendini, C; Ferrari, E; Veschi, M; Neviani, F; Manni, B; Pelosi, A; Rioli, G; Neri, M
Hypertension is a risk factor for a long-lasting arterial wall-remodelling leading to stiffness. The rapid method measuring the pulse pressure (PP) by means of the tool of Hypertension Diagnostic Instruments (HDI) called PP-HDI, overcomes some of the problems arising with more-time consuming methods, like ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM), and give information about the elasticity of the arterial walls. We studied the relationship between the PP-HDI, the large artery compliance (LA-C) and small artery compliance (SA-C) and few well-established indices of arterial blood pressure (ABP) in a sample of 75 hypertensive subjects, aged 65 years and over. Significant correlations between LA-C and heart rate (HR), PP-ABPM and PP-HDI were found. SA-C relates with HR and systolic blood pressure (SBP) measured in lying and standing positions. Applying a stepwise regression analysis, we found that LA-C variance stems from PP-HDI and HR, while SA-C variance stems from SBP in lying position. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves for thresholds of PP showed that PP-HDI reached levels of sensitivity/specificity similar to PP-ABPM. In conclusion, surveillance of ABP through hemo-dynamic indices, in particular of SBP, is essential, nevertheless the advantage of this control is not known in an elderly population where the organ damage is already evident. PP needs necessarily an instrumental measurement. The PP-HDI result is similar in reliability with respect to PPABPM, but is more rapid and well applicable in an elderly population.
Neural substrates of normal and impaired preattentive sensory discrimination in large cohorts of nonpsychiatric subjects and schizophrenia patients as indexed by MMN and P3a change detection responses.
Takahashi, Hidetoshi; Rissling, Anthony J; Pascual-Marqui, Roberto; Kirihara, Kenji; Pela, Marlena; Sprock, Joyce; Braff, David L; Light, Gregory A
Schizophrenia (SZ) patients have information processing deficits, spanning from low level sensory processing to higher-order cognitive functions. Mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a are event-related potential (ERP) components that are automatically elicited in response to unattended changes in ongoing, repetitive stimuli that provide a window into abnormal information processing in SZ. MMN and P3a are among the most robust and consistently identified deficits in SZ, yet the neural substrates of these responses and their associated deficits in SZ are not fully understood. This study examined the neural sources of MMN and P3a components in a large cohort of SZ and nonpsychiatric control subjects (NCS) using Exact Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography Analyses (eLORETA) in order to identify the neural sources of MMN and P3a as well as the brain regions associated with deficits commonly observed among SZ patients. 410 SZ and 247 NCS underwent EEG testing using a duration-deviant auditory oddball paradigm (1-kHz tones, 500ms SOA; standard p=0.90, 50-ms duration; deviant tones P=0.10, 100-ms duration) while passively watching a silent video. Voxel-by-voxel within- (MMN vs. P3a) and between-group (SZ vs. NCS) comparisons were performed using eLORETA. SZ had robust deficits in MMN and P3a responses measured at scalp electrodes consistent with other studies. These components mapped onto neural sources broadly distributed across temporal, frontal, and parietal regions. MMN deficits in SZ were associated with reduced activations in discrete medial frontal brain regions, including the anterior-posterior cingulate and medial frontal gyri. These early sensory discriminatory MMN impairments were followed by P3a deficits associated with widespread reductions in the activation of attentional networks (frontal, temporal, parietal regions), reflecting impaired orienting or shifts of attention to the infrequent stimuli. MMN and P3a are dissociable responses associated with broadly
Neural substrates of normal and impaired preattentive sensory discrimination in large cohorts of nonpsychiatric subjects and schizophrenia patients as indexed by MMN and P3a change detection responses☆
Takahashi, Hidetoshi; Rissling, Anthony J.; Pascual-Marqui, Roberto; Kirihara, Kenji; Pela, Marlena; Sprock, Joyce; Braff, David L.; Light, Gregory A.
Objective Schizophrenia (SZ) patients have information processing deficits, spanning from low level sensory processing to higher-order cognitive functions. Mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a are event-related potential (ERP) components that are automatically elicited in response to unattended changes in ongoing, repetitive stimuli that provide a window into abnormal information processing in SZ. MMN and P3a are among the most robust and consistently identified deficits in SZ, yet the neural substrates of these responses and their associated deficits in SZ are not fully understood. This study examined the neural sources of MMN and P3a components in a large cohort of SZ and nonpsychiatric control subjects (NCS) using Exact Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography Analyses (eLORETA) in order to identify the neural sources of MMN and P3a as well as the brain regions associated with deficits commonly observed among SZ patients. Methods 410 SZ and 247 NCS underwent EEG testing using a duration-deviant auditory oddball paradigm (1-kHz tones, 500 ms SOA; standard p=0.90, 50-ms duration; deviant tones P=0.10, 100-ms duration) while passively watching a silent video. Voxel-by-voxel within- (MMN vs. P3a) and between-group (SZ vs. NCS) comparisons were performed using eLORETA. Results SZ had robust deficits in MMN and P3a responses measured at scalp electrodes consistent with other studies. These components mapped onto neural sources broadly distributed across temporal, frontal, and parietal regions. MMN deficits in SZ were associated with reduced activations in discrete medial frontal brain regions, including the anterior–posterior cingulate and medial frontal gyri. These early sensory discriminatory MMN impairments were followed by P3a deficits associated with widespread reductions in the activation of attentional networks (frontal, temporal, parietal regions), reflecting impaired orienting or shifts of attention to the infrequent stimuli. Conclusions MMN and P3a are
Getulio Teixeira Batista
Full Text Available It is quite impressive the visibility of online publishing compared to offline. Lawrence (2001 computed the percentage increase across 1,494 venues containing at least five offline and five online articles. Results shown an average of 336% more citations to online articles compared to offline articles published in the same venue. If articles published in the same venue are of similar quality, then they concluded that online articles are more highly cited because of their easier access. Thomson Scientific, traditionally concerned with printed journals, announced on November 28, 2005, the launch of Web Citation Index™, the multidisciplinary citation index of scholarly content from institutional and subject-based repositories (http://scientific.thomson. com/press/2005/8298416/. The Web Citation Index from the abstracting and indexing (A&I connects together pre-print articles, institutional repositories and open access (OA journals (Chillingworth, 2005. Basically all research funds are government granted funds, tax payer’s supported and therefore, results should be made freely available to the community. Free online availability facilitates access to research findings, maximizes interaction among research groups, and optimizes efforts and research funds efficiency. Therefore, Ambi-Água is committed to provide free access to its articles. An important aspect of Ambi-Água is the publication and management system of this journal. It uses the Electronic System for Journal Publishing (SEER - http://www.ibict.br/secao.php?cat=SEER. This system was translated and customized by the Brazilian Institute for Science and Technology Information (IBICT based on the software developed by the Public Knowledge Project (Open Journal Systems of the British Columbia University (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/. The big advantage of using this system is that it is compatible with the OAI-PMH protocol for metadata harvesting what greatly promotes published articles
Digests and indexes for issuances of the Commission, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel, The Administrative Law Judges, the Director`s Decisions, and the Decisions on Petitions for Rulemaking are presented in this document. The digests and indexes are intended to serve as a guide to the issuances. Information elements common the cases hear and ruled upon are displayed in one or more of five formats: case name index, headers and digests, legal citations index, subject index, and facility index.
Precession photography of fibres: Prediction of patterns 415. Proton linear accelerator. Design studies of a 100 MeV proton linear accel- erator 257. Proximity effect. Structural instability and superconductivity in niobium-titanium alloys 555. Pseudo-random sequences. Implementation and comparative study of ran-.
for commercial vehicle clutch system. 585. CNC end milling. Optimization in CNC end milling of UNS ... Electric field effects. Influence of unbalanced voltages on the movement of metallic particle in a three phase common enclosure gas insulated busduct. 393. Electromagnet. Design, fabrication, and characterization of a.
Elasto-plastic strain analysis. Elasto-plastic strain analysis by a semi- analytical method. 403. Electric vehicle drive. The differential induction machine: Theory and performance. 663. Electronic packaging. A study aimed at characterizing the interfacial structure in a tin-silver solder on nickel-coated copper plate during aging.
variable DOF. 247. Gas–liquid phase separation. Entrainment phenomenon in gas–liquid two- phase flow: A review. 1173. Gasification. Biomass-based gasifiers for internal combus- tion (IC) engines—A review. 461. Gauss–Newton method. Flexibility-based structural damage identifica- tion using Gauss–Newton method.
colony optimization (ACO). Allocation of advertising space by a web ser- vice provider using combinatorial auctions. 213. Association rules. Interestingness of association rules in data mining: Issues relevant to e-commerce 291. Bearing damage.
Automatic recognition. New method for a person identification sys- tem. 259. Bearing damage. Detection of bearing defects in three-phase induction motors using Park's transform and radical basis function neural networks 235. Bending vibrations. Natural frequencies of a flat viaduct road part simply supported on two ends.
H S Gupta, New Delhi. P K Gupta, Meerut. Sanjay Gupta, Navi Mumbai. Stefan T Hertwig, Bern. Thomas H Hintze, Valhalla. Anneli Hoikkala, Jyvaskyla. Judith Humphries, Appleton. Laura A Hyatt, Lawrenceville. Maneesha Inamdar, Bangalore ... Neelam Shirsat, Navi Mumbai. S Shivaji, Hyderabad. K R Shivanna, Bangalore.
R. Narasimhan (Krishtel eMaging) 1461 1996 Oct 15 13:05:22
projectile. 379. Automation. A second-order autocorrelator for single-shot measurement of femtosecond laser pulse durations. 603. Axially symmetric bodies. Axial symmetric rotation of a partically immersed body in a liquid with a surfacetant layer. 353. Backpropagation algorithm. Application of chaotic noise reduction tech-.
Scott, Randall W.
The original problem of the Special Collections division of the Michigan State University Library (MSU) was to establish a direction for the comic book section of the popular culture collection, and to state the holdings in the chosen area. The comics chosen as the target collection were the superhero comics of the 1960's through 1975, as this was…
Atkinson, Steven D., Comp.; Knee, Michael, Comp.
The University Libraries Computer Search Service (State University of New York at Albany, SUNYA) provides access to databases from many vendors including BRS, Dialog, Wilsonline, CA Search, and Westlaw. Members of the Computer Search Service, Collection Development, and Reference Service staffs select vendor services and new databases for their…
controlled atmosphere 3. Potassium hexacyanoferrate. Interaction of potassium hexacyano- ferrate (II) with histidine 199. Potentiometric determination. Potentiometric determination of ther- modynamic parameters for the com- plex formation of Arsenazo I and. Spadins with ytterium (III), zirco- nium (IV) and cerium (IV) 531.
Damage tolerant evaluation of cracked stiffened panels under fatigue loading. 171. De-bond growth. Fatigue de-bond growth in adhesively bonded single lap joints. 79. Decentralized controller. A set of decentralized PID controllers for an n - link robot manipulator. 405. DeConverter. Punjabi to UNL enconversion system.
Effects of transverse shear and rotatory inertia on large amplitude vibration of composite plates and shells 367. Loss of coolant accident. Safety of nuclear power plants 263. Markov chains. Computer-aided reliability analysis of fault- tolerant systems 209. Metal matrix composites. Recent research and development, future ...
Association for School, College, and University Staffing, Madison, WI.
The membership of the Association for School, College, and University Staffing (ASCUS) includes representatives of major educational institutions that prepare personnel for positions in schools, colleges, universities, school districts, and other educational agencies. This directory provides listings of those people on college campuses who are…
for determining cutting force model in turning hardened AISI H11 hot work tool steel 109. Allophone. Salient phonetic features of Indian languages in speech technology. 587. Aluminum alloy 5083. An investigation of the microstructures and properties of metal inert gas and friction stir welds in aluminum alloy 5083. 505.
R. Narasimhan (Krishtel eMaging) 1461 1996 Oct 15 13:05:22
review of diamond-cutting glasses. 945. Bulk material glass. Bulk metallic glasses: A new class of engi- neering materials. 783. Carbon doping. Superconductivity in MgB2:Phonon modes and influence of carbon doping. 263. Carbon equilvant. Influence of alloying on hydrogen-assisted cracking and diffusable hydrogen ...
Gas turbine. Entropy generation in a channel resembling gas turbine cooling passage: Effect of rota- tion number and density ratio on entropy generation. 439 ... Hot filament CVD. High vacuum tribology of polycrystalline dia- mond coatings. 811. Hotwire CVD. Bio-functionalization of silicon nitride-based piezo-resistive ...
R. Narasimhan (Krishtel eMaging) 1461 1996 Oct 15 13:05:22
Extra Deep drawn steel sheets. Experimental and finite element analysis of fracture criterion in general yielding fracture mechanics. 631. Fast breeder ... Modelling and control of broad band traf- fic using multiplative multifractual cascades. 699. Human computer interaction. Indian accent text-to-speech system for web.
Influence of various acids on the physico- mechanical properties of pozzolanic mortars. 683. Prediction scenarios. Prediction of traffic fatalities and prospects for mobility becoming sustainable-safe. 365. Pressure-sensitive paint. Resection methodology for PSP data processing: Recent experiences in NAL 19. Public health.
R. Narasimhan (Krishtel eMaging) 1461 1996 Oct 15 13:05:22
Abutments. Velocity and turbulence at a wing-wall abut- ment. 35. Acoustic noise. Application of holography in jet acoustic studies. 389. Air-fuel combustion. Numerical study of effect of oxygen fraction on local entropy generation in a methane-air burner. 641. All solid-state exciter. A compact spark pre-ionized pulser ...
Raridon, M.H. (ed.)
This seventh edition of the subject thesaurus contains the standard vocabulary of indexing terms (descriptors) developed and structured by the technical staff of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information as part of its subject indexing activities for building and maintaining the Energy Data Base (EDB) and other energy information data bases for the Department of Energy (DOE). The purpose of this thesaurus is to enhance the efficiency of information retrieval from these data bases. This structured vocabulary reflects the scope of DOE's research, development, and technological programs and encompasses terminology derived not only from the basic sciences for also from areas of energy resources, conservation, safety, environmental impact, and regulation. There are 21,080 valid descriptors and 5683 forbidden terms in this edition of the Thesaurus. These descriptors are listed alphabetically.
Rodriquez, A A; Agre, J C; Franke, T M
To compare strength and endurance variables obtained in the quadriceps muscles of postpolio and control subjects over a 7-year interval with macro and single fiber electromyography (EMG) variables. A controlled inception cohort study. Neuromuscular research laboratory of a university hospital. A cohort of 23 postpolio and 14 control subjects. All postpolio subjects had a history, physical examination, and EMG consistent with previous poliomyelitis, and had greater than antigravity strength in the quadriceps muscle tested. Unstable postpolio subjects acknowledged new quadriceps weakness over the 7-year period of the study (n = 11), and stable postpolio subjects denied new weakness of the quadriceps over the same period (n = 12). All subjects had tests of neuromuscular function of the quadriceps muscles at the onset of this study and yearly over a 7-year period. EMG variables were determined on a separate day after the seventh year of neuromuscular measurements. Neuromuscular variables measured were isometric knee extension peak torque, isometric endurance (time to inability to maintain knee extensor contraction at 40% of maximal torque), tension time index (TTI) (product of isometric endurance time and 40% of maximal torque), and recovery of torque at 10 minutes after the endurance test. EMG variables were macro EMG and single fiber EMG (jitter, fiber density, and percent blocking). Unstable postpolio subjects did not lose strength more rapidly than stable postpolio subjects or control subjects. Unstable postpolio subjects were significantly weaker, had decreased TTI, larger macro EMG amplitude, greater jitter, blocking, and fiber density in comparison with stable postpolio subjects (all p postpolio group (p .05) with neuromuscular or EMG variables in control, stable, or unstable postpolio subjects.
The Air University Library Index to Military Periodicals is a subject index to significant articles, news items, and editorials appearing in 77 English language military and aeronautical periodicals...
The Air University Library Index to Military Periodicals is a subject index to significant articles, news items, and editorials appearing in 76 English language military and aeronautical periodicals...
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — There is an EJ Index for each environmental indicator. There are eleven EJ Indexes in EJSCREEN reflecting the 11 environmental indicators. The EJ Index names are:...
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — There is an EJ Index for each environmental indicator. There are eight EJ Indexes in EJSCREEN reflecting the 8 environmental indicators. The EJ Index names are:...
Guilfoyle, Richard A.; Guo, Zhen
A restriction site indexing method for selectively amplifying any fragment generated by a Class II restriction enzyme includes adaptors specific to fragment ends containing adaptor indexing sequences complementary to fragment indexing sequences near the termini of fragments generated by Class II enzyme cleavage. A method for combinatorial indexing facilitates amplification of restriction fragments whose sequence is not known.
Dittmann, I.; Maug, E.; Spalt, O.G.
We analyze the efficiency of indexing executive pay by calibrating the standard compensation model to a large sample of U.S. CEOs. The benefits from indexing the strike price of options are small, and fully indexing all options would increase compensation costs by 50% for most firms. Indexing has
Full Text Available High school and academic libraries users need precise classifi cation and subject access review of printed and electronic resources. In library catalogue since, Universal Decimal Classifi cation (UDC -similar to Dewey system - ex classifi es research and scientifi c areas. in subject areas of 796 Sport and 371 Teaching. Nowadays, users need structure of subjects by disciplines in science. Full-open resources of library must be set for users in subject access catalogue, because on the example of bachelors degree thesis in Faculty of Physical Education in Novi Sad they reaches for disciplines in database with 36 indexes sort by fi rst letters in names (Athletics, Boxing, Cycling, etc. This database have single and multiplied index for each thesis. Users in 80% cases of research according to the subject access catalogue of this library.
Tertiary Index term. Geosciences. Solid earth. Tectonics. Structural Geology. Geodynamics. Seismology. Exploration geophysics. Seismic hazards. Geomagnetism. Mineralogy. Petrology. Metamorphic. Igneous. Sedimentary. Fossil fuels. Petroleum and coal. Isotope geology. Geochronology. Isotope geology. Landform and.
Full Text Available The importance of Levinas’ notions of sensibility and subjectivity are evident in the revision of phenomenological method by current phenomenologists such as Jean-Luc Marion and Michel Henry. The criticisms of key tenants of classical phenomenology, intentionality and reduction, are of a particular note. However, there are problems with Levinas’ characterization of subjectivity as essentially sensible. In “Totality and Infinity” and “Otherwise than Being”, Levinas criticizes and recasts a traditional notion of subjectivity, particularly the notion of the subject as the first and foremost rational subject. The subject in Levinas’ works is characterized more by its sensibility and affectedness than by its capacity to reason or affect its world. Levinas ties rationality to economy and suggests an alternative notion of reason that leads to his analysis of the ethical relation as the face-to-face encounter. The ‘origin’ of the social relation is located not in our capacity to know but rather in a sensibility that is diametrically opposed to the reason understood as economy. I argue that the opposition in Levinas’ thought between reason and sensibility is problematic and essentially leads to a self-conflicted subject. In fact, it would seem that violence characterizes the subject’s self-relation and, thus, is also inscribed at the base of the social relation. Rather than overcoming a problematic tendency to dualistic thought in philosophy Levinas merely reverses traditional hierarchies of reason/emotion, subject/object and self/other.
Mai, Jens Erik
The paper discusses the notion of steps in indexing and reveals that the document-centered approach to indexing is prevalent and argues that the document-centered approach is problematic because it blocks out context-dependent factors in the indexing process. A domain-centered approach to indexing...... is presented as an alternative and the paper discusses how this approach includes a broader range of analyses and how it requires a new set of actions from using this approach; analysis of the domain, users and indexers. The paper concludes that the two-step procedure to indexing is insufficient to explain...... the indexing process and suggests that the domain-centered approach offers a guide for indexers that can help them manage the complexity of indexing....
The CENDI Indexing Workshop held at NASA Headquarters, Two Independence Square, 300 E Street, Washington, DC, on September 21-22, 1994 focused on the following topics: machine aided indexing, indexing quality, an indexing pilot project, the MedIndEx Prototype, Department of Energy/Office of Scientific and Technical Information indexing activities, high-tech coding structures, category indexing schemes, and the Government Information Locator Service. This publication consists mostly of viewgraphs related to the above noted topics. In an appendix is a description of the Government Information Locator Service.
This compilation consists of bibliographic data and abstracts for the formal regulatory and technical reports issued by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Staff and its contractors. It is NRC`s intention to publish this compilation quarterly and to cumulate it annually. The main citations and abstracts in this compilation are listed in NUREG number order. These precede the following indexes: secondary report number index, personal author index, subject index, NRC originating organization index (staff reports), NRC originating organization index (international agreements), NRC contract sponsor index (contractor reports), contractor index, international organization index, and licensed facility index. A detailed explanation of the entries precedes each index.
Desmond, Winifred F.; Barrer, Lester A.
Subjects covered in this bibliography include manual, mechanized and automated techniques, evaluation of systems, standards, storage and retrieval systems, research, vocabularies, author participation, permuted title indexing, citation indexing, and specialized indexing requirements, i.e. chemistry, medicine, patents, engineering drawing, and…
Bureau of Outdoor Recreation (Dept. of Interior), Washington, DC.
A partial index to selected outdoor recreation literature received by the Department of the Interior Library during late 1966 and the first six months of 1967 provides 847 abstracts which are retrievable by subject, name, and geographic indexes. Subject categories include outdoor recreation resources, administration of resources and programs,…
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — This data set contains vector polygons representing the boundaries of all the hardcopy cartographic products produced as part of the Environmental Sensitivity Index...
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — This data set contains vector polygons representing the boundaries used for the production of the hardcopy maps as part of the Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI)...
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services — IndexCat provides access to the digitized version of the printed Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office; eTK for medieval Latin texts; and...
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Human land uses may have major impacts on ecosystems, affecting biodiversity, habitat, air and water quality. The human use index (also known as U-index) is the...
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Human land uses may have major impacts on ecosystems, affecting biodiversity, habitat, air and water quality. The human use index (also known as U-index) is the...
Department of Veterans Affairs — As of June 28, 2010, the Master Veteran Index (MVI) database based on the enhanced Master Patient Index (MPI) is the authoritative identity service within the VA,...
Kendall, Cyril W C; Augustin, Livia S A; Emam, Azadeh; Josse, Andrea R; Saxena, Nishta; Jenkins, David J A
The glycemic index concept owes much to the dietary fiber hypothesis that fiber would reduce the rate of nutrient absorption and increase the value of carbohydrate foods in the maintenance of health and treatment of disease. However, properties and components of food other than its fiber content contribute to the glycemic and endocrine responses postprandially. The aim of the glycemic index classification of foods was therefore to assist in the physiological classification of carbohydrate foods which, it was hoped, would be of relevance in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases such as diabetes. Over the past two decades low glycemic index diets have been reported to improve glycemic control in diabetic subjects, to reduce serum lipids in hyperlipidemic subjects and possibly to aid in weight control. In large cohort studies, low glycemic index or glycemic load diets (glycemic index multiplied by total carbohydrate) have also been associated with higher levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, reduced C-reactive protein concentrations and with a decreased risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease. More recently, some case-control and cohort studies have also found positive associations between the dietary glycemic index and the risk of colon, breast and other cancers. While the glycemic index concept continues to be debated and there remain inconsistencies in the data, sufficient positive findings have emerged to suggest that the glycemic index is an aspect of diet of potential importance in the treatment and prevention of chronic diseases.
This report indexes the issuances heard and ruled upon from January through June 1997. Issuances are from the Commission, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Boards, the Administrative Law Judges, the Directors` Decisions, and the Decisions on Petitions for Rulemaking. Information provided for each case includes the case name, full test reference, issuance number, issues raised by appellants, legal citations, facility name and docket number, subject matter of issues and/or rulings, type of hearing, and type of issuance. Each issuance is displayed in one or more of five separate formats: (1) case name index, (2) headers and digests, (3) legal citations index, (4) subject index, and (5) facility index.
Components of the leaf area index of marandu palisadegrass swards subjected to strategies of intermittent stocking Componentes do índice de área foliar de pastos de capim-marandu submetidos a estratégias de lotação intermitente
Alessandra Aparecida Giacomini
Full Text Available Leaf area index is the main sward characteristic related to the processes of light interception and competition in plant communities. The objective of this experiment was to quantify and evaluate the composition of the leaf area on tillers of marandu palisadegrass (Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu subjected to strategies of intermittent stocking. The experiment was carried out in Piracicaba, state of São Paulo, Brazil, from October/2004 to December/2005. Swards were grazed at 95 and 100% canopy light interception (LI to post-grazing heights of 10 and 15 cm, following a 2 ' 2 factorial arrangement with four replications in a randomised complete block design. Estimates were made of sward leaf area index, site filling, specific leaf area and the dimensionless ratio between tiller leaf area and volume (R, as well as the relative contribution of basal and aerial tillers to these variables. In early spring, values of leaf area index and specific leaf area were low when compared to the other seasons, and swards grazed at 95% LI presented higher site filling and specific leaf area than those grazed at 100% LI. This resulted in higher tillering activity and increase in leaf area index in late spring, indicating quick recovery and early return of swards grazed at 95% LI to growing conditions. Aerial tillers corresponded to an important morphological adaptation of marandu palisadegrass to increase its competitive ability. Treatment 100/10 resulted in the highest and 95/15 in the lowest R values throughout the experiment, suggesting an allometric pattern of growth of tillers during regrowth in order to compensate low tiller population and optimise the leaf area index. Grazing management practices can benefit from this knowledge by promoting ideal sward conditions to maximise and accelerate growth.O índice de área foliar é a principal característica do dossel relacionada com os processos de interceptação e competição por luz em comunidades de
Full Text Available Abstract The study provides the rationale, history and current status of the Index Medicus for the World Health Organization Eastern Mediterranean Region. The Index is unique in combining the geographic coverage of peer-reviewed health and biomedical journals (408 titles from the 22 countries of the Region. Compiling and publishing the Index coupled with a document delivery service is an integral part of the WHO Regional Office's knowledge management and sharing programme. In this paper, bibliometric indicators are presented to demonstrate the distribution of journals, articles, languages, subjects and authors as well as availability in printed and electronic formats. Two countries in the Region (Egypt and Pakistan contribute over 50% of the articles in the Index. About 90% of the articles are published in English. Epidemiology articles represent 8% of the entire Index. 15% of the journals in the Index are also indexed in MEDLINE, while 7% are indexed in EMBASE. Future developments of the Index will include covering more journals and adding other types of health and biomedical literature, including reports, theses, books and current research. The challenges and lessons learnt are discussed.
This digest and index lists the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issuances for July to September 1997. Issuances are from the Commission, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Boards, the Administrative Law Judges, the Directors` Decisions, and the Decisions on Petitions for Rulemaking. There are five sections to this index: (1) case name index, (2) headers and digests, (3) legal citations index, (4) subject index, and (5) facility index. The digest provides a brief narrative of the issue, including the resolution of the issue and any legal references used for resolution.
Munch, Inger Christine; Kessel, Line; Borch-Johnsen, Knut
tolerance testing, clinical and laboratory examinations, non-invasive ocular lens fluorometry and seven-field fundus photography. Results: Retinopathy was present in 8.3% (CI(95) 6.3-10.3%) of subjects. Higher systolic blood pressure (SBP) (p = 0.032), increasing body mass index (BMI) (p = 0.014) and wider...
Kong, Kai Ling; Hendrich, Suzanne
To determine glycemic, insulinemic, and satiety indices of 3 types of kefir. This study was divided into 3 phases. In phase 1, 50 g of available carbohydrate from low-fat strawberry kefir or orange kefir was tested, and in phase 2, low-fat plain kefir containing 25 g of available carbohydrates was tested for glycemic index (GI), in both cases compared with an equivalent amount of glucose. In phase 3, 1000-kJ portions of all 3 types of kefirs were compared with white bread with the same energy content to determine the insulinemic index (II) and satiety index (SI) of all 3 kefirs. In all phases, a single-meal, randomized crossover design was performed in which the test meals were given to healthy adults, 5 men and 5 women. The total incremental plasma glucose area under the curve (iAUC) for strawberry, orange, and plain kefirs was significantly lower compared with the respective high-GI control food, which was glucose solution. However, the IIs and SIs of kefir did not differ significantly from the white bread. Kefir is a low- to moderate-GI food; however, its II was high. Although kefir had higher water content, the SI of kefir was not significantly different from white bread.
Suherman; Fakhrizal, Said Reza; Al-Akaidi, Marwan
Multiple access technique is one of important techniques within medium access layer in TCP/IP protocol stack. Each network technology implements the selected access method. Priority can be implemented in those methods to differentiate services. Some internet networks are dedicated for specific purpose. Education browsing or tutorial video accesses are preferred in a library hotspot, while entertainment and sport contents could be subjects of limitation. Current solution may use IP address filter or access list. This paper proposes subjective properties of users or applications are used for priority determination in multiple access techniques. The NS-2 simulator is employed to evaluate the method. A video surveillance network using WiMAX is chosen as the object. Subjective priority is implemented on WiMAX scheduler based on traffic properties. Three different traffic sources from monitoring video: palace, park, and market are evaluated. The proposed subjective scheduler prioritizes palace monitoring video that results better quality, xx dB than the later monitoring spots.
The glycemic index is a ranking of carbohydrate containing foods. Foods are ranked according to their immediate effect on blood sugar levels. The higher a f ood raises blood sugar, the higher its glycemic index. Scientists published the first index in 1981 when they were researching diet therapy for diabetes. This first list contained 51 foods, and the list has continued to expand, with the most recent official list containing 750 foods. Fruits, grains, dairy products, some vegetables, pastas...
Commodity Futures Trading Commission — Shows index traders in selected agricultural markets. These traders are drawn from the noncommercial and commercial categories. The noncommercial category includes...
Gang, Jianhua; Guo, Jie (Michael); Hu, Nan; Li, Xi
We measure the efficiency of mergers and acquisitions by putting forward an index (the ‘M&A Index’) based on stochastic frontier analysis. The M&A Index is calculated for each takeover deal and is standardized between 0 and 1. An acquisition with a higher index encompasses higher efficiency. We find that takeover bids with higher M&A Indices are more likely to succeed. Moreover, the M&A Index shows a strong and positive relation with the acquirers’ post-acquisition stock perfo...
Brand-Miller, Jennie; Buyken, Anette E
In recent years, many of the concerns surrounding the glycemic index have been addressed by methodological studies and clinical trials comparing diets carefully matched for other nutrients. These findings are reviewed together with new observational evidence for the role of the dietary glycemic index in the etiology of cardiovascular disease. The determination and classification of the glycemic index of a food product is now standardized by the International Standards Organization. Systematic studies using isoenergetic single and mixed meals have shown that glycemic index and/or glycemic load are stronger predictors of postprandial glycemia and insulinemia than carbohydrate content alone. In overweight individuals, a diet that combined modestly higher protein and lower glycemic index carbohydrates was the most effective diet for prevention of weight regain. New observational studies have reported increased risks of coronary heart disease associated with higher intakes of carbohydrates from high glycemic index foods. Epidemiological evidence has emerged linking dietary glycemic index to visceral fat and inflammatory disease mortality. There is growing recognition that replacing saturated fat with refined, high glycemic index carbohydrates increases postprandial glycemia and may be detrimental for weight control and predisposition to cardiovascular and inflammatory disease. In contrast, low glycemic index carbohydrates reduce risk.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — There are 40 supplementary EJSCREEN indexes that are divided into 5 categories: EJ Index with supplementary demographic index, Supplementary EJ Index 1 with...
Full Text Available Bibliometric analyses based on citations are most often at the forefront where scientific publications are concerned. A fact often neglected is that the visibility and availability of scientific publications are basic prerequisites for future reading, citation and influence. Journal visibility can be significantly improved by providing open access and availability through popular online databases. In this study, we investigated 112 mapping science journals to determine the visibility of scientific publications in a smaller interdisciplinary field. In addition to other data, we collected data on open access, indexing, subject areas within the Web of Science and Scopus bibliographic databases and the number of journals in these databases. The coverage of mapping science journals in 14 bibliographic databases was analyzed. Only 11% of the titles from the journals analyzed were indexed in 10 or more databases. Google Scholar, Scopus, Bibliotheca Cartographica and GEOBASE include most mapping science journals, while only 19 are included in Web of Science. A comparison indicates more thorough coverage of an individual journal in Web of Science than in Scopus. Only a few mapping science journals appear in the Directory of Open Access Journals, despite the large number of open access mapping science journals available. Adding subject categories within databases does not facilitate finding mapping science journals, which are dispersed among numerous, mostly inadequate categories in the Web of Science and Scopus databases.
Fernandez, Miguel; Garcia, Monica; Fernandez, Nestor
The Global ecosystem restoration index (GERI) is a composite index that integrates structural and functional aspects of the ecosystem restoration process. These elements are evaluated through a window that looks into a baseline for degraded ecosystems with the objective to assess restoration...
Hewitt, Clifford A., Comp.; McKinstry, Herbert A., Comp.
This index provides a topical taxonomy of media which have been selected for their relevance in the teaching of materials science and engineering. The index is keyed to a matrix which matches topical and/or class material with six classifications of media: print, 16mm film, super 8 film, slide/tape, videotape, and other (including interactive…
Items 1 - 50 of 93 ... Vol 11, No 2 (2016), Asymptotic normality of non-parametric estimator for the FGT poverty index with when the parameter is strictly between 0 and 1, Abstract PDF. Youssou Ciss, Aboubakary Diakhaby. Vol 12, No 2 (2017), Asymptotic normality of non-parametric estimator for the FGT poverty index with ...
Christensen, Hans Dam
Hans Dam Christensen, ”Rethinking image indexing?”, in: Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, vol. 68, no. 7, 2017, 1782-1785......Hans Dam Christensen, ”Rethinking image indexing?”, in: Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, vol. 68, no. 7, 2017, 1782-1785...
Buchan, R. L.
Discussion of computer-aided indexing activity focuses on examples from projects at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Standardization and quality in providing subject access to databases are considered; and computer-aided lexicography, including thesaurus construction, access vocabulary, definitions preparation,…
Andersen, Steffen; Fountain, John; Harrison, Glenn W.
Subjective probabilities play a central role in many economic decisions, and act as an immediate confound of inferences about behavior, unless controlled for. Several procedures to recover subjective probabilities have been proposed, but in order to recover the correct latent probability one must...
Andersen, Steffen; Fountain, John; Harrison, Glenn W.
Subjective probabilities play a central role in many economic decisions and act as an immediate confound of inferences about behavior, unless controlled for. Several procedures to recover subjective probabilities have been proposed, but in order to recover the correct latent probability one must ...
van Wijnbergen-Huitink, Janneke; van Wijbergen-Huitink, Janneke; Meier, Cécile
This introductory chapter traces some of the considerations on the basis of which relativistic approaches to subjective meaning became en vogue. In doing so, the chapter provides an overview of the relevant linguistic and philosophical issues when developing a treatment of subjectivity. In addition,
The term ‘subjective safety in traffic’ refers to people feeling unsafe in traffic or, more generally, to anxiety regarding being unsafe in traffic for oneself and/or others. Subjective safety in traffic can lead to road users limiting their mobility and social activities, which is one of the
J. Flik; B.M.S. van Praag (Bernard)
textabstractIn this paper we will deal with definitions of subjective poverty lines. To measure a poverty threshold value in terms of household income, which separates the poor from the non-poor, we take into account the opinions of all people in society. Three subjective methods will be discussed
Full Text Available The contribution of modern science to the progress of civilization is immeasurable. Even its tendency toward exclusive concentration on the objective world has had salutary effects of great value. Modern science has wiped away much that was merely superstitious or speculative. Its rejection of unfounded opinions and prejudices has helped the thinking mind question conventional beliefs, shed preferences and prejudices, and challenge established authority. But modern systems thinking inherited from natural science is the suppression of the subjective dimension of reality. Many complex systems are an attempt to define and represent all subjective experience in physical terms. The modern man has a bias towards objectivity. The powerful influence of sense impressions on his mind and thinking makes him ignore the subjective experience and consider only objective facts as a valid, legitimate and representation of reality. Observing objective factors that are physical is easier than observing subjective factors that are subtle. The mechanistic view of reality has led to the rejection of the role of the individual in social development as insignificant. The individuals determine the development of society. Their social power has its roots both in subjective factors and objective factors. Economy, politics, society, and culture are inseparable dimensions of a single integrated reality. Subject and object constitute an integrated whole. The mind sees them as separate and independent. Or it views one as completely subordinate to the other. Unbiased approach to the study of all human experiences may prove that subject and object are interdependent dimensions or elements of reality.
Full Text Available The question about the subjects of law branches is concerning the number of most important and difficult in law science. Its right decision influences on the subject of law regulation, precise definition of addressees of law norms, the volume of their rights and duties, the limits of action of norms of Main part of the branch, its principles. Scientific investigations, dedicated to law subjects system, promote the development of recommendations for the legislative and law applying activity; they are needed for scientific work organization and student training, for preparing qualified lawyers.
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services — The National Death Index (NDI) is a centralized database of death record information on file in state vital statistics offices. Working with these state offices, the...
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — PDSI from the Dai dataset. The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is devised by Palmer (1965) to represent the severity of dry and wet spells over the U.S. based...
Items 5051 - 5100 of 11090 ... Journal Home > Advanced Search > Browse Title Index .... Vol 10, No 84 (2011), Fatty acid elongase 1 (FAE1) promoter as a candidate for genetic engineering of fatty acids to .... V Jalasutram, A Jetty, GR Anupoju.
Washington University St Louis — TOMS_AI_G is an aerosol related dataset derived from the Total Ozone Monitoring Satellite (TOMS) Sensor. The TOMS aerosol index arises from absorbing aerosols such...
Kaczynski, Andrew T; Schipperijn, Jasper; Hipp, J Aaron
A lack of comprehensive and standardized metrics for measuring park exposure limits park-related research and health promotion efforts. This study aimed to develop and demonstrate an empirically-derived and spatially-represented index of park access (ParkIndex) that would allow researchers...... using ArcGIS 9.3 and the Community Park Audit Tool. Four park summary variables - distance to nearest park, and the number of parks, amount of park space, and average park quality index within 1 mile were analyzed in relation to park use using logistic regression. Coefficients for significant park...... of park use across all cells in KCMO ranged from 17 to 77 out of 100. ParkIndex represents a standardized metric of park access that combines elements of both park availability and quality, was developed empirically, and can be represented spatially. This tool has both practical and conceptual...
Rahelić, Dario; Jenkins, Alexandra; Bozikov, Velimir; Pavić, Eva; Jurić, Klara; Fairgrieve, Christopher; Romić, Dominik; Kokić, Slaven; Vuksan, Vladimir
The Glycemic Index (GI) is a rating system that ranks carbohydrate-containing foods according to their postprandial blood glucose response relative to the same quantity of available carbohydrate of a standard such as white bread or glucose...
Items 1 - 50 of 490 ... Journal Home > Advanced Search > Browse Title Index ... to the extraction and purification of pectin from inferior shaddock using .... Vol 4, No 4 (2008), Assessment of heavy metals concentrations in water from borehole at ...
Items 1 - 34 of 34 ... Journal Home > Advanced Search > Browse Title Index ... Vol 17 (2007), Application of wastewater treatment by algae in irrigation of some economic ... and physiological behavior of drinking water-borne pathogenic bacteria.
Items 101 - 150 of 444 ... Journal Home > Advanced Search > Browse Title Index ... Vol 60 (2007), Determination of Phenols in Water Samples using a ... Silver on Nano-ZnO for the Environmental Purification of Dye Pollutants, Abstract PDF.
... with lower GI foods. For many people with diabetes, carbohydrate counting along with choosing healthy foods and maintaining ... and-fitness/food/what-can-i-eat/understanding-carbohydrates/glycemic-index-and-diabetes.html?loc=ff-slabnav . Accessed July 21, 2016. ...
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — NOAA's National Climatic Data Center is now producing the Regional Snowfall Index (RSI) for significant snowstorms that impact the eastern two thirds of the U.S. The...
Vasuki, Vidya; Cohen, Trevor
The rapid growth of biomedical literature is evident in the increasing size of the MEDLINE research database. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), a controlled set of keywords, are used to index all the citations contained in the database to facilitate search and retrieval. This volume of citations calls for efficient tools to assist indexers at the US National Library of Medicine (NLM). Currently, the Medical Text Indexer (MTI) system provides assistance by recommending MeSH terms based on the title and abstract of an article using a combination of distributional and vocabulary-based methods. In this paper, we evaluate a novel approach toward indexer assistance by using nearest neighbor classification in combination with Reflective Random Indexing (RRI), a scalable alternative to the established methods of distributional semantics. On a test set provided by the NLM, our approach significantly outperforms the MTI system, suggesting that the RRI approach would make a useful addition to the current methodologies.
Efectividad del uso tópico de Salvia officinalis en la disminución del índice gingival en sujetos con gingivitis Effectiveness of topical use of Salvia officinalis in the gingival index decrease in subjects with gingivitis
R Valenzuela Melgarejo
Full Text Available Introducción: La gingivitis es el problema periodontal de mayor prevalencia en la población, por lo que deben buscarse más alternativas de tratamiento y prevención. Objetivo: Evaluar efecto del uso de Salvia officinalis en disminución del índice gingival modificado (IG en alumnos de Odontología de la Universidad del Desarrollo diagnosticados con gingivitis, año 2010. Sujetos y Método: Fue realizado un estudio cuantitativo, ciego, experimental del tipo ensayo clínico controlado con placebo, sobre la acción de extracto de S. officinalis en dentífrico y colutorios para gingivitis inducida por placa bacteriana, en 33 alumnos de odontología de la Universidad del Desarrollo, Concepción; 13 mujeres y 20 hombres entre 21 y 29 años. Fueron divididos en tres grupos; placebo, colutorio y dentífrico. Luego del inicio del tratamiento fueron citados a los 7, 14 y 28 días, finalizando el tratamiento el día 14. Resultados: En el control no se encontró diferencias significativas (p=0.061 la primera semana, mientras que en los grupos con colutorio o dentífrico si hubo diferencias significativas (p=0.000 y p=0.002. La última semana al retirar el placebo, el IG se mantuvo, por otro lado en los grupos con S. officinalis no continuó el descenso. La disminución del IG fue mayor para los grupos colutorio y dentífrico que para el control. Discusión: El uso de S. officinalis es efectivo en la disminución del IG. El colutorio y dentífrico logran disminuir con mayor rapidez el IG. El colutorio logró la mayor disminución del IG.Background: Gingivitis is the most prevalent periodontal problem in people, so we need to find new alternatives for treatment and prevention. Aim: To evaluate the effects of Salvia officinalis in the declining modified gingival index (GI in dentistry students of the Universidad del Desarrollo diagnosed with gingivitis, year 2010. Subjects and Methods: This was a quantitative study, blinded, experimental type of placebo
Kauffman, Thomas; Théoret, Hugo; Pascual-Leone, Alvaro
Visual deprivation may lead to enhanced performance in other sensory modalities. Whether this is the case in the tactile modality is controversial and may depend upon specific training and experience. We compared the performance of sighted subjects on a Braille character discrimination task to that of normal individuals blindfolded for a period of five days. Some participants in each group (blindfolded and sighted) received intensive Braille training to offset the effects of experience. Blindfolded subjects performed better than sighted subjects in the Braille discrimination task, irrespective of tactile training. For the left index finger, which had not been used in the formal Braille classes, blindfolding had no effect on performance while subjects who underwent tactile training outperformed non-stimulated participants. These results suggest that visual deprivation speeds up Braille learning and may be associated with behaviorally relevant neuroplastic changes.
This article considers whether it is fortunate that data protection rules, as a starting point, apply to all physical persons as data subjects, or whether it would be better to differentiate between kinds of persons on grounds of their ability to act as a data subject. In order to protect all...... persons, it is argued that a principle of care should be part of data protection law....
Digests and indexes for issuances of the Commission, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel, the Administrative Law Judges, the Directors` Decisions, and the Decisions on Petitions for Rulemaking are presented in this document. These digests and indexes are intended to serve as a guide to the issuances. Information elements common to the cases heard and ruled upon are: Case name (owner(s) of facility); Full text reference (volume and pagination); Issuance number Issues raised by appellants; Legal citations (cases, regulations, and statutes); Name of facility, Docket number; Subject matter of issues and/or rulings; Type of hearing (operating license, operating license amendment, etc); Type of issuance (memorandum, order, decision, etc.). These information elements are displayed in one or more of five separate formats: Case Name Index, Headers and Digests, Legal Citations Index, Subject Index, and Facility Index.
Townsend, J. C.; Cronin, J. P.
A coronary heart disease index was developed from longitudinal ECG (LCG) tracings to serve as a cardiac health measure in studies of working and, essentially, asymptomatic populations, such as pilots and executives. For a given subject, the index consisted of a composite score based on the presence of LCG aberrations and weighted values previously assigned to them. The index was validated by correlating it with the known presence or absence of CHD as determined by a complete physical examination, including treadmill, resting ECG, and risk factor information. The validating sample consisted of 111 subjects drawn by a stratified-random procedure from 5000 available case histories. The CHD index was found to be significantly more valid as a sole indicator of CHD than the LCG without the use of the index. The index consistently produced higher validity coefficients in identifying CHD than did treadmill testing, resting ECG, or risk factor analysis.
To determine the glycemic index of Gen-Premium. Ten healthy volunteers were included for testing glycemic index of Gen-Premium. After the overnight fast, the subjects consumed 50 grams of glucose (reference food) within five minutes. The blood samples were collected at 0, 30, 60, 90, and 120 minutes for measuring of plasma glucose. One day later the same subjects consumed 50 grams of carbohydrate from Gen-Premium (test food) within five minutes. After complete the data, the glycemic index was calculated by the standard method. The glycemic index of Gen-Premium was 27.29, which classify in low GI food. According to the methodology of glycemic index determination, the glycemic index of Gen-Premium is 27.29, which is considered to be favorably low.
Índice de massa corporal e hipertensão arterial em indivíduos adultos no Centro-Oeste do Brasil Índice de masa corporal e hipertensión arterial en individuos adultos en el Centro Oeste del Brasil Body mass index and hypertension in adult subjects in Brazil's Midwest
Nadia Mohamed Amer
. OBJETIVO: Investigar posibles factores asociados a las alteraciones en el índice de masa corporal (IMC. MÉTODOS: Estudio desarrollado en Nova Andradina - Mato Grosso do Sul, con 369 individuos registrados en el programa Estrategia Salud de la Familia en el año 2007. Los datos fueron colectados en los domicilios, por medio de entrevista semiestructurada y evaluación antropométrica. En el análisis de los datos, fueron utilizados los tests chi-cuadrado y Mantel Haensel, para respuestas categóricas, y ANOVA y Tukey, para las continuas. RESULTADOS: Las prevalencias de sobrepeso y obesidad fueron de 33,3% y 23,0%, respectivamente. En su mayoría, los individuos presentaban las siguientes características: sexo femenino (85,4%, inactivos (89,7%, relación cintura-cadera (RCC inadecuada (83,7% y portaban algún problema de salud crónico (31,9%, especialmente la hipertensión arterial. Los factores de riesgo para sobrepeso y obesidad pueden ser relacionados a las variables estado civil viudo, RCC inadecuada, renta más baja y problemas de salud. Ya la hipertensión arterial puede ser asociada apenas a la obesidad. CONCLUSIÓN: El porcentual de personas que se encontraban encima del peso y de aquellas que no practicaban actividad física en Nova Andradina indica que esas cuestiones constituyen desafío importante para el sector salud también en las pequeñas ciudades. Por eso, es urgente la implantación de programas de intervención multidisciplinares en el ámbito de la atención básica.BACKGROUND: Overweight and obesity are an important public health problem in society, due to the growth in all age groups and their association with various chronic diseases, especially hypertension OBJECTIVE: To investigate possible factors associated with changes in body mass index (BMI. METHODS: Study developed in the city of Nova Andradina, State of Mato Grosso do Sul, with 369 subjects registered in the Family Health Strategy Program in 2007. Data were collected at the subjects
G. Graefe; F Halim; S. Idreos (Stratos); H. Kuno; S. Manegold (Stefan); J.N. de Sa (Joao); B. Seeger
textabstractAdaptive indexing initializes and optimizes indexes incrementally, as a side effect of query processing. The goal is to achieve the benefits of indexes while hiding or minimizing the costs of index creation. However, index-optimizing side effects seem to turn read-only queries into
Gloria Staka; Fatmir Dragidella; Metush Disha
Human nose occurs in many shapes and sizes and ethnic influences my results in different appearances of the nose. Nasal index is an ethnic sensitive anthropometric index. It is an important athropometric parameter for classifying the race and sex of the individual whose identity is unknown. This study was undertaken to determine the nasal index of the Kosovo Albanian population. The study sample comprised 204 subjects (101 males and 103 females) aged 18-25 years. Nasal height and nasal width ...
Bandel, I; Bungum, Mona; Richtoff, J
STUDY QUESTION: Is overweight associated with impaired sperm DNA integrity? SUMMARY ANSWER: High body mass index (BMI) is not associated with impaired sperm DNA integrity as assessed by the DNA Fragmentation Index (DFI). WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: Previous studies, based on fewer subjects and including...
Carpenter, Kathryn Hammell; Alexander, Adrian W.
Presents the 1994 periodical price index, based on subscription price information supplied and compiled by the Faxon Company to measure changes in average U.S. periodical prices. Highlights include subject categories, rates of increase, price index comparisons, prices by Library of Congress Classification, and comparative information from 1977…
The technical staff of the ERDA Technical Information Center, during its subject indexing activities, develops and structures a vocabulary that allows consistent machine storage and retrieval of information necessary to the accomplishment of the ERDA mission. This thesaurus incorporates that structured vocabulary. Terms in the thesaurus are listed alphabetically; each alphabetic entry is accompanied by a ''word block'' containing all the terms associated with the entry. (RWR)
The technical staff of the ERDA Technical Information Center, as part of its subject indexing activities, develops and structures a vocabulary which allows consistent machine storage and retrieval of information. This thesaurus incorporates that structured vocabulary. Terms in the thesaurus are listed alphabetically; each entry is accompanied by a ''word block'' containing all the terms associated with the entry. There are 15,905 approved terms and 4198 forbidden terms in this edition. (RWR)
The technical staff of the DOE Technical Information Center, during its subject indexing activities, develops and structures a vocabulary that allows consistent machine storage and retrieval of information necessary to the accomplishment of the DOE mission. This thesaurus incorporates that structured vocabulary. The terminology of this thesaurus is used for the subject control of information announced in DOE Energy Research Abstracts, Energy Abstracts for Policy Analysis, Solar Energy Update, Geothermal Energy Update, Fossil Energy Update, Fusion Energy Update, and Energy Conservation Update. This terminology also facilitates subject searching of the DOE energy information data base, a research in progress data base, a general and practical energy information data base, power reactor docket information data base, nuclear science abstracts data base, and the federal energy information data base on the DOE on-line retrieval system, RECON. The rapid expansion of the DOE's activities will result in a concomitant thesaurus expansion as information relating to new activities is indexed. Only the terms used in the indexing of documents at the Technical Information Center to date are included. (RWR)
The technical staff of the DOE Technical Information Center, during its subject indexing activities, develops and structures a vocabulary that allows consistent machine storage and retrieval of information necessary to the accomplishment of the DOE mission. This thesaurus incorporates that structured vocabulary. The terminology of this thesaurus is used for the subject control of information announced in DOE Energy Research Abstracts, Energy Abstracts for Policy Analysis, Solar Energy Update, Geothermal Energy Update, Fossil Energy Update, Fusion Energy Update, Energy Conservation Update, and Power Reactor Docket Information (published for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission). This terminology also facilitates subject searching of the DOE technical information data base, a research in progress data base describing energy-related research, and a general and practical energy information data base on the DOE on-line retrieval system, RECON. The rapid expansion of DOE's activities will result in a concomitant thesaurus expansion as information relating to new activities is indexed. Only the terms used in indexing documents at the Technical Information Center to date are included. (RWR)
Crisan, Maria; Crisan, Diana; Sannino, Gianpaolo; Lupsor, Monica; Badea, Radu; Amzica, Florin
The objective of this paper is to assess the role of conventional and high-frequency ultrasound in the evaluation of the depth of cutaneous skin cancer. The study was performed on 46 subjects, divided into 3 categories, according to their skin pathology [basal cell carcinoma (BCC), 18 subjects; superficial spreading melanoma (SSM), 8 subjects; nodular melanoma (NM), 20 subjects]. Conventional and high-frequency ultrasonographic measurements were performed in order to assess the thickness of the tumors and the vascularization degree. We compared the mean values of the tumoral thickness obtained by using ultrasound (ultrasonographic depth index) with the histological depth index, obtained after performing histological sections stained with hematoxylin-eosin, and specific monoclonal antibodies in case of pigmented tumors. We established a correlation index between the histological and ultrasonographic values of the tumoral thickness. We found a strong correlation between the ultrasonographic index (measured by high-frequency sonography) and the histological index for nodular BCC (correlation of 98.4 %), NM subjects (correlation of 98.4 %), and SSM subjects (correlation of 99.4 %). An increase of the blood supply was noticed in nodular lesions only. Ultrasonography allows a very accurate assessment of skin cancer. The ultrasonographic depth index can be considered an objective, non-invasive marker for cutaneous tumors, comparable to the histological one, with a very good sensitivity (98-99 %).
such as concepts, aboutness, topic, isness and ofness are also briefly presented. The conclusion is that the most fruitful way of defining “subject” (of a document) is the documents informative or epistemological potentials, that is, the documents potentials of informing users and advance the development......This article presents and discuss the concept “subject” or subject matter (of documents) as it has been examined in library and information science (LIS) for more than 100 years. Different theoretical positions are outlined and it is found that the most important distinction is between document......-oriented views versus request-oriented views. The document-oriented view conceive subject as something inherent in documents, whereas the request-oriented view (or the policy based view) understand subject as an attribution made to documents in order to facilitate certain uses of them. Related concepts...
Jahn, R G; Dunne, B J
Over the greater portion of its long scholarly history, the particular form of human observation, reasoning, and technical deployment we properly term "science" has relied at least as much on subjective experience and inspiration as it has on objective experiments and theories. Only over the past few centuries has subjectivity been progressively excluded from the practice of science, leaving an essentially secular analytical paradigm. Quite recently, however, a compounding constellation of newly inexplicable physical evidence, coupled with a growing scholarly interest in the nature and capability of human consciousness, are beginning to suggest that this sterilization of science may have been excessive and could ultimately limit its epistemological reach and cultural relevance. In particular, an array of demonstrable consciousness-related anomalous physical phenomena, a persistent pattern of biological and medical anomalies, systematic studies of mind/brain relationships and the mechanics of human creativity, and a burgeoning catalogue of human factors effects within contemporary information processing technologies, all display empirical correlations with subjective aspects that greatly complicate, and in many cases preclude, their comprehension on strictly objective grounds. However, any disciplined re-admission of subjective elements into rigorous scientific methodology will hinge on the precision with which they can be defined, measured, and represented, and on the resilience of established scientific techniques to their inclusion. For example, any neo-subjective science, while retaining the logical rigor, empirical/theoretical dialogue, and cultural purpose of its rigidly objective predecessor, would have the following requirements: acknowledgment of a proactive role for human consciousness; more explicit and profound use of interdisciplinary metaphors; more generous interpretations of measurability, replicability, and resonance; a reduction of ontological
What is a 'we' – a collective – and how can we use such communal self-knowledge to help people? This book is about collectivity, participation, and subjectivity – and about the social theories that may help us understand these matters. It also seeks to learn from the innovative practices and ideas...... practices. Through this dialogue, it develops an original trans-disciplinary critical theory and practice of collective subjectivity for which the ongoing construction and overcoming of common sense, or ideology, is central. It also points to ways of relating discourse with agency, and fertilizing insights...... from interactionism and ideology theories in a cultural-historical framework....
Heather P. Jespersen
Full Text Available This article discusses the problem of giving subject access to works of art. We survey both concept-based and content-based access by computers and by indexers/catalogers respectively, as well as issues of interoperability, database and indexer consistency, and cataloging standards. The authors, both of whom are trained art historians, question attempts to mystify fine art subject matter by the creation of clever library science systems that are executed by the naive. Only when trained art historians and knowledgeable catalogers are finally responsible for providing subject access to works of art, will true interoperability and consistency happen.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) is a measure of overall progress towards environmental sustainability, developed for 146 countries. The index...
Casarett, David; Karlawish, Jason; Asch, David A
CONTEXT Cash payments are often used to compensate subjects who participate in research. However, ethicists have argued that these payments might constitute an undue inducement. OBJECTIVES To determine whether potential subjects agree with theoretical arguments that a payment could be an undue inducement. DESIGN/SETTING/PARTICIPANTS Survey of 350 prospective jurors. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Belief that a $500 payment for research participation would impair their own, and others' ability to think carefully about the risks and benefits of a clinical trial. RESULTS Two hundred sixty-one jurors (74.6%) believed that a $500 payment would impair subjects' ability to think carefully about the risks and benefits of research. Ninety-six of 120 (80%) expressed this concern about subjects with a low income ($50,000). In contrast, only 69 (19.7%) of jurors believed that a $500 payment would influence them. Jurors who believed that this payment would influence them reported lower incomes and less education. CONCLUSION Members of the general public share ethical concerns about the influence of payments for research, although they believe that these concerns are more applicable to others than to themselves.
Rensink, Arend; Bézivin, J.; Heckel, R.
Discussions about model-driven approaches tend to be hampered by terminological confusion. This is at least partially caused by a lack of formal precision in defining the basic concepts, including that of "model" and "thing being modelled" - which we call subject in this paper. We propose a minimal
Three models are proposed to describe the strategy applied by a subject when he is confronted with two successive time intervals and is required to deal with some relation between them, for example, by telling which was the longer by adjusting the second to match the first. (Author)
Jansen, MA, Robert
Includes one diagnostic test and three complete tests, all questions answered and explained, self-assessment guides, and subject reviews. Also features test strategies, QR codes to short instructional videos, and a detailed appendix with equations, physical constants, and a basic math review.
Full Text Available The nations of the world have set themselves a target of reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Here, we propose a biodiversity intactness index (BII) for assessing progress towards this target that is simple and practical - but sensitive...
Items 351 - 400 of 641 ... Vol 4, No 5 (2014), Lipid Profile and High Maternal Body Mass Index is Associated with Preeclampsia: A Case-Control Study of the Cape Coast Metropolis, Abstract PDF. RKD Ephraim, PA Doe, S Amoah, EO Antoh. Vol 3, No 1 (2013), Lipid Profile of Anti Retroviral Treatment Naive HIV Infected ...
Items 301 - 312 of 312 ... Vol 30, No 1-2 (2015), Vitamin C Prevents Sleep Deprivation-induced Elevation in Cortisol and Lipid Peroxidation in the Rat Plasma, Abstract PDF. Olayaki L A, Sulaiman S O, Anoba N B. Vol 25, No 2 (2010), Waist circumference, waist to hip ratio, and body mass index in the diagnosis of metabolic ...
Issue, Title. Vol 1, No 1 (2009), Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status and Body Mass Index Among Adult Nigerians, Abstract PDF. CE Mbada, RA Adedoyin, AS Odejide. Vol 2, No 1 (2010), Relationship Between the 6-minute Walk Test and Correlates of Type 2 Diabetes: Indication for caution in exercise prescription ...
Agarwal, Pankaj K.; Arge, Lars Allan; Erickson, Jeff
We propose three indexing schemes for storing a set S of N points in the plane, each moving along a linear trajectory, so that any query of the following form can be answered quickly: Given a rectangle R and a real value t, report all K points of S that lie inside R at time t. We first present...... an indexing structure that, for any given constant >0, uses O(N/B) disk blocks and answers a query in O((N/B)1/2+ +K/B) I/Os, where B is the block size. It can also report all the points of S that lie inside R during a given time interval. A point can be inserted or deleted, or the trajectory of a point can...... be changed, in O(logB2 N) I/Os. Next, we present a general approach that improves the query time if the queries arrive in chronological order, by allowing the index to evolve over time. We obtain a tradeoff between the query time and the number of times the index needs to be updated as the points move. We...
Items 201 - 224 of 224 ... Vol 5, No 1 (2004), Studies on microbial quality, swelling index and moisture content of white and yellow garri in storage, Abstract. O Nwaiwu, VI Ibekwe ... Vol 14, No 2 (2011), Sustainability of Beekeeping as a Means of Economic Empowerment, Biodiversity and Food Security, Abstract. EO Ubeh, EU ...
Items 101 - 150 of 763 ... Vol 7, No 4 (2013), “Mapping the regional variation in potential vulnerability in Indian Agriculture to climate change”- An exercise through constructing vulnerability index, Abstract PDF. A Das. Vol 1, No 5 (2007), Bacteria associated with the coral Echinopora lamellosa (Esper 1795) in the Indian Ocean ...
Items 101 - 150 of 846 ... Issue, Title. Vol 9, No 3 (2017), Assessment of nutrient contamination in surface water, case study of Ain Zada Dam (North-East of Algeria), Abstract PDF. A Mebarkia, A Haouchine, A Boudoukha, R Nedjai. Vol 5, No 2 (2013), Assessment of water quality index for groundwater of Valsad district of south ...
compositor string ... composite page delimiter Table 1: Input style parameters. % makes it possible to index an entire section or a large piece of text...A page number can be a composite of one or more fields separated by a certain delimiter bound to page- compositor (e.g. 11-12 for page 12 of Chapter II
Brüggenthies, Wilhelm; Dick, Wolfgang R.
This inventory lists for more than 16,000 astronomers and other persons with relation to astronomy their dates of life and biographical resources (books, papers, encyclopedic entries, obituaries, etc.). Besides professional and amateur astronomers, the index contains numerous mathematicians, physicists, geodesists, geologists, geophysicists, meteorologists, globe and instrument makers, pioneers of space flight, patrons of astronomy, and others.
Items 51 - 100 of 117 ... Vol 10, No 1 (2005), Growth of Lemon (Citrus Limon L. Buru) in response to Water Stress and shading, Abstract ... Vol 7, No 1 (2002), Performance index efficacy for cultivar rating in tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum mill) evaluated for heat tolerance in a dry hot eco-zone, Abstract. J. Goke Bodunde.
Jul 18, 2011 ... Curcumin alone caused reduction of the mitotic index. In addition, curcumin has protective and anticlastogenic activity by enhancing the scavenging of free radicals (Tzvetan et al., 2007). In this study, the focus was to study the administration time of one important member of flavonoids, CA, which is present ...
In a method for performing a refractive index based measurement of a property of a fluid such as chemical composition or temperature, a chirp in the local spatial frequency of interference fringes of an interference pattern is reduced by mathematical manipulation of the recorded light intensity...
A refractive index based measurement of a property of a fluid is measured in an apparatus comprising a variable wavelength coherent light source (16), a sample chamber (12), a wavelength controller (24), a light sensor (20), a data recorder (26) and a computation apparatus (28), by - directing...
In a method for performing a refractive index based measurement of a property of a fluid such as chemical composition or temperature by observing an apparent angular shift in an interference fringe pattern produced by back or forward scattering interferometry, ambiguities in the measurement caused...
Items 1 - 50 of 171 ... Vol 1, No 2 (2007), Advances in Improving Harvest Index and Grain Yield of Maize in Ethiopia, Abstract. M Worku, H Zelleke ... Vol 8, No 2 (2014), Bottom Sediment Chemistry, Nutrient Balance, and Water Birds in Small High Altitude Tropical Reservoirs in the Rift Valley, Kenya, Abstract. Francis Mwaura.
Items 101 - 150 of 227 ... Journal Home > Advanced Search > Browse Title Index ... Vol 7, No 1 (2015): Supplement 1, Impact of a quality improvement project to strengthen infection prevention and control training at rural healthcare facilities ... Vol 2, No 1 (2010), Is temperament a key to the success of teaching innovation?
Items 151 - 200 of 1083 ... 2009: September: Supplement, Assessment of working women's perception and pursuit of recreation, Abstract. VT Nolan, J .... Vol 14, No 4 (2008):, Body fat, body mass index in black South African adolescents after a physical activity intervention programme: PLAY study, Abstract. D Naude, HS ...
Items 551 - 600 of 1166 ... ... of eutrophication state index using a remote sensing data-driven ... Jay Walmsley, Mark Carden, Carmen Revenga, Frank Sagona, Malcolm Smith .... patterns in the main rivers of the Sabie Catchment, Mpumalanga, South Africa ... PCB and OCP concentrations in Hartbeespoort Dam, South Africa, ...
Items 1 - 50 of 521 ... Journal Home > Advanced Search > Browse Title Index ... Vol 22, No 8 (2004), A medical approach to language delay, Abstract PDF ... Vol 29, No 3 (2011), Advanced magnetic resonance imaging of the brain: MRI is now the ...
Kaczynski, Andrew T; Schipperijn, Jasper; Hipp, J Aaron
using ArcGIS 9.3 and the Community Park Audit Tool. Four park summary variables - distance to nearest park, and the number of parks, amount of park space, and average park quality index within 1 mile were analyzed in relation to park use using logistic regression. Coefficients for significant park...... significance for researchers and professionals in diverse disciplines....
Topp, C W; Østergaard, S D; Soendergaard, S
BACKGROUND: The 5-item World Health Organization Well-Being Index (WHO-5) is among the most widely used questionnaires assessing subjective psychological well-being. Since its first publication in 1998, the WHO-5 has been translated into more than 30 languages and has been used in research studies...... is very high. CONCLUSIONS: The WHO-5 is a short questionnaire consisting of 5 simple and non-invasive questions, which tap into the subjective well-being of the respondents. The scale has adequate validity both as a screening tool for depression and as an outcome measure in clinical trials and has been...
Potvin, S; Aubin, G; Stip, E
Given the extent, magnitude and functional significance of the neurocognitive deficits of schizophrenia, growing attention has been paid recently to patients' self-awareness of their own deficits. Thus far, the literature has shown either that patients fail to recognize their cognitive deficits or that the association between subjective and objective cognition is weak in schizophrenia. The reasons for this lack of consistency remain unexplained but may have to do, among others, with the influence of potential confounding clinical variables and the choice of the scale used to measure self-awareness of cognitive deficits. In the current study, we sought to examine the relationships between subjective and objective cognitive performance in schizophrenia, while controlling for the influence of sociodemographic and psychiatric variables. Eighty-two patients with a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder (DSM-IV criteria) were recruited. Patients' subjective cognitive complaints were evaluated with the Subjective Scale to Investigate Cognition in Schizophrenia (SSTICS), the most frequently used scale to measure self-awareness of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Neurocognition was evaluated with working memory, planning and visual learning tasks taken from Cambridge Neuropsychological Tests Automated Battery. The Stroop Color-Word test was also administered. Psychiatric symptoms were evaluated with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and the Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia. The relationships between subjective and objective cognition were evaluated with multivariate hierarchic linear regression analyses, taking into consideration potential confounders such as sociodemographic and psychiatric variables. Finally, a factor analysis of the SSTICS was performed. For the SSTICS total score, the regression analysis produced a model including two predictors, namely visual learning and Stoop interference performance, explaining a moderate portion of the variance
2017), An Acoustic Investigation of The Duration of Vowel Nasalization in Ga, Abstract PDF. Rebecca Atchoi Akpanglo-Nartey. Vol 4, No 1 (2015), An analysis of subject agreement errors in English: the case of third year students ...
C Olali, G Malietzis, S Ahmed, E Samaila, M Gupta ... homeostatic model assessment insulin resistance values in obese subjects, Abstract PDF ... Vol 16, No 3 (2013), Relationship between admission serum C-reactive protein and short term ...
Background: Maize meal as (tuwo) with Baobab soup as (miyan kuka) is a popular meal in northern and middle belt of Nigeria. Aims: The meal was fed to diabetic and healthy subjects to establish the glycaemic index of this commonly consumed meal in the environment. Subjects and Methods: Ten type II diabetic and seven ...
Chabran, Richard, Comp.; And Others
Designed to provide improved subject access over other existing subject heading lists for literature related to the Chicano experience, the Thesaurus is an initial attempt to remedy the absence of a baseline vocabulary for use in indexing and retrieving relevant materials from various information systems. Most of the approximately 700 entries are…
Vojtíšek, Petr; Květoň, M.; Richter, I.
Roč. 19, č. 4 (2017), č. článku 045603. ISSN 2040-8978 R&D Projects: GA MŠk(CZ) LO1206 Institutional support: RVO:61389021 Keywords : volume gratings * holography * dispersion * refractive index modulation Subject RIV: BH - Optics, Masers, Lasers Impact factor: 1.741, year: 2016 http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2040-8986/aa6092/meta
Yu, L X; Jiang, W; Zhang, X; Lionberger, R; Makhlouf, F; Schuirmann, D J; Muldowney, L; Chen, M-L; Davit, B; Conner, D; Woodcock, J
Narrow therapeutic index drugs are defined as those drugs where small differences in dose or blood concentration may lead to serious therapeutic failures and/or adverse drug reactions that are life-threatening or result in persistent or significant disability or incapacity. The US Food and Drug Administration proposes that the bioequivalence of narrow therapeutic index drugs be determined using a scaling approach with a four-way, fully replicated, crossover design study in healthy subjects that permits the simultaneous equivalence comparison of the mean and within-subject variability of the test and reference products. The proposed bioequivalence limits for narrow therapeutic index drugs of 90.00%-111.11% would be scaled based on the within-subject variability of the reference product. The proposed study design and data analysis should provide greater assurance of therapeutic equivalence of narrow therapeutic index drug products. © 2014 American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.
Lundgaard Andersen, Linda
Fieldwork is one of the important methods in educational, social, and organisational research. In fieldwork, the researcher takes residence for a shorter or longer period amongst the subjects and settings to be studied. The aim of this is to study the culture of people: how people seem to make...... sense of their lives and which moral, professional, and ethical values seem to guide their behaviour and attitudes. In fieldwork, the researcher has to balance participation and observation in her attempts at representation. Consequently, the researcher’s academic and life-historical subjectivity...... are important filters for fieldwork. In general, fieldwork can be understood as processes where field reports and field analysis are determined by how the researcher interacts with and experiences the field, the events and informants in it, and how she subsequently develops an ethnography. However, fieldwork...
Yi, Ke; Wang, Lu; Wei, Zhewei
returned by reporting queries. In this article, we design indexing techniques that allow for extracting a statistical summary of all the records in the query. The summaries we support include frequent items, quantiles, and various sketches, all of which are of central importance in massive data analysis......), of a particular attribute of these records. Aggregation queries are especially useful in business intelligence and data analysis applications where users are interested not in the actual records, but some statistics of them. They can also be executed much more efficiently than reporting queries, by embedding...... properly precomputed aggregates into an index. However, reporting and aggregation queries provide only two extremes for exploring the data. Data analysts often need more insight into the data distribution than what those simple aggregates provide, and yet certainly do not want the sheer volume of data...
Choi, James J; Laibson, David; Madrian, Brigitte C
We conduct an experiment to evaluate why individuals invest in high-fee index funds. In our experiments, subjects allocate $10,000 across four S&P 500 index funds and are rewarded for their portfolio's subsequent return. Subjects overwhelmingly fail to minimize fees. We can reject the hypothesis that subjects buy high-fee index funds because of bundled non-portfolio services. Search costs for fees matter, but even when we eliminate these costs, fees are not minimized. Instead, subjects place high weight on annualized returns since inception. Fees paid decrease with financial literacy. Interestingly, subjects who choose high-fee funds sense they are making a mistake.
Subject sensitive invariantism is the view that whether a subject knows depends on what is at stake for that subject: the truth-value of a knowledge-attribution is sensitive to the subject's practical interests. I argue that subject sensitive invariantism cannot accept a very plausible principle for
The International Energy Agency: Subject Thesaurus contains the standard vocabulary of indexing terms (descriptors) developed and structured to build and maintain energy information databases. Involved in this cooperative task are (1) the technical staff of the USDOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) in cooperation with the member countries of the International Energy Agency`s Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDE) and (2) the International Atomic Energy Agency`s International Nuclear Information System (INIS) staff representing the more than 100 countries and organizations that record and index information for the international nuclear information community. ETDE member countries are also members of INIS. Nuclear information prepared for INIS by ETDE member countries is included in the ETDE Energy Database, which contains the online equivalent of the printed INIS Atomindex. Indexing terminology is therefore cooperatively standardized for use in both information systems. This structured vocabulary reflects thscope of international energy research, development, and technological programs. The terminology of this thesaurus aids in subject searching on commercial systems, such as ``Energy Science & Technology`` by DIALOG Information Services, ``Energy`` by STN International and the ``ETDE Energy Database`` by SilverPlatter. It is also the thesaurus for the Integrated Technical Information System (ITIS) online databases of the US Department of Energy.
Botos Horia Mircea
Full Text Available This paper approaches the subject of Weather Derivatives, more exactly their basic element the weather index. The weather index has two forms, the Heating Degree Day (HDD and the Cooling Degree Day (CDD. We will try to explain their origin, use and the relationship between the two forms of the index. In our research we started from the analysis of the weather derivatives and what they are based on. After finding out about weather index, we were interested in understanding exactly how they work and how they influence the value of the contract. On the national level the research in the field is scares, but foreign materials available. The study for this paper was based firstly on reading about Weather Derivative, and then going in the meteorogical field and determining the way by which the indices were determined. After this, we went to the field with interest in the indices, such as the energy and gas industries, and figured out how they determined the weather index. For the examples we obtained data from the weather index database, and calculated the value for the period. The study is made on a period of five years, in 8 cities of the European Union. The result of this research is that we can now understand better the importance of the way the indices work and how they influence the value of the Weather Derivatives. This research has an implication on the field of insurance, because of the fact that weather derivative are at the convergence point of the stock markets and the insurance market. The originality of the paper comes from the personal touch given to the theoretical aspect and through the analysis of the HDD and CDD index in order to show their general behaviour and relationship.
Wilson, JM; Wilson, TK
Objective: The purpose of this study was to create a global medical earnings index, called the Medical MAC Index, to enable a comparison of what medical specialists earn in the countries included in the study. Design...
Items 101 - 150 of 214 ... Vol 27, No 1 (2012), Introduction: The Shifting Sands of Natural Resource Management in Zimbabwe, Abstract .... STW Mhiribidi. Vol 25, No 1 (2010), Protection of widows and surviving children under the intestate succession laws of Zimbabwe: The case of estates of persons subject to customary law ...
Items 1 - 50 of 61 ... Chris Winberg. Vol 4, No 2 (2016), Book Review: Detox your writing: Strategies for doctoral researchers, Abstract PDF. Puleng Motshoane. Vol 4, No 2 (2016), Book Review: Posthumanism and the Massive Open Online Course: Contaminating the Subject of Global Education, Abstract PDF. Siddique Motala.
Items 1 - 50 of 150 ... Vol 13, No 1 (2004), Changes in Lipids and Routine Haematological Parameters as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Infection Progresses to Acquired ... Vol 14, No 1 (2005), Comparative Erythrocytes Osmotic Fragility Test and some Haematological Parameters in HbAA and HbSS subjects, Abstract.
Items 201 - 210 of 210 ... Vol 33, No 1 (2017), The levels of yield and purity of genomic DNA from five tomato cultivars subjected to two DNA extraction techniques, Abstract PDF. S. A. Ganiyu, S. M. Yusuf, J. O. Agbolade, J. E. Imonmion. Vol 29 (2015), The Use of DNA Barcoding in Identification of Genetic Diversity of Fish in ...
Items 51 - 100 of 127 ... Vol 3, No 2 (2010), Impact of Cytotoxin-Associated Gene Product-A Positive Helicobacter Pylori Strains on Micro-albuminuria in Type 2 Diabetes, Abstract PDF. A Ibrahim, T Zaher, T Ghonemy, S El-Azim, M El-Azim. Vol 5, No 2 (2012), Informed Consent for Inclusion into Clinical Trials: A Serious Subject ...
Items 151 - 200 of 253 ... VA Alabi. Vol 15, No 1 (2014), Subjective Welfarism, Communitarian Paternalism and the Aristotelian Quest for the Good Society, Abstract PDF. A Afolayan, F Offor. Vol 15, No 2 (2014), Sufism Shat'h versus Surrealism Literature and Art, Abstract PDF. Z Abdollah. Vol 15, No 1 (2014), Technè, Dianoia ...
Items 101 - 150 of 224 ... Vol 43, No 3 (2016), Post-apartheid nostalgia and the sadomasochistic pleasures of archival art, Abstract. Zamansele Nsele. Vol 40, No 3 ... Vol 36, No 2 (2009), Reading Through the Gates: Structure, Desire and Subjectivity in J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, Abstract. E Smuts. Vol 35, No 1 (2008) ...
Items 351 - 400 of 447 ... Nyangabyaki Bazaara. Vol 30, No 3 (2005), Subjectivity in servitude: the servant and indigenous family arrangement in written Igbo drama, Abstract. Frances N Chukwukere. Vol 30, No 1 (2005), Supporting University ICT Developments: The Makerere University Experience, Abstract. Francis Frederick ...
Items 51 - 100 of 113 ... Vol 32 (2012), Islamic Reform in Colonial Space: The Jihad of Shaykh Boubacar Sawadogo and French Islamic Policies in Burkina Faso, 1920-1946. Abstract. OM Kobo. Vol 33 (2013): Theorising Experience, Subjectivity and Narrative in Studies of Gender and Islam, Lessons in Writing, Lessons in ...
Items 1 - 50 of 3061 ... Vol 24, No 1 (2016), Giardia lamblia infections in children in Ghana, Abstract ... Vol 23, No 1 (2016), A case of bilateral visual loss after spinal cord surgery, Abstract ... of proteinuria in subjects without impaired renal filtration function in a ... complication that may occur during dental treatment: “foreign body ...
Items 3351 - 3400 of 3974 ... Vol 103, No 7 (2013), The Biosulin equivalence in standard therapy (BEST) study − a multicentre, open-label, non-randomised, interventional, observational study in subjects using Biosulin 30/70 for the treatment of insulin-dependent type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus, Abstract PDF. D Segal, D ...
Items 1 - 50 of 279 ... Vol 20, No 4 (2008), Accelerated hydrotherapy and land-based rehabilitation in soccer players after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: a series of three single subject case studies, Abstract PDF. B-L Momberg, C Louw, L Crous. Vol 21, No 1 (2009), Acute and session RPE responses during ...
Items 301 - 350 of 985 ... Vol 15 (2009), Effective valence as the control parameter of the superconducting iron pnictide Tc, Abstract. Godfrey E Akpojotor. Vol 15 (2009), Effects of both wellbore and reservoir properties on pressure and pressure derivative distribution of a horizontal well subject to complete external fluid drive ...
Items 201 - 250 of 273 ... Vol 18, No 1 (2010), Sociodemography and Distribution of Students Attending Schools for the Blind in Oyo State, Nigeria, Abstract PDF ... Vol 18, No 2 (2010), Subjective Optic Disc Assessment and Single Measurement Intraocular Pressure to Screen a Cohort of Pensioners in Port Harcourt, Abstract ...
Items 801 - 850 of 2005 ... Vol 79, No 2 (2002):, Haematological alteration in Leprosy patients treated with dapsone, Abstract PDF. N. K. D. Halim, E. Ogbeide. Vol 83, No 1 (2006):, Haematological, lipid profile and other biochemical parameters in normal and hypertensive subjects among the population of the eastern province ...
Items 101 - 150 of 483 ... Vol 52, No 1 (2007), Cognitive deficits and their relationship to other neurological complications in Nigerian Chronic Alcoholic subjects, Abstract. F K Salawu, S A ... Vol 52, No 4 (2007), Comparison of Functional Disability with Physical Activity in Patients with Low Back Pain, Abstract. M O Akindele.
Items 51 - 100 of 155 ... Vol 14, No 1 (2010), Helicobacter pylori carriage among adult Nigerian subjects without dyspeptic symptoms, Abstract. G Ahaneku, MN ... Vol 15, No 2 (2011), Morphologic changes in the anterior pituitary gland of male wistar rats following high comsumption of mixed palm oil diets, Abstract. OA Egwu ...
Items 51 - 100 of 465 ... Vol 16, No 2 (2011), Cardiovascular response to resistive and non-resistive reciprocal pulley exercise among apparently healthy subjects. Abstract. AA Amaeze, NO Egbo, CI Ezema. Vol 15, No 2 (2010), Caries experience among school children in Enugu, Nigeria. Okoye LO, Chukweneke FN, Akaji ...
Haedersdal, C; Pedersen, F H; Svendsen, J H
after the myocardial infarction. A significant correlation (Spearman's correlation coefficient rs, p less than 0.05) was found between LVEF at rest and the following variables assessed at exercise test: 1) the heart rate at rest, 2) rise in heart rate, 3) ratio between maximal heart rate and heart rate...... at rest, 4) rise in systolic blood pressure, 5) rate pressure product at rest, 6) rise in rate pressure product, 7) ratio (rHR) between maximal rate pressure product and rate pressure product at rest, 8) total exercise time. The heart rate was corrected for effects caused by age (heart index (HR...
Blackburn, Patrick Rowan; Jørgensen, Klaus Frovin
In this paper we explore the logic of now, yesterday, today and tomorrow by combining the semantic approach to indexicality pioneered by Hans Kamp and refined by David Kaplan with hybrid tense logic. We first introduce a special now nominal (our @now corresponds to Kamp’s original now...... operator N) and prove completeness results for both logical and contextual validity. We then add propositional constants to handle yesterday, today and tomorrow; our system correctly treats sentences like “Niels will die yesterday” as contextually unsatisfiable. Building on our completeness results for now......, we prove completeness for the richer language, again for both logical and contextual validity....
Full Text Available A primordial aspect of the Sartrian critique of alienation concerns understanding the analytic ideology as the domination of materiality over the symbolic, in other words as the reification of the human, and therefore as anticulture. In the context of contemporary nihilism, the decoding of the mechanisms which consign praxis to the practico-inert requires a critique of the relations between the social sciences and philosophy, which in its turn implies a new theory of the relation between what Sartre calls the "notion" (the area of subjectivity and the "concept" (objectivity, From this perspective, the deconstruction of the established frontiers between the social sciences and philosophy, and between the conceptual and the narrative, is corelative to a redefinition of the relation between theory and practice.
Rutkowski, R.W. [ed.
The Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDE) is a consortium of member countries around the globe that share their energy research and technology information through ETDE`s database. The Exchange was established in 1987 under the auspices of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and serves all ETDE member countries. The Exchange also collaborates with other entities as appropriate.The International Energy:Subject Thesaurus [ETDE/PUB--2(Rev.2)] contains the standard vocabulary of indexing terms (descriptors) developed and structured to build and maintain energy information databases. Involved in this cooperative task are (1) the technical staff of the U.S. DOE Office of Scientific and technical Information (OSTI) in cooperation with the member countries of the International Energy Agency`s Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDE) and (2) the International Atomic Energy Agency`s International Nuclear Information System (INIS) staff representing the more than 100 countries and organizations t hat record and index information for the international nuclear information community. Because all ETDE member countries are also members of INIS, the contents of INIS`s database are included in ETDE`s database. Indexing terminology is therefore cooperatively standardized for use in both information systems. This structured vocabulary reflects the scope of international energy research and technology programs. The terminology of this thesaurus aids in subject searching on commercial systems, such as the online products offered by Knight-Ridder Information Services and STN International and the CD-ROM products offered by Silver Platter and Knight-Ridder. This thesaurus can also be used with the in-house systems provided by some ETDE member countries. Descriptors are added to the thesaurus as needed (i.e., when a document contains a concept for which there is no adequate term or terms in the thesaurus). More than 28,000 entries appear in this document, which replaced International
Andersen, U B; Skøtt, P; Bruun, N E
aged 18-35 years whose parents both had essential hypertension, and 22 age- and sex-matched subjects whose parents were both normotensive. Diabetes or morbid obesity in any subject or parent excluded the family. The 24-h blood pressure was measured. The subjects received an isocaloric diet with a fixed.......04). Compared with the controls, the subjects predisposed to hypertension had a higher 24-h diastolic blood pressure [78 (70, 82) mmHg, compared with 73 (68, 77) mmHg], but a similar insulin sensitivity index ¿10(7)x[313 (225, 427)] compared with 10(7)x[354 (218, 435)] l(2).min(-1).pmol(-1).kg(-1)¿. Thus...... the sodium-retaining effect of insulin was more pronounced in subjects with a strong genetic predisposition to essential hypertension than in subjects with normotensive parents. This effect may contribute to the development of hypertension in subjects with a genetic predisposition to hypertension....
This paper compares the subject indexing on articles pertaining to Immanuel Kant, agriculture, and aging that are found simultaneously in Humanities Index, Academic Search Elite (EBSCO) and Periodicals Research II (Micromedia ProQuest), in order to show that there are substantial variations in the depth and quality of indexing in these databases.…
... 43 Public Lands: Interior 1 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Does DOI maintain an index of its reading... a FOIA Request § 2.5 Does DOI maintain an index of its reading room materials? Each bureau will maintain and make available for public inspection and copying a current subject-matter index of its reading...
Full Text Available This article examines personality subjective well-being and describes its psychological structure, general components and characteristics. An overview of foreign theories and studies on subjective well-being is presented. Correlations among related concepts such as happiness, life satisfaction and subjective well-being are also described. Subjective well-being is seen as a multivariate construction of a stable nature in mobile equilibrium. It is argued that a type of professional activity can have great importance and a positive impact on an individual’s social life, health, identity shaping and psychological wellness. This article’s findings are substantiated by the survey administered to 2229 respondents divided into groups according to their area of business: students, psychologists, doctors, teachers, engineering and technical staff, representatives of service industries, workers, military men, and prisoners. The descriptors identified two types of natures: positive, directed to a person’s inner world (happy, lucky, optimistic and to the outer world (trustworthy, competent, successful, and negative (pessimistic, unhappy, envious. This division of nature type was categorized according to the participants’ subjective well-being index. Empirical evidence has shown that occupational specificity influences a person’s subjective well-being. A substantial difference was found in subjective well-being index of the respondents. A higher index is typical of students and military men. Educators and industrial intelligentsia also demonstrate an increased level of subjective well-being, whereas prisoners tend to have a low level of subjective well-being. The same low index is characteristic of servicing trade representatives and psychologists.
Łakomski, Mateusz; Dudzik, Katarzyna; Badiuk, Nataliia
Łakomski Mateusz, Dudzik Katarzyna, Badiuk Nataliia. Abortion - a subject that keeps coming back! Journal of Education, Health and Sport. 2017;7(7):1017-1026. eISSN 2391-8306. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.999877 http://ojs.ukw.edu.pl/index.php/johs/article/view/4914 The journal has had 7 points in Ministry of Science and Higher Education parametric evaluation. Part B item 1223 (26.01.2017). 1223 Journal of Education, Health and Sport eISSN 2391-8306...
... death in the United States. 2013 Traffic Safety Culture Index January 2014 607 14th Street, NW, Suite ... org | 202-638-5944 Title 2013 Traffic Safety Culture Index (January 2014) About the Sponsor AAA Foundation ...
National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The 2001 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) utilizes a refined methodology based on the 2000 Pilot ESI effort, to construct an index covering 122 countries...
Frati-Munari, A C; Roca-Vides, R A; López-Pérez, R J; de Vivero, I; Ruiz-Velazco, M
To investigate the increase of glycemia due to the ingestion of usual food in Mexico, portions with 50 g of carbohydrate form white corn tortilla, yellow corn tortilla, spaghetti, rice, potatoes, beans brown and black, nopal (prickle pear cactus) and peanuts, compared with white bread, were given to 21 healthy and 27 non-insulin-dependent diabetic subjects. Serum glucose and insulin were measured every 30 min for 180 min long. Glycemic index was obtained as: (area under curve of glucose with test food/area under curve of glucose with white bread) X 100. A corrected index was calculated subtracting the area corresponding to initial values. Insulin index was obtained similarly. Each sample was studied 14-18 times. Glycemic and insulin indexes of white and yellow corn tortilla, spaghetti, rice and potatoes were not different from bread (P greater than 0.05). Corrected glycemic indexes of brown beans (54 +/- 15, +/- SE) and black beans (43 +/- 17) were low (p less than 0.05), as well as corrected insulin indexes (69 +/- 11 and 64 +/- 10 respectively, (P less than 0.02). Peanuts had low glycemic (33 +/- 17, P less than 0.01), but normal insulin index. Nopal had very low glycemic and insulin indexes (10 +/- 17 and 10 +/- 16, P less than 0.0001). These data might be useful in prescribing diets for diabetic subjects.
Freeland, Mark S.; Schendler, Carol Ellen; Anderson, Gerard
This paper describes the development of regional hospital input price indexes that is consistent with the general methodology used for the National Hospital Input Price Index. The feasibility of developing regional indexes was investigated because individuals inquired whether different regions experienced different rates of increase in hospital input prices. The regional indexes incorporate variations in cost-share weights (the amount an expense category contributes to total spending) associa...
Singh, Harpreet; Singh, Reema; Malhotra, Arjun; Kaur, Manjit
Efficient identification of subject experts or expert communities is vital for the growth of any organization. Most of the available expert finding systems are based on self-nomination, which can be biased, and are unable to rank experts. Thus, the objective of this work was to develop a robust and unbiased expert finding system which can quantitatively measure expertise. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a controlled vocabulary developed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) for indexing research publications, articles and books. Using the MeSH terms associated with peer-reviewed articles published from India and indexed in PubMed, we developed a Web-based program which can be used to identify subject experts and subjects associated with an expert. We have extensively tested our system to identify experts from India in various subjects. The system provides a ranked list of experts where known experts rank at the top of the list. The system is general; since it uses information available with the PubMed, it can be implemented for any country. The expert finding system is able to successfully identify subject experts in India. Our system is unique because it allows the quantification of subject expertise, thus enabling the ranking of experts. Our system is based on peer-reviewed information. Use of MeSH terms as subjects has standardized the subject terminology. The system matches requirements of an ideal expert finding system.
Benson, Etienne S
Argument In recent decades, through the work of Jane Goodall and other ethologists, the practice of giving personal names to nonhuman animals who are the subjects of scientific research has become associated with claims about animal personhood and scientific objectivity. While critics argue that such naming practices predispose the researcher toward anthropomorphism, supporters suggest that it sensitizes the researcher to individual differences and social relations. Both critics and supporters agree that naming tends to be associated with the recognition of individual animal rights. The history of the naming of research animals since the late nineteenth century shows, however, that the practice has served a variety of purposes, most of which have raised few ethical or epistemological concerns. Names have been used to identify research animals who play dual roles as pets, workers, or patients, to enhance their market value, and to facilitate their identification in the field. The multifaceted history of naming suggests both that the use of personal names by Goodall and others is less of a radical break with previous practices than it might first appear to be and that the use of personal names to recognize the individuality, sentience, or rights of nonhuman animals faces inherent limits and contradictions.
Vinogradov, G. P.
The problem of constructing a choice model of an agent with endogenous purposes of evolution is under debate. It is demonstrated that its solution requires the development of well-known methods of decision-making while taking into account the relation of action mode motivation to an agent’s ambition to implement subjectively understood interests and the environment state. The latter is submitted for consideration as a purposeful state situation model that exists only in the mind of an agent. It is the situation that is a basis for getting an insight into the agent’s ideas on the possible selected action mode results. The agent’s ambition to build his confidence in the feasibility of the action mode and the possibility of achieving the desired state requires him to use the procedures of forming an idea model based on the measured values of environment state. This leads to the gaming approach for the choice problem and its solution can be obtained on a set of trade-off alternatives.
Full Text Available The specific aspects which determined the way some groups of students conducted their work in a university laboratory, made us understand the articulation of these groups´s dynamics, from elements that were beyond the reach of cognition. In more specific terms the conduction and the maintenance of the groups student´s dynamics were explicited based on a intergame between the non conscious strategies, shared anonymously, and the efforts of the individuals in working based on their most objective task. The results and issues we have reached so far, using a reference the work developed by W.R.Bion, with therapeutical groups, gave us the possibility for understanding the dynamics of the student´s experimental work through a new approach that approximates the fields of cognition and subjectivity. This approximation led us to a deeper reflection about the issues which may be involved in the teaching process, particularly in situations which the teacher deals with the class, organised in groups.
Feyisa, Gudina Legese; Meilby, Henrik; Fensholt, Rasmus
. We tested the accuracy and robustness of the new method using Landsat 5 TM images of several water bodies in Denmark, Switzerland, Ethiopia, South Africa and New Zealand. Kappa coefficient, omission and commission errors were calculated to evaluate accuracies. The performance of the classifier...... of various sorts of environmental noise and at the same time offers a stable threshold value. Thus we introduced a new Automated Water Extraction Index (AWEI) improving classification accuracy in areas that include shadow and dark surfaces that other classification methods often fail to classify correctly...... and omission errors by 50% compared to those resulting from MNDWI and about 25% compared to ML classifiers. Besides, the new method was shown to have a fairly stable optimal threshold value. Therefore, AWEI can be used for extracting water with high accuracy, especially in mountainous areas where deep shadow...
Sneha Sameer Ganu
Full Text Available Background: Excessive increases in weight bearing forces caused by obesity may negatively affect the lower limbs and feet but minimal research has examined the long-term loading effects of obesity on the musculoskeletal system, particularly in reference to the feet. Objectives: The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of obesity on medial longitudinal arch of foot in young adults. Method: 60 subjects, 30 obese & 30 non obese were assessed for height & weight using standard technique. Radiographic images under static condition were used for calculating the arch index. Result: The arch index of obese subjects was significantly lower than the non obese subjects & there is a negative correlation between the BMI & the arch index. Conclusion: These results suggests that obesity lowers the medial longitudinal arch of foot.
821781 CARUSO , JOHN P. 1931- Request All Available, Why Not Minimum l equired? 45:45-48 Mr-Ap CASSINO (WWII), 1944 The Roar if the 8-Incher. Truman R...Fire Distribution Technique) Works! Earl W. Finley MAJ FA 45:24,25 My-Je Request All Available, Why Not Minimum Required? John P. Caruso COL FA 45:45...0. JR. 1938- ARTEP Discussion. Letter 45.6 My-Je NERDAHL, MICHAEL Miniature "Long Tom." Letter 49:2 Mr-Ap NEUTRON WARFARE Production of
The Solar Index, or, more completely defined as the Service Hot Water Solar Index, was conceptualized during the spring of 1978. The purpose was to enhance public awareness to solar energy usability. Basically, the Solar Index represents the percentage of energy that solar would provide in order to heat an 80 gallon service hot water load for a given location and day. The Index is computed by utilizing SOLCOST, a computer program, which also has applications to space heating, cooling, and heat pump systems and which supplies economic analyses for such solar energy systems. The Index is generated for approximately 68 geographic locations in the country on a daily basis. The definition of the Index, how the project came to be, what it is at the present time and a plan for the future are described. Also presented are the models used for the generation of the Index, a discussion of the primary tool of implementation (the SOLCOST program) and future efforts.
Topic indexing is the task of identifying the main topics covered by a document. These are useful for many purposes: as subject headings in libraries, as keywords in academic publications and as tags on the web. Knowing a document’s topics helps people judge its relevance quickly. However, assigning topics manually is labor intensive. This thesis shows how to generate them automatically in a way that competes with human performance. Three kinds of indexing are investigated: term assignment, a task commonly performed by librarians, who select topics from a controlled vocabulary; tagging, a popular activity of web users, who choose topics freely; and a new method of keyphrase extraction, where topics are equated to Wikipedia article names. A general two-stage algorithm is introduced that first selects candidate topics and then ranks them by significance based on their properties. These properties draw on statistical, semantic, domain-specific and encyclopedic knowledge. They are combined using a machine learn...
Towards a definition of SUBJECT in binding domains and subject-oriented anaphors 27 and it holds little explanatory value. At best, EPP ensures that the highest argument will move to subject position. The final property I will discuss here is the fact that, in some languages (e.g. Icelandic and. Dutch), there is a subset of ...
Daniel Scott; Michelle Rutty; Bas Amelung; Mantao Tang
Much research has been devoted to quantifying optimal or unacceptable climate conditions both generally and for specific tourism segments or activities over the last 10 years. This knowledge is not incorporated in the Tourism Climate Index (TCI), which has also been subject to other substantial critiques. To more accurately assess the climatic suitability of destinations for leisure tourism, the Holiday Climate Index (HCI) was developed. A major advancement of the HCI is that its variable rat...
Trincado, Estrella; Vindel, Jose María
The shape of the curves relating the scaling exponents of the structure functions to the order of these functions is shown to distinguish the Dow Jones index from other stock market indices. We conclude from the shape differences that the information-loss rate for the Dow Jones index is reduced at smaller time scales, while it grows for other indices. This anomaly is due to the construction of the index, in particular to its dependence on a single market parameter: price. Prices are subject to turbulence bursts, which act against full development of turbulence.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The 2012 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 132 countries on 22 performance indicators in the following 10 policy categories: environmental burden of...
Carayol, Marion; Leitzmann, Michael F; Ferrari, Pietro
OBJECTIVE: Metabolomic is now widely used to characterize metabolic phenotypes associated with lifestyle risk factors such as obesity. The objective of the present study was to explore the associations of body mass index (BMI) with 145 metabolites measured in blood samples in the European...... Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study. METHODS: Metabolites were measured in blood from 392 men from the Oxford (UK) cohort (EPIC-Oxford) and in 327 control subjects who were part of a nested case-control study on hepatobiliary carcinomas (EPIC-Hepatobiliary). Measured metabolites...
Reynolds, Rebecca C; Lee, Stephen; Choi, James Y J; Atkinson, Fiona S; Stockmann, Karola S; Petocz, Peter; Brand-Miller, Jennie C
Acne vulgaris may be improved by dietary factors that increase insulin sensitivity. We hypothesized that a low-glycemic index diet would improve facial acne severity and insulin sensitivity. Fifty-eight adolescent males (mean age ± standard deviation 16.5 ± 1.0 y and body mass index 23.1 ± 3.5 kg/m(2)) were alternately allocated to high or low glycemic index diets. Severity of inflammatory lesions on the face, insulin sensitivity (homeostasis modeling assessment of insulin resistance), androgens and insulin-like growth factor-1 and its binding proteins were assessed at baseline and at eight weeks, a period corresponding to the school term. Forty-three subjects (n = 23 low glycemic index and n = 20 high glycemic index) completed the study. Diets differed significantly in glycemic index (mean ± standard error of the mean, low glycemic index 51 ± 1 vs. high glycemic index 61 ± 2, p = 0.0002), but not in macronutrient distribution or fiber content. Facial acne improved on both diets (low glycemic index -26 ± 6%, p = 0.0004 and high glycemic index -16 ± 7%, p = 0.01), but differences between diets did not reach significance. Change in insulin sensitivity was not different between diets (low glycemic index 0.2 ± 0.1 and high glycemic index 0.1 ± 0.1, p = 0.60) and did not correlate with change in acne severity (Pearson correlation r = -0.196, p = 0.244). Longer time frames, greater reductions in glycemic load or/and weight loss may be necessary to detect improvements in acne among adolescent boys.
Department of Psychology, Stellenbosch University. Correspondence to: Marieanna le .... In Putter's24 study, coping strategies were not good predictors of psychological wellbeing, while in other ..... (Accessed 14/11/2005). 33. Diener E. Subjective well-being: the science of happiness and a proposal for a national index.
Jimeno-Yepes, Antonio J; Plaza, Laura; Mork, James G; Aronson, Alan R; Díaz, Alberto
MEDLINE citations are manually indexed at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) using as reference the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) controlled vocabulary. For this task, the human indexers read the full text of the article. Due to the growth of MEDLINE, the NLM Indexing Initiative explores indexing methodologies that can support the task of the indexers. Medical Text Indexer (MTI) is a tool developed by the NLM Indexing Initiative to provide MeSH indexing recommendations to indexers. Currently, the input to MTI is MEDLINE citations, title and abstract only. Previous work has shown that using full text as input to MTI increases recall, but decreases precision sharply. We propose using summaries generated automatically from the full text for the input to MTI to use in the task of suggesting MeSH headings to indexers. Summaries distill the most salient information from the full text, which might increase the coverage of automatic indexing approaches based on MEDLINE. We hypothesize that if the results were good enough, manual indexers could possibly use automatic summaries instead of the full texts, along with the recommendations of MTI, to speed up the process while maintaining high quality of indexing results. We have generated summaries of different lengths using two different summarizers, and evaluated the MTI indexing on the summaries using different algorithms: MTI, individual MTI components, and machine learning. The results are compared to those of full text articles and MEDLINE citations. Our results show that automatically generated summaries achieve similar recall but higher precision compared to full text articles. Compared to MEDLINE citations, summaries achieve higher recall but lower precision. Our results show that automatic summaries produce better indexing than full text articles. Summaries produce similar recall to full text but much better precision, which seems to indicate that automatic summaries can efficiently capture the most
We propose a new index to quantify SSRN downloads. Unlike the SSRN downloads rank, which is based on the total number of an author's SSRN downloads, our index also reflects the author's productivity by taking into account the download numbers for the papers. Our index is inspired by - but is not the same as - Hirsch's h-index for citations, which cannot be directly applied to SSRN downloads. We analyze data for about 30,000 authors and 367,000 papers. We find a simple empirical formula for th...
National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The 2002 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) measures overall progress toward environmental sustainability for 142 countries based on environmental systems,...
Yunus, Mohd Zulkifli Mohd; Ahmad, Fatimah Shafinaz; Ibrahim, Nuremira
Climate change, particularly its associated sea level rise, is major threat to mangrove coastal areas, and it is essential to develop ways to reduce vulnerability through strategic management planning. Environmental vulnerability can be understood as a function of exposure to impacts and the sensitivity and adaptive capacity of ecological systems towards environmental tensors. Mangrove vulnerability ranking using up to 14 parameters found in study area, which is in Pulau Kukup and Sg Pulai, where 1 is low vulnerability and 5 is very high vulnerability. Mangrove Vulnerability Index (MVI) is divided into 3 main categories Physical Mangrove Index (PMI), Biological Mangrove Index (BMI) and Hazard Mangrove Index (HMI).
National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The 2008 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) centers on two broad environmental protection objectives: (1) reducing environmental stresses on human health, and (2)...
Full Text Available This paper presents an important bioclimatic index which shows the influence of wind on the human body thermoregulation. When the air temperature is high, the wind increases thermal comfort. But more important for the body is the wind when the air temperature is low. When the air temperature is lower and wind speed higher, the human body is threatening to freeze faster. Cold wind index is used in Canada, USA, Russia (temperature "equivalent" to the facial skin etc., in the weather forecast every day in the cold season. The index can be used and for bioclimatic regionalization, in the form of skin temperature index.
Full Text Available The main focus of our work was to collect basic body measurements of donkey population in Czech republic and determine the factors that influence these body measurements and hipometric indexes. The following measurements were recorded: height at withers, chest circumference and metacarpus interference. Based on the collected data, we were able to calculate the hipometric indexes: index of boniness, skeleton strength index, body mass index and coup height index. From a total of 331 individuals of donkey species living in Czech republic we managed to collect 50 samples. These were subjected to a general linear model (GLM and multiplex comparison statistical analysis. We managed to prove a statistically significant difference between donkeys born in Czech republic and the ones born abroad for all the measurements. Specifically the metacarpus circumference the gender dependency was also proved, having its impact on the hipometric indexes as well; the boniness index and skeleton strength index were also proved to be gender – dependent.
Kabilan, Muhammad Kamarul; Ismail, Hairul Nizam; Yaakub, Rohizani; Yusof, Najeemah Mohd; Idros, Sharifah Noraidah Syed; Umar, Irfan Naufal; Arshad, Muhammad Rafie Mohd.; Idrus, Rosnah; Rahman, Habsah Abdul
This "Project Sheet" describes an on-going project that is being carried out by a group of educational researchers, computer science researchers and librarians from Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang. The Malaysian Education Index (MEI) has two main functions--(1) Online Indexing System, and (2) Online Repository System. In this brief…
You have heard about issues surrounding indexing and retrieval of nuclear records and automation and micrographics of these records. Now we are going to get each of you involved in indexing and assigning keywords. The first part of this hands-on workshop will be a very basic, elementary step-by-step introduction, concentrating on how to assign keywords. It is a workshop for beginners, People who have never done it before. It is planned to demonstrate what an analyst has to do to index and assign keywords to a document. Then I will take some pages of a report and demonstrate how I choose keywords for it. Then each of you will have a chance to do the same thing with similar pages from another report. Then we will discuss the variations ln the keywords you individually assigned. There are many systems that can be used. In this particular workshop we will cover only a system of building your own keyword listing as you index your documents. We will be discussing keywords or descriptors or subject words, but first I want to point out a few other critical points about indexing. When developing an indexing project the most important thing to do first lS decide what elements you want to retrieve by. Whether you go into a large computer retrieval system or a small three-by-five card system, you have to decide in advance what you want to retrieve. Then you can go on from there. If you only need to search by equipment number or by purchase order or by contract number, then you can use a very simple retrieval system. But if you want to be able to retrieve a record by any combination of elements, then you have to consistently input these into your system. For example, if you want to be able to ask for the drawings of the piping in the secondary cooling system, level 3, manufactured by a certain vendor, then you must have put the information into the index by a retrieval file point, in advance. I want to stress that the time spent in deciding what has to be retrievable is never
This handbook serves as a guide to understanding and implementing the Federal regulations and US DOE Orders established to protect human research subjects. Material in this handbook is directed towards new and continuing institutional review board (IRB) members, researchers, institutional administrators, DOE officials, and others who may be involved or interested in human subjects research. It offers comprehensive overview of the various requirements, procedures, and issues relating to human subject research today.
Stephan, Yannick; Sutin, Angelina R; Caudroit, Johan; Terracciano, Antonio
The subjective experience of aging, indexed by how old or young an individual feels, has been related to well-being and health-related outcomes among older adults. The present study examined whether subjective age is associated with memory level and changes, as indexed by measures of immediate and delayed recall. A complementary purpose was to test the mediating role of depressive symptoms and physical activity in the relation between subjective age and memory changes. Participants were drawn from three waves of the Health and Retirement Study. Subjective age, baseline memory measures, and covariates were assessed during the 2008 wave (N = 5809), depressive symptoms and physical activity were assessed again in the 2010 wave, and the follow-up memory measures were assessed in the 2012 wave. Regression analyses that included demographic, metabolic, and vascular covariates revealed that a younger subjective age at baseline was associated with better concurrent performance and with slower decline in immediate and delayed recall. Bootstrap procedures indicated that fewer depressive symptoms mediated these associations. Additional analyses revealed that memory level and change were unrelated to changes in subjective age. Beyond chronological age, the subjective experience of age is associated with cognitive aging. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.org.
Asghari, Alimohamad; Farhadi, Mohammad; Kamrava, Seyed Kamran; Ghalehbaghi, Babak; Nojomi, Marzieh
Sleep disturbances are common among adult populations and can have a significant effect on daytime activities. The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of sleep problems and subjective sleep quality in the adult population of Tehran, Iran. From an urban community of Tehran, a random sample of 3400 adult men and women were selected by a cross-sectional design. Using the Persian version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), subjects were interviewed face-to-face. There were 3114 completed questionnaires returned and analyzed. The mean age of the subjects was 43.57 (± SD 17.5) years. Overall 37% (95% CI: 35-39) of the population were categorized as poor sleepers. The PSQI > 5 showed 27% were males versus 35% among females. The global PSQI scores ranged from 4.20 ± 2.67 to 5.60 ± 3.74 for males and 5.03 ± 3.00 to 7.97 ± 4.31 for females by age groups. The difference across age groups for global PSQI score was significant in females (P rate of sleep complaints in this population-based study was high. Females, older adults, widows and separated couple were the most important risk factors for sleep disturbances.
Boyd, Britta; Straatman, Bas; Mangalagiu, Diana
This paper presents a consumption-based Carbon City Index for CO2 emissions in a city. The index is derived from regional consumption and not from regional production. It includes imports and exports of emissions, factual emission developments, green investments as well as low carbon city...
African Index Medicus - In order to give access to information published in or related to Africa and to encourage local publishing, the World Health Organization, in collaboration with the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa (AHILA), has produced an international index to African health literature and ...
Full Text Available The aim of this article is to give an explicit formula for computing the Maslov index of the fundamental solutions of linear autonomous Hamiltonian systems in terms of the Conley-Zehnder index and the map time one flow.
Deerwester, Scott; And Others
Describes a new method for automatic indexing and retrieval called latent semantic indexing (LSI). Problems with matching query words with document words in term-based information retrieval systems are discussed, semantic structure is examined, singular value decomposition (SVD) is explained, and the mathematics underlying the SVD model is…
Cho, Danny I.; Ogwang, Tomson; Opio, Christopher
In this paper, principal components methodology is used to derive simplified and cost effective indexes of water poverty. Using a well known data set for 147 countries from which an earlier five-component water poverty index comprising of "Resources," "Access," "Capacity," "Use" and "Environment" was constructed, we find that a simplified…
The refractive index reported previously for the rhabdomeres of flies (1.349) has been corrected for waveguide effects. The presented correction method has yielded n1 = 1.365 ± 0.006. It is argued that an acceptable estimate for the refractive index of the inhomogeneous surroundings of fly
Vélez, María Alejandra; Trujillo, Carlos Andres; Moros, Lina; Forero, Clemente
Subjective insecurity is a key determinant of different forms of prosocial behavior. In Study 1, we used field experiments with farmers in Colombian villages exposed to different levels of violence to investigate how individual perceptions of insecurity affect cooperation, trust, reciprocity and altruism. To do so, we developed a cognitive-affective measure of subjective insecurity. We found that subjective insecurity has a negative effect on cooperation but influences trust and altruism positively. In Study 2, carried out three years after Study 1, we repeated the initial design with additional measures of victimization. Our goal was to relate subjective insecurity with actual victimization. The findings of Study 2 support the initial results, and are robust and consistent for cooperative behavior and trust when including victimization as a mediator. Different indicators of victimization are positively correlated with subjective insecurity and an aggregate index of victimization has a negative effect on cooperation but exerts a positive influence on trust. PMID:27472437
Vélez, María Alejandra; Trujillo, Carlos Andres; Moros, Lina; Forero, Clemente
Subjective insecurity is a key determinant of different forms of prosocial behavior. In Study 1, we used field experiments with farmers in Colombian villages exposed to different levels of violence to investigate how individual perceptions of insecurity affect cooperation, trust, reciprocity and altruism. To do so, we developed a cognitive-affective measure of subjective insecurity. We found that subjective insecurity has a negative effect on cooperation but influences trust and altruism positively. In Study 2, carried out three years after Study 1, we repeated the initial design with additional measures of victimization. Our goal was to relate subjective insecurity with actual victimization. The findings of Study 2 support the initial results, and are robust and consistent for cooperative behavior and trust when including victimization as a mediator. Different indicators of victimization are positively correlated with subjective insecurity and an aggregate index of victimization has a negative effect on cooperation but exerts a positive influence on trust.
María Alejandra Vélez
Full Text Available Subjective insecurity is a key determinant of different forms of prosocial behavior. In Study 1, we used field experiments with farmers in Colombian villages exposed to different levels of violence to investigate how individual perceptions of insecurity affect cooperation, trust, reciprocity and altruism. To do so, we developed a cognitive-affective measure of subjective insecurity. We found that subjective insecurity has a negative effect on cooperation but influences trust and altruism positively. In Study 2, carried out three years after Study 1, we repeated the initial design with additional measures of victimization. Our goal was to relate subjective insecurity with actual victimization. The findings of Study 2 support the initial results, and are robust and consistent for cooperative behavior and trust when including victimization as a mediator. Different indicators of victimization are positively correlated with subjective insecurity and an aggregate index of victimization has a negative effect on cooperation but exerts a positive influence on trust.
Jesús M. de Miguel
Full Text Available The present paper analyses and revises the latest Democracy Index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit in the United Kingdom. We analyze the changes produced in the index from 2006 to 2011, as well as in the five basic factors that constitute the index: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. The analysis of these factors ?measured by sixty variables? has made it possible to develop a new index, based on the data from 167 countries, and calculate a revised ranking. Countries have been classified into four types: democracies, flawed democracies, mixed systems, and authoritarian/totalitarian regimes. The new index permits a better understanding of the impact of the crisis through variables such as economic growth, human development, quality of life, corruption, and violence.
Skovse, Astrid Ravn
This paper aims to add new, empirically based insights to the understanding of the dynamics by which linguistic features come to index locality. It does so through examining the indexicalities of the term wallah among adolescents living in the suburban, multi-ethnic Danish neighborhood Vollsmose....... The paper shows how the term wallah, by being emblematic of the enregistered voices of somewhat competing, locally constructed characterological figures (Agha 2005), comes to serve as an index of highly specific kinds of locality. The data comes from an experimental mapping method tapping into informants...... in a wide range of multi-ethnic settings in Scandinavia – wallah is nevertheless capable of indexing both local and supralocal sociolinguistic scales at once, reflecting the multiscalarity of the “new localities” of globalization (Blommaert 2010). By considering the possibility of features indexing a range...
Guy H E J Vijgen
Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Cold-stimulated adaptive thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue (BAT to increase energy expenditure is suggested as a possible therapeutic target for the treatment of obesity. We have recently shown high prevalence of BAT in adult humans, which was inversely related to body mass index (BMI and body fat percentage (BF%, suggesting that obesity is associated with lower BAT activity. Here, we examined BAT activity in morbidly obese subjects and its role in cold-induced thermogenesis (CIT after applying a personalized cooling protocol. We hypothesize that morbidly obese subjects show reduced BAT activity upon cold exposure. METHODS AND FINDINGS: After applying a personalized cooling protocol for maximal non-shivering conditions, BAT activity was determined using positron-emission tomography and computed tomography (PET-CT. Cold-induced BAT activity was detected in three out of 15 morbidly obese subjects. Combined with results from lean to morbidly obese subjects (n = 39 from previous study, the collective data show a highly significant correlation between BAT activity and body composition (P<0.001, respectively explaining 64% and 60% of the variance in BMI (r = 0.8; P<0.001 and BF% (r = 0.75; P<0.001. Obese individuals demonstrate a blunted CIT combined with low BAT activity. Only in BAT-positive subjects (n = 26 mean energy expenditure was increased significantly upon cold exposure (51.5±6.7 J/s versus 44.0±5.1 J/s, P = 0.001, and the increase was significantly higher compared to BAT-negative subjects (+15.5±8.9% versus +3.6±8.9%, P = 0.001, indicating a role for BAT in CIT in humans. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that in an extremely large range of body compositions, BAT activity is highly correlated with BMI and BF%. BAT-positive subjects showed higher CIT, indicating that BAT is also in humans involved in adaptive thermogenesis. Increasing BAT activity could be a therapeutic target in (morbid obesity.
Hänninen, T; Reinikainen, K J; Helkala, E L; Koivisto, K; Mykkänen, L; Laakso, M; Pyörälä, K; Riekkinen, P J
To evaluate the relationship between objectively measured memory functions and subjective complaints of memory disturbance and whether subjective complaints are affected by some personality traits or affective states. Cross-sectional two-group comparison. The city of Kuopio in Eastern Finland, considered representative of the urban elderly population of Finland. Originally 403 subjects aged 67-78 years from the random sample and then two matched study groups initially including eighteen subjects but only ten in the final analysis. Screening and follow-up examinations of subjects with and without subjective memory complaints: (1) Memory functions: Benton's visual retention test and the paired-associated learning subtest of Wechsler Memory Scale. (2) Memory complaints: Memory Complaint Questionnaire. (3) Personality traits and affective state: Two subscales from Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and Geriatric Depression Scale. Complaints of memory loss did not correlate with the actual memory performance in the tests. However, those subjects who most emphatically complained of memory disturbance had greater tendencies toward somatic complaining, higher feelings of anxiety about their physical health, and more negative feelings of their own competence and capabilities than those who did not complain of memory deterioration associated with aging. The study suggests that subjective feelings of memory impairment are more closely associated with personality traits than with actual memory performance in normal elderly people.
In this work, I shall deal with the psychodynamic approach to subjectivity in P.V.C. To this effect, I want to develop the concept of subject and subjectivity, its variation and historical-social construction and its approach in counselling, from a psychodynamic conceptual framework in P.V.C. with a short reference to the theoretical sources on which this approach is founded. Departamento de Psicología
Aoki, Tomoko; Rivlis, Gil; Schieber, Marc H
Many studies of right/left differences in motor performance related to handedness have employed tasks that use arm movements or combined arm and hand movements rather than movements of the fingers per se, the well-known exception being rhythmic finger tapping. We therefore explored four simple tasks performed on a small touchscreen with relatively isolated movements of the index finger. Each task revealed a different right/left performance asymmetry. In a step-tracking Target Task, left-handed subjects showed greater accuracy with the index finger of the dominant left hand than with the nondominant right hand. In a Center-Out Task, right-handed subjects produced trajectories with the nondominant left hand that had greater curvature than those produced with the dominant right hand. In a continuous Circle Tracking Task, slips of the nondominant left index finger showed higher jerk than slips of the dominant right index finger. And in a continuous Complex Tracking Task, the nondominant left index finger showed shorter time lags in tracking the relatively unpredictable target than the dominant right index finger. Our findings are broadly consistent with previous studies indicating left hemisphere specialization for dynamic control and predictable situations vs. right hemisphere specialization for impedance control and unpredictable situations, the specialized contributions of the two hemispheres being combined to different degrees in the right vs. left hands of right-handed vs. left-handed individuals. Copyright © 2016 the American Physiological Society.
Aug 21, 2014 ... Subjects, Materials and Methods: Seventy healthy participants agreed to take part in the study. The anthropometric .... administered, the blood sample was drawn for cortisol level at 30 min. The samples were ... BMI=Body mass index, WC=Waist circumference, SBP=Systolic blood pressure, DBP=Diastolic ...
Song, X.; Pitkaniemi, J.; Heine, R.J.; Pyorala, K.; Soderberg, S.; Stehouwer, C.D.; Feskens, E.J.M.
Background/Objectives: To investigate the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and mortality from various causes. Subjects/Methods: Data of 72¿947 European men and 62¿798 women aged 24–99 years at baseline were collaboratively analyzed. Both absolute and relative mortality risks were estimated
Thompson, R.C. (comp.)
This bibliography on the biology of the transuranium elements is a revision of one issued in 1973 (BNWL-1782). It includes essentially all of the citations from the earlier document, a few corrections and additions from the older literature, plus the new literature to mid-1975. It also includes a subject-matter index not present in the original document.
Schwartz, S.R.; Phillips, S.L.; Perra, J.J.
The descriptive cataloging and subject indexing rules and methodology needed to process bibliographic information for GRID database storage are documented. Data elements which may appear in a bibliographic record are tabulated. Examples of coded data entry forms are included in an appendix. Examples are given of unit records in the database corresponding to one bibliographic reference. (MHR)
We explored the relationship between age, gender and anthropometric measurements and atherogenic index in hypertensive patients. A cross sectional study was done involving 109 adult hypertensive patients attending the cardiology clinic of Niger Delta University Teaching Hospital. Subjects were recruited ...
Background: Obesity in pregnancy can contribute to epigenetic changes. Aim: To assess whether body mass index (BMI) in pregnancy is associated with changes in the methylation of the peroxisome proliferator‑activated receptor γ (PPAR) promoter region (−359 to − 260) in maternal and neonatal leukocytes. Subjects and ...
Hermans, E.A.; Dubbelman, M.; van der Heijde, R.G.L.; Heethaar, R.M.
PURPOSE.: To experimentally verify the suggestion of Gullstrand (1909), i.e., that the equivalent refractive index of the human lens increases with accommodation. METHODS.: The left eye of five subjects was focused on different accommodation stimuli, while the right eye was imaged with Scheimpflug
Grzegorzewski, Andrzej; Synder, Marek; Szymczak, Wiesław; Kowalewski, Maciej; Kozłowski, Piotr
Authors present an estimation of articulo-trochanteric-distance (ATD) and ATD index in patients with Perthes disease and if there is any correlation between ATD and ATD index and age at the onset, gender, type of treatment, Herring and Stulberg classification. The study population consisted of 242 patients (35 female and 207 male) who had reached skeletal maturity at last follow up. The mean age at the onset of symptoms was 7 years and 4 months. All patients were treated by containment methods (bed rest and traction in abduction, brace, Petri cast, varus osteotomy, Salter osteotomy and shelf operation). ATD was estimated according to the Edgren methods and ATD index was calculated as relation ATD on Perthes site to ATD in normal joint. The late results were classified according to the Stulberg classification. Statistical analysis did not revealed any correlation between the age at the onset, gender and ATD index and ATD during last follow up. Both parameters decreased with poor results according to the Stulberg classifications. ATD index and ATD were statistically significant less after surgical treatment than after non-operative treatment. The same relations were seen between patients with leg length discrepancy (LLD) and without LLD. Patients in Herring group A had statistically significant bigger both parameters than patients in group B, C and patients in Herring group B than C. Articulo-trochanteric-distance and ATD index decreased during follow up and ATD decreased also in normal joint. In our opinion ATD index is a more reliable radiological parameter than ATD. ATD index decreases with bigger necrosis of the femoral head and poor result according to the Stulberg classification. This parameter is an evidence of the dysfunction proximal femoral growth plate in patients with LLD. The most decreased ATD index was observed after surgical treatment. There was no correlation between the age at the onset, gender and ATD index at last follow up.
Full Text Available This paper discusses the various subjects embedded in cognitive psychotherapy. The cognitive model developed by Beck, considered as a rationalist and modernist model, will exemplify these subjects. Cognitive therapy should be placed in the modernist historical context and related to a subject characterized as having rationality and the ability to observe and detect cognitions, emotions and behaviors. The paper develops this background introducing three main subject types. The first is the introspective and conscious subject, who is able to observe what is within oneself, has free access, and is conscious of one's cognitive world. The second is the cognitive miser that describes the subject who enters into therapy. The final subject identified, is the trained scientist who is able to develop a more objective knowledge, changing faulty schemas and cognitive distortions. This subject is the one most looked for in cognitive therapy. We could connect these subjects to some of the main elements of cognitive therapy such as the concept of ABC, assessment procedures, cognitive techniques or the relevance of schemas. Finally, the paper suggests some issues for study that could contribute to the theoretical and clinical evolution of cognitive psychotherapy.
Buchan, Ronald L.
An account is given of a method for data base-updating designated 'computer-aided indexing' (CAI) which has been very efficiently implemented at NASA's Scientific and Technical Information Facility by means of retrospective indexing. Novel terms added to the NASA Thesaurus will therefore proceed directly into both the NASA-RECON aerospace information system and its portion of the ESA-Information Retrieval Service, giving users full access to material thus indexed. If a given term appears in the title of a record, it is given special weight. An illustrative graphic representation of the CAI search strategy is presented.
This compilation consists of bibliographic data and abstracts for the formal regulatory and technical reports issues by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Staff and its contractors. It is NRC`s intention to publish this compilation quarterly and to cumulate it annually. The main citations and abstracts in this compilation are listed in NUREG number order: NUREG-XXXX, NUREG/CP-XXXX, NUREG/CR-XXXX, and NUREG/IA-XXXX. These precede the following indexes: Secondary Report Number Index, Personal Author Index, Subject Index, NRC Originating Organization Index (Staff Reports), NRC Originating Organization Index (International Agreements), NRC Contract Sponsor Index (Contractor Reports) Contractor Index, International Organization Index, Licensed Facility Index. A detailed explanation of the entries precedes each index.
This compilation consists of bibliographic data and abstracts for the formal regulatory and technical reports issued by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Staff and its contractors. It is NRC`s intention to publish this compilation quarterly and to cumulate it annually. The main citations and abstracts in this compilation are listed in NUREG number order: NUREG-XXXX, NUREG/CP-XXXX, NUREG/CR-XXXX, and NUREG/IA-XXXX. These precede the following indexes: secondary report number index; personal author index; subject index; NRC originating organization index (staff reports); NRC originating organization index (international agreements); NRC contract sponsor index (contractor reports); contractor index; international organization index; and licensed facility index. A detailed explanation of the entries precedes each index.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — This data set contains vector polygons representing the boundaries of all hardcopy cartographic products produced as part of the Environmental Sensitivity Index...
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — This data set contains vector polygons representing the boundaries of all the hardcopy cartographic products produced as part of the Environmental Sensitivity Index...
Kottow Andrea R
Full Text Available Abstract Based on the distinction between living body and lived body, we describe the disease-subject as representing the impact of disease on the existential life-project of the subject. Traditionally, an individual's subjectivity experiences disorders of the body and describes ensuing pain, discomfort and unpleasantness. The idea of a disease-subject goes further, representing the lived body suffering existential disruption and the possible limitations that disease most probably will impose. In this limit situation, the disease-subject will have to elaborate a new life-story, a new character or way-of-being-in-the-world, it will become a different subject. Health care professionals need to realize that patients are not mere observers of their body, for they are immersed in a reassesment of values, relationships, priorities, perhaps even life-plans. Becoming acquainted with literature's capacity to create characters, modify narratives and depict life-stories in crisis, might sharpen physicians' hermeneutic acumen and make them more receptive to the quandaries of disease-subjects facing major medical and existential decisions in the wake of disruptive disease.
BACKGROUND: Asthma is a known risk factor for acute ozone-associated respiratory disease. Ozone causes an immediate decrease in lung function and increased airway inflammation. The role of atopy and asthma in modulation of ozone-induced inflammation has not been determined. OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine whether atopic status modulates ozone response phenotypes in human subjects. METHODS: Fifty volunteers (25 healthy volunteers, 14 atopic nonasthmatic subjects, and 11 atopic asthmatic subjects not requiring maintenance therapy) underwent a 0.4-ppm ozone exposure protocol. Ozone response was determined based on changes in lung function and induced sputum composition, including airway inflammatory cell concentration, cell-surface markers, and cytokine and hyaluronic acid concentrations. RESULTS: All cohorts experienced similar decreases in lung function after ozone. Atopic and atopic asthmatic subjects had increased sputum neutrophil numbers and IL-8 levels after ozone exposure; values did not significantly change in healthy volunteers. After ozone exposure, atopic asthmatic subjects had significantly increased sputum IL-6 and IL-1beta levels and airway macrophage Toll-like receptor 4, Fc(epsilon)RI, and CD23 expression; values in healthy volunteers and atopic nonasthmatic subjects showed no significant change. Atopic asthmatic subjects had significantly decreased IL-10 levels at baseline compared with healthy volunteers; IL-10 levels did not significa
Almăşan, Oana Cristina; Băciuţ, Mihaela; Almăşan, Horea Artimoniu; Bran, Simion; Lascu, Liana; Iancu, Mihaela; Băciuţ, Grigore
To establish the skeletal pattern in subjects with malocclusions and temporomandibular disorders (TMD); to assess the relationship between craniofacial skeletal structures and TMD in subjects with malocclusions. Sixty-four subjects with malocclusions, over 18 years of age, were included in the study. Temporomandibular disorders were clinically assessed according to the Helkimo Anamnestic Index. Subjects underwent a lateral cephalogram. Subjects were grouped according to the sagittal skeletal pattern (ANB angle) into class I, II and III. Parametric Student tests with equal or unequal variations were used (variations were previously tested with Levene test). Twenty-four patients with TMD (experimental sample); 40 patients without TMD (control group); interincisal angle was higher in class I and II (p < 0.05) experimental subjects; overjet was larger in experimental subjects; midline shift and Wits appraisal were broader in the experimental group in all three classes. In class III subjects, the SNB angle was higher in the experimental group (p = 0.01). Joint noises followed by reduced mandible mobility, muscular pain and temporomandibular joint (TMJ) pain were the most frequent symptoms in subjects with TMD and malocclusions. Temporomandibular joint status is an important factor to consider when planning orthodontic treatment in patients with severe malocclusions; midline shift, large overjet and deep overbite have been associated with signs and symptoms of TMD.
Hayden, Elizabeth P; Wiegand, Ryan E; Meyer, Eric T; Bauer, Lance O; O'connor, Sean J; Nurnberger, John I; Chorlian, David B; Porjesz, Bernice; Begleiter, Henri
Electroencephalographic (EEG) measures of hemispheric asymmetry in anterior brain activity have been related to a variety of indices of psychopathology and emotionality. However, little is known about patterns of frontal asymmetry in alcohol-dependent (AD) samples. It is also unclear whether psychiatric comorbidity in AD subjects accounts for additional variance in frontal asymmetry, beyond a diagnosis of AD alone. We compared 193 AD subjects with 108 control subjects on resting brain activity in anterior and posterior regions, as indexed by asymmetries in alpha band power in the left and right hemispheres. Within the AD group alone, we examined whether comorbid major depressive disorder (MDD) or antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) had effects on regional asymmetry. Compared with control subjects, AD subjects exhibited lower left, relative to right, cortical activation in anterior regions. Evidence that comorbidity in AD subjects accounted for further variance in EEG asymmetry was mixed; AD subjects with comorbid ASPD were not significantly different from those without ASPD, while AD subjects with a lifetime history of MDD showed less asymmetry in anterior regions than those without MDD. Our findings indicate that AD subjects exhibit a pattern of frontal asymmetry similar to that found in other psychiatric groups. Results examining the effects of comorbidity in AD on EEG asymmetry were inconclusive. The implications of our findings for future work are described.
Hansen, Brian Benjamin
The article presents a theory of the subject, based on the work of Jacques Lacan, using the concepts of alienation, separation and liberation.......The article presents a theory of the subject, based on the work of Jacques Lacan, using the concepts of alienation, separation and liberation....
Ossorio, P G
A conceptual approach to linguistic data processing problems is sketched and empirical illustrations are presented of the major software components- indexing, storage, and retrieval-of a document processing system which offers, in principle, the advantages of complete automation, unlimited cross- indexing, effective sequential retrieval, sub-documentary indexing reflecting heterogeneity of subject matter within a document, and a procedure for automatically identifying retrieval requests which would be inadequately handled by the system. The indexing schema, designated as a "Classification Space" consists of a Euclidean model for mapping subject matter similarity within a given subject matter domain. A schema of this kind is empirically derived for certain fields of Engineering and Chemistry. A set of five related empirical studies provide convincing evidence that when appropriate experimental procedures are followed a very stable C-Space for a given content domain can be constructed on a surprisingly small data base. Other empirical studies demonstrate specific computational procedures for effective automatic indexing of documents in a C-Space, using a relatively small system vocabulary. One study demonstrates that a C-Space maps subject matter relevance as well as subject matter similarity, and thereby pro- motes effective sequential retrieval ; this result is also shown under conditions of automatic indexing. Negative results are found in an attempt to use the structural linguistic distinction of subject and object as a means of improving techniques for automatic indexing.
Che Wan Jasimah Bt Wan Mohamed Radzi
Full Text Available The main objective of this paper is to bring a model for firm sustainability performance index by applying both classical and Bayesian structural equation modeling (parametric and semi-parametric modeling. Both techniques are considered to the research data collected based on a survey directed to the China, Taiwan, and Malaysia food manufacturing industry. For estimating firm sustainability performance index we consider three main indicators include knowledge management, organizational learning, and business strategy. Based on the both Bayesian and classical methodology, we confirmed that knowledge management and business strategy have significant impact on firm sustainability performance index.
Digests and indexes for issuances of the Commission (CLI), the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (LBP), the Administrative Law Judges (ALJ), the Directors` Decisions (DD), and the Decision on Petitions for Rulemaking (DPRM) are presented in this document. These digests and indexes are intended to serve as a guide to the issuances. Information elements common to the cases heard and ruled upon are: case name (owner(s) of facility); full text reference (volume and pagination); issuance number; issues raised by apellants; legal citations (cases, regulations, and statutes); name of facility, docket number; subject matter of issues and/or rulings; type of hearing (operating license, operating license amendment, etc.); type of issuance (memorandum, order, decision, etc.).
Digests and indexes for issuances of the Commission (CLI), the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board panel (LBP), the Administrative Law Judges, the Directors` Decisions (DD), and the Denials of Petitions for Rulemaking (DPRM) are presented in this document. These digests and indexes are intended to serve as a guide to the issuances. Information elements common to the cases heard and ruled upon are: Case name (owner(s) of facility); Full text reference (volume and pagination); Issuance number; Issues raised by appellants; Legal citations (cases, regulations, and statutes); Name of facility, Docket number; Subject matter of issues and/or rulings; Type of hearing (for construction permit, operating license, etc.); Type of issuance (memorandum, order, decision, etc.).
Digests and indexes for issuances of the Commission (CLI), the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (LBP), the Administrative Law Judges (ALJ), the Directors` Decision (DD), and the Denials of Petitions for Rulemaking (DPRM) are presented in this document. These digests and indexes are intended to serve as a guide to the issuances. Information elements common to the cases heard and ruled upon are: case name (owner(s) of facility), full text reference (volume and pagination), issuance number, issues raised by apellants, legal citations (cases, regulations, and statutes), name of facility, docket number, subject matter of issues and/or rulings, type of hearing (for construction permit, operating license, etc.), type of issuance (Memorandum, order, decision, etc.).
Digests and indexes for issuances of the Commission (CLI), the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (LBP), the Administrative Law Judges (ALJ), the Directors` Decisions (DD), and the Denials of Petitions for Rulemaking (DPRM) are presented in this document. These digests and indexes are intended to serve as a guide to the issuances. Information elements common to the cases heard and ruled upon are: Case name (owner(s) of facility); full text reference (volume and pagination); issuance number; issues raised by appellants; legal citations (cases, regulations, and statutes); name of facility, docket number; subject matter of issues and/or rulings; type of hearing (for construction permit, operating license, etc.); and type of issuance (memorandum, order, decision, etc.).
Digests and indexes for issuances of the Commission (CLI), the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (LBP), the Administrative Law Judges (ALJ), the Directors` Decisions (DD), and the Denials of Petitions for Rulemaking (DPRM) are presented in this document. These digests and indexes are intended to serve as a guide to the issuances. Information elements common to the cases heard and ruled upon are: case name (owner(s) of facility); full text reference (volume and pagination); issuance number; issues raised by appellants; legal citations (cases, regulations, and statutes); name of facility, docket number; subject matter of issues and/or rulings; type of hearing (for construction permit, operating license, etc.); and type of issuance (memorandum, order, decision, etc.).
Bayraktar, C; Taşolar, S
Tinnitus is defined as perception of sound with no external stimulus, and can separate into pulsatile and non-pulsatile types. Arterial stiffness is a parameter that can predict the cardiovascular event and associated with incidence of stroke. It has been shown that increased arterial stiffness may lead to microvascular damage in brain. Our aim was to assess the arterial stiffness of the carotid system in the development and severity of idiopathic subjective tinnitus. Forty subjective tinnitus patients and 40 age- and sex-matched controls were enrolled in the study. The parameters obtained from the participants included pure tone hearing (dB), serum lipid profile (mg/dl), fasting glucose (mg/dl), blood pressure (mmHg), and body mass index (BMI, kg/m2). The common carotid artery (CCA) stiffness index, Young's elastic modulus (YEM), common carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT), peak systolic velocity (PSV), end-diastolic velocity (EDV), resistive index (RI), pulsatility index (PI), vessel diameter, mean velocity (MV), and volume flow (VF) were measured in both the right and left common carotid arteries in both groups. The CCA stiffness index, YEM measurements, right CIMT, and left PI were found to be significantly higher in the patients than those in the control group (p tinnitus and the patient characteristics, there was a significant positive correlation with the CCA stiffness index, YEM measurements, left CIMT, and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR). However, only the right and left CCA stiffness parameters were found to be statistically significant in the multivariate analysis as independent predictors of a moderate to high degree of tinnitus. The increased stiffness index of the common carotid arteries was significantly associated with the formation and severity of tinnitus. Therefore, an assessment of the carotideal system may be helpful in these patients.
Momeni-Moghaddam, Hamed; Kundart, James; Ehsani, Marzieh; Abdeh-Kykha, Atena
Body Mass Index (BMI) is of increasing interest to eye care practitioners. Associations have recently been proven between high BMI and several diseases affecting the eyes, including AMD, intracranial hypertension, optic disc cupping, and glaucoma. The symptoms of dizziness and vertigo have also been associated with high BMI. However, to these authors' knowledge, there has been no study performed comparing BMI to binocular function. In this analytical-descriptive study, 119 randomly selected young subjects had their BMI measured, along with refractive error, dissociated phoria, near point of convergence, vergence ranges and facility, and stereopsis. In most situations, the subjects classified as normal and overweight, based on their BMI had better performance than those classified as underweight or obese. The worst binocular performance was found in underweight subjects. The one-way ANOVA showed only statistically significant differences between mean of near point of convergence and vergence facility, in different states of BMI. Unlike most ocular diseases that are adversely affected by higher BMI values, most binocular vision skills are adversely affected by lower BMI values. The possible reasons for this are discussed.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The 2014 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 178 countries on 20 performance indicators in the following 9 policy categories: health impacts, air quality,...
National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The 2016 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 180 countries on 20 performance indicators in the following 9 policy categories: health impacts, air quality,...
Allegheny County / City of Pittsburgh / Western PA Regional Data Center — Map Index Sheets from Block and Lot Grid of Property Assessment and based on aerial photography, showing 1983 datum with solid line and NAD 27 with 5 second grid...
These lecture notes aim at providing a purely analytical and accessible proof of the Callias index formula. In various branches of mathematics (particularly, linear and nonlinear partial differential operators, singular integral operators, etc.) and theoretical physics (e.g., nonrelativistic and relativistic quantum mechanics, condensed matter physics, and quantum field theory), there is much interest in computing Fredholm indices of certain linear partial differential operators. In the late 1970’s, Constantine Callias found a formula for the Fredholm index of a particular first-order differential operator (intimately connected to a supersymmetric Dirac-type operator) additively perturbed by a potential, shedding additional light on the Fedosov-Hörmander Index Theorem. As a byproduct of our proof we also offer a glimpse at special non-Fredholm situations employing a generalized Witten index.
Describes the work of the Centre for Catalogue Research at the University of Bath (England), some of which deals with visual factors affecting the design and performance of library catalogues and indexes. (FL)
Vermont Center for Geographic Information — Social vulnerability refers to the resilience of communities when responding to or recovering from threats to public health. The Vermont Social Vulnerability Index...
Vermont Center for Geographic Information — This map shows: The overall vulnerability of each town to heat related illness. This index is a composite of the following themes: Population Theme, Socioeconomic...
NSGIC Local Govt | GIS Inventory — A polygon feature class of Miami-Dade County, Digital Map Library (DML) index layer. This layer identifies the areas, which is divided into square mile that we have...
This Use Site Index provides guidance to assist applicants for antimicrobial pesticide registration by helping them identify the data requirements necessary to register a pesticide or support their product registrations.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 163 countries on environmental performance based on twenty-five indicators grouped within ten core policy...
Lawson, Anton E.
Niaz (1990) presents arguments in favor of the retention of Piaget's epistemic subject as a theoretical construct to guide research and practice in science education and psychology. The intent of this article is to point out the weaknesses of those arguments and to suggest that the weight of evidence argues against the existence of the logical thinker postulated by Piaget. Therefore, contrary to Niaz's conclusion that the acceptance of Piaget's epistemic subject will facilitate the development of cognitive theories with greater explanatory power, the conclusion is reached that Piaget's epistemic subject is dead and that continued acceptance of this aspect of Piagetian theory would be counterproductive.
This is a supplement to International Energy: Subject Thesaurus (ETDE/PUB--2(Rev.1)), which replaced DOE/TIC-7000--the EDB Subject Thesaurus. This supplement is provided periodically to keep International Energy: Subject Thesaurus recipients up-to-date on valid vocabulary terms (descriptors) used in building and maintaining several international energy information databases. Each issue contains all new terms added since the publication of the Thesaurus. Each supplement is a cumulative listing of the new terms, so that each issue replaces the previous one.
Clear, Robert; Inkarojrit, Vorapat; Lee, Eleanor
Forty-three subjects worked in a private office with switchable electrochromic windows, manually-operated Venetian blinds, and dimmable fluorescent lights. The electrochromic window had a visible transmittance range of approximately 3-60%. Analysis of subject responses and physical data collected during the work sessions showed that the electrochromic windows reduced the incidence of glare compared to working under a fixed transmittance (60%) condition. Subjects used the Venetian blinds less often and preferred the variable transmittance condition, but used slightly more electric lighting with it than they did when window transmittance was fixed.
Full Text Available Aim: The study aimed at assessing the quality of sleep in seniors. Another objective was to determine the impact of gender, age, type of residence and taking sleeping medication on the quality of sleep. Design: A cross-sectional study. Methods: Data were collected using the standardized Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI questionnaire. The sample comprised 146 seniors living in the Moravian-Silesian Region, Czech Republic. The survey was conducted from January 2014 to the end of October 2014 in a long-term chronic care department of a selected hospital, two retirement homes and among seniors living in their own homes. Results: Thirty-five (24% seniors had their global PSQI scores of 5 (i.e. the highest score indication good sleep quality or less. The remaining 111 (76% participants were shown to suffer from impaired sleep quality as their global PSQI scores were 6 or higher. There were statistically significant differences in component scores between seniors with the global PSQI scores of 5 or less and those with higher scores. The best quality of sleep was observed in females, seniors in the 65–74 age category and those sharing their own homes with their spouses or partners. Conclusion: Subjective sleep quality assessment varies significantly with respect to gender, age, type of residence and use of sleeping medication. Keywords: sleep quality, PSQI, subjective assessment, senior.
Ample evidence exists to support the conclusion that enterprise search is failing its users. This failure is costing corporate America billions of dollars every year. Most enterprise search engines are built using web search engines as their foundations. These search engines are optimized for web use and are inadequate when used inside the…
dimethyloctyl forrhate, a potent mimic of the aggregation pheromone of the flour beetles 3. Phonon mediated reaction. Phonon mediation of solid state photoreaction: Photodimerization of o-methoxy cinnamic acid 337. Photoelectron spectroscopy.
Surface waves due to blasts on and above inviscid liquids of finite depth 227. Surface waves. Surface waves due to blasts on and above inviscid liquids of finite depth 227. Symmetrizer. Symmetrizing a Hessenberg matrix: Designs for. VLSI parallel processor arrays 59. System of conservation laws. Solution of a system of ...
Polysilicon. Electrical properties of polycrystalline silicon and zinc oxide semiconductors 243. Polytype in SiC. High resolution electron microscopy as a tool for structural investigations 4.59. Polytype structures ... Oxidation of thin films of tin at room temperature in hydrogen sulphide atmosphere 1019. RF sputtering. A novel ...
institutes Ivanovskii, UN., el al. [1986. p.136-149. rus] 41-1202 Naturally occurring creep in ice-rich permafrost. Savigny , K.W., [1980, 355p... Savigny , K.W., et al, [1986. p.315-327. eng] 41-3471 Modeling of marine fiber reinforced concrete and frozen soil. Gopal, R.K., [1986, 155p...Ice-rich permifnMt «oil. Savigny , K.W., et al. ,1916, p.504-514, eng, 41-2470 Permafroat and Quaternary history of the Meckenzie- Be«ufort
Tiago do Prado Paim
Full Text Available There is an abundance of thermal indices with different input parameters and applicabilities. Infrared thermography is a promising technique for evaluating the response of animals to the environment and differentiating between genetic groups. Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate superficial body temperatures of lambs from three genetic groups under different environmental conditions, correlating these with thermal comfort indices. Forty lambs (18 males and 22 females from three genetic groups (Santa Inês, Ile de France × Santa Inês and Dorper × Santa Inês were exposed to three climatic conditions: open air, housed and artificial heating. Infrared thermal images were taken weekly at 6h, 12h and 21h at the neck, front flank, rear flank, rump, nose, skull, trunk and eye. Four thermal comfort indices were calculated using environmental measurements including black globe temperature, air humidity and wind speed. Artificial warming, provided by infrared lamps and wind protection, conserved and increased the superficial body temperature of the lambs, thus providing lower daily thermal ranges. Artificial warming did not influence daily weight gain or mortality. Skin temperatures increased along with increases in climatic indices. Again, infrared thermography is a promising technique for evaluating thermal stress conditions and differentiating environments. However, the use of thermal imaging for understanding animal responses to environmental conditions requires further study.
Full Text Available Forensic anthropology is a neglected branch of physical anthropology in Indonesia. The role of anthropology in forensics including medical and dental forensic is identification. Anthropology could be used in identify skeleton including sex, age, height and race. The aim of this study was to know the facial index, the upper facial index and the orbital index among three different students race population of Jember University used Posteroanterior radiography. The subjects of this study were Batak, Klaten and Flores students of Jember University. The craniometric indices in this study according to the El-Najjar classification. The result showed that all the subjects facial index classified as hypereuryprosopic with the mean between 78.05–79.184. Batak population upper facial index classified as hyperueryene, while Flores and Klaten population were euryene. All the population orbital index classified as hypsiconch.
Goins, L.F.; Webb, J.R.; Cravens, C.D.; Mallory, P.K.
This is part 2 of a bibliography on nuclear facility decommissioning and site remedial action. This report contains indexes on the following: authors, corporate affiliation, title words, publication description, geographic location, subject category, and key word.
McKane, Meghann; Soslow, Jonathan H; Xu, Meng; Saville, Benjamin R; Slaughter, James C; Burnette, W Bryan; Markham, Larry W
Duchenne muscular dystrophy leads to cardiomyopathy. The objective of this study was to estimate the association of body mass index with cardiomyopathy onset. Cardiomyopathy was defined as left ventricular ejection fraction Duchenne muscular dystrophy subjects and age of cardiomyopathy onset.
Jung, Dietrich; Petersen, Marie Juul; Sparre, Sara Lei
Examining modern Muslim identity constructions, the authors introduce a novel analytical framework to Islamic Studies, drawing on theories of successive modernities, sociology of religion, and poststructuralist approaches to modern subjectivity, as well as the results of extensive fieldwork in th...
Jung, Dietrich; Petersen, Marie Juul; Sparre, Sara Lei
Examining modern Muslim identity constructions, the authors introduce a novel analytical framework to Islamic Studies, drawing on theories of successive modernities, sociology of religion, and poststructuralist approaches to modern subjectivity, as well as the results of extensive fieldwork...
Adam J. Kolber
... laws pay little attention to such differences. I make two central claims: First, a successful justification of punishment must take account of offenders' subjective experiences when assessing punishment severity...
Andersen, U B; Skøtt, P; Bruun, N E
content of sodium and potassium for 4 days before the study. An isoglycaemic, hyperinsulinaemic clamp with infusion of insulin (40 munits.min(-1).m(-2)) was performed. We measured the renal clearance of diethylenetriaminepenta-acetic acid, sodium, potassium and lithium both under basal conditions.......04). Compared with the controls, the subjects predisposed to hypertension had a higher 24-h diastolic blood pressure [78 (70, 82) mmHg, compared with 73 (68, 77) mmHg], but a similar insulin sensitivity index ¿10(7)x[313 (225, 427)] compared with 10(7)x[354 (218, 435)] l(2).min(-1).pmol(-1).kg(-1)¿. Thus...... the sodium-retaining effect of insulin was more pronounced in subjects with a strong genetic predisposition to essential hypertension than in subjects with normotensive parents. This effect may contribute to the development of hypertension in subjects with a genetic predisposition to hypertension....
Kitau, M J; Grint, P C; Heath, R B; Chard, T
Serum alphafetoprotein (AFP) levels were measured using a sensitive radioimmunoassay in 108 hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg)-positive subjects and 695 controls. The concentrations were significantly higher in the HBsAg-positives. Within this group, the highest levels were found in those with active HBV infection. In those without evidence of acute infection, the levels were higher in the high-risk than in the low-risk subjects. It is concluded: 1) that measurement of serum AFP might be a useful additional index of infectivity and prognosis in HBsAg-positive subjects; and 2) that in the light of the association between chronic HBV infection, hepatocellular carcinoma, and raised AFP in non-European populations, consideration should be given to regular monitoring of AFP levels in HBsAg-positive subjects in the United Kingdom.
Full Text Available The article presents a view of a problem of subjective illness theory in context of coping behavior. The article compiles the results of the latest studies of coping; discloses the way subjective illness theory affects the illness coping and patient's health; presents the study of differences in coping behaviour of patients at risk of heart attack and oncology. The article is recommended for specialists, concerned with psychological reasons of pathogenic processes and coping strategies of patients.
Lee, M; Hill, S; Scullin, J
The purpose of this study was to examine the responses of normal living subjects to the application of anteroposterior forces to the ribcage. Seventeen subjects aged between 25 and 37 years were tested during slow oscillatory loading while breath-holding at the end of a normal expiration. The mean stiffness coefficient was found to be 9.4 N mm(-1) (SD 2.9) and the mean gradient of the force-strain relation was 1888 N (SD 646). Comparison with previously published cadaver data indicates that the embalmed cadaver ribcage stiffness is in the order of three times stiffer than living subjects, while fresh cadavers showed comparable stiffness to living subjects. A number of studies have used models to predict and understand the behaviour of the thoracic spine. Validation of the behaviour of models which include the thoracic spine and ribcage depends on comparison of model response predictions with observed responses of human subjects. The present study provides data on the anteroposterior compressibility of the ribcage of living subjects which may be suitable for use in model validation studies. Copyright © 1994. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Full Text Available In recent work on null subject languages it has been claimed that preverbal subjects are always (clitic-left dislocated. In this paper, we argue against this claim, on the grounds of empirical evidence from European Portuguese concerning agreement facts, asymmetries between preverbal subjects and clitic-left dislocated XPs with respect to minimality effects, the existence of languages with a mixed system (null expletive subjects and full referential ones, language acquisition data, the behavior of negative QPs and interpretation facts, and propose a non-uniform analysis of preverbal subjects and clitic-left dislocated XPs that derives their topic interpretation from a predication rule stated configurationally (section 2. Our account of the SVO and VSO orders displayed in European Portuguese relies on a specific formulation of the EPP parameter, on the locality constraint Attract Closest X and on the independently motivated claim that V-movement targets T in European Portuguese (section 3. Under our analysis, the computational system generates equally economical SVO and VSO derivations and discourse considerations, at the appropriate interface, rule out the unfelicitous ones.
Megawati, E. R.; Lubis, L. D.; Harahap, F. Y.
Obesity in children and young adult is associated with cardiovascular risk in short term and long term. The aim of this study was to describe the profile of the cardiovascular functions parameters and physical fitness in overweight. This is an analytical observational study with cross sectional approach. The samples of this study were 85 randomly selected subjects aged 18 to 24 years with normoweight and body mass index parameters measures were body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-hip ratio (WHR), cardiovascular function parameters (resting pulse, blood pressure, and peak flow meter) and physical fitness parameters (VO2max dengan McArdle step test). The mean BMI was 24,53±4,929. The WC and WHR mean were 86,7±14,10 cms and 0,89±0,073 cm respectively. The mean of resting pulses were higher in normoweight subject (p=0,0209). The mean systole were lower in normoweight subject (p=0,0026). No differences VO2 max between groups (p=0,3888). The peak flow meter was higher in normoweight (p=0,0274). The result of this study indicate that heart rate, systole and peak flow meter are signifantly different between groups. The heart rate and the peak flow meter in the overweight subjects were lower meanwhile the systole blood pressure was higher compared to normoweight subjects.
Redford, J.S. (ed.)
The Office of Scientific and Technical Information, in its role of managing scientific and technical information in support of DOE programs, develops and maintains a standardized vocabulary for indexing this information. This permutated listing, an appendix to the Energy Data Base: Subject Thesaurus (DOE/TIC-7000-R6), has been prepared to alleviate the problems of entry to a large multidisciplinary thesaurus containing both single and multiword descriptors. It is designed to be used in conjunction with the Subject Thesaurus and is not to be used alone.
Samuel Olufemi Akodu
Full Text Available Background. Sickle cell disorders are known to have a negative effect on linear growth. This could potentially affect proportional growth and, hence, Cormic Index. Objective. To determine the Cormic Index in the sickle cell anaemia population in Lagos. Methodology. A consecutive sample of 100 children with haemoglobin genotype SS, aged eight months to 15 years, and 100 age and sex matched controls (haemoglobin genotype AA was studied. Sitting height (upper segment and full length or height were measured. Sitting height was then expressed as a percentage of full length/height (Cormic Index. Results. The mean Cormic Index decreased with age among primary subjects (SS and AA controls. The overall mean Cormic Index among primary subjects was comparable to that of controls (55.0±4.6% versus 54.5±5.2%; 54.8±4.5% versus 53.6±4.9% in boys and girls, respectively. In comparison with AA controls, female children with sickle cell anaemia who were older than 10 years had a significantly lower mean Cormic Index. Conclusion. There was a significant negative relationship between Cormic Index and height in subjects and controls irrespective of gender. Similarly, a significant negative correlation existed between age, sitting height, subischial leg length, weight, and Cormic Index in both subjects and controls.
Poulsen, S H; Jensen, S E; Tei, C
Prospective assessment of a nongeometric Doppler-derived index of combined systolic and diastolic myocardial performance was performed in 64 patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI) within 1 hour after their arrival to the hospital and in 39 age-matched healthy subjects. The index is defined...
Hall, Dorothy K.; Riggs, George A.
The Normalized-Difference Snow Index (NDSI) has a long history. 'The use of ratioing visible (VIS) and near-infrared (NIR) or short-wave infrared (SWIR) channels to separate snow and clouds was documented in the literature beginning in the mid-1970s. A considerable amount of work on this subject was conducted at, and published by, the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory (AFGL). The objective of the AFGL work was to discriminate snow cover from cloud cover using an automated algorithm to improve global cloud analyses. Later, automated methods that relied on the VIS/NIR ratio were refined substantially using satellite data In this section we provide a brief history of the use of the NDSI for mapping snow cover.
Guermazi, Mohammad; Yahia, Monem; Kessomtini, Wassia; Elleuch, Mohamed; Ghroubi, Sameh; Ould, Sidya Abderrahman; Mrabet, Fouzia; Fki, Hbib; Fermanian, Jacques; Poiraudeau, Serge; Revel, Michel; Baklouti, Sofiène; Elleuch, Mohamed Habib
To summarize the difficulties involved in translating tests in Arabic and to describe the translation methods and to apply those to functional indexes. Four functional indexes were translated and then subjected to the following test validation methods: back translation, pre-test, and review by an expert committee. Translation problems were underlined. These include in particular the different types of equivalence between the source language and the target language (semantics, idioms, conceptual... equivalences). Problems related to comprehensive literal words were the most observed. The current method combining translation with back translation is not sufficient and must be used with, a pre-test and a review committee.
Digests and indexes for issuances of the NRC, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, the Administrative Law Judges, the Directors` Decisions, and the Decisions on Petitions for Rulemaking are presented in this document. These digests and indexes are intended to serve as a guide to the issuances. Information elements common to the cases heard and ruled upon are: (1) case name, (2) full text reference, (3) issuance number, (4) issued raised by appellants, (5) legal citations, (6) name of facility and Docket number, (7) subject matter, (8) type of hearing, and (9) type of issuance.
Full Text Available One essential application in bioinformatics that is affected by the high-throughput sequencing data deluge is the sequence alignment problem, where nucleotide or amino acid sequences are queried against targets to find regions of close similarity. When queries are too many and/or targets are too large, the alignment process becomes computationally challenging. This is usually addressed by preprocessing techniques, where the queries and/or targets are indexed for easy access while searching for matches. When the target is static, such as in an established reference genome, the cost of indexing is amortized by reusing the generated index. However, when the targets are non-static, such as contigs in the intermediate steps of a de novo assembly process, a new index must be computed for each run. To address such scalability problems, we present DIDA, a novel framework that distributes the indexing and alignment tasks into smaller subtasks over a cluster of compute nodes. It provides a workflow beyond the common practice of embarrassingly parallel implementations. DIDA is a cost-effective, scalable and modular framework for the sequence alignment problem in terms of memory usage and runtime. It can be employed in large-scale alignments to draft genomes and intermediate stages of de novo assembly runs. The DIDA source code, sample files and user manual are available through http://www.bcgsc.ca/platform/bioinfo/software/dida. The software is released under the British Columbia Cancer Agency License (BCCA, and is free for academic use.
Cordasco Giancarlo; Pagnoni Mario; Polimeni Antonella; Nucera Riccardo; Saccucci Matteo; Tecco Simona; Festa Felice; Iannetti Giorgio
Abstract Background There have been no quantitative standards for volumetric and surface measurements of the mandibular condyle in Caucasian population. However, the recently developed cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) system allows measurement of these parameters with high accuracy. Methods CBCT was used to measure the condylar volume, surface and the volume to surface ratio, called the Morphometric Index (MI), of 300 temporo-mandibular joints (TMJ) in 150 Caucasian young adult subjects, ...
Machine Aided Indexing (MAI) is a Web-based application program for aiding the indexing of literature in the NASA Scientific and Technical Information (STI) Database. MAI was designed to be a convenient, fully interactive tool for determining the subject matter of documents and identifying keywords. The heart of MAI is a natural-language processor that accepts, as input, any user-supplied text, including abstracts, full documents, and Web pages. Within seconds, the text is analyzed and a ranked list of terms is generated. The 17,800 terms of the NASA Thesaurus serve as the foundation of the knowledge base used by MAI. The NASA Thesaurus defines a standard vocabulary, the use of which enables MAI to assist in ensuring that STI documents are uniformly and consistently accessible. Of particular interest to traditional users of the NASA Thesaurus, MAI incorporates a fully searchable thesaurus display module that affords word-search and hierarchy- navigation capabilities that make it much easier and less time-consuming to look up terms and browse, relative to lookup and browsing in older print and Portable Document Format (PDF) digital versions of the Thesaurus. In addition, because MAI is centrally hosted, the Thesaurus data are always current.
Choi, James J.; Laibson, David; Madrian, Brigitte C.
We conduct an experiment to evaluate why individuals invest in high-fee index funds. In our experiments, subjects allocate $10,000 across four S&P 500 index funds and are rewarded for their portfolio’s subsequent return. Subjects overwhelmingly fail to minimize fees. We can reject the hypothesis that subjects buy high-fee index funds because of bundled non-portfolio services. Search costs for fees matter, but even when we eliminate these costs, fees are not minimized. Instead, subjects place high weight on annualized returns since inception. Fees paid decrease with financial literacy. Interestingly, subjects who choose high-fee funds sense they are making a mistake. PMID:20495662
To have a complete human science in the mental health field it is essential to give adequate attention to both the objective and the subjective data related to people with psychiatric disorders. The tendency in the past has been to ignore or discount one or the other of these data sources. Subjective data are particularly neglected, sometimes considered (only) part of the "art" of medicine since the usual methodologies of the physical sciences in themselves are not adequate to reflect the nature, elusiveness, and complexity of human subjective experience. The complete experience of hallucinated voices, for instance, often includes not only the voices themselves but also terrible anguish and terrifying inability to concentrate. But even such descriptors fall unnecessarily short of reflecting the data of the experience, thus leaving research, theory, and treatment with incomplete information. To represent adequately the subjective data it is essential to recognize that besides the usual discursive knowledge and methods of traditional physical science, a second kind of knowledge and method is required to reflect the depth of human experience. To accomplish this, we must employ approaches to narrative and the arts that are uniquely capable of capturing the nature of these experiences. Only by attending seriously in our research, training, theory, and practice to the unique nature of subjective data is it possible to have a true human science for our field.
Grein, H-J; Schmidt, O; Ritsche, A
Reproducibility of subjective refraction measurement is limited by various factors. The main factors affecting reproducibility include the characteristics of the measurement method and of the subject and the examiner. This article presents the results of a study on this topic, focusing on the reproducibility of subjective refraction measurement in healthy eyes. The results of previous studies are not all presented in the same way by the respective authors and cannot be fully standardized without consulting the original scientific data. To the extent that they are comparable, the results of our study largely correspond largely with those of previous investigations: During repeated subjective refraction measurement, 95% of the deviation from the mean value was approximately ±0.2 D to ±0.65 D for the spherical equivalent and cylindrical power. The reproducibility of subjective refraction measurement in healthy eyes is limited, even under ideal conditions. Correct assessment of refraction results is only feasible after identifying individual variability. Several measurements are required. Refraction cannot be measured without a tolerance range. The English full-text version of this article is available at SpringerLink (under supplemental).
Underhill, Charles S., Comp.
This subject guide to articles and illustrations appearing in the National Geographic over a 64 year period groups detailed topics under broader alphabetical headings. It is not an author or title index, and includes people only as featured subjects of articles. An abbreviation key is provided. (FM)
Lirov, Yuval; Lirov, Viktor
Describes the development of a knowledge-based system, REX, that creates subject bibliographies by downloading reference material from an online bibliographic service. The expert systems architecture is explained, use of Prolog is described, and creation of the subject knowledge base and an author index are discussed. (10 references) (LRW)
This study was based on the subjective responses of the masons that are performing physical activity of blocklaying in the outdoor condition in outdoor condition in outdoor condition in Ogun State Nigeria. A total of 204 masons were investigated on the average of seventeen. Ogun State Nigeria. A total of 204 masons were ... |
By offering medical assistance and vocational training in courses such as beekeeping to landmine survivors, we can improve their livelihoods and economic independence.Learn More
LIFE OF A MINE DETECTION DOG
When our Mine Detection Dogs are not hard at work sniffing out mines, they enjoy taking breaks in swimming pools!Learn More
Through CHAMPS, MLI helps hundreds of children who have been hurt by landmines every year. Help us give injured children hope for the future!Learn How
THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS!
Thanks to our supporters, Mine Detection Dogs like Texas have helped to save lives and provide mine risk education to children around the world.Learn More
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We are deeply saddened by the passing of General Jack Merritt, the first Chairman of the Marshall Legacy Institute. The family of General Merritt welcomes donations to MLI to commemorate the legacy of General Merritt and to sponsor a lifesaving mine detection dog in his memory.Read more here
Donates highly trained landmine detection dogs to mine-affected countries and trains local handlers to safely use these dogs to find landmines. MLI has never lost a dog to a landmine injury. |
What would it be like to keep bees for 80 years? You could ask 92-year-old George Birks, who started back in the 1920s. The price of a loaf of bread was 9 cents; a pound of sugar was 7 cents; gasoline was 30 cents a gallon. And honey retailed at about 5 cents per pound. You’d be happy earning a dollar or two a day. When George Birks began his 80-year beekeeping odyssey, he may have driven a used open two-seater 9-horsepower Adamson, a popular model in England where he lived.
George Birks was introduced to the sport of bee-dodging by his uncle. As a Brit, he would have experienced the bombs and sugar rationing of the Second World War, the demise of small farm holdings, and changes in climate. Mr Birks says he started more than 80 years ago. By the time he was 12, he was an experienced bee wrangler and became a founding member of the Hartlepool Boys High School Boy Scout group, where he earned his bee farming badge. By the way, if there is any doubt that he has been living in the English countryside, he was originally from Hartlepool, but now lives in Arkengarthdale, which is near Reeth, in Upper Swaledale, and he has chaired bee clubs in Yorkshire, Beverley, Cottingham, Alnwick, and Harrogate. This week, the Richmond and Beverley Beekeeping Associations presented to him a certificate commemorating his 80 years. |
Greetings from the OC Mini Maker Faire Team,
Our first event is behind us and we consider it a wonderful success thanks to all the excellent people who helped make it happen, including our amazing volunteers. Now we are looking forward to next year and OCMMF 2013 to be bigger and better but, we can’t do it without the help of some passionate, dedicated, hardworking folks like you who are willing to volunteer some time and energy. We are looking for a few good people to join our core Leadership Team to help us not only throughout the year but, especially on event day to keep things organized and running smoothly. We’ll also be needing general volunteer help the day of the event, read on for some details.
Leadership Team Members needed include:
Someone with experience to help make sure we’re handling our finances properly, getting taxes paid right and following the rules, this is mostly a mentor/advisory position.
Help us make connections and find businesses and individuals with the Maker Spirit who are willing to invest a little money in the OC Mini Maker Faire and help it to grow in the years to come.
Area Leaders (aka Mini Bosses)
People who will be in charge of specific areas during the day of the OCMMF event. Duties include but, are not necessarily limited to: helping to recruit volunteers for your area before the big day, checking in Makers & Vendors in your area and helping things run smoothly in your area during the event. Many areas have a theme like Fiber Arts (yarn, cloth, etc), Maker Stage (music, demos, speakers, etc), vendors (small Etsy type vendors selling their wares), robotics, Homegrown Village (gardening, beekeeping, etc)
No particular experience is necessary for this position we just need some dedicated, excited people who are willing to put in the time and energy to make it the best they can.
As a Leadership Team Member you will be fed and cared for the day of the event, 10 of your friends and family will be admitted for free to the event and you will have the pride of knowing that you are helping the Maker Community in Orange County become awesome.
General volunteers for the day of the event.
These people will work for a few hours the day of the event with such tasks as ticket sales, runners, set-up crew, clean-up crew, etc. they will have the rest of the time to themselves to enjoy the event.
Please contact Bequi at Bequi@OCMiniMakerFaire.com if you’re interested. You can also follow the progress of OCMMF 2013 via Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
“There are 3,010,232 creative people in Orange County and we want to bring you together to share your passions. We believe that when this happens you’ll not only inspire each other but everyone around you. Join the movement, discover the Maker in yourself.” |
Spotify is jumping into the podcast game, apparently to compete with iTunes and their new music streaming service. The three of us use Spotify and talk about what this means as a Spotify user and also as a podcasters.
We have a few pieces of voicemail to play. These both slipped through the cracks. Gary from KiwiMana Podcast (a beekeeping podcast from New Zealand) calls in to talk about feedback from listeners and how how they use that feedback with their show. Jeffrey K Holbrook from Daggers of the Mind agrees with Dave Jackson that Tawny is the PGT secret sauce, and then he gives us a nice audio bumper to use.
One of the dirty words for podcasters is podcasting stats. The three of us talk about our philosophies with statistics. We talk about what stats services we use, how often we look at stats and what we do with the data.
Service of the Week
Tawny provides us with a service of the week on this episode and it’s Prezi. Prezi is a visually stimulating alternative to PowerPoint or Keynote. Corey uses Prezi quite a bit for work. If you’d like to see a Prezi in action, check out this video that Corey did, teaching high school students how to fill out tax forms for their first job.
Corey and Tawny will both be using Prezi for their presentations at Podcast Midwest. |
Tri-Island Cocoa Farm Rehabilitation
Tri-Island chocolate has been implementing Permaculture design practices since work began on rehabilitating their family farm from the soil up. Using Permaculture patterns found in nature as a guide they are building a sustainable, productive ecosystem on their family estate.
Through constructing a beautiful space and abundant natural food forest, you too will learn about the guided methods of the Rastafarian communities and Permaculture forefathers implemented by Tri-Island chocolate.
In this one day experience you will:
- Harvesting your own cinnamon spice.
- Meet and hear stories from Grenadian farmers
- Learn about Caribbean honey beekeeping, a bee life cycle and taste raw Grenadian honey.
- Learn how Permaculture design is being implemented across the cocoa farm
- Support the team construct their composting toilet structure
Please wear comfortable trainers/boots (you don’t mind getting wet/dirty) long trousers, sunblock, insect repellent and a sun hat. |
Designed for a full day's work in the bee yard, this zipper veil full bee suit offers the admirable features of Jawadis completely unzippable veil and the coveralls that delivers total protection for the beekeeper, pest control, bee pest control or handling small animals. The suit has a zip on the front torso and ankles for quick and easy access of wear and maximize protection. Additional zip are sewen at the ankle of the suit so you don't have to take your shoes off. What a design!
Two pockets on the legs and two on the chest fasten with Velcro. The pockets on both sleeves may be used to carry tools.
Please remember, your preferred size should fit loose to be effective against stings and to fit over your clothing. Please order a suit two size larger from your ordinary size. For example if you wear size small order beekeeping suit sized large.
Each suit is enclosed in a briefcase-like carrying case. |
Marwin Richard Despain passed away August 28, 2012, at home from complication from a fall at the river on his birthday.
Marwin was born August 4, 1935, in Phoenix, Ariz. to Elzie Winston Despain and Anna Margaret Eckel Despain. They lived in Prescott, Ariz. until the World War II years, when they moved to Lynnwood, Calif. and both parents worked in the aircraft factories.
In 1944 they moved to Medford, Ore., where they lived out their lives. Marwin went to schools in Medford and graduated from Medford High School. He attended one year of college at Brigham Young University, then married Eloise Mielke in 1956 in the Salt Lake City Temple. That same year he went to work for the Bureau of Land Management surveying for the Talent water pen stock, tunnel and canals. They worked on land surveys for Emigrant Lake, Howard Prairie, etc. He later worked for other surveyors. He worked on the Elk Creek Dam for Obioshi, on the Lost Creek Dam and first surveying, and then as a carpenter on Peyton Bridge. In 1961-1963 he went to California to work for Greenwood Surveyors who did the Olympic Village at Tahoe, then for Clair Hill who surveyed for the power lines over the Feather River Canyon area, where the only way in every day was by helicopter.
Back in 1959 he was hired by Delmar Smith, the original owner of Crater Rock Museum, who wanted to teach him beekeeping from the ground up and how to make his own bee "equipment." He had been a commercial beekeeper for 40 years along with working full time. At one time he was a building contractor and retired in 2006 from carpentry. He also held a master of cabinetry certification.
He was a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and held many positions in the church along with positions with the Boy Scouts of America.
He is survived by his wife; a sister, Roberta Henegi; five children, Richard Laurence, a rancher in Weiser, Idaho; Laura Zurligen, an interior designer in Salt Lake City, Utah; David Despain, a builder in Oregon City, Ore.; Julie Farmer, a beautician in Vernonia, Ore.; and Karen Patton, a dental technician in Vernonia, Ore.; 30 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents and a brother, Noal Despain.
Marwin and Eloise lived in the same house for 45 years.
Marwin always loved being in nature, like climbing Mt. Shasta, working with wood in his shop, and serving others in the Church. His beekeeping was his life's enjoyment, even until this time. But still his family and church came first. He had many wonderful friends.
Funeral services will be held at 10:30am on Saturday, September 1, 2012, at Memory Gardens Mortuary Chapel, 1395 Arnold Lane, with a graveside to follow at Memory Gardens Memorial Park. www.memorygardensmortuary.com |
Jim 'n' I Farms, Inc. also has a wide array of educational talks that incorporate beekeeping into many different facets of agriculture, horticulture and marketing.
Discussions can vary from 20 minutes up to full-day sessions and vary in price and availability.
Here are just a few of our past Topics of Discussion that might be of interest for your next meeting or conference. Contact us for further information and event scheduling.
Full Day and Multi-Day Classes
Basics of Beekeeping-Year 1
Basics of Beekeeping-Year 2 |
Kurds, numbering around 30 million people, are the largest stateless national group in the world, spread over eastern Turkey, northern Syria, Iraq, and western Iran. Since 2007, the government of Turkey has been bombing the Pishdar region of Iraqi Kurdistan. Innocent Iraqi Kurds are victims of these bombings — twenty people have been killed and more than a hundred civilian homes destroyed. The people of this area have been displaced, which has taken a mental toll. They struggle with the loss of their livelihoods (livestock, beekeeping, agriculture). The constant bombardment has resulted in a lack of schools, since teachers are afraid to travel to the area.
The US government could take immediate steps to pressure the Turkish government to stop the bombing. Sign the petition.
In May, Donald Trump stated President Erdogan of Turkey would receive a quick order of military equipment. The United States supports Turkey’s continuous bombing of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).However, these bombings are hurting innocent people.
Turkey's bombardments continue to date. On Friday, July 28, 2017, as part of their cross-border bombing campaign, the Turkish army shelled areas around Zakho district of Iraqi Kurdistan. As a result, four civilians have been injured. The Turkish officials claimed that they shelled the area due to the presence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). However, the civilians have rejected the Turkish government's claim.
With hope and solidarity,
Ann, Ariel, Brienne, Haley, Jodie, Katie, Mariana, Mark, Mary, Medea, Nancy, Paki, Paula, Taylor and Tighe
PS: Learn more about Iraqi Kurdistan!
Join Iraqi Kurdistan Report-Back live with CODEPINK's Nancy Mancias, August 5 @ 12pm PT/3pm ET |
INTEGRITY IN SCIENCE
I was shocked to learn, in reading the Winter 2013 journal, that the Weston A. Price Foundation had chosen to honor Andrew Wakefield with its Integrity in Science award. I am deeply disappointed in the position that your organization has taken in regards to Mr. Wakefield’s so-called research and wonder at how an organization such as yours, which seems to care about precedent and scholarly knowledge, can still support this man’s case, which has been so thoroughly debunked by a wide swath of scientific journals and credible journalists, which do not have a bone to pick and are not in the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry.
I ardently believe that it is incumbent upon an organization such as yours to be willing to be as stringent as humanly possible when propagating information, which can have such far-reaching implications to people’s health. Andrew Wakefield’s research does not, in any reasonable standard, pass this important test.
Editor’s Response: Dr. Andrew Wakefield was singled out for the wrath of the pharmaceutical industry when his research found the vaccine strain of measles virus in the intestinal tracts of children whose parents reported regressive autism and inflammatory bowel disease after the MMR vaccine. In the pursuit of the link between childhood vaccines, intestinal inflammation, and neurological injury in children, Dr. Wakefield lost his job, his career, his fellowships and his medical license. Many other teams and papers have replicated his work; these studies have been peer reviewed and published. Dr. Wakefield is in fact suing the British Medical Journal (which repudiated his published research paper) and the journalist who attacked him most virulently. His boss and supervisor, prestigious pediatric gastroenterologist Professor John Walker-Smith, who was also stripped of his medical license and accused of the same supposed wrongdoings, sued in the High Court in Britain and was fully exonerated on all charges. The judge severely rebuked the British General Medical Council for its egregious misconduct. Dr. Wakefield’s findings of a novel form of bowel disease are now so accepted in the scientific community that vaccine makers are attempting to develop a vaccine for bowel disease in kids with autism. There are well over two hundred scientific papers and case reports published in peer reviewed medical journals documenting and exploring vaccine injury and death. (These can be found at http://www.greatergoodmovie.org/learn-more/science/.) Both the U.S. and Italian governments have conceded that MMR can cause autism. Finally, I should add that WAPF, which supports non-toxic therapies, has always opposed toxic vaccinations. The Foundation will continue to support Dr. Wakefield and others like him, who have the courage to say the truth.
The Weston A. Price Foundation seems to me to be politically correct in its disregard for antibiotic use at this time in our history. However, I don’t remember reading in Dr. Price’s book that he did any research on them, so why does the Foundation jump on the bandwagon of condemning them? Are we all under the shadow of propaganda that combines all antibiotics under one umbrella term (like the word fat, which doesn’t distinguish between butter, Crisco or belly fat), and combines all use of antibiotics under that same high-dose/ short-term umbrella that generates the super bugs like MRSA?
My superficial understanding, with the help of Wikipedia, is “The term antibiotic was first used in 1942 by Selman Waksman and his collaborators in journal articles to describe any substance produced by a microorganism that is antagonistic to the growth of other microorganisms in high dilution.” Although antibiotics are produced commercially, we also have many natural antibiotics that fit this definition. There are also many synthetic drugs that are also now called by the same term, antibiotic.
Antibiotics are not all the same. The ones that may be responsible for creating the so-called super bugs work by interfering with the cell wall of their target. Many disease causing microorganisms just change their cell wall to evade persecution, thereby making the antibiotics ineffective. When these types of antibiotics are used in the standard high doses as prescribed by physicians for a short term of a week to ten days, all susceptible “germs,” as well as good guys, are killed, leaving only the strongest bugs to repopulate.
On the other hand, there is a class of antibiotics that works by inhibiting protein synthesis within the cell. This class of antibiotics targets pathogens that lack a cell wall. Because the pathogens have no cell wall, they must live as parasites within cells of a host. They are slow growing and stealthily multiply within our cells until our cells burst. They give off toxins causing us pain, and release bits of our own destroyed cells that cause all sorts of “autoimmune” conditions.
Antibiotics targeting protein synthesis tend to be the antibiotic used in animal agriculture to “promote growth.” Low doses of these antibiotics, such as the tetracycline class, promote growth of animals in unhealthy agricultural conditions by limiting reproduction of the pathogens that would normally slow the animals’ growth and cause disease. In low doses, the tetracycline class of antibiotics does not kill all susceptible micro-organisms, leaving only super bugs. Low doses do not harm the animal, or human host of the pathogen. Low doses slow down the reproduction of pathogens.
Living streptomyces bacteria produce low doses of tetracyclines in nature to do exactly the same thing—to defend against pathogens that would invade them. This is only my rudimentary understanding of a huge issue.
There have been many controlled studies, and case studies, that prove the infectious root of arthritis, scleroderma, and many, many of our chronic diseases. This globe is now one big human CAFO, after all.
The late Thomas McPherson Brown devoted his life to curing people of rheumatoid arthritis with tetracyclines, and proved the efficacy of an antibiotic cure for scleroderma. A year after Dr. Brown’s death, in 1990, Dr. Joseph Mercola, having about a dozen rheumatoid arthritis patients, attended a meeting in Chicago sponsored by the Arthritis Institute, where a dozen physicians from around the country discussed Dr. Brown’s antibiotic protocol. Dr. Mercola himself said he used Dr. Brown’s protocol on thousands of his own patients with good results (http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/08/16/ rheumatoid-arthritis-protocol.aspx#!).
In this video, Dr. Mercola wanders all around about needed nutrients that can be purchased in pill form. He basically ignores the importance of the power of tetracyclines to control the pathogens. My hypothesis is that all of the peoples studied by Dr. Weston A. Price were naturally exposed to streptomyces bacteria and the tetracyclines these bacteria produced.They didn’t need to know about them, the streptomyces bacteria were in the lands they lived on and in their fermented foods because there was no way to keep them out. These bacteria increased in the fermented foods because the fermented foods were as rich in nutrients as the soils in which they grew.
We no longer have access to these specific microbial helpers. We no longer ferment the dirt of the forest along with our sauerkraut.
I have been almost totally cured of disabling rheumatoid arthritis with nothing other than Dr. Brown’s tetracycline protocol, and only scorn from the many doctors I visited. I am what they call “non-compliant.” In my second year of low dose tetracycline, I am getting younger all the time. I have heard from seven people about my letter on mycoplasmas in the Fall 2013 issue of Wise Traditions. I believe there are many more out there who are under the cloud of bad press for antibiotics. I cringe every time I see on the WAPF Facebook page articles condemning all antibiotic use, with no understanding of the huge numbers of people being sentenced to ignorance of the cause of their incurable disease.
Editor’s Response: Weston Price did not address the issue of antibiotics because these drugs were just coming on the market when he retired. Starting in the late 1940s, antibiotics largely pushed out cod liver oil as a way of protecting against infectious disease. Our philosophy is always to try diet first—including, in the case of rheumatoid arthritis, bone broths, cod liver oil and fermented foods. Antibiotics, including low-dose tetracycline, should be a remedy of last resort, and even then, these allopathic compounds should be used in conjunction with a nutrient-dense diet.
ONCE AGAIN PRICE WAS RIGHT!
Sometimes the absence of something is more revealing than the presence of it. While other dentists were jumping on the antibiotic bandwagon in the early to mid-twentieth century, Dr. Weston A. Price continued to practice according to his conscience and the knowledge he had gained from his research on pulpless (root-canalled) teeth. This included an assessment of his patients’ susceptibility to disease and if this was indeed positive, appropriate cavitation surgery of the tooth (extraction and removal of all the surrounding dead bone). However, in patients who had a stronger constitution who he believed could reasonably quarantine the bacteria released from a root canal, Price practiced watchful waiting and would only intervene when signs or symptoms in these patients indicated the need for extraction.
Dr. Price was not only knowledgeable but a leader in researching and teaching about these dental focal infections. However, not everyone was in agreement on this subject. In fact, the backlash against these twentieth century pioneer physicians and scientists diagnosing and treating focal infections (dental, tonsil, sinus, appendix, etc.) was fierce. For one, many conventionally oriented doctors felt that dentists were overstepping their bounds by performing oral surgery to treat systemic disease (rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, ulcers, etc.) since they considered the body their turf. Further, endodontics was becoming a recognized field in dentistry, and these newly minted dental specialists didn’t appreciate focal infection advocates vilifying their primary treatment—the placement of root canals. However, the most significant cause of the demise of focal infection interest and study in the mid-twentieth century was the discovery of antibiotics.
First identified by Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928, penicillin soon became the panacea for every medical and dental infection—or even any suspected infection since it was often used prophylactically. Further, this new “miracle drug” was readily embraced by both patients and doctors alike as a relatively cheap, painless, easy-to-administer and non-invasive alternative to extraction. Although Fleming himself warned that the “misuse of penicillin could lead to the selection and propagation of mutant forms of bacteria resistant to the drug” (New York Times, 1945), the unbridled optimism for the use of this medication continued to grow.
However, as we know today, Price’s restraint was prescient. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics has become epidemic—ranging from MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphyloccus Aureus), to VRSA (Vancomycin Resistant Staphyloccus Aureus), to the horror of Clostridium difficile—a bacterium so virulent it literally peels the lining off the colon and is estimated to cause two hundred fifty thousand infections and fourteen thousand American deaths a year (Antibiotic Resistance Threats, CDC, 2013). But this drug-induced morbidity and mortality is not only confined to hospital settings; “gut dysbiosis” has become a common diagnosis for the devastating effect antibiotics wreak on our intestines, leading to such autoimmune conditions as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile d iabetes a nd Type 1 d iabetes (J. Autoimmun, 34, May 2010). And the related epidemic intestinal permeability (“leaky gut”) from antibiotics where the body has difficulty differentiating “self” (normal cells and tissues) from “nonself” (undigested food antigens, noxious excretion products from pathogenic microbes, toxic metals and chemicals, etc.) is the very definition of autoimmune disease itself. In fact, the use of antibiotic drugs in the twentieth century and the rise of autoimmune diseases – from only a handful in the early 1900s to currently comprising over one hundred different illnesses today—paralleled each other quite synchronously over the twentieth century.
Currently even conventional doctors and their allopathically oriented government agencies are sounding the alarm in regard to the ongoing misuse and overuse of antibiotics. Dr. Davies, England’s Chief Medical Officer, has stated that “Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness at a rate that is both alarming and irreversible. . . ” (11/24/12, www. nursingtimes.net). And the conservative U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued a report naming antibiotic resistance as one of the most “urgent” threats to global health, and warning both physicians and scientists about the “potentially catastrophic consequences of inaction” (Antibiotic Resistance Threats, CDC, 2013).
These frightening forecasts can certainly be daunting. But it is important to remember that killing bugs is an allopathic creed arising out of conventional medicine only in the last two centuries. By following the wise traditions of our ancestors as Dr. Weston A. Price observed in the fourteen different cultures he studied around the world in the 1930s, properly prepared nutrient-dense diets provided these exceptionally healthy indigenous peoples with readily assimilable proteins, fats, and carbohydrates to deal with life’s stressors and to ward off disease. Thus, by utilizing the dietary principles Dr. Price discovered, along with skillful biological dentistry and a non-toxic and healthy lifestyle, as well as nutritional supplements, herbs, and homeopathic remedies when required, we too can achieve and maintain optimal health, and relegate modern allopathic drugs to where they primarily belong— to be used only occasionally in acute emergencies.
Louisa L. Williams, MS, DC, ND
San Rafael, California
Editor’s Response: For more information on the rise and fall of focal infection research please see Chapter 8 in Radical Medicine by Louisa Williams. For more information on the harm antibiotics do, see Curing CASPERS at www.radicalmedicine.com.
My daughter told me this today and I found it interesting. A friend had given her a box of gluten-free crackers at Thanksgiving. She and her husband did not like the crackers so, since they live in a redwood forest with lots of critters around, they tossed them into the forest for the animals to eat. They assumed the animals would eat the crackers. But, she told me, the crackers are still there, and they have not even gotten moldy. Made me think of butter versus margarine!
SOY AND FEVERS
I want to share a success story. My son was having asymptomatic fevers of unknown origin (one hundred four degrees for six to twelve hours, at least twice a month) and getting sick all the time. He already had some odd reactions so we got him allergy tested. It turned up that he reacted to all the things he had natural aversions to. Two of the biggies were soy and legumes. We had been vegetarian for years, and all of his life. We omitted all these items from his diet and introduced local soy-free clean meats. Since doing this, he has not only been sick less, but also has not had one asymptomatic fever.
SOY AND ECZEMA
My son is sensitive to soy. It caused one of the most vicious and aggressive cases of eczema that many doctors and pediatricians have ever seen in a child (nummular eczema).
Since going organic and avoiding soy, my son is free from eczema hell. No more unfermented soy for him! He would scratch his back up against his crib in the night till he bruised and bled. My husband and I purged a basketful of creams and ointments the other week and couldn’t believe that what ended up being the solution was eliminating soy and tidying our diet. We are pretty good, but when we slip up or eat out frequently during busy times, my son suffers again.
TRULY GOOD FOOD
The health benefits of raw milk are well documented. Our own doctor praises my family for producing our own food from our garden and milking the cow that gives her raw white gold to us on a daily basis. My four healthy and beautiful children only got ear infections when I bought pasteurized milk from the store when my cow was dry. (Those were three sad months!)
But that is not what I want to write about. I have to mention the superior taste that raw, nonhomogenized milk has, something even my young children have noticed. My five-year-old turned his nose up at the store-bought (organic) milk for the first month of buying it, claiming it was “weird tasting.” Now I’m no expert or foodie, but my children are right. There is no comparison. Raw milk is a perfect example of truly good food.
Colmar Manor, MD
Editor’s Response: When raw milk is unavailable, it’s probably best just to give your children cheese.
MOVE TO AMEND PETITION
How can we put pressure on multinational agricultural corporations to improve their environmental responsibility, product quality, and treatment of employees and livestock? How can we give more power to small farms?
One easy but important step is to sign the petition at the Move To Amend website. It states “We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.”
Let’s get big money out of politics! Elected officials should work for human well being, not shareholder profits!
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
In the article “Dangers of Statin Drugs” on your website, I believe that another danger should be addressed. Over the past few years I have noticed many automobile accidents that do not appear to have any reasonable cause, usually involving elderly drivers.
Examples include backing into a building when the driver intended to go forward; stepping on the accelerator instead of the brake; and turning left instead of right—or the reverse of this action. Most, but not all, accidents have been minor.
Your article identifies issues of “memory loss,” “confusion,” “slow reaction times,” and “weak leg muscles.” These could definitely explain these strange accidents.
Would it be possible for your organization to research such accidents and determine whether statin drugs could be identified as a basic cause? If so, it may be advisable to add a warning not to drive when using statins.
Robert A, Klabis
Editor’s Response: It is very difficult to obtain such information, but we can assume that the widespread use of statin drugs makes driving more dangerous for all of us. And what about airplane pilots? Former astronaut Duane Graveline describes how an attempt to warn pilots not to take statins was quashed by the pharmaceutical industry.
WISE TRADITIONS IN SLOVENIA
As a chapter leader, I was intrigued by the raw milk vending machines throughout Slovenia. When I researched more about this amazing republic, I was impressed with the health, nutrition, and safe travel freedoms.
Off I went on an adventure for five weeks in December 2013 and January 2014. Sylvia Onusic (who offers summer tours to Slovenia) recommended I contact Vesna Veliscek (now a chapter leader in Slovenia) for her hands-on activities (www.slocally.com). Vesna and I attended a gourmet Food Walk in charming Ljubljana led by Iva Gruden of www.Ljubljananjam.si. I invite you to visit these impressive websites for their unique offerings.
There it was, a clean, gleaming beacon of health: my first of many raw milk vending machines. With joy, I inserted half a Euro and received a glass bottle, then inserted one Euro to dispense one liter of fresh, creamy, rich milk. Since I had kefir grains with me, I cultured the milk that very evening in my hotel room. I cultured every two to three days and fattened up my happy grains. I left these grains with three families who are now actively culturing and passing on the kefir grains to others.
By the way, I visibly lost weight on this trip by consuming the richest and most delicious food that Slovenia has to offer, that is, the traditional Slovenian foods. This was the typical breakfast served: a plate mounded with homemade prosciutto, salami, hard and soft cheeses, farm eggs with pancetta, olives and olive oil from the trees outside, white corn polenta, warm bread from the stone oven, fresh and dried fruit, and hot tea from herbs growing within view. This is how I started my day.
Please contact me if you wish to know what I had for lunch and dinner!
Vesna’s hands-on activities were varied: a beekeeper for raw honey, bee pollen, royal jelly and propolis; promoting a remote village for its sheep and goat cheese; running a restaurant serving trout from the Soca River a few steps away; and promoting specialty wine cellars. Vesna and I had many serendipitous experiences by being in the moment.
Miha Gartner of www.slotrips. si assisted me with tourist farm stays, seaside accommodations and airport transfers. His attentive follow-up was so appreciated.
All in all, I enjoyed being in the company of slim and active Slovenians with their sparkling eyes and warm, welcoming smiles. I am returning to this remarkable country for May and June to enjoy the cherry blossoms, ripe orchard fruits and the summer season. Revisiting Iva, Vesna and Miha will be a joy.
Rosemary Duma, RN Chapter Co-Leader
Las Vegas, Nevada
I read the articles on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and Roundup in the Fall issue of Wise Traditions. They were astounding! They arrived at a time when I was bleeding and under doctor’s care for bladder problems. After reading the articles I stopped eating all GMO foods. Now I am eleven days without a show of blood and I feel my strength has returned! Thank you for that information.
Still, changing my diet to eliminate all GMO-produced foods has been very depressing. I doubt that any one I tell about this menu change of mine will ever want to do it. Soy oil is in almost everything. Even in vitamins. And can there ever be a complete list of GMO foods? Will they never stop till all crop foods are GMOs?
The Weston A. Price Foundation is very courageous to teach people about GMOs. You are going to be either hated or loved.
San Francisco, California
I was appalled and disheartened with my 2014 Shopping Guide which reads on page 1, “Shopping Guide Now Available as an iPhone App.”
Thomas Cowan, MD, a member of the WAPF Board of Directors, gave the following excellent advice in 2009: “Throw away your cell phone; live as far away from a cell tower as you can” (Winter 2009, page 26). Beverly Rubik, PhD, in her Wise Traditions 2012 conference talk, warned WAPF members of the harmful changes in the blood when exposed to wireless devices (as seen under dark field microscopy).
German studies clearly show the pathological agglutination effects on human red blood cells (also termed rouleaux) after just twenty to ninety seconds on a wireless phone. Even more disturbing is the fact that a bystander almost six feet away was found to suffer blood changes as pathogenic as the blood of the nearby phone user.
People ignore the effects of “second- hand” radiation on those in the vicinity of the transmitting wireless devices. Yet, it is documented in many independent scientific studies that fetuses, babies and children are the most vulnerable to harmful exposure effects of radio frequency microwaves.
Many grocery shoppers are mothers. Some are pregnant or have young children with them. I often see moms using iPhones within inches of their babies in shopping carts, some of whom are allowed to play with wireless devices. Microwaves blasting from cell phones pass through barriers (concrete, wood, glass) and travel miles to cell towers. Imagine how easily they penetrate human bodies, especially those of babies. The Russian government warns: “Use of mobile telecommunication devices for those under eighteen or pregnant should be restricted” (Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection).
High levels of radio frequency microwaves and electromagnetic fields from an iPhone were described by a WAPF member in the Summer 2013 Wise Traditions (page 9): “I just tested my wife’s iPhone and I was shocked. My meter measures both microwaves and magnetic fields. Not only did the phone put out the expected microwaves, but it also generated a huge electromagnetic field. The phone spiked my meter from three feet away. . . I have never seen such strong fields from any appliance— that’s what was so shocking.” Yet, this is the very device now recommended for accessing the WAPF 2014 Shopping Guide!
In a YouTube video, Dietrich Klinghardt, MD makes the following comment: “Right now we are in the process of sacrificing generations of children in the name of the god of cell phones and electro-communications. . . they are being crippled in their soul development and their higher development.”
And in a private training seminar for medical doctors Dr. Klinghardt explained: “The worst one [cell phone], by the way, is now the iPhone. I don’t know if you know how the iPhone works, but the iPhone is a horrible, horrible idea . . . Every iPhone user is a broadcasting panel. You’re a walking, broadcasting panel. And the only way you can switch that function off is by taking the battery out. Even if you turn it off, the iPhone is still a sending mast. It’s a really evil technology. Unbelievable!”
Thank goodness WAPF has been tireless in its warnings about soy, GMOs, processed foods, and so on. Just as important are consistent warnings on the well documented and devastating effects of radio frequency microwaveemitting devices. Should the WAPF actively contribute to harm by offering an iPhone download of the Shopping Guide in the name of making product selection quick and convenient?
The words of Dr. Neil Cherry (1946- 2003), Associate Professor of Environmental Health at Lincoln University, New Zealand, should guide us all: “Electromagnetic fields and radiation damage DNA and enhance cell death rates and therefore they are a Ubiquitous Universal Genotoxic Carcinogen that enhances rates of cancer, cardiac, reproductive and neurological disease and mortality in human populations. Therefore there is no safe threshold level. The only safe exposure level is zero, a position confirmed by dose-response trends in epidemiological studies.”
Ken Hardy Chapter Co-Leader
Las Vegas, Nevada
Editor’s Response: Much as we may object to cell phones, iphones and ipads, they are not going away. Our Shopping Guide App will reach thousands of people who have never heard of WAPF before, and help them find foods that could protect them, as least partially, from the effects of EMFs. Rest assured, we will still continue to publish the Shopping Guide in hard copy form, for those who do not use cell phones or iphones (including myself). We will even be providing a version of the Shopping Guide for old fashioned computers.
I am a chapter leader in a small town, and for years I was discouraged by low numbers attending our chapter meetings. Starting in 2010, there were three to five at meetings, then it grew to twelve for a while. Then a young woman named Jodi started coming to meetings last year. She had been extremely ill with many symptoms, up to thirty in all, the main one being frequent incapacitating migraine headaches. After changing her diet she started to feel better, and then after one meeting she chatted with Dr. Wayne Feister, and he said to her, “Maybe it is the MSG.” She then did a lot of study, and became quite the expert on food additives. She is now celebrating one year of great health with no headaches.
She is so happy she has become a crusader for the Weston Price Foundation. She orchestrated an article in the local paper with a photo of her and myself with the whole story. She and I have since had many inquiries. The local library contacted me because folks had come in there wanting more information on WAPF. I had to go in and explain that yes, they already have Wise Traditions on the shelf. I also took in my WAPF business card, plus some brochures.
Jodi has been posting info on her Facebook page causing my group to grow even before the newspaper article. We now have about thirty people at meetings, and we are still growing! The dear girl is on a mission.
Jane Kraft, Chapter Leader
Kenton/Hardin County, Ohio
A FOOD EVENING
I have been a chapter leader for Herefordshire in the UK for two years and for twelve years have been running a guest house with my partner Robert Elliott. Our overriding passion is real food (sourcing, cooking and eating!) and since being introduced to Weston Price by one of our guests, we have taken every opportunity to talk about the Foundation and its work to anyone who has been prepared to listen!
In 2008 we published Rob’s first book, The Food Maze, a distillation of our own research into modern industrial food production and its impact on our health and the environment, wrapped around our own personal journey of discovery. We are always thrilled when we get positive feedback from those who have read it and as a result change the way they do things, such as swap their supermarket allegiance for independent shops, start growing their own vegetables or seek out a local raw milk producer.
For example, a couple named Hannah and David came to stay with us last November. They coincidentally had read The Food Maze before they visited us. Since November they have been spreading the real food message to family, friends and their local community. Their enthusiasm knows no bounds and I would love to share it with you. They live in Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire and have two young children. Below is the letter we received from them.
“The food evening we hosted a couple of weekends ago was a great success. It felt a bit odd at first, but we soon settled into it, and everyone was very well fed by the time they left. We talked about everything we’ve learned and done, gave out books and then we just fed people.
“We had eating going on in our living room, and the dining room was set up a bit like a shop—with loads of produce set out (mainly dry whole foods and toiletries) with prices per unit marked on so that people could see and touch them, and get a real sense of value for money.
“Then we had another table with loads of books on it and David had some brilliant chats with people there.
“It was really nice to hear the conversations that emerged naturally over ‘dinner.’ The food was a slightly strange concept, but we wanted to take people on a tour of a whole day of eating. So rather than a big full-on meal, we did small portions of breakfast, lunch, dinner and tea. It felt mighty odd giving people a small bowl of porridge with their glass of wine to start a Saturday night dinner party, but it actually worked brilliantly! So we had porridge with various toppings—homemade yogurt, local honey, homemade jam and Rapadura sugar. Then David made a delicious pearl barley risotto with local cheese and thyme from the garden. We had homemade breads with homemade butter and a birthday cake for one of our guests made with stoneground flours, Rapadura sugar, butter from the dairy, and eggs from our friends’ chickens. We also had raw milk tastings.
“We had an old fashioned butter churn on display, which was passed around throughout the evening. Everyone helped to make the butter (from untreated cream from the dairy) that we ate with the bread later on.
“The parting shot was really to invite people to be part of three strands we’re involved in—online wholefoods bulk shop, raw milk/cream/butter round, and FarmDrop. It was a great success. The amazing thing is that everyone who came has sent me a shopping list, so I am placing an enormous order on Friday night. We are collecting approximately forty pints of milk every ten days or so at the moment—it’s only for three families so far, but that’s fine for now.
“FarmDrop is exciting. I have a webinar interview that will teach me more, but it looks likely that I will be setting up one here in Irthlingborough. This will be the first in our region, and hopefully will happen in the next few months. If you have a look at the website you’ll get the gist of it : http://www.farmdrop.co.uk/#/
“The other exciting thing that has happened since I last wrote, is that we have got chickens! Still very young, so no eggs for a little while, but they seem very happy in our yard, and the children have been absolutely wonderful with them. I would say our food waste has been reduced by well over 75 percent now that all the veg peelings are going straight to the chickens!”
A footnote to the story is that Hannah’s application for a FarmDrop in Irthlingborough has been accepted. We await with great anticipation the next chapter of their story.
Sally Dean, Chapter Leader
LES DAMES DC FOOD SYMPOSIUM
by Kim Hartke, WAPF Publicist
Les Dames d’ Escoffier is an international organizationof Women in the Culinary Arts. It originated in New York City, and the second oldest chapter is the Washington, DC chapter. Every two years the DC chapter holds a food symposium, where women in the food, beverage, and hospitality industry gather to learn about trends, techniques, and professional skills they will need to excel in their field. The event is open to the public, and many who attend are interested in food, nutrition, and wine. This year, for the first time, the Weston A. Price Foundation exhibited at this fascinating day of food festivities and workshops.
The international president of Les Dames, Beth Allen described their mission as advocacy, farming, nutrition, health and wellness, and philanthropy. The women of Les Dames to date have raised four million dollars and awarded scholarships to help deserving women attend culinary school.
The sessions during the event incorporated many topics close to the Weston A. Price mission. One of them, called Backyard Farming, featured a live hen, Oprah Henfree, who came for show and tell. The panelists also discussed beekeeping, kitchen gardening, farmers markets and sustainable farming.
“Charcuterie: How Salt and Time Transform” was about home food preservation which demonstrated nourishing traditional foods such as liver pâté, gravlax, and rillettes. Another speaker taught about olive oil and how to evaluate a product’s purity and authenticity.
A fascinating session called “Food and Culture” was led by the writers of American Food Roots, a website devoted to telling food stories. The new Internet journal highlights the cultural diversity that abounds in our melting pot America. The website is looking for unique food heritage stories, and they are creating an active and engaged community around geographic and ethnic foodways. The writers plan to write or film more stories about agriculture. One of the writers mentioned how huge fermenting is now, but seemed unaware of the role that Sally Fallon Morell and Sandor Katz have played in popularizing this traditional food. She attributed the interest in ferments to the availability of produce at farmers markets.
Particularly insightful was the panel discussion about the future of restaurant food. Phil Petrilli, who worked for Chipotle during its ascendency (he helped engineer the chain’s relationship with Joel Salatin), is now leading the national operations of Noodles and Company. He said both of these restaurant chains are based on the concept of “fast casual.” He said today’s recession-weary consumer is eating out less, and demanding more in quality, while still wanting an economical meal. He said consumers’ palates are expanding and flavors like curry and coconut are no longer scary but desirable. He sees spice levels and heat levels also increasing on restaurant menus. He explained that cravability still rules, and is created by sugars, fats and salts. Noodles and Company makes their chicken stock in-house at commissaries around the country, with fresh produce brought in daily.
The leading restaurant consultant in the world, Michael Whiteman, appeared on the panel through a video linkup from his home in Brooklyn. When asked about food trends, he said that innovation has stalled at the upper end of the market. He believes all the hot food trends are coming from the bottom end, where food is most affordable. He said the innovators are the chefs in food trucks, hipster joints and start-up fast casual restaurants. He claims that what is exciting today’s diner are the mash-ups of different ethnic foods, such as a Mexican taco topped with Korean kimchi. He said people want the collision of cultures on their tongue, and he dubbed all these gastronomic experiments and multinational taste thrills “world food.”
Lisa Kartzman, communications director of a food importer, Roland Foods, listed the top food trends. She said the top trends are flavors and spices, fresh herbs, health and wellness, ancient grains, gluten-free, non-GMO, organic and sustainability. She said when Roland first exhibited at the Natural Products Show, only one and one-half aisles were devoted to food products. Today, half the show is food. She also said more and more chefs are asking for non-GMO products.
It was a rewarding day, and it was heartening to hear echos of Weston A. Price principles in many of the sessions. The Dames were very excited to have WAPF as a new exhibitor, so chapter leaders in metropolitan areas may want to find out if there is a similar event sponsored by the Dames in your city. |
Harvest is the premier provider of home-brew, wine-making and fermentation needs. We also carry the supplies you need to make your homesteading dreams come true!
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Ohio Local Honey & Hive Products
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-Harold Thurman Whitman |
Gone (Evan Ratliff): In the age of cell telephones, databases, GPS, and social networks, you can never really disappear. The story of a younger father who seemed to have it all – till he faked his loss of life.
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Are you a fan of Honey? Have you been taking it or using it regularly? I am sure most of you have at least a bottle of Honey at home due to its long list of benefits and uses. While some of us like to take it as a refreshing drink to soothe the throat, I have been taking honey regularly to strengthen my body’s immune system and sometimes use it in substitution of sugar.
There are many types of honey in the market ranging from the flora, mild to hearty types to the more commonly heard Manuka which not only has healing properties, but increase our body’s immunity.
If you had been purchasing honey from your regular grocery store, you may have come across this brand of honey called Capilano.
Capilano Honey was established in 1953 as a cooperative to support Australian beekeepers by Brisbane brothers Tim and Bert Smith. More than six decades later, Capilano is proud to continue to supply delicious, 100% pure Australian honey from their network of more than 600 beekeeping families across Australia. For more information, visit http://www.capilanohoney.com
Capilano Honey is based in Australia and they have recently launch the world’s first clinically-tested honey with naturally occurring prebiotics, Beeotic®.
Beeotic® is the result of extensive research and a world-first clinical study conducted through the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to identify the widely recognised, but until now unproven, prebiotic health potential of selected Australian honeys.
So what are the benefits of consuming Prebiotics Honey?
- Prebiotic rich foods (e.g. Jerusalem artichoke, onion, garlic, leek, asparagus) can help the good bacteria in your gut grow, improving the good-to-bad bacteria ratio and helps to improve your digestive health.
- Honey has been used to help normalise digestive balance (by raising levels of good bacteria and suppressing potentially harmful ones in the digestive tract) they are a good source of prebiotics.
Beeotic® is 100% pure Australian honey. The name ‘Beeotic®’ comes from the incredible natural phenomenon in which, during the process of converting nectar into honey, bees add special enzymes that help create prebiotic sugars in conjunction with their own diverse gut microbiota.
If you are looking at improving your overall digestive health, simply consume a daily dose of 14ml (equivalent of 1tbsp). I personally prefer to scoop my honey using a wooden or plastic spoon to prevent spoiling the properties but so long as you do not “soak” your spoon in the jar of honey, it should be fine.
This product is halal-certified and is recommended for children 12 months and up. The bottle comes with a Lift “n” Peel seal which is such a clever idea! I used to struggle opening seals, leaving uneven edges, but not anymore with this.
I love they honey’s smooth texture and its sweetness when ingested. You can also use this honey on your pancakes and waffles instead of your regular maple syrup.
Feel free to drizzle them on your bread as a bread spread or make them into a refreshing honey lemon drink in this hot, wet and occasionally erratic weather to boost your body’s immunity. 1 tablespoon of honey is sufficient to make a glass, you can adjust this according to your taste preference.
The squeeze upside down bottle is friendly for your pancakes and you can go hands free. Great for adding them to your drinks to use the honey as a sweetener and no mess from digging the jar.
Where to purchase?
Beeotic® is available in all leading supermarkets (NTUC, Giant and Cold Storage) in Singapore in two BPA-free PET variants: 340g upside down ($16.80) and 500g jar ($22.00).
Before you head off, I am pleased to announce that Capilano Honey had given me 2 additional sets ( 1 Jar + 1 Upside down Jar) for my giveaway so I’ll be doing the giveaway over on my instagram and facebook page soon. Do follow me at www.instagram.com/pearlywerkz and http://www.facebook.com/pearlywerkz for more details of how you can win a set for yourself.
For more information about Capilano Honey :
Disclaimer: Thank you Capilano Honey for sending these products over for my review. Review is 100% honest and based on personal experience. All photographs on this site belongs to the property of Pearlywerkz. Please do not take them as your own. Do ask for permission if you wish to utilize them. |
2017 Promises to be more Colorful than 2016!
At least, on our walls. Last year almost all of the colors of the year were pretty neutral. But, oh how things have changed! This year, Pantone looks to brighten our day with Greenery. As stated on the their website, Pantone believes their 2017 Color of the Year symbolizes “new beginnings, lushness, renewal and restoration”. And, of course, they hope you will use Greenery, a “fresh and zesty yellow-green, to rejuvenate and revitalize your spaces”. Referring to it as “nature’s neutral,” Pantone sees this shade as “life-affirming”. Now, I’m not sure that I would ever refer to a paint color as “life-affirming”, but I will say this is a bright, cheerful shade of green that reminds me of spring foliage and Kermit the Frog!
The only real neutral on this years forecast list is Sherwin Williams’ Poised Taupe. It is a classic balance of cool and warm, bold and subtle. As Sherwin Williams likes to describe this shade, “It’s as though gray and brown had a baby.” Poised Taupe is “weathered, woodsy, cozy and harmonious.” Consequently, it is a classic background that will work in rooms that have either gray or brown in the color palette. The aftereffect of this color depends on whether you choose warm or cool colors to pair with it. So, for those of you who are not ready for the vividness of Greenery, Poised Taupe may be your answer.
Next, is Olympic Paint. They decided to go with a soothing, soft shade of violet. Cloudberry is “refreshing, calming and serene.” As stated on their website, Olympic Paint intends Cloudberry to be a hue to help you “escape outside distractions and create balance in your surroundings.” I would definitely use Cloudberry to create a tranquil and mesmerizing master bedroom suite.
Because Benjamin Moore decided to go a little darker and more mysterious than Cloudberry, their Shadow is “allusive and enigmatic, a master of ambiance.” On their website, they refer to Shadow as a “rich, royal amethyst that is provocative, poetic and sophisticated.” This is quite a departure from last year’s color of the year, Alabaster. Shadow is dark and intense, you may want to experiment with this shade in small doses. Therefore, it would positively make a eye-catching accent wall.
Honey Glow, which is Dunn Edwards’ color of the year, rivals Pantones’ Greenery in it’s brightness and energy. This “warm, golden yellow hue is cheerful, bold and lively.” Dunn Edwards has actually partnered with a nonprofit organization called HoneyLove to promote urban beekeeping and educate people about making their gardens bee friendly. Consequently, Dunn Edwards has agreed to donate 10% of the proceeds of Honey Glow to HoneyLove! This shade, too, may be one to start with in small doses, unless this happens to be your all-time favorite color.
Byzantine Blue, from Glidden Paint, is meant to be considered “gender-neutral.” And, according to their website, Byzantine Blue, which is really a “playful, yet peaceful purple” is uniquely versatile. Because this really is an adaptable color, I could see it being beautifully used in a variety of spaces.
Finally, we have Pittsburgh Paint’s Violet Verbena. As you can see, many companies went with a blue-violet shade for their 2017 Colors of the Year. Probably not really surprising though, as blue is the most often quoted as being people’s favorite color. Violet Verbena has a grayish purple “chameleon-like hue that adds depth and luxury,” according to their website. In addition, it could be the “perfect backdrop” for a little “subtle and serene pampering.” Violet Verbana is” bohemian, playful, moody and tranquil” in style. |
UCS is rightly proud of the range of co-curricular activities that are on offer at the Senior School. This is entirely consistent with our aim to encourage our young people to be intellectually curious, confident and kind.
Our reputation for drama and music is second to none. The variety of productions in our state-of-the-art theatre is astounding, many of them produced and directed by the pupils themselves. Similarly, in music, the range of concerts of different genres, choirs and musical ensembles caters for every taste. The all-round quality of what the pupils produce is remarkable. We would boast that we can offer lessons in pretty much any instrument that any boy or girl would like to learn!
The range of sporting experiences on offer to all the pupils is equally wide-ranging. As well as all the major team sports (Football, Rugby, Cricket, Hockey and Tennis) our swimming squad for example has benefitted enormously from the state of the art pool at UCS Active. Similarly, netball and basketball are going from strength to strength as is senior girls' football. All pupils benefit from at least one games session a week as well as having the opportunity to make full use of our outstanding indoor sporting facilities at Frognal. The quality of coaching for all is first class and augmented by specialist support in all the major sporting codes.
However, it is the range of activities on top of this that is perhaps most impressive. Many of our vast array of clubs are run by the pupils themselves. Our History of Science, Islamic and Jewish Societies are prime examples of this. From gardening and beekeeping through to more obviously intellectual pursuits including a vast array of visiting speakers, there is much to stimulate and challenge our young people on a daily basis.
The Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme is extremely popular across the top years of the school and pupils are entered for the Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards on a yearly basis. Add to this the wide range of external trips; regular theatre and opera visits, a wide range of educational trips including to CERN in Geneva for our Physicists, to Barcelona for our Mathematicians, New York for our Drama students, History trips to the Battlefields and more widely around Europe, regular language exchanges, music tours, ski trips both to Europe and the United States as well as sporting tours around the globe including a rugby tour to South Africa in July 2017 to name but a few. All of these add to the richness of the experience that is on offer as part of an education at UCS. |
The European or Western Honey Bee (Apis millifera) is not native to the Americas. They where brought to the Americas by settlers in the early 1800. Now, have you every stopped to wonder how life would be if the Honey Bee's where to disappear? Well think about this, each day farmers around the world have thousands of tiny winged workers pollinating the crops of the food that we eat and the plants we use.
Why is that so important? Tree's and plants need to mate just like animals and humans and the offspring of the mating process are the fruits and vegetables we eat. Pollen is the male germ cells produced by all flowering plants for fertilization and plant embryo formation. The Honeybee uses pollen as a food. Flowers would also be at risk of decline if they are not pollinated. Bees are the main source of pollination and bees make up 80% of the insect world.
Without the bees the farmers would have to find other way to pollinate which would be time consuming and costly to the farmers and to the consumers.
Dirk Olsen of Olsen Honey Farms of Albany prepares for the day as bee crews load the truck with feeder bottles to be distributed to the hives.
The Beekeepers job is to help this process along and Commercial Beekeepers like Dirk Olsen of Olsen Honey Farms make a living working with honey bees. Dirk Olsen has two subspecies of western honey bees, the Italian and the Carniolan bee.
Dirk and his beekeeping crews start early in the morning in order to check the hives, move the hives and feed the bees for more than 100 sites. Feeding the bees cost Olsen Honey Farms $2000 a day. Feeder jugs are filled with sugar water and placed on top of the hives. Without this food during the winter the bees would die. Olsen Honey Farms provides bees to almond orchards in central California as well as meadow foam fields in Oregon.
Farmers pay $48 per hives at two hives an acre in order to have bees placed on their farms to pollinate crops such as kale, turnips, clover, pumpkin, cherry, almonds and much more.
Feeder bottles are filled full of sugar water and are lined up in boxes in the warehouse at Olsen Honey Farms. The feeders will be loaded onto a truck and taken out to the bee hives so that the bees can eat.
A colony of bees consist of one queen per hive, 200 to approximately 500 drones and thousands of workers. The drones are the only males in the hive and their only job is to mate with the queen. Drones are formed from an unfertilized egg from the queen and the female workers are formed from fertilized eggs. The queen mates only once in her life but she will mate with several drones and stores the sperm in a sac called the spermatheca. After the drone mates, his penis will break off and he will die. If drones remain during the winter months, they are removed from the hives and they will die.
Dirk Olsen of Olsen Honey Farms inspects a hives for the condition of the colony.
Bee hives must be check regularly to determine if the queen is producing and to check on the condition of the colony. If a queen is not producing the she is destroyed and replaced with a new queen by the bee keeper. Hive population has suffered due to the cold and wet weather conditions. In the United States alone we have seen a decline in the bee population due to a syndrome called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) wherein the worker bees are disappearing.
Although there is no definitive answer as to why this phenomenon is occurring, researchers and beekeepers have found some contributing causes. Dirk Olsen said that some of the causes are varroa mites, disease, and the lack of greater genetic diversity of the queens.
Greg Hansen of Olsen Honey Farms prepares a smoker for inspecting the bee hives. Burlap is burned in the smoker to calm the bees. Experts say that the bees, sensing the smoke, go into a survival stage rather then protecting the hive by gathering as much food as they can from the combs.
The Queen Bee pictured just left of the center is the largest bee in the colony and the only bee that lays eggs. Seen here, the worker bees will make a pathway for the queen as she moves about the hive.
Varroa mites are one of the largest contributor of CCD. Varroa mites can be seen with the naked eye as a small red or brown spot on the bee's thorax. Varroa mites feed off the bodily fluids of adult, pupal and larval honey bees. Varroa are carriers for a virus that is particularly damaging to the bees. Bees that are infected with this virus during their development will often have visibly deformed wings.
The disease nosema lives in the stomach of the bee and is widespread among adult honey bees. The symptoms of the Nosema are relatively nonspecific. This makes it easy to confuse with other diseases of the honeybee. It arises mostly in the spring after periods of bad weather, although it may also be a winter disease that is only noticed in the spring when beekeepers first inspect their hives.
The most notable symptom is dysentery. This appears as yellow stripes on the outside of the hive and in severe cases, inside the hive. Bees may also be unable to fly (“crawling”) due to disjointed wings. Further symptoms include increased girth of the abdomen, missing sting reflex and early supersedure of the queen. If the queen is infected, its ovaries degenerate and ovum production drops due to atrophy of the ova, after which it is likely to be superseded.
Even though bee population has been down in the United States, beekeepers are building their hives back up. Ongoing research will determine the causes of CCD, but ultimately it will take the diligent efforts of the ever watchful beekeeper to ensure the successful restoration of the bee population. |
ACBA Regular Meeting
* The next regular meeting of the ACBA will be on May 10, 2018. * The speaker will be Bob Cole who will discuss swarming.* The meeting will ... [more
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To be up to date with the latest information in the apiculture industry to can check out our beekeeping latest news. On the other hand in case you’re new to apiculture and would like to start professional beekeeping today get a copy of our beekeeping for beginners ebook.
Beekeeping, like every other activity, has its own dos and don’ts. Beginning beekeeping generally involves buying bees and the needed equipment. Nevertheless, some individuals who are starting this avocation generally make several mistakes. It’s ok to make mistakes, which post can help new beekeepers avoid making precisely the same mistakes others have before.
Here are three mistakes which every beekeeper should avoid:
1. Not knowing the best time to start a beekeeping business or hobby can end up being a calamity. It often leads to some lack of cash and your bees. Since most bees expire during the winter, winter is the worst possible time to begin. This would force a beekeeper to purchase a fresh mountain of bees, which would cost more cash. Fall is another inferior time since you will find fewer blooms, hence a smaller amount of honey harvested, to start beekeeping. The best time to begin beekeeping is during summer, which is the time of the year where there are loads of blooms that are blooming.
2. Buying used gear and old books on beekeeping. That is a typical mistake made by many start beekeepers. Purchasing used old and equipment beekeeping publications is not a great thought, although it is clear that one would want to conserve money as much as possible. First, used gear can come with “familial” issues. The extractor factory outlet might have a leak, or the uncapping knife might not be sharp enough to uncap all the wax in one go. This would surely change the quality of one’s honey, which isn’t an ideal situation particularly if a beekeeper is planning to begin a honey-selling business. Second, outdated information can be provided by old books on beekeeping. One might be stuck using the traditional method when there are better and more rapid means fabrication honey and to maintain beehives.
3. Refraining from purchasing protective gear. Think about this. He/she’ll come out as a pincushion with all the bee stingers stuck to their body if one does not wear protective equipment when managing the hives and accumulating the honeycombs. Protective equipment is not cheap, yes, but it is going to help beekeepers avoid having to pay medical bills.
These three errors are presented here to help future beekeepers avert them. Before getting started beekeeping, it is best to consult with a specialist beekeeper. If purchasing a particular thing looks overly expensive, constantly think about the end cost ( in case that they do not purchase this item now, will it cost them more later on?). In the end, it truly is up to the person to decide the best course of action. |
I went to an Introductory Beekeeping class this month, and it was AMAZING!! Offered by the Lake County Beekeepers Association, it was chock-full of information, useful strategies, history and biology, and specific steps for starting your own hives.
I left with the very firm conviction that I want to commit to beekeeping; however, with a daughter who is still hesitant, neighbors right next door who are somewhat nature-phobic, and still so much to learn… I’m okay taking one more year to plan carefully, feel fully prepared, and find a good home for my initial hives.
What I also left with, however, was an even stronger urge to advocate for the safety, protection, and support of pollinators locally and worldwide. We need our bees, friends. We need them desperately. And right now they seem to be the proverbial canary in the coal mine – giving us an early heads up that our environment (and food) has become unsustainably toxic. Something has to change.
And that’s where we come in. Today, I want to share 6 easy things we can each do that will immediately and very effectively have a positive impact on our bees. Perhaps if enough of us step in, change our own environments, and use our power as consumers to help usher in constructive change – we will manage to save our pollinators. Any step(s) you can take will help a great deal!
* * *
There is increasing evidence that our pollinators (honey bees, wild bees, etc.) are dying off. Colony Collapse Disorder is a very real thing, though the theories on cause and remedy do vary. (And if you have time, I do encourage you to look through all those embedded links!)
While there may not be a cohesive theory as to why it’s happening, everyone is sure it is. Hearing decades-long beekeepers talk about the shifts they’ve seen and the observational data they can offer is extremely sobering. One of the best – and easiest – things you can do is become more informed and advocate in every way possible to save the bees. Here are some of the petitions and efforts currently underway:
- You can find petition efforts to help protect the bees via Change.org, SumofUs, MoveOn.org, CREDOaction, and Food Democracy Now. (If you’re finding this post after these have expired, Bee Petitions has up-to-date info on active petitions you can sign.)
- Whole Foods has started an effort called Share the Buzz that seeks to provide information, advocacy ideas, and important partnerships.
- Several films have been made about CCD and the disappearance of pollinators. You can support the movies, host screenings, or find additional ways to get involved through their websites. Check out: Vanishing of the Bees, Queen of the Sun, More Than Honey, and the PBS documentary Silence of the Bees.
- Nonprofits like The Honeybee Conservancy, Native Bee Conservancy, and The Nature Conservancy have loads of information, volunteer opportunities, and ways to support bee conservation efforts.
2. INCREASE YOUR BEE-FRIENDLY PLANTS
All of our bees are suffering – we often think of honey bees first, but other wild bees are essential to the pollination of food crops. By planting bee-friendly flowers, herb, and grasses in your environment, you can help ensure a variety of bees can gather food in areas that are safe. Here are some resources that can help you determine what may work best in your area:
- The Native Plant Society can help you identify native species in your state (in the US), or you can try Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center‘s database. While not all are necessarily bee-friendly, using native species helps all local flora and fauna thrive.
- The Honeybee Conservancy has tips and strategies for planting a bee-friendly garden.
- For those in Britain, check out treehugger‘s info on lists shared by the Royal Horticultural Society for 400 bee-friendly plants.
- Plant suggestions shared with me by local (Midwest) beekeepers include: thistle, clover, alfalfa, maple trees, chicory, dandelions, goldenrod, coneflower, and anything in the mint family.
- PLEASE BE SURE to buy plants you know are safe from chemicals. Bee supporters have been petitioning Home Depot and Lowe’s to stop selling pesticide-laden plants… but no change is yet firm. Buy from a safe source, such as Ernst Conservation Seeds or The Ark Institute (among others), to ensure seeds are chemical-free.
3. MAKE YOUR MONEY TALK
It’s always important to remember: One of the greatest roles of power we inhabit is that of consumer. How and where you spend your money matter. Supporting businesses that are truly bee-friendly sends a message, as does ignoring businesses who are harming the planet. Here are a few ideas for getting the biggest bang for your (metaphorically loud) buck:
- Burt’s Bees has a Wild for Bees program that includes information, community partnerships to increase plantings for pollinators, and recipes by chefs who keep bees.
- Support local garden and nursery shops who sell chemical-free plants. If you’re not sure what to look for, check out the Xerxes Society for a list of common pesticides used (in the US), or visit Beyond Pesticides to find common trade names for bee-harming chemicals.
- Buy organic when you can. This type of purchase ensures your food was grown without the use of pesticides, chemicals, or GM/GE crops… all of which helps ensure bee safety and hive survival. Be wary of companies masquerading as safe. EWG and others have begun to compiles lists of companies greenwashing their efforts by putting on an organic (or at the very least “healthy”) facade while actually cutting dangerous corners in production. Check out the Non-GMO Shopping Guide to help your decision-making on grocery day.
4. STOP USING PESTICIDES
So along with planting chemical-free plants and buying chemical-free food (both of which are fantastic steps!), it’s important to remember that we’ve also got to treat our own homes in a chemical-free way. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the way we treat our yards, water our plants, or pest-proof our homes can also introduce harmful toxins into the environment. Here are some ideas for getting pesticides out of your local domain:
- Check out Reader’s Digest or Mother Earth News to learn how to garden chemical-free. Select organic soils and natural fertilizers, boost plants’ growth with worm compost tea, and conquer garden pests without pesticides.
- Try to maintain your lawn naturally. Organic Gardening has great tips on natural lawn care that is safer for you and the environment.
- Take are of pests inside your home with chemical-free strategies from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Most common household pests can be eliminated naturally; however, if you’re looking for a company that can offer a safe alternative, take a look at Beyond Pesticides’ Safety Source for Pest Management.
5. BUILD A BEE HOUSE
One of the best ways to support local pollinators is to build a bee house (sometimes also referred to as a bee hotel, or bee box). These little structures provide a nesting area for pollinators of all types, which encourages population growth. Here are a few resources for building (or buying) your own pollinator palace:
- The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service offers loads of information on how to build your own bee block (or nesting block), as well as how to encourage nesting with natural materials you may have on your property. Wonderful information can also be found via The Pollinator Garden.
- Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World (an amazing book) has instructors for building your own native pollinator habitat – along with lots of other cool DIY projects.
- Mason Bee Homes (out of Canada) provides multiple styles of bee houses you can purchase (or you can search YouTube for build-your-own videos).
6. START YOUR OWN HIVE
Okay. This one may not qualify as easy, but it’s worth considering. When you consider that one beehive can yield 85 to 100 pounds of honey each year, most beekeepers say they break even in the first year (and if you make some of the necessary equipment from scratch, you can make even more).
In some states, a certain amount of acreage enables you to list the bees as livestock to enjoy a tax break. So it’s not only an act of protection and advocacy (and a labor of love for most keepers), it’s also not a bad way to make some extra income while sustaining the environment. If you think you even might be interested, I encourage you to give these resources a look:
- The American Beekeeping Federation (ABF) is a wonderful place to start for information. Consider it the motherload of honeybee-related facts.
- Beesource is an online community that enables you to virtually connect with beekeepers all over the world, boasting 14000 member and growing.
- The Practical Beekeeper: Beekeeping Naturally by Michael Bush is a highly recommended starter book.
- Visit your local Farmers’ Market and talk to any honey sellers you see. Chances are, they keep their own bees – and will LOVE to tell you all about them! (Seriously, these folks really do tend to adore their bees.) |
Ned Ryan Doyle remembers the days of the original staff of MOTHER EARTH NEWS magazine. Doyle talks about working on MOTHER's Ethanol Fuel and Low-Cost Solar tours, being part of the Eco-Village and teaching hundreds of workshops each year.
Learn about the original staff of MOTHER EARTH NEWS magazine and the remarkable changes they helped to make in self-sufficient living issues of the day.
I discovered my first issue of the MOTHER EARTH NEWS in 1974. Immediately it struck me that something was very different about this magazine. It was filled with practical, realistic advice, information and projects all centered on sustainable living with respect for the Earth. I was hooked on "MOTHER" with that one issue. Like thousands of others at the time, I felt it was far more than a how-to publication; it was a magazine with a larger message that spoke to the people. The articles and editorials addressed very real concerns about the environment, about the absurdity of relying on fossil fuels, about false economics and a myriad other issues, nearly all of which, sadly, we still face today. At the same time, MOTHER EARTH NEWS offered proven alternatives for making our lives better, affordable ways to reduce the impact on our planet and rational options for living a joyful life.
The message and methods found in the pages of MOTHER touched tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of people. The common sense, down-to-earth information was for real people living real lives. It inspired many regular, down-home folks to take more control over their lives, including myself. In 1979 I went to Hendersonville, North Carolina, for the very first of MOTHER'S Seminars. After only one week, I shamelessly begged for a job . . . and got one!
My years with MOTHER, from 1979 to 1985, rank among the best times of my life. I was a part of the original staff of MOTHER EARTH NEWS staff, traveling with the MOTHER 's Ethanol Fuel and Low-Cost Solar tours that crisscrossed the United States, stopping in dozens of cities and towns to offer how-to workshops on producing fuel ethanol and building extremely low-cost solar systems for hot water or space heating. I also worked as a coordinator and instructor at MOTHERS 622-acre Eco-Village Research Center and helped with the original MOTHER'S Chapters Organization that connected like-minded folks together in a cooperative spirit for work projects (and often lots of play). People often ask, "Wow, what was it like? It must have been exciting to work on those projects!" My answer never varies: "It wasn't so much the projects, it was the people who were exciting."
Don't get me wrong. Building a passive-solar, earth-sheltered, 1,000-square-foot home for a family of four (complete with greenhouse, permaculture gardens and microhydro generator) for less than $10 a square foot was exciting. Building cordwood barns, towers and domes was exciting. Being one of a dozen staffers who taught hundreds of workshops each year on topics ranging from beekeeping, composting toilets and wind power to bread-baking, photovoltaics and cordwood construction to thousands of summer visitors at the Eco-Village was exciting. Demonstrating a fully functional, 8-gallon-per-hour, 190-proof ethanol fuel still in cities around the United States usually under the watchful eyes of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was exciting. Visiting MOTHER's Chapters across the United States and Canada was exciting. But, the people who made all these projects happen, well, that's where the real excitement was and where my memories go.
Months on the road teaching thousands of folks to build their own ethanol stills and solar systems day after day, week after week, could have been tedious and exhausting, but the endless enthusiasm of our team and the great people we met along the way made it fun and invigorating.
Back at the Eco-Village the collective can do spirit of dozens of folks made it a magical place. Yes, it was exciting to see new projects take shape each year, from harnessing hydropower from the Eco-Village lake and installing a Jacob's wind-electric system, to building the now infamous, blazing yellow-Minto Wheel — a two-story-tall contraption that harnessed solar-heated water and converted it into mechanical energy (well, kind of), but the real excitement and memories came from teaming up with those wonderful people.
We assumed we could do anything and, frankly, we pretty much did. We worked hard, thought creatively and things came together. For example, we knew that commercial solar hot air systems had the fastest payback period — our challenge was to make them even less expensive, which we did by building hot air collectors out of free, discarded fluorescent glass tubes and old tin cans.
One day, my group, which was working on alternative fuels, was summoned into MOTHER's main office and issued a challenge: "We want a truck that runs on wood chips instead of gas to compete in a cross-country alternative vehicle race against a wide field of competitors that will be followed by the national media. We want it to be ready in a month and we want to win this race. Any questions?"
We looked at each other in silence for a few seconds until, without really thinking, I blurted out, "I have one question. What col or do you want us to paint it?" We were that confident. And yes, the MOTHER team won the race.
But among the people who live in my memories of MOTHER, two top the list: John and Jane Shuttleworth, the founders of the MOTHER EARTH NEWS. It would be presumptuous to claim I knew precisely what motivated them, but what I saw was a fervent desire to make a difference by gathering and sharing information, offering readers bootstrap strategies for self-reliant living, and boldly proclaiming the obvious about renewable energy, clean living and sound principles of sustainable economics. While the entire staff labored for countless hours, for months and years, John and Jane worked harder than anyone to fulfill their vision.
From 1970, when MOTHER was launched from a kitchen table, even past the time I joined in 1979, these two people were always in the middle of the action and at the heart of our mission. John and Jane proved individuals can make a big difference in the world. They excited us into doing the right things for the right reasons and are among the ones who keep me excited and motivated even today, nearly 20 years later. For me, MOTHER has been so much more than a magazine — it's been my way of life.
Ned Doyle lives off-grid in a passive-solar, earth-sheltered structure in western North Carolina. He is currently the Coordinator of the Southern Energy & Environment Expo (www.seeexpo.com).
Thanks for the memories, MOM! On the road: Beach, John, B.V. Richard and Ben; At the Eco-Village: Jay, Dennis, James, Leroy, Ricky, Henry, David, Norman, Bob, Kerry, Barbara, Franklin, Susan, L. T, Emerson, Robyn, Kathy, Dot, Richard, Lynda, John, Don, Janis, Red, Bev, Lucy, Dave, Clarence, Cory, Rob, Jack and many more. Behind the desks and at the drawing boards: Mark, Don, Richard, Mary Jo, Anita, David, Susie, Marsha, Jack, Steve, Joanne, Lorna, Barb, Solar, Bruce, Terry, Wanda, Fran, Ken, Kathleen, Sara, Wendy and Ted. Thanks to everyone! — Ned.
Whether you want to learn how to grow and raise your own food, build your own root cellar, or create a green dream home, come out and learn everything you need to know — and then some!LEARN MORE |
Follow us on YouTube HERE! We’re putting our bees to bed for the winter. Overwintering bees means…honey on the homestead! Check out our video here. We show you what beekeeping on the homestead looks like, plus, why we add a towel to the hive…Watch our Overwintering Bees video!
Finally, this ‘ol homesteader can breath a sigh of relief! Dare I say… something went as planned? And considering the fact that nothing ever goes as planned, I’m counting this a big success. Huge. Gigantic. An incredibly large success. A delicious success, too. In fact, if it was up to me, I’d bathe in this
I’ll pretend like I didn’t spend the better part of two hours writing out a deliciously goal-filled post before my WordPress crashed and took with it every last word. I’ll also pretend like I didn’t cry out to the heavens in a form of protest after said crash happened. After all, there is far bigger
I did it. I got sucked into computer-land for too long. And when that happens, I peel myself away – brain slightly sizzled – and instantly try and find something to do that will ground me. Baking bread has always been one of those things. It’s a reminder to me that I’m living. And that
I showed up at my parents house last night for supper, battered, bruised, and on the verge of tears. They, as always, ushered me in, handed me a cold beer, entertained my children, and allowed me to vent. You see, sometimes homegirl needs to just some things off her chest. Sometimes, it’s gotta get out
After getting all set up with our hives a few months ago, this past weekend, it was finally time to get some bees in the hives! This was a magical moment for me. I’ve dreamed of having bees for years and years and when dreams like that culminate into these moments, it can be overwhelming
I’m pretty excited about this post, my friends. This one has been a long time coming. I’ve been lusting after the possibility of having our own honey bees for years now and as of this morning, that dream was finally realized. Okay. Well, if we want to get technical, it wasn’t full realized. After all, |
Posted 4 years ago on May 8, 2013, 10:12 p.m. EST by quantumystic
from Memphis, TN
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BY BRANDON KEIM Nearly one in three commercial honeybee colonies in the United States died or disappeared last winter, an unsustainable decline that threatens the nation’s food supply.
Multiple factors — pesticides, fungicides, parasites, viruses and malnutrition — are believed to cause the losses, which were officially announced today by a consortium of academic researchers, beekeepers and Department of Agriculture scientists.
“We’re getting closer and closer to the point where we don’t have enough bees in this country to meet pollination demands,” said entomologist Dennis vanEngelstorp of the University of Maryland, who led the survey documenting the declines.
Beekeepers lost 31 percent of their colonies in late 2012 and early 2013, roughly double what’s considered acceptable attrition through natural causes. The losses are in keeping with rates documented since 2006, when beekeeper concerns prompted the first nationwide survey of honeybee health. Hopes raised by drop in rates of loss to 22 percent in 2011-2012 were wiped out by the new numbers.
Honeybee colony losses over the last seven years. Image: Engelstorp et al. The honeybee shortage nearly came to a head in March in California, when there were barely enough bees to pollinate the almond crop.
Had the weather not been ideal, the almonds would have gone unpollinated — a taste, as it were, of a future in which honeybee problems are not solved.
“If we want to grow fruits and nuts and berries, this is important,” said vanEngelstorp. “One in every three bites [of food consumed in the U.S.] is directly or indirectly pollinated by bees.”
Scientists have raced to explain the losses, which fall into different categories. Some result from what’s called colony collapse disorder, a malady first reported in 2006 in which honeybees abandon their hives and vanish. Colony collapse disorder, or CCD, subsequently became a public shorthand for describing bee calamities.
Most losses reported in the latest survey, however, don’t actually fit the CCD profile. And though CCD is largely undocumented in western Europe, honeybee losses there have also been dramatic. In fact, CCD seems to be declining, even as total losses mount. The honeybees are simply dying.
“Even if CCD went away, we’d still have tremendous losses,” said entomologist Diana Cox-Foster at Pennsylvania State University. “CCD losses are like the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The system has many other issues.”
Studying these issues isn’t easy. In real-world agricultural settings, it’s hard to run the rigorous, every-last-variable-controlled experiments on which definitive conclusions are founded. These experiments can be run in labs and small-scale test fields, but whether those accurately reflect real-world complexity is debated.
Amidst the uncertainties, scientific attention has settled on a group of culprits, the most high-profile of which is a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids. These were developed in the 1990s, rushed to market with minimal studies of potential harms, and subsequently became the world’s most-used pesticides.
In the last several years, it’s become evident that neonicotinoids are extremely toxic to honeybees and, even in small, sub-lethal doses, make bees more vulnerable to disease. The European Union recently limited neonicotinoid use, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing their use.
Pesticide companies have fought the restrictions, arguing that neonicotinoids are unfairly blamed. Most non-industry scientists say the question isn’t whether neonicotinoids are a problem, but where they fit into a constellation of problems.
“Different studies indicate that this class of pesticide is rather harmful to the bees,” said honeybee pathologist Cédric Alaux of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, who said the E.U.’s restrictions are sensible. “However, we should not be too naive and think that it will solve the bee problem.”
Just as important as neonicotinoids, and perhaps more so, are Varroa destructor mites. First detected in the United States in 1987, the mites weaken bees by sucking their hemolyph, the insect analogue of blood, and also transmit viruses and other parasites. A recent USDA report called Varroa “the single most detrimental pest of honey bees.”
The report also noted that neonicotinoid exposure alters immune system function in Varroa-infected bees and makes bees more vulnerable to infection by Nosema ceranae, another parasite implicated in honeybee losses. It’s possible that neonicotinoids used on crops don’t usually kill bees outright, but weaken them enough for other stresses to become lethal.
Agricultural entomologist Christian Krupke of Purdue University likened the effects to “living in an area with extreme levels of smog, causing your body and immune system to become overtaxed so that a common cold progresses to pneumonia.”
Krupke noted that although neonicotinoids are the most common poisonous chemicals in honeybee environments, they’re far from the only chemicals. Cox-Foster and vanEngelstorp stressed that point, referencing research that found 121 different pesticides in honeybee hives. On average, each hive contained traces of 6 pesticides, and sometimes several dozen.
Research on pesticide interactions is in its infancy, but combinations may be extremely harmful to bees, amplifying what the chemicals would do alone. “I worry that the neonicotinoid attention is distracting from the other pesticides that have clear effects, and might even have stronger effects. Things like fungicides are completely unregulated for bees,” said vanEngelstorp. “I think we need to keep the pesticide investigation broader.”
'We’re getting closer and closer to the point where we don’t have enough bees.'Another, less-appreciated aspect of honeybee life also gained attention in the winter survey and new USDA report: what they eat. Though commercial bees are trucked on pollination circuits around the United States, most beekeepers have home bases in the upper Midwest, an area that’s undergone significant changes in recent years. Rising food prices led farmers to plant crops in fields previously considered marginal or set aside as grasslands. Honeybees forage in those grasslands, and can’t get the nutrition they need from flowering crops alone.
Add the record-setting drought of summer 2012, and bees were hard-pressed for nourishment. Malnourishment could in turn make bees more vulnerable to pests and infections, or exacerbate the effects of pesticides.
“The drought, the possible combination of factors that went with it, was clearly a big problem for a lot of beekeepers,” vanEngelstorp said. “In some cases, it was a combination of Varroa and these malnourished, pesticide-exposed bees.”
Commercial bees pollinate dozens of crops, and though colonies can be replaced, continuing losses could soon render beekeeping economically unviable. Researchers are trying to breed more resilient bees, but the combination of chemicals, nutrition and disease will likely prove insurmountable by genetic improvements alone, said Cox-Foster.
She said native pollinator habitat needs to be left intact or re-established; a field that goes unplanted, or a roadside left unmowed, can be thought of as insurance against commercial honeybee loss. Dennis vanEngelstorp recommended that, as a rule of thumb, 10 percent of land mass should be managed as pollinator havens.
Pesticides can also be used more carefully. Rather than being applied broadly, across entire fields and locales, they can be precisely targeted to outbreaks. Other unnecessary uses can be averted.
“Many entomologists and pest management professionals have been saying for years that there is no pest management justification for using these insecticides on virtually every crop grown in North America,” said Krupke. “Yet, the opposite trend is occurring.”
The honeybee catastrophe could also signal problems in other pollinator species, such as bumblebees and butterflies, that are not often studied.
“Thinking of honeybees as our canary in the coal mine, a monitor for environmental conditions, is very appropriate,” Cox-Foster said. “With honeybee colonies, you have the ability to open them up and see what’s going on. There are many other species needed for pollination, but with most of those, we don’t have the ability to see what’s happening.” |
Reviewed by Jen Hutton
Fifteen-year-old girl, you are a survivor! Womanhood—likely the first and last time you will hear this word—is already upon you. Your body heaves through the last stages of puberty. Some part of your person seems to always sting: your earlobes, your navel, your scalp dyed deep purple. You steer your awkward frame—concave, plump, or needlessly perfect—on collision courses charted by your heart. That organ has been your unsteady guide, alternately swollen or broken, exploding intermittently with the truest love or deepest hate.
Perhaps it will be a disappointment when you finally confront your own heart not as the glittery paper valentine you imagined it to be but as the fist of muscle it truly is, crisscrossed with veins, fatty tissue, and rubbery valves. At fifteen, I stared bleakly at a sheep’s heart (reputedly close in size and anatomy to a human’s) in my Grade 10 biology class. The heart was grey and dead, stiffened with formaldehyde. Yet dissecting that heart was not nearly as terrifying as the previous year’s revelation in our Catholic education’s obligatory (and only) sex ed lesson. With the boys playing pickup outside, our gym teacher hustled us girls into a classroom to watch a video. The video was nothing new, full of older actors squeaking through pre-teen dialogue and animations of ova floating down narrow straits. In its penultimate scene, the video depicted a woman giving birth but from the waist down. Between her legs was not the small, sterile channel we were accustomed to seeing in textbooks. Rather her vagina was stretched impossibly wide, hair and fluid along its edges, as if it were slowly expelling a football. The video enabled its desired effect (don’t get pregnant), but like seeing the sheep’s heart, we left that classroom feeling that our own skins were even more alien than we thought they were.
In a way, this alienation to our own biology was not so strange. It was something we were raised to accept. Our religion presented the human body as a mythic subject, vis-à-vis the immaculate conception or the transubstantiation of Christ. It taught us that our bodies were sacred and not meant to be touched. Yet my classmates and I were no worse off than the public school kids, even though the “townies” seemed so much more worldly and cocksure. Was it all the advanced sex ed they were being taught? The frank talks delivered by their more liberal, knowing parents? Who knows. We all fumbled through our teenage years; most of us made it out unscathed. But my teenage self seems not that distant from Amazon Solitaire’s fifteen-year-old narrator, raised in a Christian home and only educated herself about her body “from the diagrams printed on a Tampax box.” How much more alien would that body be to feel, as she described it, “a separate pulse in [her] belly”?
Comparatively, the inner crises of adolescence (heartbreak, heartbreak, etc, etc) are not nearly as serious as what emerged from the narrator’s abdomen: a foreign mass that “made skin and hair. Teeth even. It was pushing all of my organs around.” The thing with a separate pulse was genderless and unidentifiable. It had human parts assembled in an entirely un-human way. Medicine describes the thing as either a teratoma, a rare cancerous tumor that develops differentiated limbs and organs, or possibly fetus in fetu, where the afflicted carries their unborn twin inside them. They are equally monstrous, nature at its most extreme. (In some regard the thing itself, rather than its host, is the true survivor.) In the book, the narrator’s doctor’s diagnosis was more palatable. “An egg of mine had decided to fertilize itself” was more than a glossing over of the facts. Perhaps the explanation was meant to appease a teenager going into surgery, or her worried parents. But the premise—an egg fertilizing itself, creating progeny without sperm—is even more inconceivable than the presence of a teratoma itself. While immaculate conception is a key tenet of Christian belief, in the annals of modern medicine it doesn’t exist.
The cover of Cox’s tiny book (Risograph-printed on white paper speckled with multicolored flakes) depicts a flat triangle, set slightly askew and colored primary blue. The shape is distilled from another abstraction: Cox’s painting titled A Woman Without A Master, 2012, which was exhibited alongside the video that animates Amazon Solitaire’s text at Commonwealth and Council earlier this year. The triangle is mute, but invokes other associations: to yield, a form seeking balance, the Holy Trinity.
Who is a woman without a master? Cox’s heroine is one. Post-surgery and dosing herself with morphine, she conjures more of them: the Amazons, the all-female warrior tribe of Greek myth. In the original stories (written by men), the Amazons were described as far from “womanly.” They reputedly lopped off their right breasts in order to accommodate the wide arc of their bows, and killed their male offspring to perpetuate their tribe. But Cox’s book, these women live in a self-fashioned Arcadia. In the narrator’s narcotic-induced dreams, she communed with the Amazons in their manless society, gardening, beekeeping, playing basketball, and repairing a car. Like the card game referenced by the title of her book (a variation on Solitaire where the queens are ranked as kings), in this blissful fantasy, sisters are doin’ it for themselves.
Amazon Solitaire seems to resurrect a second-wave discourse within a particularly pertinent frame—especially since feminism has emerged as a dirty word among some teenaged women—but emphasizes a sense of independence rather than emancipation. After her recovery, fully weaned off morphine, Cox’s narrator supplants her missing Amazons by heading to a summer sleep-a-way camp with other young women. In this new-found freedom, she dyes her hair, reads teen mags, and swims with the girls in a public fountain in her undies. In this period of self-discovery, Cox’s heroine is without a master in more than one sense: living and creating life (even in its extreme variations) without men, without a standard for which to build it.
Akina Cox, Amazon Solitaire (Golden Spike Press, 2013)
Images: Cover and interior of Amazon Solitaire |
Below are a few photos from the 2013 Bee School. We had a great turn out with 111 people in attendance. Two all-day tracks were available: Beginning Beekeeping and Managing the Established Hive. In addition, three demonstrations and two panel discussion were offered during the breaks. Club members also created and manned educational displays of specific elements of beekeeping. All in all, it was a great day for beekeeping!
Ken Kloepper on Queen Rearing
Danny Wright on Honey Production
Dawn Quicksall on Bee Gardens
Jason Weaver and Son selling their Hive Equipment
John Michl conducting a Swarm Trap demonstration.
Larry Quicksall talking on Bee Biology
Lisa Dhom on getting your first bees
Panel Discussion with Travis Dollarhide, Ken Kloepper, Danny Wright, and Lonnie Langley
Rita Rhodabarger on Bee-Friendly Gardens
Dave Dhom during his smoker demonstration
Terry Hopper being interviewed by NewsChannel 20 from Springfield |
“Discover the European Honeyland” was the motto of this year’s Apimondia in Ukraine and 8000 visitors and 100 exhibitors from all over the world took up the invitation. The members from the Bayer Bee Care and Bayer Animal Health teams attending the congress & exhibition took the opportunity to share information about some of the research projects and state-of-the-art equipment they are developing with external collaborators, to improve bee health.
The Bee Care stand was a busy meeting point for journalists, scientists and thousands of beekeepers seeking information, advice and innovations. Among the scientific visitors to the stand was Jeff Pettis, Research Leader at the USDA Beltsville bee laboratory in Maryland, USA, who was interested to learn more about a new diagnostic tool being co-developed to help beekeepers combat Varroa mite.
Bayer was also involved in the scientific aspects at Apimondia. Presentations included a report on the effectiveness of the innovative Varroa Gate, a device being developed to prevent infestation and re-infestation of bee colonies, and a paper showing the importance of miticide rotation with different modes of action to prevent resistance among Varroa populations. Bayer also participated in a roundtable discussion on pesticides and bees which focused on the decision to restrict neonicotinoid use in Europe. While this decision was intended as a step to enhance bee safety, Bayer panelist, Dr. Christian Maus, presented long-term monitoring data, which indicate that the product suspensions are unlikely to improve the bee health situation in Europe.
Closing the gap between scientists and beekeepers
As in previous years, Apimondia offered ample opportunities to network with colleagues and bee enthusiasts from all over the world. Professor emeritus Nikolaus Koeniger from the Bee Research Institute at Frankfurt University highlights the added value of the event: “Closing the gap between practical apiculture and scientific developments is an important mission of the congress. This dialog is important for all of us. Scientists would lose a lot of their economic significance and influence, if we lost touch with the practice of beekeeping.”
The global bee community can meet again at Apimondia in 2015 in South Korea.
A special-edition Apimondia Bee Care newsletter is available which provides lots of additional information about the recent event and the activities of the Bayer Bee Care team while they were there. To receive this special Apimondia edition and other regular Bee Care newsletters in the future, just register at the Bee Care website: http://beecare.bayer.com/register
If you are interested in finding out more about our other activities or want to get in touch, take a look at our facebook and twitter sites for the most up-to-date information or contact the Bee Care team directly at firstname.lastname@example.org |
- Fame can be a fickle thing: sometimes the ones who would deserve it the most go without it in their life and only get recognition posthumously. For André Kertész, acknowledgement did come during his life but he felt under-appreciated regardless.
- The photographic career of André Kertész is usually divided into four periods: The Hungarian period, the French period, the American period and the International period.
- André Kertész’s first camera was a 1912 ICA box camera. He also photographed with a Goerz Tenax folding camera before switching to a 35mm Leica camera. At the end of his career, in the 70s, Kertész was donated a Polaroid camera by the Polaroid Corporation itself. He used the camera to make remarkable images that were a continuation of the themes he’d explored all his life: simplicity and distortion.
- André Kertész was the first photographer ever to have his own solo exhibition at an art gallery. His show at the Sacre du Printemps gallery in Paris in 1927 was received favourably by critics. Throughout his career, Kertész’s photographs were exhibited in dozens of galleries all over the world.
Why does fame come too late for many of us? Why are some talented people not recognised before their death and others never?
The lack of perceived esteem was something that plagued photographer André Kertész (1894-1985) all his life. Despite being one of the pioneers of photojournalism and having been admired by such preeminent fellow photographers as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa and Brassaï, Kertész still felt that he didn’t get the respect due to him.
Whether he was underestimated by his contemporaries or not is a question which requires understanding of history as well as psychological insight to unravel.
Any amount of publicity and accolades may not be enough for a person whose innate sense of worth has been compromised at an early stage of life. On the other hand, an overly inflated ego will demand more and more, regardless of circumstances.
In Kertész’s case, the recognition was there, almost from the beginning. It continued all through his long life in the form of photo assignments from newspapers and magazines as well as exhibitions by the world’s top museums. The acknowledgements even included honorary doctorates from many colleges and universities.
The fickleness of fame should not surprise anyone who’s striven for perfection in their work and finds it superseded in public perception by inferior outputs. Contemporary opinions are always unpredictable and untrustworthy; the true value of an artist’s work can only be seen from a historical perspective.
Thirty years after his death, André Kertész has well and truly secured his place in the 20th centrury Photography Hall of Fame.
In fact, his standing as a world-renowned photographer had been uncontested long before the end of his career.
The fact that it took Kertész decades to appreciate the admiration his work received was perhaps a personal tragedy for him, as well as a lesson in the importance of gratitude for all of us.
Early Life and the Hungarian Period
André Kertész was born into a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary on 2 July 1894. His father, Lipot Kertész, was a literary man infused in classics who supported his family, with varying success, by selling books and working at the stock exchange. Kertész’s mother, Ernestin Hoffmann, supplemented the family income by selling coffee at a market square in Budapest.
André – whose real name was Andor and who was nicknamed “Bandi” – was the middle child of three sons. From early on, Kertész was drawn to arts and photography but managed to finish his studies at the Academy of Commerce in Budapest in 1912.
After graduating, Kertész found work at the Giro Bank of the Budapest Stock Exchange. He acquired his first camera, a 1912 ICA box camera, with which he photographed peasants and gypsies of his native country, as well as the landscapes on the Hungarian Puszta.
One of his earliest photographs, the Sleeping Boy, was made in 1912. His first published photograph appeared in the Hungarian magazine Érdekes Ujság a few years later, in 1917.
Kertész had been enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army since the beginning of World War I. He photographed the war scenes with a Goerz Tenax, a cheap folding camera manufactured by the German camera maker Anstalt C.P. Goerz AG in Friedenau, Berlin, between 1912 and 1926.
The young photographer was wounded at war in 1915, suffering a temporary paralysis in his left arm. He convalesced at a military hospital in Budapest from where he was transferred to a North-Hungarian town of Esztergom, some 45 kilometres northwest of Budapest.
In Esztergom, Kertész continued photographing. The well-known photograph “Underwater Swimmer” – the only surviving example in a series of photos – is from this period.
After the war, Kertész returned to his job at the stock exchange where he met his fiancee and future wife, Erzsebet Salomon, also known as Elizabeth Saly.
In the 1920s, Kertész briefly tried his hand in beekeeping but soon returned to work in the stock exchange. He spent his spare time honing his photography skills by photographing Elizabeth and his brother Jeno, among others.
Kertész’s photography career took an upturn in 1923 when he received a diploma from the Hungarian Photographer’s Association. A couple of years later, in 1925, the news magazine Érdekes Ujság again used one of his photographs, this time on the cover of the publication. As a result, Kertész gained some publicity as a photographer in Hungary.
The French Period
In 1925, André Kertész moved to Paris where he freelanced for various European magazines and spent time with other Hungarian expatriots, including François Kollar, Robert Capa, Emeric Feher, Brassaï and Julia Bathony.
Kertész had his first one-man photography exhibition (which was also the first solo exhibition by any photographer ever) at the Sacre du Printemps gallery in Paris in 1927. The show was successful and received positive reviews.
At this time, he also photographed portraits of fellow artists such as the painters Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger and Marc Chagall; writer Colette, film director Sergei Eisenstein, the French-Romanian poet Tristan Tzara, and the American sculptor Alexander Calder.
In 1928, Kertész switched to using Leica cameras. As smaller format cameras, they were well-suited for street photography.
In the same year, Kertész married a Hungarian-born painter Rosza Klein who, under his tutelage, became a famous portrait photographer using the name Rogi André. The marriage was terminated four years later, in 1932, and Kertész never referred to it in his later interviews.
Kertész continued photographing for magazines. His pictures were published in French periodicals Vu and Art et Médecine as well as in the German publications Münchner Illustrierte and Bilfur.
After being encouraged to make photo essays by Lucien Vogel, the editor of Vu magazine, Kertész shot a series of female nudes. These famous photographs depict the female form in an abstract manner, reflected and distorted by mirrors. The photos were published in a book form in 1933 under the name Distortions.
Other books followed. Enfants, dedicated to Elizabeth and the photographer’s late mother, came out in 1933.
A book titled Paris, which was dedicated to Kertész’s brothers Imre and Jeno, was published in 1934.
The year 1936 saw the publication of Nos amies les betes (Our Friends the Animals).
Les Cathédrals du vin (The Cathedrals of Wine) was printed the following year, in 1937.
Marriage and the American Period
Kertész married Elisabeth Saly on June 17 1933. In 1936, Kertész got a work offer from the Keystone Press Agency and the couple moved to New York. The timing was fortuitous as Europe began its rapid plunge into the darkness of World War II.
The time in New York was difficult for Kertész, however. He felt displaced, with no artistic friends and with the people on the street hostile to photography. He also had difficulty learning English, which further alienated him. His own description of the early times in the U.S. was terse: “Absolute tragedy”.
In 1937, Kertész left his job at the Keystone Agency but continued commissioned work for Town and Country as well as Harper’s Bazaar magazines, among others. He was also approached by Vogue but turned the offer down because he felt work for a fashion magazine was beneath him.
He later changed his mind and worked for Vogue for a spell. He finally severed ties with them, however, when his work was not included in the June 1941 photography issue of Vogue.
As Hungary was part of the Axis powers in World War II, Kertész, along with his wife, were “designated as enemy aliens.” He was forbidden to photograph anywhere out of doors or on any project related to national security, effectively halting his photojournalistic work for the remainder of the war.
After the war, the Kertész couple became American citizens. André started working for magazines again and, in 1946, signed an exclusive contract with an American mass media company Condé Nast to photograph for the House and Garden magazine.
As part of his job, he would spend the next fifteen or so years making about 3000 photos of famous houses and landmarks for the magazine in America and elsewhere.
During this time, Kertész continued his personal work by publishing books and exhibiting at museums. The book Day of Paris, with photos taken before emigration into the United States, was published in 1945, to a favourable response from the critics. The Art Institute of Chicago organised a solo exhibition of Kertész’s work in 1946.
In 1952, the Kertészs moved into an apartment near the Washington Square Park in New York City from where he would photograph many of his famous photographs of the park covered in snow.
The International Period
Kertész ended his contract with the House and Garden magazine in 1961, embarking on his personal career with full swing again.
This move effectively started the final phase of Kertész’s career which for him meant travelling around the world to visit an almost endless stream of exhibitions. This period also brought with it the long-awaited international fame and recognition.
During his world tours, Kertész would be making new friends and “rekindling” old friendships, especially after the death of his wife in 1977.
At the end of the 70s, Kertész was given a Polaroid camera by the Polaroid Corporation. The experimental polaroids, taken by Kertész during the end of a long photographic career, are a beautiful testimonial to the vision of a photographer who hardly ever commented on his work, except to say that it depicted the “simplicity of life”.
The Fleeting, Lasting Fame
André Kertész searched for recognition and appreciation throughout his life. Despite the inevitable international photography celebrity status, he remained unsatisfied with the lack of intellectual and other commentary or criticism.
The photographer – who saw his work as “writing with light” – had no political agendas at a time when political alliances made and broke friendships and fostered professional relationships.
His “timeless” aesthetic language with its nostalgic overtones may also not have been truly appreciated by the contemporaries – a common fate of artists whose work turns out to have lasting qualities.
Whatever the reason for the real or imagined slight of Kertész by the photographic establishment, his work has proven to be an inspiration for many photographers in the past and in the present.
The two other Hungarian photographers, mentioned in the beginning of this article, Brassaï and Robert Capa, as well as Henri Cartier-Bresson, all learned from Kertész. According to Cartier-Bresson, “we all owe him a great deal.”
Of the contemporary photographers, the American street photographer and blogger Eric Kim has written about the lessons he’s learned from Kertész.
André Kertész was one of the forerunners of photojournalism as well as a pioneer in the use a handheld cameras in street photography.
Many of his photographs are characterised by a high vantage point, as in the series on the Washington State Park, taken with a telephoto lens from the window of his apartment in New York City.
His photographs are always poetically constructed with a formal appreciation of the laws of composition. There is an exhilarating sense of space and freedom in many of them – as if they belonged to two different eras at once: the present and an unknown future.
André Kertész died at his home in New York at the age of 91 on 28 December 1985.
Early Cameras Used by André Kertész
ICA Box Cameras
ICA box cameras were manufactured by ICA, or Internationale Camera AG, between 1911 and 1925. The company was based in Dresden, Germany and founded in 1909. It was a joint venture of four German camera makers: Hüttig AG from Dresden, Kamerawerk DR. Krüneger from Frankfurt, Wünsche AG from Reick, and Carl Zeiss Palmos AG from Jena.
The early box cameras were most likely made of thin steel sheet metal. They had a 4.5x6cm negative and cost four Reichs Mark each, which was a very cheap price.
The cameras allowed you to load six photographic plates at a time which were then automatically advanced for exposure.
The complete camera kit, including 12 photo plates, 10 sheets of photographic paper, 10 photo frames, as well as the chemicals and the tools for developing and making photo prints cost 8.5 Reichs Marks, which would still have been relatively affordable.
Goerz Tenax Folding Camera
Goerz Tenax was a folding camera manufactured by the German camera maker Anstalt C.P. Goerz AG in Friedenau, Berlin, between 1912 and 1926. It had an aluminium body covered with leather and a bellows system which allowed for precise focusing.
This medium to large format camera utilised glass plates for photographic negatives. It came in three different formats: 9x12cm, 10x15cm and 13x18cm.
It used a variety of lenses which were all manufactured by Goerz, including the f6.8 Kalostigmat, the f6.8 or the f7.7 Dagor and the f6.8 Trilentar.
André Kertész: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Kert%C3%A9sz
Andre Kertesz, 91, Pioneer in Photography, Dies: https://mobile.nytimes.com/1985/09/30/arts/andre-kertesz-91-pioneer-in-photography-dies.html
André Kertész: Hungarian-born American Photographer: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andre-Kertesz
Chronology – André Kertész and Szigetbecse: http://maimano.hu/en/chronology-andre-kertesz-and-szigetbecse-2/
10 Lessons Andre Kertesz Has Taught Me About Street Photography: http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2013/09/16/10-lessons-andre-kertesz-has-taught-me-about-street-photography/
Goerz Taro Tenax: http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Goerz_Taro_Tenax
Ica cameras in 1913: https://ludens.cl/photo/ica/camera.html
Ica catalogs: https://sites.google.com/site/fromthefocalplanetoinfinity/ica
All photos copyright (c) the estate of André Kertész, except the portrait of André Kertész copyright (c) David Moore |
If you love to write and have always had a dream to see your work published, but don’t want to start or manage a blog to feature all your writings, why not write for a blog or publication and get paid for it?
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Differential gene expression of the honey bee Apis mellifera associated with Varroa destructor infection
- M Navajas1Email author,
- A Migeon†1,
- C Alaux†2,
- ML Martin-Magniette3, 4,
- GE Robinson2,
- JD Evans5,
- S Cros-Arteil1,
- D Crauser6 and
- Y Le Conte6
© Navajas et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2008
Received: 21 December 2007
Accepted: 25 June 2008
Published: 25 June 2008
The parasitic mite, Varroa destructor, is the most serious pest of the western honey bee, Apis mellifera, and has caused the death of millions of colonies worldwide. This mite reproduces in brood cells and parasitizes immature and adult bees. We investigated whether Varroa infestation induces changes in Apis mellifera gene expression, and whether there are genotypic differences that affect gene expression relevant to the bee's tolerance, as first steps toward unravelling mechanisms of host response and differences in susceptibility to Varroa parasitism.
We explored the transcriptional response to mite parasitism in two genetic stocks of A. mellifera which differ in susceptibility to Varroa, comparing parasitized and non-parasitized full-sister pupae from both stocks. Bee expression profiles were analyzed using microarrays derived from honey bee ESTs whose annotation has recently been enhanced by results from the honey bee genome sequence. We measured differences in gene expression in two colonies of Varroa-susceptible and two colonies of Varroa-tolerant bees. We identified a set of 148 genes with significantly different patterns of expression: 32 varied with the presence of Varroa, 116 varied with bee genotype, and 2 with both. Varroa parasitism caused changes in the expression of genes related to embryonic development, cell metabolism and immunity. Bees tolerant to Varroa were mainly characterized by differences in the expression of genes regulating neuronal development, neuronal sensitivity and olfaction. Differences in olfaction and sensitivity to stimuli are two parameters that could, at least in part, account for bee tolerance to Varroa; differences in olfaction may be related to increased grooming and hygienic behavior, important behaviors known to be involved in Varroa tolerance.
These results suggest that differences in behavior, rather than in the immune system, underlie Varroa tolerance in honey bees, and give an indication of the specific physiological changes found in parasitized bees. They provide a first step toward better understanding molecular pathways involved in this important host-parasite relationship.
The honey bee (Apis mellifera, Insecta: Hymenoptera) has become an important model for genetic study, especially as its genome has been sequenced . It is also an important economic insect as it is the world's principal crop pollinator and honey producer . These activities have been threatened by the spread of Varroa destructor (Acari: Parasitiformes) a parasite of honey bees that causes devastating harm in many countries . Varroa mites are ectoparasites of honey bees, parasitizing immature and adult bees and reproducing in cells in the honeycomb that contain brood . Varroa mites or virus associated to mites impair the honey bee immune system and in some cases boost the amplification of bee viruses . The mechanisms underlying the mite's suppression of bee immunity and its impacts on pathogen virulence have not been elucidated.
There are genetic differences in the ability of honey bees to tolerate Varroa parasitism (tolerance is defined here as the capacity for the bees to survive when the parasite develops, preventing the demise of the hive). Some colonies of honey bees tolerate Varroa infection and survive despite the presence of the parasite in the hive [7–10]. These differences have been attributed to a variety of factors, including grooming and hygienic behavior , and differences in the timing of larval and pupal development that impact mite reproduction .
Colonies of the Asian honey bee Apis cerana (the original host of V. destructor) suffer less damage from this parasite than A. mellifera in spite of the presence of the mite in the hives, and these two factors have been implicated . The mechanisms underlying genetic differences for honey bee tolerance to Varroa mites are unknown. Insights into these mechanisms may lead to new molecular tools for both Varroa diagnosis and selective breeding of mite-tolerant honey bees for the bee industry. These issues are now amenable to study thanks to new genomic resources available for honey bees. Microarray analyses of differences in gene expression due to both mite parasitization and genotypic differences in bee tolerance are powerful approaches to explore the role of many genes in what are no doubt multifactorial resistance traits. Microarrays have proven to be useful in the study of host-pathogen interactions in other insects [14–18].
Differences in bee gene expression in response to Varroa infestation and bee genotype
Comparisons of Varroa-infected and non-infected pupae from the 4 colonies studied pinpointed the expression of 32 genes whose expression varied significantly between the two types of pupae. Among them, 15 (47%) of these cDNAs were significantly up-regulated and 17 (53%) down-regulated in bees exposed to Varroa. The magnitude of the difference of expression is small in all cases. The single exception was EST (BB160020A20G03) which was over-expressed 20-fold in bees infected with Varroa. BLAST searches indicated that this EST matches the honey bee virus (AY292384), deformed wing virus .
There were 116 cDNAs whose expression varied with bee genotype, 47 (40.5%) of them up-regulated and 69 (59.5%) down-regulated. Two genes were regulated both as a function of Varroa infection and bee genotype. Dlic 2 is down-regulated in Varroa-parasitized bees and up-regulated in tolerant bees, whereas Strn-Mlck is down-regulated both in Varroa-parasitized and tolerant bees. The full list of genes with significant differences in expression is presented in Additional file 1.
Identification of A. mellifera-regulated transcripts and assignment of biological functions
To add biological meaning to the relatively large amount of microarray-derived data, we searched the GeneOntology database for the putative biological processes and molecular functions for the genes that showed significant differences in expression. Among these 148 genes, 19 associated with the presence of Varroa and 68 associated with bee genotype had information in Gene Ontology.
Functional clustering based on Gene Ontology
Biological process (unknown)
cell organization and biogenesis
Molecular function (unknown)
(B) Bee phenotype
Biological process (unknown)
regulation of physiological process
regulation of transcription
cell organization and biogenesis
nervous system development
Molecular function (unknown)
nucleic acid binding
ion transporter activity
ubiquitin-protein ligase activity
transmembrane receptor protein kinase activity
cytoskeletal protein binding
signal transducer activity
Characteristics of the RT-qPCR analysis of differentially expressed genes of Apis mellifera
Honey bee ID
Forward primer sequences
Reverse primer sequence
Amplicon size (bp)
Previous gene expression studies concerning honey bee immunity have mainly investigated responses to microbial pathogens . Yet physiological responses to macroparasites such as Varroa are likely to be very different from microorganisms, as has been shown recently in a study on Drosophila revealing the ability of this species to activate a systemic immune response adapted to the invader . The results described here pinpoint several genes regulated by Varroa parasitism that can be linked to honey bee responses to the presence of Varroa or to differences in bee tolerance.
Honey bee biological response to Varroa parasitism
Varroa parasitism and deformed wing virus
One of the consequences of Varroa parasitism is a decline in immune capacity which appears to induce the proliferation of viruses such as deformed wings virus in bees . The down-regulation of the autophagic-specific gene 18 (Atg18) detected here is noticeable. Autophagy is an important mechanism for innate immunity against bacteria and viruses [21, 22]. The candidate innate immunity gene poly U binding factor 68 Kd (pUf68) is also down-regulated in Varroa parasitized bees. By decreasing autophagy and immunity processes in bees, Varroa might favor the proliferation of DWV. Interestingly, the Varroa-parasitized bees displayed high levels of DWV viral RNA (about 20-fold; Additional file 1). The boost of DWV multiplication might cause cellular and molecular damage, and thus the observed production of genes for protein repair (Pcmt) , and the labeling of proteins for degradation (Nedd8) . In contrast to these findings, we did not see a decrease on transcript abundance of immune pathway members (Evans et al., 2006) found on this array. In fact, transcripts for the gene Rab7, a plausible regulator of immunity, were up-regulated in Varroa-parasitized bees.
The most notable symptoms of Varroa-parasitized bees are disfigured, small adults with deformed legs and wings [4, 6]. Our results show that at the transcriptome level the presence of Varroa down-regulates two genes involved in developmental processes, slg and dlg1. It has been shown that the Drosophila sugarless (sgl) gene regulates wingless signaling , which has a critical role in developmental processes. The gene dlg1 has been implicated in the control of proliferation of Drosophila imaginal discs programmed to produce adult structures at metamorphosis . Although a down-regulation of these genes could have been induced by the presence of Varroa (via the DWV virus), a specific link with the development of deformed adults of virus-infected bees would need to be further investigated.
Cognitive impairment in bees parasitized by Varroa
Varroa infestation does not always cause wing deformity. Adults may sometimes appear to be normal morphologically, but there are mite effects on adult bee behavior. In particular, mite-parasitized foragers display a decrease in learning capability , prolonged absences from the nest and a lower rate of return to the colony . A decrease in neuronal capacities involved in learning and navigation is a possible cause. Although the physiological mechanisms underlying reduced performance by bees in the presence of Varroa remain unknown, our results show that, the gene pale encoding tyramine hydroxylase is down-regulated in pupae parasitized by Varroa. Interestingly, the gene pale is needed for dopamine synthesis, which stimulates the nervous system and has many functions in the brain, including important roles in neural development, behavior and cognition, motor activity, motivation and learning. It is also interesting to note that the Dlic2 and Atg18 genes, both down-regulated in Varroa-parasitized bees, are enhancers of the blue cheese gene (bchs), which is up-regulated in tolerant bees (see below). The bchs gene has been reported as preventing progressive neural degeneration in aged flies . It is plausible, if these changes are chronic (still expressed in adults), that infested bees have a higher rate of neuronal apoptosis when aging, which might explain why foragers (the oldest bees in the nest) have difficulties in learning and orientating in flight.
Behavioral resistance of bees to Varroa
Grooming behavior seems to be one of the main characters involved in the tolerance of bees to Varroa . Similarly, selection for tolerance to Varroa seems to be possible by selecting bees with a high level of hygienic behavior . Hygienic behavior is understood as the ability of bees to uncap and remove infected brood. Although the molecular mechanisms underlying this trait remain unknown, some insights are provided here based on the large-scale comparative analysis of transcriptome differences between Varroa-tolerant and sensitive bees.
A disproportionately high fraction of the genes differentially expressed between tolerant and susceptible bees are involved in the development of the nervous system (Fig. 2B). A large part of these genes are down-regulated in tolerant bees compared to sensitive bees, including the genes futsch, scratch (scrt), otk, Myosin heavy-chain-like (Mhcl), groucho (gro), kekkon-1 (kek1) [26, 33–38]. Fringe (fng), also down regulated in Varroa-tolerant bees, plays an important role in the positive regulation of Notch signalling pathway involved in the regulation of genes that control multiple cell differentiation processes during embryonic and adult life, such as neuronal function and development . Finally, a gene involved in locomotory behavior, single-minded (sim), is down-regulated in tolerant bees. Drosophila mutant sim flies are only able to walk in circles and this phenotype is due to defects in the central brain complex .
Several genes involved in neuron excitability are up-regulated in Varroa-tolerant bees compared to sensitive bees. Purity of essence (poe) (also named pushover) is involved in neuronal excitability and may play a role in responsiveness to environmental stimuli and behavior. For example, fly mutants display behavioral defects such as sluggishness, uncoordination and defective flight . This gene has been shown to be down-regulated in honey bees by the queen mandibular pheromone, which slows the behavioral maturation of workers, e.g. transition from inside hive work (nurse) to foraging activity(forager) . The GluClα gene, a glutamate-gated Cl- channel specific to arthropods, which is also up-expressed in tolerant bees, is known to modulate neuronal membrane excitability . The paralytic gene (para), known to be important in the conducting of nerve action potentials in flies , is also up-regulated. Seen together, these genes suggest a mechanism by which Varroa-tolerant bees are more sensitive to external stimuli than Varroa sensitive bees. Also, the Dynein heavy chain 64C gene (Dhc64c), up-regulated in tolerant bees, is required for proliferation of mushroom-body neuroblasts . Mushroom bodies have an important role in insect cognition and are known to be involved in learning and memory, particularly for smell.
Interestingly, several genes involved in olfaction (smell impaired 21F smi21F, suppressor of the white-apricot gene su(w a ), poe, para, Rogdi) are up-regulated in Varroa-tolerant bees compared to sensitive bees [46–50]. However, the Down syndrome cell adhesion molecule gene (Dscam) and four wheel drive (fwd) also have a role in olfaction, and they are down-regulated in Varroa-tolerant bees . The differential expression of this group of genes depending on bee genotype is of major importance considering that in the hive, olfaction and neuronal sensitivity together may play a major role in the detection of Varroa infested cells. Observations made on two earlier generations of the bee stocks here studied have been shown that Varroa-tolerant bees have better ability to detect the mite . Previous studies showed that hygienic bees have a higher olfactory sensitivity and responsiveness than non-hygienic bees [52–54]. They are notably able to discriminate between odors of healthy and diseased brood at a lower stimulus level, suggesting that olfaction and responsiveness play a key role in hygienic behavior. In addition, observations made on the behavior of the brood, have shown open cells containing destroyed parasitized bee pupae in tolerant experimental colonies, which is in agreement with a bee hygienic behavior against Varroa. If these gene candidate pathways for Varroa behavioral tolerance can be further confirmed, the results suggest that they already set up during the pupae stage.
There were differences in expression between tolerant and sensitive bees for genes involved in increased resistance to toxins like Ahcy13 (Adenosylhomocysteinase at 13) involved in detoxification , and para involved in resistance to insecticide pyrethroids and DDT (Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane) . Two genes linked to immunity, Dsam and otk, members of the Immunoglobulin gene superfamily in Drosophila were down-regulated in Varroa-tolerant bees, while one galectin-family gene (an apparent ortholog to Drosophila CG32226) appears to be upregulated.
Low fold differences in gene expression
For most of the genes showing significant differences in expression in the present study, the magnitude of these differences was small. Recent reports have shown that microarrays can significantly underestimate gene expression changes and therefore if a severe cut-off is applied, this approach might miss important changes in gene expression. Recent reports have validated the capability of a microarray approach to detect small gene expression differences ; 87% of a set of parasite-specific genes displayed changes 2-fold or less in D. melanogaster challenged to a protozoan parasite . Similarly, about 60% of genes of the lepidopteran, Spodoptera frugiperda, revealed around 0.5-fold changes in the transcript levels associated with virus infection . As one possible explanation for low level gene regulation, it has been suggested in Drosophila that much of the response to parasite attack probably does not involve de novo gene expression but post-transcriptional events . Another possibility is that many small differences in gene expression reflect subtle modulation by a large number of factors acting in cascade. The small changes reported here might also represent an underestimation of tissue-specific effects obscured by whole-body analysis. Future studies of Varroa effects on honey bees should analyze specific tissues, and our results suggest a focus on the brain would be fruitful. Previous studies have demonstrated extensive regulation of brain gene expression in conjunction with honey bee behaviour [42, 59–61].
This work is the first step towards understanding the genomic responses of honey bees to Varroa parasitism. It demonstrates that honey bee pupae exhibit differences in gene expression associated either with the presence of Varroa, or with tolerance to this parasite. These results highlight the potential importance of behavioral mechanisms of response to Varroa and suggest that a study focused on the brain is of importance for the future. For an economically important species such as the honey bee, the identification of parasite-specific response factors might ultimately serve to identify molecules that act on bee parasites. In addition, differences between tolerant and sensitive bees could lead to developing tools to select improved strains of honey bees for beekeepers.
Honey bee colonies and sample collection
Both, sensitive and tolerant honey bee colonies here studied, belong to non related local strains of the same A. mellifera population which is bred in the Laboratory of Bee Biology and Protection, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, Avignon, France. Four colonies were used for this study; two (T222 and T757) had survived for 11 years with no chemical treatment against Varroa despite the widespread presence of this parasite in the locale, and displayed a very low rate of parasitism . The other two colonies (S21 and S38) showed a very high level of parasitism. No acaricide treatment was applied to avoid pesticide bias. Parasitism intensity was determined by counting the number of mites that died naturally and accumulated on the floor of the hive in each colony during the year (method described in Ellis et.al. ). Estimations based on data for 5 years (4 measurements/year) showed that the infestation rate in colonies S21 and S38 was on average 10 times higher than in colonies T222 and T757.
The reproduction of Varroa mites can be affected by traits in developing bees [63, 64]. We therefore examined gene expression in pupae. Honey bee pupae were collected from the four bee colonies at the blue-eye stage at the start of cuticle pigmentation, making it possible to determine the bee developmental stage . Capped brood cells were opened and two samples of 50 parasitized and non-parasitized pupae were collected. A pupa was considered to be parasitized if a reproductive Varroa was found with it in the honeycomb cell. The pupae were collected and snap frozen using N2 and stored at -80°C until RNA extraction.
We compared parasitized and non-parasitized pupae from both susceptible and tolerant colonies. To minimize the effect of genetic variation, pools of full-sister pupae (related by 75% due to haplodiploidy ) were collected in equal numbers from each of the study colonies.
Sibling estimation by microsatellite genotyping
To identify full sisters, one hundred bees per colony were genotyped (50 parasitized and 50 not parasitized) using Ap53 and A107 microsatellite loci; these loci have been shown to be effective for this purpose . DNA was extracted from 2 legs/pupa, and DNA extraction and PCR amplification were as described , except that the PCR products were detected on a MegaBACE DNA Analysis System 1000 (Molecular Dynamics Inc., USA). The genotype data were used to assemble sets of 8 pupae belonging to the same full sibling group. For each of these, subsets of pupae of Varroa-parasitized and non parasitized bees were analyzed in microarray experiments. This procedure minimizes the effects of intra-colonial genetic variation on gene expression.
Microarray experimental design
The sets of bees were freeze-dried and ground in liquid nitrogen. 30 mg (about 3% of the powder obtained) was used for each RNA extraction using the RNeasy Plant Mini Kit (Qiagen, Courtaboeuf, France) following the manufacturer's protocol for animal tissues. The total RNA solution was treated in liquid by RNase-Free DNase I and purified on column RNA Cleanup (Qiagen, Courtaboeuf, France) according to the manufacturer's protocols. The purity and concentration of RNA were determined by OD measurements in a spectrophotometer. RNA extraction was validated by specific PCR amplifications following RT-PCR of both the glyceraldehyde 3 phosphate dehydrogenase 1 (XM_397363) and the epsilon-tubulin 1 (XM_394700) genes. The quality of the extracted RNA (integrity and size distribution of total RNA) was verified by 1.2% agarose gel electrophoresis in TAE buffer and ethidium bromide staining.
cDNA synthesis and array hybridizations
10 μg total RNA was used for cDNA synthesis using fluorescent Cy3-dCTP or Cy5-dCTP (Amersham Biosciences, Orsay, France) and the Pronto!TM plus System kit (Promega, Charbonnières, France) for labeling. Dye-labeled cDNAs were purified on cleanup columns (Promega, Charbonnières, France). 55 pmol of the labeled cDNA per dye was used per slide. Prehybridation, hybridization and washing steps were performed according to . The slides were hybridized at 42°C and air dried by centrifugation for 2 min at 800 rpm at room temperature.
Microarray data acquisition and statistical analysis
The arrays were scanned on a GenePix 4000A scanner (Axon Instruments, Foster City, USA) and images were analyzed by GenePix Pro 3.0 (Axon Instruments, Foster City, USA). For each array, the raw data comprised the logarithm (base 2) of median feature pixel intensity at wavelength 635 nm (red) and 532 nm (green). No background was subtracted. We excluded control spots (as described in ) and spots for which duplicates did not pass quality controls standards, cDNAs were not found by spot-finding software, or those determined to be irregular by visual inspection. Intensity signals for cDNAs passing these filters were normalized for intensity- and position-dependent bias. Array-by-array normalization was performed to remove systematic biases. Then, we replaced the value of the spots that were considered as badly formed features with the value of the duplicate. We averaged the two values from each duplicated feature to obtain one value of the gene per array in each condition.
A total of 4,795 cDNAs passed initial filters; 3,045 of these were collapsed to genes and 1,750 ESTs were unassigned. We refer to the combined set of genes and unassigned ESTs as genes, although some redundancy might exist. ANOVA analysis was used to classify the differentially expressed genes according with the different factors considered (P < 0.05 was used to denote statistical significance).
Statistical analyses were conducted using R version 2.2.0 and the R/maanova software package version 0.98.8 [61, 68]. The gene-by-gene mixed effect ANOVA model, Yijkvr = μ + Ai + Dj + (ST)k + Vv + Eijkvr, was applied. Observation Yijkvr is the expression value of the gene in the biological replicate r studied on array i when the condition is labelled with dye j. The condition is defined by a modality of the genotype, say k, and the modality of the Varroa, say v. The residual of the mode Eijkvr and the term Ai are treated as random effects and the others as fixed effects. Statistical tests were performed with R/Maanova using the hybrid variance model, Fs, based on a James-Stein estimator [69, 70]. To control the number of false-positives, the significance (nominal P-value) of genes was computed using a permutation test (pvalperm with 1000 permutations) . Permutation tests have the advantage of not assuming a parametric underlying distribution of expression values. A gene was declared differentially expressed if its adjusted P-value is lower than 0.05. The adjusted P-value used here made it possible to control the Family Wise Error Rate (FWER)
Functional analysis of gene expression
Microarray ESTs were annotated as described in [60, 71]. Briefly, ESTs corresponding to microarray cDNAs were tested for near-perfect matches (98% identity) to coding (protein) sequence or to genomic sequence within or immediately downstream (500 bp) of predicted genes (using release 1 of the honey bee Official Gene Set ). Redundant cDNA values were averaged (by using untransformedvalues), and resulting values were assigned to official gene names (which are all prefixed "GB"). Remaining cDNAs not associated with predicted sequences retained their EST identifiers and are presented here by EST accession number (prefixed "BB"). Genes were tentatively assigned molecular function terms based on annotation of the single best BLASTX match in Drosophila melanogaster.
We used Gene Ontology (GO) analysis to identify the biological function of the differentially expressed genes, as described in . We sought statistically overrepresented terms among the set of genes significantly regulated. This Enrichment of Gene Ontology (GO) category was tested with a Hypergeometric test followed by the Benjamini Hochberg correction for multiple testing using the analysis tool GOToolBox . Briefly, the analysis calculates the frequency of terms of a gene list (the significantly regulated genes) and compares these results with total frequencies of genes analyzed. We also grouped functionally related genes on the basis of their GO terms. Distances based on GO terms are calculated for all possible pairs from the gene list which are then used for clustering (e.g. the probability that they are functionally related). The functional clustering of genes was carried out in GOToolBox using the WPGMA algorithm. A minimum cluster size of 3 genes was applied.
Transcript quantification by RT-qPCR
The results of the microarray study were confirmed by measuring the expression of 4 differentially regulated genes (Table 2) using Real-Time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). Using an aliquot of the RNA extractions (pools of 8 bees) used for the microarray work, cDNAs were created using the ImProm-II™ Reverse Transcription System kit (Promega). This cDNA (three replicates) was used as template for the Real-Time PCR performed in a Roche LightCycler 480 Instrument platform. The reaction mix consisted of 10 μl of LightCycler 480 SYBR Green Supermix (Roche Laboratories), 5 μl (either 600 nM or 300 nM) of forward and reverse primers, 3 μl dH2O and 2 μl cDNA template. Three reactions were performed and means calculated for each locus and treatment. To standardize the results, a housekeeping gene (Rp49) that did not vary in expression was used as control. The forward/reverse primer sequences are indicated in Table 2. The efficiency for each locus was determined by running a dilution series (1000x, 100x, 10x, 1x) in triplicate. The results were standardized using the method. Efficiency of the amplicons obtained for each locus was adequately high and at least 97% (Table 2).
We thank C. Whitfield for helpful discussion in a previous version of the experimental design, advice in hybridization protocols and earlier statistical analysis. We also thank A. Rieux for his input in the real-time PCR experiments and J-M Bécard and T. Newman for technical assistance. We thank B. Blondin and P. Delobel for help in array's scanning and for providing access to laboratory facilities at Montpellier SupAgro. This work was funded by a European grant for beekeeping, FEOGA-convention 07-17/2004-2007.
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
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Our reputation for construction, backed up with strong delivery on time and on budget, underpins our ability to create long-standing relationships with our clients.
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Eric Springer is a French trained Gourmet specialist.
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They remain true to their founding values of quality, honesty and hard work. They have the highest ethical standards in the industry and they do the right thing. Exclusive Gas is a business based on trust. Exclusive Gas is consistently associated with the high standards of service, quality, personal attention to clients, and integrity.
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Founded and registered in 1998, we initially traded as LV Voere or LV Feeds in Kameeldrift East, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa. In 2007 Dr R van Rheede van Oudtshoorn, practicing at Cullinan Animal Hospital and Dr T Hornschuh from Equine Reproduction Services, both veterinarians joined the operation and the business was renamed to Optima Feeds and Vet Shop. Another business, Optima Vet and Feed shop was registered which handles the Rayton operation. Initially the company stocked only Epol Feeds, but over the years the operation expanded and we are now agents for Epol, Alzu, Vitaline, Victory Feeds , Equi Feeds, Spurwing Horse Feeds, Vuma Horse Feeds, IAMS, Montego Dog Feeds, Vets Choice, Hills, Eukanuba, Equus, Driehoek Voere, Capstone, Blenheim, Shamrock etc. The range of animal feeds has also expanded.
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Established in 1997, Kwathlano has grown to be one of the leading luxury passenger transport and tour companies in South Africa. Derived from the indigenous Basotho word meaning “There by the Five”, we specialize in the following five fields:
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Inside KentuckyA and T Goat Farm (Hindman)
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Here are three things - the ABC - I believe we need to re-think most urgently:
Agriculture - chemical farming is the number one killer of bees and birds, by pesticide poisoning and by herbicidal destruction of wild food sources. We need GM crops like we need to get hooked on heroine: the agri-chem-GM model is exactly that of the drug pusher, with promises of a better life turning to dust as the price rises with every dose and not-so-veiled threats if you consider kicking the habit. If you are gullible enough to believe the GM industry's sales pitch, I have some beach-front property in Arizona you may be interested in.
There is plenty of food for everyone: the problem is lack of education and the politics of distribution. Learning to grow healthy food – along with principles of nutrition - should be as integral to a child's education as learning to read. If you think more GM or more pesticides is the answer, then you are asking the wrong question. If you think massive grain monocultures can solve the problem of starvation in Africa or Bangladesh, then you have not been paying attention to reports of crop failures in Texas.
Biodiversity - is nature's way. Mono-cropping may be cheap in the short term, but in the long term it is incalculably expensive, both to the health of the soil and of the people. Organic gardening is the way forward - nobody sprays the jungle, yet it feeds millions of creatures. Permaculture, forest gardening, aquaponics, all have a part to play in our future of abundance for all, if we kick the grain habit in favour of a multi-layered, many-flavoured, vegetable-based diet with wild and free-range protein supplements.
Conservation - Wild places are the lungs and kidneys and liver of the planet: they purify, recycle and replenish and we need more of them. Natural habitats must be conserved and protected and re-created where they are lacking. Nowhere have we ever truly improved on nature. Alongside this radical ABC, we also need to re-think beekeeping, which provides a metaphor for our overall treatment of nature since Victorian times. We have been taught to put bees in boxes designed not for their convenience but rather for ours, while applying medications designed to mask the problems we have created for them. We have shipped them around to service the mono-crops we have decided we needed - contrary to their natural world of diversity and naturally-evolved flora.
We all must now take responsibility for the abuse suffered by the planet and work to make it a better place for us and for the bees.
Phil Chandler is a tutor at MyGardenSchool, where he teaches a course in Natural Beekeeping For Gardeners. He has devoted his life to the plight of the declining British honeybee, and is author of The Barefoot Beekeeper, a book that champions sustainable, low-impact, low-cost, chemical-free, small-scale, 'organic', natural beekeeping, using simple equipment that almost anyone can make at home. http://www.biobees.com/ |
The California State Apiary Board has scheduled a meeting on Oct. 3, 2008 at the UC Davis Harry H. Laidlaw Honey Bee Research Facility. The meeting will include the seating of the board by California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura, who appointed the board based on nominations submitted to the department earlier this year.
Board members are California beekeepers representing the major geographical divisions of the beekeeping industry: Jackie Park- Burris (Palo Cedro), Leroy Brant (Oakdale), Lyle Johnston (Madera), Steve Godlin (Visalia), and Richard J. Ashurst (Westmoreland). This advisory board makes recommendations to the CDFA secretary on matters pertaining to the California apiary industry.
The Oct. 3 meeting is set for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the agenda includes election of a board chair and other officers, as well as a tour of the research facility and presentations by its researchers.
In recent years, the apiary industry has been attacked by various exotic pests, pathogens and Colony Collapse Disorder, which have resulted in significant losses of bees throughout the state and nation. Honey bees pollinate $6 billion worth of crops in California – roughly one-third of the food we eat. Three quarters of the nation’s honey bee colonies are needed to pollinate California’s almond crop alone.
The California State Apiary Board was established by the Legislature, which declared that a healthy and vibrant apiary industry is important to the economy and welfare of the state, and that its promotion and protection is in the interest of the people of the State of California. Board members receive no compensation but are entitled to payment of necessary traveling expenses. The term of office for a board member is four years. |
Well, hello there! I'm Michelle, welcome to the series, Beekeeping: 31 Days. If you've dropped by for a visit I'm guessing that you are considering getting into beekeeping or that you are concerned about some scary things you've heard about bees. You've come to the right place! I'm going to spend a month sharing how I got into it, basic things you'll need to know to get started, and cool stuff you can make to give away or sell once you get going.
Not interested in getting bees? No worries! There are lots of simple things you can do to help bees even if you don't want to have any yourself. There are some fabulous things to make from beeswax and honey too and I'll tell you how to find the stuff you need for that even if you don't want to harvest your own honey and wax. Even if you are afraid of bees or can't tell the difference between a wasp and a bee this is the place to be!
I'll be including a reading list and other resources to help you get started and I'll be reviewing a product or two that I love. Here's what the list of posts looks like right now, but be advised they are likely to change somewhat over the course of the month so I can keep things up to date with what is going on in real time.
Here's how the series works: This is the go to page for all the links. Even though they are listed here they won't "go live" or actually have a link to follow until the day of. The posts are subject to change depending on whether or not the girls do something fascinating. So let's get started and do this bee thing! See you tomorrow!
2. Basic Facts About Honeybees
3. Simple Beekeeping Glossary
4. 10 Things You Need to Start Beekeeping
5. What It's Really Like to Keep Bees
6. How to Get Over Your Fear of Beekeeping
7. My First Visit to a Bee Yard
8. How I Got Started in Beekeeping
9. Assembling Your Hive Part 1A Challenging Hive of Activity
10. Assembling Your Hive Part 2
11. Beekeeping Equipment
12. Purchasing Your Bees
13 Pests & Problems
14 Reviewing the Freeman Hive Beetle Trap
15 Inside the Hive: Pollen, Honey, Brood
16. How To Catch a Swarm of Bees and Entertain Your Friends and Family
17 Queen Bee War: Capturing Regina George
18. Swarms and Mating of a Virgin Queen
19. Honey Shed Tour
20. What Bees Do With Empty Space
21. Your 5 Most Asked Questions Answered!
22. Harvesting Honey 101
23. Harvesting Honey With an Extractor
24. Harvesting Honey Without an Extractor
25.Update About the Fall Honey Harvest
26. How to be Sure You Are Buying Real Honey
27. Rendering Beeswax
28. Super Simple Make-up remover and Moisturizer in One
30. Ways to Help Save the Bees
31.Putting it All Together |
|Will Allen of Growing Power, at WEI|
I attended two years ago, and I may be talking briefly this year. We're also working on including a tour of my greenhouse, probably on Sunday afternoon, after everything else is over.
This is an awesome weekend! And they're low on registrations this year.
Topics to include:
- Hoophouse Building
- Composting and Vermiculture
- Four Season Growing in Minnesota
- Four Season Aquaponics and Fish Care
- Micro-enterprise Farming
- Passive Solar Greenhouse Building
- Organic Mushroom Growing
- Medicinal and Culinary Herb Farming
- Using a Root Cellar for Food Storage
- Microgreen Production
- The Role of the Chef in the Good Food Revolution
- Beekeeping and Honeymaking
- Small Farm Business Planning
- Organic Garlic Farming
- & more!
More info! http://bit.ly/OKiq4I |
The Central Mississippi Beekeepers Association hosted a beginner’s workshop on Saturday, March 15 at the Ag & Forestry Museum. Walter McKay started the event with a hands-on presentation of beekeeping equipment and jargon. He was followed by me with several power point presentations related to bee diseases, nutrition and methods for starting colonies of bees from either nucs or packages. The formal presentations were followed by an on-site lunch, which was provided by a local Boy Scout troop.
After lunch, we assembled in groups to learn how to work colonies of bees. This is almost always the best part of these workshops. For some folks, it was the first time that they had ever seen the inside of a hive. The outside activities were very relaxed and informal, and we covered all of the basics including lighting a smoker, the proper way of working a colony of bees and recognizing abnormal colony conditions.
Many of the > 115 participants told me that they greatly appreciated the day with the bees. All of the CMBA members that helped with the event deserve a round of applause for ensuring an uneventful (in terms of things going wrong) and educational experience for new beekeepers. This is almost always the workshop having the largest attendance each year. |
Vermont Beekeepers Association
VBA's Mentor Program is the way to start!
Follow the Calendar
Help Vermont beekeepers by sharing your experience.
Sign Up Here
Interested in supporting beekeeping but can't do it yourself?
Bee a Host
In response to Diane Meyerhoff's request for stories from new beekeepers, Brennan Martin sent us a link to his blog. Nicely done at: http://settlementfarmapiary.blogspot.com. |
Today there are some 100,000 Mensans in 100 countries throughout the world. There are active Mensa organizations in over 50 countries on every continent except Antarctica.
Mensa meetings are anything but dull! Many local groups meet at least monthly for dinner and drinks on a Friday night, sometimes featuring a speaker, or a lively, freewheeling discussion with fellow Mensans who share their intellectual interests. Some groups have special get-togethers or activities throughout the month. Others, especially the larger groups, have events on practically every day. Of course, participation in group activities is always entirely at your option. There’s also widely attended annual conventions offering workshops, seminars, and parties. Plus, numerous regional gatherings are held each year, offering social and intellectual excitement.
Whatever your passion, there’s almost certain to be a Special Interest Group (SIG) filled with other Mensans who share it! Mensa offers approximately 200 SIGs, in mind-boggling profusion from African Violets to zoology. Along the way you’ll find microbiology, and systems analysis, but you’ll also find Sherlock Holmes, chocolate and Star Trek. There’s the expected: biochemistry, space science, economics — and the unexpected: poker, roller-skating, scuba diving, UFOs and witchcraft. There are SIGs for breadmaking, winemaking, cartooning, silversmithing, and clowning. Heraldry, semantics and Egyptology co-exist with beekeeping, motorcycling and tap dancing. Sports SIGs cover the classics (baseball, basketball, and football) and the not so classic (skeet shooting, hang gliding, sky diving). And any Mensan who can’t find a SIG to join can easily start one.
Mensans also find opportunities to contribute to the betterment of society through charitable and volunteer activities within their communities. Many Mensa groups offer scholarships for gifted students. The Gifted Children Resource Program compiles and provides information for gifted children at the national and local levels. |
It is brilliant.
You will read that the basic premise of the book is this: pick up and hold every object in your house. If you don't literally feel joy while holding it, get rid of it. Touch every item. Every object in your home starting with your clothing. Keep only those items that fill you with joy. The items you dispose of; thank them for the service they provided to you. Literally. As in, " Thank you, sock for keeping my foot warm and protected". Then let it go. The item has served its purpose. Items that were purchased but never used? "Thank you for the joy you gave me when I bought you. Thank you for teaching me that this color is not flattering". When you have sorted all of your belongings in this way you will wake up to, and come home to, to a place that fills you with joy. Every day. Do you want to live in a storage shed or a house that fills you with happiness? Really think about it. It's that simple.
I have been, let's face it, pretty close to a hoarder since childhood. A love of crafting + american consumer culture + frugality (I paid money for this!) = an inability to throw anything out ever. It was disgusting. Totally disgusting. I will say I have realized over the last few years that space in my house is worth something too and so have been actively working to weed things out that I don't need or see a use for. But this was the kick that I needed at this time in my life.
I sorted my clothing this week. All of it except the maternity clothes in the attic. I couldn't believe some of the crap that was cluttering and choking the life out of my house. Clothing that was moved from floor to laundry basket, washed and never put away. Repeat. I will be honest and admit that some of the items I had been keeping actually filled me with disgust when I held them. Those tank tops that cost $3 new at Wal-Mart? That I bought a dozen of in various colors? Here's the kicker - that I wore when I WAS NINE MONTHS PREGNANT? Why was I keeping them? Because I needed to be told it was OK to get rid of them. I donated two garbage bags of clothing and threw 3 more in the trash. For the first time in my life all of my clothes fit into a dresser and my closet. With plenty of room to spare. I cannot even begin to tell you how good that feels.
I did cheat a little and kept some staples until I can replace them. Because if I kept only the items that truly sparked joy when I held them this is literally all I would have left in my closet:
- I have exactly two blouses that I love. They look like something to wear to an office circa 1950.
- My fancy dresses from when husband and I took ballroom dancing lessons. I have lost 20 lbs since then and they don't even fit.
- A kelly green Calvin Klein raincoat.
- My deer hunting clothes. As in, camouflage/canvas brush pants, blaze orange vest and collection of wool socks. Wanna know what fills me with joy? This. Pretty much this.
The thing about the book, and this is the part that is so important, is that ridding yourself of all of this crap (that, let's face it, you didn't like anyway) puts you in the mindset to honor the things that DO bring you joy. To be mindful. To thank each item at the end of the day for the service it provided.
She encourages you to think like: as I'm letting my hair down at night "Thank you hairpins, for holding my hair up and making me feel beautiful". Or, in the morning, "Thank you nightgown for clothing me softly while I slept." What a beautiful mindset to extent gratitude for the things you do have and cherish in life.
And it's making me view my world differently. To look at the activities that I have enjoyed over the years and admit that some of them do not bring me joy at all. Like beekeeping for example. Video gaming. Most all crafting. It's time to thank those hobbies for what they taught me and release them.
And to be more more mindful. I took so many Buddhist studies classes in college that I was on my way to a minor before I transferred and this is it in a nutshell. I was hungry tonight and wanted a snack before bed. I was also mentally spent from taking care of our little man all day. So I put my husband in charge, sent everyone upstairs and made myself what we call a "nibble plate" - soft homemade bread with butter, hard cheese, cured meats and mustard. I poured a glass of wine and sat down to eat. I was wrapping a piece of prosciutto around a slice of cheese when it occurred to me that I was very much in a meditative moment and had been for the last ten minutes. The silence, the cricket outside the window, the smell of the wine and the act of eating deliberately with my hands. This is what I had been wanting, needing.
This is what the book has shown me. |
HISTORY OF KARAKOL
History of the city
On the 1st of July 2017 the town of Karakol became148 years old. Of course, it's not a serious age for a town, but when you look back and listen to the stories of our friends and relatives, you come to the understanding that it is a meaningful mile stone in the history of Karakol.
The ends of log cabins, patterned porches and balconies, intricately carved window and door frames and painted paneled shutters on the windows represent the main wealth of Karakol's architectural heritage. This unique reminder of the city's past is, however, under threat. The historical part of the urban environment is going through a period of transformation. Particularly alarming is the condition of the Karakol vernacular- it's becoming vulgar.
You cannot make people care about their heritage, but you foster interest and popularize history.
Historical records recorded the exact date,
reasons and circumstances of town's emergence.
Historical records recorded the exact date, reasons and circumstances of town's emergence. Karakol is one of the first towns founded in Issyk-Kul Basin after the accession of Kirghiziia to the Russian Empire.
In fact in 1865, after the voluntary acceptance of Russian command, there was an urgent need to erect defensive points and constructions to withstand the invasion from the Kokand Khanate. This mission was entrusted to Alexandr Vasilyevich Kaulbars, the Colonel General of High Command. He decided to relocate Ak-Suu fortification to a more suitable and advantageous place, as it was inconveniently located far away from caravan roads. After long and thorough analysis a place was chosen on the old and abandoned trade road, where once loaded caravans traveled to Kashgar. On the 1st of July 1869 the first streets, garths and defense barracks were laid. This date is considered as the founding day of the Issyk-Kul capital known as Karakol
Kaulbars had to choose a place to build Karakol. It was planned to erect the fort on new imperial land as a military-administrative center. A comparatively small detachment made a topographical survey of the terrain, they outlined the location of streets and squares.
On July 1st , after the reconnaissance and collection of necessary information, as well as conversations with local residents, the town was solemnly laid. Preference was given to the area located at the intersection of the Karakol River and the caravan route from Chui Valley to Kashgariya.
Karakol was founded precisely as a city, not as a town.
"In the center we put a guest house," Kaulbars wrote in his memoirs. "In front of its main facade is the square for the future holy Orthodox church. The rear front faces the market square, and all this surrounded the well-developed quarters. "
Perhaps the name Karakol comes from the Mongolian "Khara Gol", which means black river, or a river flowing to the north.
Kyrgyz legend says that a long time ago the Kirghiz moving along the Balakhash steppes came to the shores of Issyk-Kul Lake. There, the unprecedented "Kara" (black) people attacked them. It took the Kirghiz a long time to fight them off. As a result, this place was named "Kara Kol" - "Black Hand", after the black hands of the people who once attacked the Kirghiz 300 years ago. "Kara" among the Turks also has the meaning of "people"
In the beginning the town grew only slowly and it seemed like it would suffer the same fate as Ak-Suu. In 1872 there were 150 inhabitants, mostly Tatars and Uzbeks, who came from Tashkent and other cities of Turkestan (the geographical designation for where Turkic peoples live). There were about 12 Russians, not considering the military, which consisted of an infantry battalion, two hundred Cossacks and a mountain battery. The main occupation of the inhabitants was trade in essential goods, which were readily bought by Dekhans from the neighboring villages ("kyshtaks").
The construction was continued by the Issyk-Kul county chief A.P. Tchaikovsky. He wrote to the Russian government: "From now on, Karakol will become a reliable fortress in the east of Semirechie." In 1870, at a new visit to the city, Kaulbars noted that the garrison occupied the already constructed barracks. Here is what he wrote in his memoirs: "I was invited to an evening, which took place in a house on the eastern outskirts of the church square. We danced cheerfully all night on the second floor, where the head of the detachment's apartment was located. In the living-room there was already a brisk trade, several small houses were scattered around the town, and one of the streets was almost completely built up. " Somewhat later, in February of the same year, a government decree was adopted to transfer the Issyk-Kul administration from Ak-Suu to the Karakol fortification.
Starting from 1875, the growth rate of the town slightly increased. Since 1890 settlers from Ukraine, the Central Black Earth Region (in European Russia), and the Volga region moved to Karakol. A particularly large influx of settlers came into the basin of Issyk-Kul Lake, including Karakol, after a crop failure in a number of provinces of the European part of Russia in the early 1890s. As a result, in 1897 there were already 8108 inhabitants in the town, and by 1913 the number had almost doubled.
The high population growth was due to the extremely beneficial natural and climatic conditions for cultivating land and livestock breeding. This fact was especially important for immigrants who had faced severe crop failures and famine in the 1870s. In Karakol there were educational institutions, a city assembly and public organizations: a merchant, an agricultural and even a race society. As in any, even a small, Russian town, there was also a theatre circle. Shopping arcades, a public park, barracks and cobbled streets complemented the picture of this small oasis, located at the foot of the Kungey - Ala-Too.
Among the cities of pre-revolutionary Kyrgyzstan, Karakol was a city of relatively high culture. An invaluable contribution was made by the participants of numerous scientific expeditions, which were led by the Russian Geographical Society, the Geological Committee and other organizations, to study and examine Russian and foreign Asia. Located at the very border of unexplored land, Karakol became a base, a starting point for the expeditions of Nikolai Mikhalovich Przhevalsky, Vsevolod Ivanovich Roborovsky, Petr Kuzmich Kozlov and many others. They prepared food, engaged guides, drovers, selected security and tested their equipment a last time before the before the long journey ahead.
In the 1860's and 70's in the areas of North-Western China, the Dungans rose against the oppressors of the Ch'ing Empire. After suppressing the uprising, the ruling elite of China organized a punitive army led by General Zuo Zongtang. Dungan rebels saw rescue in Russia. In November 1877 part of the Dungans, led by Dosifu, arrived in Karakol.
At that time the population of the city was foremost engaged in cattle breeding and beekeeping. Mainly goods brought from Tashkent and Andijan were traded. It was of particular importance that a trade route passed through Karakol. At the end of the 19th century fairs started opening here with the purpose of selling goods from Russia, buying livestock and raw animal materials.
In the early 1870s, Karakol resembled a small Russian village. There were only 80 houses and 52 shops, including barracks built of spruce logs cut down in the Karakol gorge.
In 1872, the order was given to build houses only from raw brick made from clay mixed with saman (What is saman?).
In 1881 there were six quarters in the city. But years later, in 1887, during the Vernensky earthquake, many houses made out of mud brick were ruined. Therefore, in the following years, wooden houses with decorated porches and cornices started being built again.
Former private dwelling house of the land surveyor Abramov street Telman
The house of the merchant Abduvaliev, grandfather of Chingiz Aitmatov, on the street Toktogul
At 11 tanneries of pre-revolutionary Karakol, all work was done manually. Tanning material was sent to Central Russia in large batches and was processed there. In return, finished leather and various footwear were supplied from Russia. The remnants that were obtained after dressing leather were used to produce glue. The city's glue makes was one of just two in whole Kyrgyzstan. Additionally, four intestine-purifying facilities were counted throughout the country. Gut flushing took place manually. Finished and canned products were exported to Germany. Among the mass of primitive enterprises, the largest and famous "Vorotnikov" oil merchant in the Semirechenskaya region stood out. Oil produced in the Karakol factory was sold to Tashkent and Ferghana Valley as well as to China. This factory was destroyed during the civil war. Karakol wool-washing with its 100 workers was the largest in pre-revolutionary Kirghizia.
Industrial production was supplemented with domestic crafts. Among the people engaged in crafts, there were many knife-cutters, stirrupsmen, spinners, fishermen and copper workers. The labour of saddlers, stove workers, carpenters, tailors, watchmakers and of masters of silver and gold was in demand.
And yet, despite the relatively developed industry, the bulk of the population was engaged in agriculture. Beekeeping and gardening had commercial importance.
Import was an important source of income for the citizens. This can be judged on the basis of next fact. Up to 800 trains were attracted to transport goods to the Karkarinsky Fair, which was held annually 80 km east of Karakol. A large number of vehicles were required for the transportation of various cargo coming from outside the Issyk-Kul region.
Online map of modern Karakol
The project "Preserving the cultural heritage of Karakol" was initiated by the YVO (youth volunteering organization) "Leadership" in cooperation with the Issyk-Kul Oblast State Archive and the media partner "Issyk-Kul Wave" radio station, with the support of Internews. Project Objectives:
- to contribute to the preservation of the architectural heritage of Karakol;
- to develop an interactive online map showing the historical sites of the city;
- to conduct a thematic media campaign to attract the attention of local residents and to develop civic engagement.
Information about the project: http://www.leadership.kg/index.php/ru/save-karakol...
The team of YVO "Leadership" The YVO (youth volunteer organization) "Leadership" team took part in the Laboratory of Media and Social Innovations in Dushanbe (Tajikistan) from May 21 to 23, 2017, organized by the Internews Network in Central Asia. Lab is a social project for solving socially significant problems and addressing the needs of inhabitants of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Such events are a good tool to stimulate the participation of youth, civil society and the IT community in the implementation of socially significant media initiatives. Our team presented the project "Creating an Internet platform about the historical heritage of Karakol". Following the results of the Laboratory, a team of experts and mentors supported one idea from each participating country. Our idea became the winner from Kyrgyzstan, and thereby we won a grant to implement the idea. We express our gratitude to all the mentors and organizers of the Laboratory - 2017 #inLab2017Link to our presentation of the project during the Laboratory:https://m.facebook.com/story.php…
More stories about Karakol and its history, architecture, people and development ... |
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
FIFTY-SIX MEMBERS & GUESTS attended the meeting and good fellowship was had by all. Minutes & Treasurer’s Report were approved. Lots of members renewed their dues: Dwight Coburn, Terry Cremeans, Ashby Leach, Bill & Sandy Lincoln, Bill Maynard, Dr. David Nicholas, Jeff & Anna Patton, Dale Poston, Bill & Margaret Reid. THANKS to all you renewing members!
We also had several NEW MEMBERS join us: James Black, Kim Carico, Barbara Greer, Kari Kirschbaum, Herman Maynard, Pete Meadows, Ken Miller, Kenneth Miller, Renee Ratcliff, Taylor Reed, Cynthia Morrison-Skidmore, Sherman Smith & Chris Strow. WELCOME TO EACH & EVERY ONE OF YOU!
Gabe reported that Dan O’Hanlon has been appointed as the Legislative Chair of the WV State Beekeepers. Dan arranged for the beekeepers to meet with BOTH Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin & House Speaker Richard Thompson on Ag Day. He also announced that the WVBA Spring Meeting would be in Fairmont on Saturday, March 28th. The CWBA will be putting on a Beginners Bee School at Heritage Farm on March 21st from 9 am—3 pm.
It is time to put out traps for the European Hornet...these also catch wax moths, horse flies & yellow jackets. The formula is in an old newsletter and on our website.
Dan discussed the WV Queen Producers and urged all members to send in their order for a $10 queen using the order form in the State Newsletter. BEE SURE and get those hygienic genetics in your local Drone Congregation Area.
David Adams asked about bears and Wade told him electric wire is best. We also discussed moving hives. You can move them a little bit every day or move them 2 miles away for 30 days, then move them back to your beeyard in the new location. Wade thought the best way was to make a split & move it to the new location. Many people said that their State bees have died. We got them late and they didn’t get a good chance to build up due to the drought. Other than the State bees, the average loss is around 10% which is terrific. Joe Latshaw of the Ohio Queen Program says anything under 20% is excellent beekeeping. David Nicholas has gotten all 4 of his hives to survive in his 1st year of beekeeping [WAY TO GO, DAVID!!!]. Dan believes the low loss level has to do with the good genetics we have brought into this area. Studies show that once you get 50% hygienic genes into the area, your pest problems go way down.
Spring is starting late this year, winter is hanging on. This is the most dangerous time for bees because they have started rearing brood and will starve in an extended cold spell, even with honey just a few inches away.
Paul Meade says he has lost ALL his bees & was awarded the 1st ‘WADE STILTNER DOOM & GLOOM AWARD’!
Gabe demonstrated hive top feeders. Use 1-1 sugar syrup. BEE SURE there are no cracks in the cover where bees can crawl in & drown in the syrup. Watch your bees & stop feeding when they are past the danger of starvation or you may have swarms hanging from your trees. Swarming is not all bad IF you can catch them. You get a new young queen for your hive but probably not no honey that year. We discussed pollen patties: Wade does not use them but Gabe does. Bill Reid said it helps nurse bees make royal jelly for brood rearing.
Finally, Gabe discussed SWARM CONTROL. Congestion in the brood chamber is the major reason bees swarm so BEE SURE to give her plenty of room UPWARDS to expand the brood nest. Don’t split the brood nest apart this time of year. If you run double deeps or deep & medium, you might want tor reverse the boxes now to put the one with brood on the bottom. The queen will move UP. If you find queen cells cut them out if you want honey that year, pull them into a nuc box if you want to increase your hives that year. Leave the old queen in the original hive until you are sure you have a good laying queen in the nuc box, then replace the old queen with her. Just don’t shake queen cells as the developing queen in fragile.
Raising a new queen this way also helps to break the mites breeding cycle and is one of the ways to control varroa mites.
The RULE OF THUMB around here is put your honey supers on when the Redbud trees are in bloom. And stay ahead of the flow with several boxes.
Our next meeting will be on May 11th at 6 pm. This is our annual DINNER MEETING. It will be held at the South Point Ponderosa [map on next page]. We will elect officers and Gabe will speak about Books, Magazines & Online Resources for beekeepers. BEE SURE to make plans to attend. |
Things that got away from me last week – including blog posting – got a bit recaptured over the weekend, which consisted of phone call time with all my daughters and an afternoon hanging out with Mom. It also consisted of me not being my best self when I got home from Mom’s expecting to start building beehives and Sweetheart informed me that we didn’t have any of the right nails to put the boxes together.
I will skip over the part where I expressed my feelings about this discovery.
Enter Sweetheart Senior, my father-in-law.
SS and his wife invited us all to lunch today, to celebrate a couple of birthdays – our nephew B, who turned 9, and Sweetheart’s mother, P. Senior and P haven’t been married since Sweetheart and his siblings were kids. But Christmas and birthdays are communal affairs, with all the drama one would expect at an event where lovely people congregate. Or, to put it another way, none.
Sweetheart called his dad last night to ask if he had the right kind of nails and whether we could build the hives at their place before or after the party. He did, so this morning, while Sweetheart gathered up hive parts, I walked over to their house with the birdbath we’d gotten for P, and a bag with pignoli, caramelized beets with chèvre and serving pieces for both of them.
After the party, I figured SS would set us up and Sweetheart and I would put the box and frames together. But then, Sweetheart and Senior got into it and were having a great time. So I did a little bit, but mostly hung out and took photos.
And speaking of photos, this past Thursday, the Large Midwestern Technical College where I work held its annual Five Star Event. The Five Star is the biggest scholarship fundraiser for the culinary, hospitality and baking programs.
People start lining up an hour before the 5:30 start time. The $45 ($55 at the door) gets you all the amazing food you can eat – in multiple areas at multiple stations – and a chance to buy raffle tickets, bid on silent auction items and participate in a “wine pull” – I don’t remember if it was three chances for $10 or something different, but you get the idea. Once you’ve bought in, you pick a cork from a barrel of them, and if there’s a number on the bottom, you get the bottle of wine to which the number corresponds.
Mostly, it’s a great night for people watching and a great night to watch our students and their instructors strut their culinary stuff. There was a room filled with cakes that were too pretty to eat. They were baked and decorated by baking and pastry arts students, and auctioned off. I’m going to give their pictures the last word.
Last summer, I gave myself a gift. My friend Judy was offering a four-week writing workshop. I went on-line and registered. She’s one of the Writer’s lunch writers, owner of Redbird Writing Studio and the author of “Shut Up & Write.”
It was everything I hoped for and then some. You can draw a straight line between those four weeks and this blog – my way of establishing a regular writing routine that isn’t dependent on anyone else’s editorial agenda or timeline.
Then, in January, Judy sent me an e-mail. Here’s a condensed version:
“A small group of my students are getting together for a weekend in Waupaca, April 18-20. There will be 7 or 8 of us. All have made friends with one or more of the others in class. The point isn’t writing prowess or number of publications, it’s that they want to write and are good company.
Think you’d like to join us? You get to hang out with the group when you want to, or hide in your room to write when you want to. We’ll probably have one feedback session. No classes.
Let me know if you like the idea.”
Let’s see….a chance to spend a weekend at a bed & breakfast where all I have to do is write and hang out – or not hang out – with like-minded people?
I’d never done a writing retreat before, but it’s something that anyone with any sort of creative aspirations dreams about, I think. The chance to shed nagging day-to-day responsibilities and find out whether the void that creates opens you up to producing work you’ve sworn you would, if only you had the time and space, is true. If it turns out to be just a lie you’ve been feeding yourself for decades, it’s probably best to find out in a low-stakes setting. Judy’s invitation seemed like the perfect chance for a test run.
So, despite almost forgetting that this was the weekend – and remembering in the nick of time, on Thursday night as Sweetheart and I were walking Tuki and Judy’s name came up – I left work early on Friday, packed the car, took the dog for a short walk, hit up the Public Market for some food, dropped by the nursing home to hug Mom, then headed up to the Crystal River Inn, the Bed & Breakfast where seven of the eight writers were gathered. (Barbara lives in Waupaca already, so she didn’t need a place to stay.)
Friday night we went in to town, where Judy was formally introduced, along with several other writers. She’d presented a workshop as part of the Waupaca Book Festival, and we hung about at the coffee shop and bookstore for awhile. I am proud to report that I only bought one book for myself. (I got two others, both holiday gifts.)
Saturday and Sunday both started with a walk and breakfast. On Saturday I went to the cemetery. Then, later, I went back with my camera to take a few pictures of some interesting tombstones.
This morning, I saw a Sandhill crane. It was strolling in the grass along Highway 22, elegant as you please, occasionally bending down for something to eat. I watched from a respectful distance until it safely crossed the highway and headed into a back yard, then continued on my way. (I’d opted to leave the camera behind and just take mental pictures, so no photo.)
A couple of the other authors were staying at the B&B, and yesterday, I decided that one of them – Mike Mullin – needs to come and read at Boswell Books, and do presententations at my friend Marqurite’s high school and at Large Midwestern Technical College. Also, he needs to go to my friend Mollie’s library. She’s a children’s and YA librarian who doesn’t live far from him, so I’ll be doing my Yenta the Matchmaker thing sometime this week.
After Saturday breakfast, our writing pack arranged a time and parameters for a roundtable session (three pages at 3:30). Then Judy and most of the other writers went in to town, with plans for a short hike around a nearby lake between town and roundtable. I stayed back to write.
I decided to tear apart something that had started as a blog post and ended up as something else. I’d gotten feedback on its problems from two people I trust. This seemed a good opportunity to take a stab at addressing some of them.
Several hours and three paragraphs later, I realized a couple of things:
I was really hungry.
No one was back from town.
There were tasty leftovers in my room thanks to my Public Market run.
So, I had myself a picnic on the front steps of the B&B. Then, I took another walk, snapped a few pictures of the wedding party that had shown up to take some post-ceremony pictures and went up to my room to play guitar for a bit.
When the others came back, four of us headed off to Hartman Creek State Park, where we hiked around the lake and I got to indulge my inner 11-year-old. After our round-table session, we went Culver’s for dinner, then home to bed.
This morning, I shared, via e-mail, the group picture we’d drafted a Culver’s staffer to shoot, along with a helping of gratitude.
I’ll end with a condensed version of the e-mail that accompanied our photo.
Thank you all – and especially Judy – for an incredible weekend. Even though I probably only wrote three original paragraphs, they were seismic in terms of what I’m striving to achieve with my word-pile.
I’ve grown pretty accustomed over the years I’ve been mulling the story I wanted to tell and have achieved a comfort level with many of the details of my father’s story and its fallout.
Realizing how important Debbie is as a character in this story is a recent and unsettling development, in no small part because she is (was) a public figure. I feel like the owner of a very small house and now I have to build on an extra room for the elephant. (Sigh.)”
Anyway, extreme gratitude to all of you and I look forward to Judy getting us all together again.”
I know it’s kind of cool to hate Facebook, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. It has let me stay connected to people I love who live too far away for me to see them as much as I’d like to. It’s given me a way to stay connected to people I like but am just too damned busy to see as much as I’d like to. It’s also given me a chance to develop relationships with people I’ve met in person once and would likely have never gotten a chance to get to know any better.
One is a young woman I met last summer when Sweetheart and I took our magical motorcycle tour through parts of Flyover Country. We also rode through parts of the country so remote that planes don’t even bother flying over it.
She was the server at our second breakfast at the diner where she works. (Our first was on the way out, and the food and service were so good we hit it up on the way back.) She was sparkly, a young mom with a cool tattoo.
Since becoming FB pals, I’ve discovered that she and her grade-school-age son adore each other and both her son and their dog (a black Lab) are happy and well-cared-for. Everything she posts has backed up my initial impression of her as someone I’d want to have as a friend.
One of my early morning activities is a cruise of my feed, where I scan and sometimes hit “like” or make the occasional comment as I move along. Two days ago, she posted this:
“Ugh! I don’t want to have this hate in my life any more! I dream about it. It’s constantly in my mind. I don’t want to think about it. I want it out of my head.”
Before I knew it, I was throwing words into the comment box.
“Dream about putting it in a box, sealing up the box, addressing it to wherever you want it sent with a Sharpie, taking it to the post office and mailing it off. (Use a fake return address so it doesn’t come back.) Also, if it’s a smaller amount, just use the appropriately sized envelope or soft package.”
She got other good suggestions, too. All were graciously received. But mine got me thinking about creative ways to get rid of hate, rage and other types of unwanted excess emotion.
Here are a couple of other ideas:
Send an imaginary process server to serve it with an eviction notice.
Stick it in a trick-or-treater’s plastic pumpkin. (That would clearly fall into the “trick” category.)
Burn it in the fireplace.
But I don’t want to be only kid in the room with my hand up. So, consider this an invitation to weigh in with your suggestions and recommendations for offloading unwanted emotional baggage. 3-2-1…..GO!
It’s official. As of last night, I am a beekeeper.
It feels very strange to write those words. My mental image of a beekeeper used to be some sort of slightly feral sage, an interesting sort of semi-holy person standing quietly in the midst of a raging storm of flying, buzzing, stinging creatures.
In other words, someone who is not me. Feral is a good description of me as a housekeeper, or a writer. But the closest I get to sage is Thanksgiving dinner, when I’m making the stuffing.
But that’s irrelevant now.
When I got home from work yesterday, Sweetheart had the bike out and ready. I was just walking toward him when Tammy, Dan and her son Larry showed up. I met Tammy at Large Midwestern Technical College not long ago, and we quickly discovered that Larry goes to the school down the block from me and one of his teachers is a friend. So, we invited them to hang out with us for a bit while I carried the newly-painted hive box, bottom board and top out to the back yard and placed them on the stand.
I replaced two of the wax-only frames with honey frames, so my bees would have something to eat until there is enough flowering plant life to sustain them. Kind of like a bee SNAP program (that would be food assistance, for all you non-US readers) that works the way it’s intended to work – a handup, not a handout. If all goes well, they’ll be making their food soon enough.
I love this woman’s outlook on bees and beekeeping. Also her nose for research and her companionable writing style.
Here’s an example, from a passage she wrote about having to buy a new queen for a hive that had not (as is customary when a queen dies) replaced their queen:
“They seemed so lost. At least, they sounded that way. Rather than offering the unified, major-chord buzz I was used to hearing, individual bees were humming quietly to themselves, out of phase, the result of a weird discombobulation. Without their queen, the workers didn’t know quite what to do with themselves, and obviously, they wouldn’t survive without new bees being made. To fix the problem, I rush ordered a new mated, Italian queen from a honeybee supplier in the South. Just days later, she arrived, caged along with several of her attendants, in a large, puffy envelope.”
Brackney goes on to describe the hazards of introducing a new queen into an existing hive, and does what Sweetheart and I did last night with our queen (who I have named Latifah, in case you were wondering).
The queen cage is a small wood block, about 1.5 inches long and hollowed out in the middle. There’s a layer of mesh stapled around the hollowed out side with a hole on one end. The hole is plugged up with a small bit of cork. After making sure you’ve got your finger close to the cork, you pry it off with a small knife and plug the hole with your hand so she doesn’t fly away. Then, you jam a miniature marshmallow into the hole. Take your marshmallow-cage queen, and turn the block so the mesh side is facing down into the hive. Place the block between two honey frames. The time it takes for the queen to eat through the marshmallow on one side, with bees on the other side helping her, gives everyone a chance to get used to each other.
The queen drops down into the hive, starts laying eggs, and everyone lives happily ever after.
Anyway, Brackney decided to throw caution to the winds and skip the slow introduction process.
“I carefully pried out the cork and summarily dumped the queen and her attendants onto the frames in the top of the hive.What happened next astonished me, but I guess it shouldn’t have. I’d read that queens sometimes ‘toot’ or ‘pipe’ loudly to their subjects, but I never expected to have a chance to hear it firsthand. It was a startlingly loud and clear ‘Whooooo-Whoooo-Who-Who-Who-Who!’ As she piped, the queen pressed her midsection against the wooden tops of the honeycomb frame, serving to amplify her high-pitched, staccato calls. It sounded a bit like a kazoo being played by a teakettle.”
Any writer who can come up with a phrase like “a kazoo being played like a teakettle” is my kind of writer. She’s actually anyone’s kind of writer if you’re interested in bees and like your facts wrapped up in engaging prose.
Enlisting Susan Brackney as a beekeeping resource was as easy as plucking her book off a sale rack. But my real beekeeping knight in shining armor (okay, so his shining armor is a flannel shirt, but who’s counting?) is Andy Hemken.
Then, when the Mann Lake order wasn’t here but the bees were going to be, Andy told me not to worry. We drove out to his place over the weekend with every bee thing we had, and he looked it all over. He suggested we paint the box, and gave me a new bottom board and a top (Jeff was using a slab of something that wasn’t a beehive top). When we asked how much we owed him, he said $10. It seemed like way too little, especially given how reassuring it was to have someone treat as pretty much routine that we’d be fine making a go at this beekeeping thing.
Then, yesterday, we picked up our bees. Andy had said anyone who wanted to could put some of the package bees into one of his hives (“I have 500 packages to install. Every one someone else does is one I have to put in.”). It was one of those rare “something in it for everybody” situations – Andy wins because he has a few less packages to install, and we baby beekeepers really win because we get to practice installing bees into a hive under the guidance and tutelage of an expert.
I had my vintage bee veil and a pair of spa gloves. Andy’s wife Cheryl handed Sweetheart a bee veil, and the three of us headed out to the bee yard with a five packages. I was pretty nervous trying to remember the proper sequence for what I was supposed to do when, but by the third package, I pretty much had it down. Here’s a 12-step program for Bee Package Installations:
Take top off hive, put it on the side of the hive.
Take out three middle frames, put them in front of the hive.
Using hive tool, pry can up from inside bee package. Quickly cover hole from can with square of wood so bees do not fly out.
Take hold of small metal piece protruding from top of bee package. Lift piece and slide it toward the covered hole. Uncover hole with hand not holding metal piece, shake it as you remove the tiny wooden block to which it is attached, because it will be crawling with bees who need to stay in the can.
Turn wooden block over and peer in at the queen. Make sure she’s alive. She’ll be pacing back and forth in her mesh-covered cage.
Pick up a mini marshmallow and a small knife.
When the queen is pacing away from the tiny wooden stopper at one end, use the knife to remove the stopper. Quickly plug the hole with your finger. Put down the knife and plug the hole with the marshmallow.
Now, if you don’t have stray bees clinging to the queen cage, you can put her in your pocket to keep her warm. I had stray bees every time. So I just put her nearby where she was safe.
Pick up the can, quickly remove the wooden top and turn it upside down. Tip the box from side to side, tapping on the side that’s angled down so that the bees fall into the hive. When most of them are out, set it down.
Gently replace the frames, making sure you’re not crushing your new colleagues.
Now, using a hive tool (if you have one, which we did not), make a space between two of the newly-replaced frames. Place the queen cage there, mesh side down. Hook the metal perpendicular to the cage, so it doesn’t fall in.
Close up the hive, and make sure the opening in the box with the remaining bees is facing the hive so the stragglers can find their way to their new home.
We came in from the bee yard. I picked out a package from the hundreds there – the sound of all that buzzing was something to hear. Sweetheart wrapped the package up in my jacket and put it in the top case of the motorcycle. We got home as the sun was setting.
We had just enough light to install our package. I had my bee veil on, but couldn’t shake the feeling that I had a bee down the back of my pants. (I didn’t.)
It turned out when we got inside, though, that Sweetheart had picked up a hitchhiker. He was standing in front of the open refrigerator when it happened. He slammed the door shut and shook like a dog that had just been sprung from a bathtub.
We couldn’t find the bee. Then, a few minutes later, Sweetheart opened the fridge again. She was sitting there, shivering. He picked her up and took her outside so she could find her way to her 8,000 sisters, a few brothers and Latifah, her queen.
When it came to fighting styles, my sister and I were not well-matched.
When we were very young, (I remember the baby gate in front of her bedroom door and other places in the house) and she upset me, I’d complain to my mother about whatever it was Debby was doing.
“Tell her not to,” Mom would advise.
So I would march my wee self over to wherever she was.
“NOT TO!” I’d shout.
It never worked.
As we got older, it became clear that Debby had inherited my mother’s short fuse and sharp tongue. I was older, but slower-witted. And like Dad, it took me a long time to get really angry, but when I did, I put on a show.
So most of our fights went this way: She’d get mad and start yelling. I’d try yelling back, but she was faster with the barbed words and better at shouting over me. It was easier to give up and stalk off to my room to sulk. And read.
There are two notable exceptions to this pattern. One has become the stuff of family legend, mostly because it ended with a severed finger. Sweetheart and I were having dinner at a local ethnic restaurant with one of my then college-age daughters when I casually mentioned the other.
Alex was as shocked as I’ve ever seen her.
She went completely quiet, staring at this stranger who looked like her mother, but no longer sounded like her.
“I knocked her down and walked on her,” I said.
“You knocked her down and walked on her,” Alex repeated. She repeated it a couple more times, turning the words over in her mouth as she attempted to assimilate this information into her previously-formed mother matrix. Sweetheart and I, sitting across from her at the restaurant table, watched and waited.
Her next move was to ask a question.
“What did she do?”
“I don’t remember,” I said. “What I can tell you is that she was making me really mad and I warned her that if she didn’t stop I was going to knock her down and walk on her. She wouldn’t stop, so I did.”
It was many winters on, but even from that cozy restaurant booth I could still conjure up the salient parts of the event.
We were walking home from school. The argument had commenced several blocks back, and now we were five houses away from home, at the steep part of our hilly street. It was midwinter, cold. Snow was mounded on either side of the shoveled sidewalk.
She wouldn’t stop, and I pushed her. I remember her shocked look as she went down, remember the ambiguity I felt about doing it even as I was making the choice to follow through on the threat I’d made. Even if I didn’t fully want to, even though I didn’t fully want to. I had to. Because I had said I would and if I didn’t, she’d just do whatever it was that had made me mad again and I couldn’t take that. So I walked across her, but just once. Then I kept going. She trailed behind me, crying, howling, screaming.
I walked ahead, silent. I knew I was going to be in big trouble when we got home.
I was right. The evidence was all over Debby’s back – the prints were an exact match with my boots. Mom & Dad mopped her up and comforted her while I waited for my punishment, which I don’t remember. I was sorrier about having to do it than I was about having done it, though. Or, to put it another way, my belief that she’d brought it on herself left me feeling okay about whatever punishment I got.
Across the table from me, my daughter was still scouring my face and the inside of her brain for her own answers, which were clearly not forthcoming.
We sat, silently. Sweetheart and I, waiting. At last, Alex spoke.
“I have to reassess everything I ever knew about you,” she said.
“It’s nice to know I can still surprise you after all these years,” I told her.
Then, we moved on to other topics.
One we did not discuss that night was the great finger-severing of 1965. My children have never not known that one, and as a very wee child, my niece was fascinated by the story.
Seder is in the rear-view mirror. The fancy dishes are safely stowed in the china cabinet, the Seder plate, Haggadot and box o’ plagues are back on the highest reaches of the pantry shelving and our fridge is well-stocked with leftover roast beast, eggplant Parmesan and other goodies.
Which means it’s time to talk about last Thursday. I was taking Tuki for her nightly “pre-bedtime outdoor visit” when I heard a sound I thought was rain. It was identical to the gentle patter of water on fallen leaves (we don’t rake everything up in autumn in order to protect and feed the spring growth), but I didn’t feel any drops.
Still, the soft crunching of dried leaves being jostled by something was all around me. I knelt down and peered at a patch of lawn next the sidewalk.
I saw a flash of movement as a leaf rustled, then another and another. My eyes got used to the dark, at about the same time my brain realized what was going on. It was one of the first mild nights of the season, and the yard was literally crawling – with earthworms. They were coming out of hibernation for their first meal of the season. I ran for the house.
“What’s going on?” Like me, he was already wearing his pajamas.
He came out.
“Listen!” I said, pointing at the leaves. He knelt down, quiet and still, and watched.
“There are no native earthworms anymore,” he said, “except for one somebody found in the Driftless Area.”
“Where did they come from?” I asked him.
Tuki strolled the sidewalk, sniffing around trees and occasionally looking up when a loud car or truck whizzed down the main drag that runs perpendicular to our block.
We watched the night crawlers munch their way through the fallen leaves. I thought about how amazing it is that there’s this whole world right outside my door I’d never known existed.
The next night, it was cold. The worms stayed underground. But since then, I’ve seen them again. And it will be interesting to see how things go this summer.
Speaking of which, when I looked at my cell phone yesterday, there was a call from a number I didn’t recognize.
After an exchange of “Helloes,” and “Who am I talking tos?” we figured out that Beekeeping Expert had dialed up Baby Beekeeper. The topic? The two pounds of bees I ordered the day I’d taken the Beginning Beekeeping workshop on Valentine’s Day would be arriving and ready for pickup next Monday.
Excitement and panic ensued. Panic because I have to get another deep box and frames ordered, painted (just the outside of the box) and assembled by next Monday. Also, what if I screw up. What if the queen flies away. What if I don’t feed the bees right? Also, what kind of gloves should I get?
I’m a little late on this week’s blog post because I’ve been too busy doing things and not busy enough writing about them.
Tonight, 12 people are going to sit down at my dinner table and take a trip from Flyover Country to Egypt. Then we will flee from slavery there.
I’ve been listening to music all day and cooking, and it has been paradise. Cooking is one of the most relaxing things in the world, and little makes me happier than the prospect of cooking for people I like. I will only cook for you if I like you. You can pay me to write for you, but you cannot pay me to cook for you.
Some things are not for sale.
In the “things for sale” department, however, my most recent Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle story is out in the world. It’s about Amanda Miryam-Khaye Seigel, who grew up in Madison and now lives in New York. She’s this delightful singer/songwriter in her 30s, and she sings in Yiddish. She has this pure soprano voice and the expressive range of a whole theater company. So even if you don’t know a single word of Yiddish, you still have a pretty good idea about what she’s singing. Hard-core Metallica or Nas fans might want to skip it, but if you like show tunes, this will be right up your musical alley.
Anyway, back in the “things not for sale” department, here is what my Seder crew will be tucking into so far: halved and roasted Brussels sprouts with some olive oil and Brady Street Sprinkle from The Spice House, carmelized beets tossed in some espresso vinaigrette from Oro, chicken soup with matzah balls, veggie soup with matzah balls (for the vegetarians) gefilte fish, prime rib (which, when I saw how much it cost, thought, “We are eating my children’s inheritance for Seder dinner!”), eggplant parmesan (for the vegetarians), potato kugel, green beans and a salad (made by my wonderful Milwaukee Mom and cousin Carol).
Dessert is pignolis, chocolates made by the culinary arts students at Large Midwestern Technical College – those students make the best-tasting homework ever – and fresh fruit.
I’d like to stick around and tell you about Wednesday night, when my friend Rick, Sweetheart and I went to see Judith Claire Mitchell read from her amazing new book “A Reunion of Ghosts.” She read from the book, but she also gave us a look behind the curtain at the life of Fritz Haber, who synthesized chlorine gas, and his wife Clara, the first woman to get a Ph.D. in science in Germany. Her dreams of doing cutting-edge (or any) research got washed away when she married Fritz.
Anyway, it’s time to head back into the kitchen. Those apples and nuts are not going to turn into charoset on their own.
George Lakoff has retired as Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is now Director of the Center for the Neural Mind & Society (cnms.berkeley.edu). |
This Introduction to Beekeeping course is designed to provide new beekeepers with both the practical skills and the background knowledge to start beekeeping with confidence.
The all day program is highly interactive and includes a live hive opening in the on site club apiary as well as other hands-on skill building exercises. Background instruction incorporates equipment selection and bee biology in addition to details of the Apiary and Biosecurity Codes of Practice.
Our highly qualified tutors have experience with both conventional Langstroth hives and the new Flow hives as well as top bar hives.
Included in the course fee are a comprehensive handbook and a copy of the textbook The Australian Beekeeping Manual * which retails at $50.
The hive session is weather dependent and in the event of completely unsuitable weather, we will schedule an alternative date or dates.
A certificate of completion will be awarded once the online quiz has been successfully attempted.
No previous experience is required and loan protective equipment is available for the hive session. Lunch, tea and coffee will be provided.
A combination of the course plus membership is attractively priced (due to subscription pro rating) and is highly recommended to assist new beekeepers during their early learning experiences. To join as a member and immediately sign up for the beginners course and avoid paying separately for each transaction, follow these steps:
- For each transaction except the final one, click the "Invoice me" button rather than the "Pay online" button.
- For the final transaction, click the "Pay online" button and all the transactions will be combined into a single payment.
* “…an excellent, but above all extremely comprehensive reference book, that is at the same time...eminently readable.” Australasian Beekeeper, November 2015"a standout reference for the new beekeeper..."
The Amateur Beekeeper, August 2016 |
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In our world today, we only see the poverty on the streets, hear about the wars, famine, factory farming, smell the pollution in the air and I think we all sense and feel that our human race and planet is very unstable. This overload of negative sensory stimulation can make many of us feel hopeless, depressed, angry and completely unsure of the future. I know I have felt that way at a pivotal point in my journey.
But truth be told, there is an invisible revolution happening – it’s taking place outside of the cities, on degraded lands, down long dirt roads, in the mountains and up dried river beds.
This revolution consists of groups of people who are deciding they have had enough of our extractive society and unfulfilling jobs, who are making a choice to pool their resources together and go back to the land (where we came from) to learn the old ways of living together in villages, cultivating community, taking care of one-another and learning how to take care of the land once again. Courageous and ordinary people are choosing love over fear, creation over destruction and finding the will in themselves to follow a vision for the thriving future they see for their children and grandchildren.
This is a movement of remembering that the earth is one fragile ecosystem and we are interconnected. We are designing our lives and our lands with the whole system in mind. Through this mindset we are finding ways to not only become sustainable but through proper management, we’re bringing more LIFE back to our planet. In this movement we are practicing regenerative agriculture, permaculture, alternative governance models, nature based education, natural medicine and open source information exchange.
These holistic farms and villages can be visited and they’re offering to teach us a new way of relating to this planet and each other!
Here are just 5 demonstrations of this revolution that you can visit on the annual Sustainable Living Tour:
A permaculture demonstration center that demonstrates holistic ways of designing human environments, restoring and revitalizing the land and community, and facilitates deeper understandings of ourselves and one another through immersive experiences in nature. Quail Springs whose stream went from 3 gallons per minute to 60 gallons per minute and have adorable examples of tiny houses made from Earth.
A 9 acre intentional community of health practitioners, children, visionary business leaders and educators all building a space for heart-centered community and collaboration. The Emerald Village visioned and co-created a 5 family successful, heart-centered and co-parented eco-village that practices alternative governance models and effective and responsible communication practices.
An education center that inspires through examples of landscape restoration and succession into abundance using permaculture ethics and principles. East End Eden turns over 12,000 pounds of “food waste” into rich soil yearly thanks to their pigs and are building a pond that will harvest a 1.5 million gallons of drinkable water that otherwise would run off into the ocean from just a few days of rain in drought stricken California.
An educational center, that engages individuals, families, and students in fun, hands-on activities that teach practical, environmental solutions at the household and community level.
An organic farm that educates, empowers and cultivates sustainable food through hands on workshops on gardening, composting, vermiculture, beekeeping, fruit trees, natural pest control, organic soil amending, animal husbandry and more. Wild Willow Farm cultivates resilient local food systems and trains up future sustainable farmers.
There are several more examples that you can discover on The Sustainable Living Tour and it is beyond inspiring to see this shift happening right before our eyes!
You can see this happening on and individual level through every
- mother that decides to give birth at home.
- parents that agrees to an alternative to public school.
- family that decides to grow their own food.
- person who decides to use their money as a form of voting.
- individual who chooses to follow their own passion to create a career.
- CEO who directs an ethos in their company of providing for the people and the environment.
On a personal level this shift from the inside can happen once we stop complaining about the problems and start creating, collaborating and contributing to the solution.
No matter how far you travel away from your home, when you are tapped into this network of new earth network, you will meet people on every corner of this planet who have a similar set of values and are actively working towards creating this collective vision. The degrees of separation continue to decrease, and soon we will all remember the Truth – that we are all interconnected.
It is every individual, each community, and all of these sustainable living centers that are leading the revolution to re-enliven our watersheds, bring our soil back to life, heal our human relationships and steward the earth with future generations in mind. The earth is coming back to LIFE.
Apply now for our 12-Day traveling retreat visiting Sustainable Living Centers in Southern California.
Get on the bus before it fills up, we’re half-full! www.earthjourneys.org/tour |
Stylish, sustainable, and socially conscious – that’s been the mantra on the mind of Hillcrest Mall since 2016, when it began a campaign to drastically reduce its green footprint. A number of changes were made that have lead to the centre to increase its waste diversion rate to a whopping 86 per cent! After achieving this milestone, it made perfect sense for the shopping centre to take the next logical step and incorporate wildlife into the mix.
BRING ON THE BEES
This June, Hillcrest connected with urban beekeeping organization Alvéole, and installed two beehives on its roof. The hives will start off housing approximately 20,000 bees, and have the potential to grow to 80,000 bees by the end of the season – talk about some sweet guests! The team prepared the environment by planting wildflowers around the perimeter of the mall, and are letting people know that the bees will pollinate flower and vegetable plants within a 5 kilometer radius. Bees are responsible for 80 per cent of all pollination worldwide, which contributes to about a third of the food we eat.
The 2013–14 winter saw Ontario beekeepers lose 58 per cent of their hives due to colony collapse disorder. Hillcrest’s interest in urban beekeeping is a response to events like this, which are leading to a decline in bee populations locally and around the world. What’s the latest buzz? In 2015, it was reported that Canada’s bee population is bouncing back faster than other developed countries, and this is credited to private citizens and businesses taking on urban beekeeping in a big way.
Hillcrest is officially the first shopping mall in Canada to install beehives on its roof, and they join the Shangri-La, Fairmont Royal York, and Canadian Opera Company, companies that are all part of a larger story taking place in Toronto, recently named Canada’s first Bee City. Other brands are also taking this on, with Burt’s Bees’ #KissesforBees campaign kicked off this year with a special lip-shaped art installation, sprouting native wildflowers for bees to pollinate at City Hall. This Spring, Engel & Völkers York handed out wildflower seed sticks to encourage pollination in the neighbourhood. Want to know how you can get involved? BeesMatter.ca is a good place to start!
To celebrate pollinators we have partnered with @livegreento on a living installation. Come by Nathan Philips Square to learn more about #kissesforbees and to support the bees ? ❤️?? . . . . #beehealth #nationalpollinatorweek #nathanphilipsquare #toronto #wildflowers #pollinator #colourthatlovesyouback #yyz #tdot #416 #nature #ColorThatLovesYouBack #canada
WHAT’S NEXT AT HILLCREST
Over the course of the season, Hillcrest’s honeybees will produce approximately 20kg of honey. Come fall, the Hillcrest team will directly participate in the honey extraction process, and live-stream the event via @Shop_Hillcrest on Instagram. Stay tuned!
Matte PR is the Public Relations Agency of Record for Hillcrest Mall and Engel & Völkers. |
We are a member of the Federation of Middlesex Beekeepers’ Associations and affiliated to the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA).
The Federation has six member associations:
- Barnet and District Beekeepers Association
- Ealing and District Beekeepers Association
- Enfield and District Beekeepers Association
- Harrow Beekeepers Association
- North London Beekeepers Association
- Pinner & Ruislip Beekeepers Association
Here is a list of other associations in the London area:
- Twickenham and Thames Valley Beekeepers Association
- London Beekeepers Association
- Slough, Windsor and Maidenhead Beekeepers Society
- Kent Bee-keepers’ Association
- Kingston Beekeepers
There are many other beekeeping associations in the UK and internationally. For a more comprehensive list visit the British Beekeepers Association.
We link to charitable organisations and those of interest to our members. Please contact us if you would like your website to be included in the list below and we’ll ask you to include a reciprocal link to our website. We don’t link to commercial organisations or to organisations that aren’t relevant to bees and beekeeping.
Hardy Plant Society (Middlesex)
National Honey Show
Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders’ Association |
Izaak Walton League of America: Lois Green-Sligo Chapter
The activities of the Lois Green – Sligo Chapter supports the dual missions of environmental education and conservation of our Chapter grounds. Our recent educational efforts focus on water conservation on a micro level through the construction and use of rain barrels and Save-Our-Streams workshops. We host Scouting, youth and Civil Air Patrol meetings and activities, including Eagle Scout, Gold Award projects opportunities.
A renewed effort to protect the ecosystem and beauty of our Chapter grounds, and to educate the public on its importance, has fostered a variety of programs and activities. We worked with a State certified forester to develop a forest management plan. We have beekeeping, and are monitoring the growth of rare American Chestnut tree saplings.
The fall of 2008 was the inaugural year of a bow hunting program that allows us to control our growing deer population. This program, available to Chapter members and their guests, provides our region with another way to enjoy our grounds and promote conservation of our forest.
We hope that what the Chapter offers through our programs, our property and this web site will kindle an enthusiasm for the concepts and methods of conservation, and maybe even entice you to join the Lois Green-Sligo Chapter. Help us take an active role in reversing the trends that are jeopardizing the environments and resources of our community, our country, and our world. |
We are thrilled to announce that HONEYLOVE was chosen as a finalist of the “Communities with Drive” program, sponsored by Zipcar, Inc. and Ford Motor Company. Communities with Drive is designed to acknowledge and reward organizations that are having a profound impact on the communities in which they operate.
As one of 25 finalists from over 400 entries, HoneyLove is eligible to win $50,000 in cash as well as $15,450 in Zipcar credit to support the organization’s needs. Here’s where you come in: winners are voted on by the public at
We would LOVE for you to spread the buzz that HoneyLove is a finalist to increase our chances of receiving the substantial prize in order to continue to best serve the beekeeping community.
If you are a supporter of HoneyLove, we sincerely hope you will increase our chances of winning this impactful prize by voting for us. For additional information please check out: http://bit.ly/1m9cCzx.
Many Thanks—YAY BEES!!
And… bonus points for buzzing about it on twitter: @iheartbees @Zipcar @ Ford #CommunitiesWithDrive |
For us, beekeeping is a hobby. But for the 7,000 beekeepers on family farms foreign honey is leaving a bad taste in their mouth. Canadians produce 75 million pounds of honey a year, but our largest honey packer, Billy Bee, is importing less expensive honey from China and Argentina and blending it with small amounts of Canadian honey in order to still qualify as Great White North sweet stuff. That has put a bee in a lot of bonnets. Including ours. Now some Canadian farms have bees waiting to be fed and not enough money to provide for the spring feed. Here’s a link to a change.org petition
Lets give our hardworking beekeepers some support. Hey, Bee Lives matter too! |
Since 2009, we are researching the co-evolution between city honeybees and urban ecosystems in our OpenGreens and Bee Monitoring programs. Bee colonies are now threatened in all industrialized nations. Given that the survival of bees is crucial for human sustainability, there is a great urgency to improve by all means the ways in which colonies could thrive.
The research program surveys in an artistic way the multiple fields of interaction between honeybees and the (urban) ecosystem. It is remarkable to see how a bee population functions and evolves very much in accordance to the human activities we are developing around them: gardening and (urban) agriculture. The production of honey is different related to the flowers we grow, the plants we like, the garbage or pollution we produce. Bees are very responsive to the different biotopes that we share. Though we seem to have rather few insight into what constitutes the diversity of our surrounding living place, and that’s something we want to research on a deeper level. As bio-markers, bees can give us valuable information about living conditions in our continuous productive urban landscapes.
To monitor the bees in a non-intrusive way we are building Intelligent Beehives. This are hives that are augmented with sensors and sensory processing algorithms that analyse the quality of pollen and propolis as well as the behavior of the bees in order to monitor the state of the ecology in the surrounding areas. The Intelligent Beehives are distributed in a European network, the data are available online and the creation of local biological Corridors can be consulted in realtime.
The research towards Intelligent Beehives proceeds in different steps.
First step – the production of sustainable Beehives based upon existing models – is a collaboration between OKNO and the Fab Lab Barcelona. Here we work on an OpenStructures-version of the Warré beehive model (beekeeping for all).
The next step, a collaboration between AnneMarie Maes and Sony Research Lab Paris, is researching the design of organic beehives (form and materials based upon biomimicry) and integrate biosensors in a non-intrusive way. This research will give us detailed information about the behaviour of the colony in the hive and its relation to the environment.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The project ‘Guerilla Beehives’can have an exemplary meaning for the audience if it comes to the public perception sustainability. It is a collaboration between the arts, design and science.
This is the end of the anthropocene. We imagine an ecosystem where all actors collaborate to keep up the resilience of the system. As artists, gardeners, makers and thinkers, we collaborate with animals, plants, insects and bacteria. … (read more…)
As bio indicators, honeybees provide us with a constant stream of information on the environment (urban, countryside) on which they forage (activity, pollen, nectar). Diseases like colony collapse disorder and environmental problems like the use of pesticides could be analysed in a different way by monitoring and analysing the daily … (read more…)
Our initial intention is to install the Asus computer (with debian) and a Mackie mixing panel. Later we decide to swap that setup for a more performative one: an 8 channel Prosonus soundcard, the Asus with Debian for recording and sending the files over the network to a NAS (network attached storage) hard disk.
We will record 4 times 3 minutes an hour, every :00, :15, :30 and :45. The 8-channel … (read more…)
This time I want to do it differently. I will record at regular intervals the hum of the colony and analyse it thoroughly afterwards. I also want to link the sounds with the environmental sensor data (temp, humidity, solar radiation) in the surroundings of the apiary, with the sensor data inside the beehive (temperature, humidity and vibration of the comb) as well with video images in- and outside the … (read more…)
Many naturalists have studied aspects of animal behaviour throughout history. The modern discipline of ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with the work of Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and by Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, joint winners of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ethology is a combination of laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to … (read more…)
The system is set up as a fully organic, cradle to cradle, circle. … (read more…)
The last weeks I colletected yet on several days pollen at the entrance of the beehives. I also have a pollen collected from spring this year.
On 21/22/23-8 I can work at the Chemical Engineering Lab of the VUB on the SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope). The SEM offers the possibility to make perfect 3D images at +20.000 enlargment scale. Ideal for photographing pollen and bee-parts as proboscis, receptors, e.g.
The lab is specialized in surface metals research. I work with Gizem Süngü, a future PhD student. … (read more…)
At Sony CSL in Tokyo I meet Masatoshi Funabashi. Masa is an expert in complex systems relations in ecologies. We talk about flowers and insects, and we decide to work with honeybees (among other insects) to collect usefull information on the ecosystem. The bees will work as … (read more…) |
Will Some Device Save The Bees from Bee-Colony Collapse Disorder?
Hobbyist bee-keeper Sigfried Vogel from Hüttung, Germany has discovered a way to safely shield his precious little honey makers.
An old truck has been until recently the domicile of a total of seven bee hives. Siegfried Vogel (in picture) has lost four of his bee colonies in the past year - those which were located behind wooden shielding on his truck. His son Reinhold has had better luck: He still owns his three colonies of bees which are located behind and protected by a portion of aluminum shielding on the same truck. Hence, Siegfried Vogel is now advising all beekeepers to protect their colonies of bees from mobile-phone radiation with aluminum shielding.
PHOTOS: Werner ROST
Does this radiation, which is emitted from the mobile phone masts and between microwave relay stations and to which many residents are also exposed, also pose a danger to animals? Siegfried Vogel from the Selbitz area of Hüttung believes the radiation emitted from the multitude of surrounding mobile phone masts is responsible for the loss of his four bee colonies during the past year.
Mr. Vogel is not alone in his assessment. The loss of birds has also been suspected as being caused by the mobile phone radiation. Recently, there have been numerous reports on the Internet concerning the impairment and loss of bees and messenger pigeons. The authors of these articles are attributing this loss to mobile phone mast radiation. The loss of birds is also spurring fears that the whole of nature may be at risk due to the ever-increasing electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones and the like.
HÜTTUNG - most people who enjoy a spread of sweet honey on bread at breakfast probably never think of the immense work bees perform to collect enough nectar from the pollen of plants. During each flight, a bee collects 50 millgrams of nectar - that is equivalent to 50 thousandth of a gram. To produce a kilogram of honey, the small hard working insects must visit between 3 and 5 million flowers and plants.
The bees are however not only important for satisfying the taste buds of honey-loving humans. These insects are also a dire necessity for all of nature, since a multitude of plant species rely on the small creatures for pollination and hence the continuation of their species.
During evolution (the development and change of the entire animal and plant world over millions of years) a partnership of extreme importance developed between the bees and a multitude of plant species.
"Without bees, many plant species would simply face extinction," stresses Siegfried Vogel from Hüttung, who in his early youth gained his first experiences in beekeeping.
After retiring, and now at the age of 76, Mr. Vogel has enjoyed 15 successful years of honey production. He was housing his bee colonies inside an old wooden truck and until a year ago the beekeeper had four bee colonies in hives behind wooden planks on the truck.
This winter Mr. Vogel witnessed the disappearance of all four of his bee hives. The bees had met a tragic and mysterious fate.
Siegfried Vogel believes microwave radiation from mobile phone masts is responsible for the loss of his bees. Vogel explained that the microwave radiation is coming onto his property from four directions. There are three mobile phone masts in Selbitz, three more in Sellanger, and recently a new mast was erected in Leupoldsgrün, adding to an increasing level of ambient background microwave radiation infecting the area.
Our newspaper tested the mobile phone reception in this area and found it to be "good" to "very good."
Vogel offers as evidence - that mobile phone masts have caused the demise of his bee colonies - the fact that his son's colonies, which were placed behind aluminum shielding, have survived. (Aluminum is known to block microwave radiation.)
Since all their bee colonies were equally protected from cold weather with polystyrene insulation in the trailer, Siegfried Vogel concludes that the aluminium surrounding his sons beehives must be shielding them from the radiation from mobile phone masts.
Mr. Vogel, who is a passionate hobbyist and tinkerer, continued to experiment in his workshop towards finding a solution for protecting the bees.
By holding two electrodes, connected to a voltage meter, into the air and adjusting the meter's sensitivity to 200 millivolts he gets a constantly varying readout. If he then touches the electrodes with each hand, the meter readout suddenly doubles. As Vogel explains, this simple experiment shows that the human body works as an antenna. In another experiment, he holds the two electrodes between two magnets and the voltage meter readout drops back to near zero. According to Vogel, this works with permanents magnets and electromagnets.
Vogel's results: One can protect oneself and one's bees with metal and magnetic shielding. Thus, Vogel imagines appropriate protective screening solutions not only for bee hives but also for human and animals habitats.
"We cannot stand our ground against the monopoly of the mobile telecommunication industry, but in this way perhaps we can protect ourselves," added Siegfried Vogel.
The beekeeper plans to continue working with his son's bee colonies. He also wants to provide aluminum shielding for bees in a nearby orchard. Siegfried Vogel wishes to exchange experiences with other beekeepers in the region. Prospective customers can contact him by telephone. |
Because of some busy weekends, I was unable to pick up my package and unclipped Buckfast queen until April 27. It rained all evening on the 27th. I decided to hold the bees until Sunday night. I fed them several times a day by brushing sugar syrup on the wire screen of the package. Everyone looked happy.
I had painted the hive stand, SHB trap and the hive bodies six days before hiving the bees. My nose could detect no odor of paint, so I was confident that the bees would like their wooden home.
Just before dark on Sunday, I suited up and hived the bees. The process went without incident except that the can of sugar syrup kept falling back into the package every time I tried to lift it out. It has been suggested that one should wrap a thick rubber band around the tin can once you lift it a little ways out so that it does not fall back into the package. I will try that next time.
I went to sleep thinking that hiving the bees was as simple a procedure as I claim it is in my classes.
On Monday morning I placed a quart of sugar syrup in the Boardman feeder and added the entrance reducer.
When I came home from work on Monday night, I immediately spotted a tiny swarm in a rose bush that was less than 6 feet from the hive. I opened the hive and noted that all of the queen candy was eaten from the queen cage and the queen was gone. There were very few bees in the hive. I concluded that the swarm was my queen and ten thousand bees.
I got a cardboard box, and clipped the rose branch so that the entire swarm fell in the box. I then dumped the swarm back into the beehive. My hope was that the queen would decide to stay. She did not. By the next day the bees had flown the coop. I later learned that I should have added screen in the front so she would be forced to stay at least a few days and get used to the hive.
I have heard from other beekeepers that they painted their hives the day before hiving without problem. I donít know how long one should allow for the odor of the paint to dissipate. I have also learned that sometimes the bees can eat through the queen candy in one day. Since the bees formed a swarm, I believe they did not ball the queen. I am really not sure why the queen left. Any suggestions would be welcome.
Written May 15, 2013
mail comments to firstname.lastname@example.org
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I started the summer by reading*
Inside Out and Back Again
by Thanhha Lai.
This is a children’s book…historical fiction…
I remember personally meeting a Vietnamese family in the mid-1970s who fled their homeland at the fall of Saigon. They kept the youngest child’s outgrown rain boots as a souvenir of their voyage to the new world. I was in awe of their story.
Now in this poetic book, 10-year-old Ha limns the author’s own relocation (to Alabama!), translating her family’s struggle into a universal concatenation–fear to sorrow to frustration to hope. A great family read aloud (for grades 3 and up), this will inspire active discussion of past and present immigration issues.
Then I read* a few other random things
and just finished
I Still Dream about You
by Fannie Flagg.
Borrowed this book from one sister-in-law, who borrowed it from the other sister-in-law. When I asked if it was good, each tilted her head in the same way, gave the same tight smile, and said, “Yeah.” Not sure how to read that endorsement, I began the book ready to bail. Alas…still not sure about their head tilts (genetics?)…this is a beautiful book! Sure Maggie Fortenberry is about to “permanently” solve the problems in her life (you understand that code don’t you?), but as she can’t seem to get things settled for want of keeping things decent and in order, the reader will also come to see the beauty in their own mudpuddle. Once again, Fannie Flagg is best described as delightful.
Next on my reading* list:
Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon
Went on a road trip with my sister this past weekend (the first since we are really adults) and her friend George recommended this one. Professional reviewers of the book use words like clever and refreshing and fun and funny and vibrant and crackling…all words I would use to describe my sister’s friend and her husband. And since it was a great weekend (my sides still hurt from laughing so hard), I’m looking forward to a great read.
I wonder what is on your summer reading list?
Ali says: Y colorín, colorado, este cuento se ha acabado.
First of all, I was PRETTY sure that you made up the word “concatenation.” However, I knew that “limns” was surely a typo. Really, Ali, you’re not allowed to use a reggae band as a verb! I’ve never heard either of those words in my life. However, they both appear to be real, or either you just wrote some wikipedia articles just to fool me.
Hey! We should do this more often. I don’t know if you ever knew that since May 2005 I have kept a reading* diary? I really write down every single book I’ve read with some comments. So since Memorial Day weekend, I’ve read 16 books so far. Here’s the ones I’ll admit to reading*…
(1) An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler*. Finished May 27, 2012. Apparently MFK Fisher wrote How to Cook a Wolf, and Tamar Adler, inspired by that, wanted to write an updated version. This is not a cookbook, but a narrative – and it’s very lovely inspiring writing; it is a longwinded version of “Just do it.” However, it’s a breath of fresh air to know that food is not food unless it is relished. Good, fresh, food, simply prepared, without thousands of fussy ingredients! Good salted water does a world of good for food: you have to love a cookbook that begins “How to Boil Water.” I am amazed at how well this book goes along with French Kids Eat Everything. It is interesting how Providence puts two books that marry so well into your hands in unrelated incidents.
(2) French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters by Karen Le Billon*. Finished May 31, 2012. My children aren’t particularly picky – in fact, I am the pickiest eater in my house. My children are also in college. I would have never picked this book up – or paid the full Kindle price, which I did – if I hadn’t read the free sample pages. This was FASCINATING, from the standpoint of the simple line she uses to describe her children having trouble adapting to French schools (and therefore French eating): they were bilingual, not bicultural. The French consider their outlook on food to be a national treasure, free to all, rich and poor alike. They are trained to appreciate and work for quality food, prepared simply, and served beautifully – even in the school cafeterias, which are served by “waiters,” as we Americans would understand it. I repeat: fascinating! I may read it again!
(3) Pirate King by Laurie R. King*. Finished June 17, 2012. ¡Ay, caramba! I thought to cross-reference FictFact.com and the state Public Digital Online Library – which I can (legally) sign in under two different libraries and increase my options! – and found that Pirate King was available for immediate download! Normally I get on a waiting list for then years…our state is a big state. In the 11th installment of the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Mary Russell has been assigned to work for a movie company (in 1924) filming a movie about filming a movie of the Pirates of Penzance (yes, I wrote that correctly). This installment was a joy – mishmashing the funny bits of The Pirates of Penzance with the dry humor of Laurie R. King’s earlier books – more akin to the The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (the first in the series). I must say, though, that while Mary Russell can speak French and Spanish and yet seems wholly baffled by Portuguese is stretching it a bit too far? The accompanying bonus short story Beekeeping for Beginners was charming – and a welcome look at Holmes’s point of view.
(4) The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy by Jeanne Birdsall*. Finished June 18, 2012. This series has been on the rave list by all the homeschooling moms (of which I am not) for some time. In the initial pages I read, it has much the same feel as Swallows and Amazons – a magical summer vacation combined with meeting new friends.
(5) The Treble Wore Trouble (The Liturgical Mysteries) by Mark Schweizer*. Finished July 4, 2012. The local author strikes again! This is the 11th installment in the stories about St. Germaine, NC, a thinly veiled Blowing Rock. St. Germaine is a tiny tourist town of 1500, where the ex-mayor quipped, “Come for the murders; stay for the shopping!” The police chief/organist tries to keep the town under control. This installment includes a toddler tent evangelist, a production of At Home in Mitford, a truffle pig, and “blended worship” – combining praise music and traditional music – and the Poli Woli Doodle Mass. A gold star, any way you look at it! Hilarious. SO hilarious!
Nancy says: All is words, and all shall be words
and all manner of thing shall be words.
*We love our public libraries and independent bookstores.
If you are interested in these titles, will you search these locations in your hometown? |
Our Apiary, Buzy Bee Honey Corp, is owned and operated by the Silveira Family. The Silveira family is composed of Andres & Angela Silveira and their three children Yesi, Jose and David. Buzy Bee Honey started as a simple dream for the Silveira family, but little did they know that it was soon to become a big reality. After a family friend came and offered them to become beekeepers, this was the offer that they could not refuse. This offer started with 50 active hives in the fall of 2009, and by the spring of 2012 we at Buzy Bee Honey are running around 230 active hives. Our goal is to have 300 active hives by the end of the fall of 2012.
It has not been easy getting to where we are now, since we had no clue of how hard beekeeping was and could be. But with the help of local beekeepers and lots of reading and studying we have made it through this rough patch.
We at Buzy Bee Honey, specialize in Tropical South Florida honey. We do our own processing and packaging to insure our customers get the real “unadulterated Tropical South Florida honey”. We do not blend our honey with other honeys, or process it in a way that would change the flavor, color or deplete its nutritional value. It is raw, unfiltered, unheated Tropical South Florida Honey as pure and natural as extracted honey can be.
We at Buzy Bee Honey are members of the following Associations:
- Florida State Beekeepers Association
- Florida State Department of Agriculture
- Fresh From Florida |
This month’s edition of the Dayton Dozen is sponsored by our friends at Goldfish Swim School in honor of National Water Safety Month. Goldfish Swim School is devoted to WATER Safety Awareness and work to keep families (especially toddlers) safe in and around the water. Specifically, instructors use integrity, compassion and trust to teach kids and their parents the WATER safety guidelines. Not sure what those are? Here you go:
WATER safety guidelines
Wear your life jacket!
Act. Throw! Don’t go.
Take swimming lessons.
Educate, learn swim safety skills.
Respect, play it cool and follow the rules.
And without further adieu… here is your May Dayton Dozen!
Farm Volunteer Work Days – Yellow Springs
***DMB Tip: Teach the kids to volunteer early and often with this family fun event that help keep Glen Helen beautiful
- May 2; 6pm
- Antioch Farm Assistance- Support students and staff at Antioch Farm by helping with the harvest, caring for farm animals, and general farm needs. Seasonal, spring through fall. Contact Kat Christian for information.
Owl Walk Night Hike – Dayton – Wegerzyn Gardens
***DMB Tip: Bring some glow bracelets as well as flashlights to keep an eye on littles ones who wander…
- May 2; 7:30pm
- Take a hike around the trails at Wegerzyn. Learn about the different sounds our evening critters make, discover you very own night vision, and even see a real owl! We’ll meet in the parking lot.
- Bring a flashlight.
SICSA Preschool Tails – Kettering
***DMB Tip: Pre-register, these events always sell out!
- May 4; 10am
- Preschool Tails is an hour-long program in which SICSA staff read a fun children’s picture book with a humane theme and complete a craft or activity. Children will also have a chance to interact with adoptable pets.
- Ages 3-5
Jedi Academy – Vandalia
***DMB Tip: Make sure to dress in your best Star Wars clothing for a galactic good time!
- May 4; 6pm (3-6 years old) & 7pm (7-12 years old)
- Make light sabers, complete a Jedi obstacle course, make a treat and other related activities
Wright Patterson AFB Family Fun Fest Carnival – Beavercreek
***DMB Tip: This festival runs two weekends – so don’t try to do it all in one day!
- May 5th – 12th; Hours vary each day
- Carnival games, rides, food…kicking off the Summer festival season!
- Open to the public and located on Springfield St. – 1/2 Mile Northeast of the Air Force Museum across from Gate 1-B.
Mom & Me Fairy Princess Party – Vandalia
***DMB Tip: Join your princess and wear your own princess best or tiara.
- Dress your 2-6 year old up in their fairy princess costume.
- Participants will create a special secret garden, decorate cookies, enjoy snacks, and at the end receive their fairy princess wings.
Mother’s Day ~ Tea, Cupcakes & Embroidered Napkins – Twist Cupcakery, Dayton
***DMB Tip: Since this is before Mother’s Day – think of making these for grandparents or other moms in your life.
- May 7; 12-3
- Eat delicious cupcakes fromTwist Cupcakery as you learn to embroider signatures onto napkins.
- Supplies, cupcakes and tea all provided…What a great tradition to start!
- Ages 7 and up
Science Saturday with Mister C – Dayton Engenneer’s Club
***DMB Tip – Curious what this is about…check out Mister C’s YouTube Channel
- May 13; 9:30-10:30
- Nothing else like this in Dayton – a live science show at the Engineers Club of Dayton.
- Let kids learn science the fun way with Mister C
Big Rig Gig – Centerville – Oak Grove Park
***DMB Tip: There are a lot of trucks to see and climb in – arrive early!
- May 13; 10-Noon
- climb on the big vehicles from around town! Honk a fire truck horn, shift the gears of a Centerville-Washington Park District tractor, check out the buttons in the law enforcement vehicles and much more.
Farm Babies Fest – Dayton – Aullwood Farm
***DMB Tip: Leave some time to explore Aullwood – the whole place is amazing!
- May 13; 10am-5pm
- Enjoy a wonderful day of baby animals, farm experiences, great food
- The day’s activities include: Live shows featuring Duck Tails, Gem City Jumpers Competitive Jump Rope Team, Chris Rowlands, Miami Valley Dance Council Square Dancers and Aullwood’s Wildlife Wonders;
- Draft horse and tractor wagon rides ($1/person);
- Free children’s activities, old fashioned games and craft making;
- Delicious sandwiches featuring Aullwood’s meats, gourmet Mexican dishes, brick-oven pizzas, lemon shake-ups, sugar waffles, kettle corn, grilled cheese sandwiches and home-baked goodies
- Demonstrations of blacksmithing, wool felting, beekeeping, picture puzzles, dog training and duck herding
- Pond exploration, drawing to win a new Huffy 26” Coca-Cola bicycle, 50/50 raffle and Balloon Man
A World A’Fair – Dayton International Festival – Downtown Dayton
***DMB Tip: One of my favorite events of the year – come hungry (and thirsty) – the kids will love all the dancers in costume.
- May 19/20/21; Varied Times
- Food & drink from every country/culture that you can imagine!
- Music – Dancing – Traditional Costumes!
Feast of the Flowering Moon Festival – Chillicothe, OH
***DMB Tip: Make a weekend out of it & stay at a hotel to enjoy all the festivites
- Memorial Day Weekend
- This four-day festival offers plenty of family-friendly entertainment including: Native American music and dancing, crafters and exhibits, commercial exhibits.
- Also visit the Mountain Men Encampment with working craftsmen and demonstration, art & craft show
- Continuous entertainment on the main stage & carnival rides throughout! |
Been in the workshop today laboriously cutting wood to size for the hive / hives. I got hold of a Makita table saw in the week which is making short work of getting the timber from the lumber yard to the right dimensions.
A very useful bit of kit as you can 'batch cut' lots of bits ready to be made into hives at a later date. Just have to remind myself that it is also a very dangerous bit of kit so I'm being ultra cautious and careful using it.
I'm working from my own drawings which I've modeled up into 3D CAD and converted into 2D drawings with dimensions on so I can refer to them as I go.
I've decided to complete a hive in the next week or so before I post these so I know they're ok to work from (in case you've fecked up on the measurements eh? Ed.).
Found this today on the web - The WI Martha Kearney Beekeeping Blog - where the lovely Martha (from R4, BBC etc) shares her beekeeping adventures. |
Here is the third instalment of my quest to review the entire "Purpose Driven Life" chapter by chapter.
Chapter two opens with a quote from Isaiah (Warren sure likes the old testament), but the second quotation in the header is by Albert Einstein, "God doesn't play dice." Note the full stop at the end. The actual quote according to Albert Einstein Quotes is "God does not play dice with the universe." Quite a different meaning, no? Einstein also referred to god in the sense of the great unknown, not in the sense that Warren and his fundie friends use the term, as in jehova.
The rest of the chapter is seriously mystifying. It's all about how god has a plan for everyone, every day of everyone's life has been planned in the smallest detail since the beginning of time. This directly contradicts his words from two pages ago "You may choose your career, your spouse, your hobbies, and many other parts of your life" WTF? That is some serious cognitive dissonance
He pulls out the fine tuning argument, by quoting a senior research fellow in human genetics from New Zealand that says the cosmos was specifically designed to bring human life about. It seems to be a typical fundie trick to try this appeal to authority, where someone who is a recognised authority on one field should now be able to provide an authoritative opinion about another. This guy is a biologist, not a cosmologist or astronomer. You may as well ask my opinion about beekeeping.
Now we get to my personal favourite quote thus far "If there were no god, we would all be 'accidents', the result of astronomical random chance in the universe. You could stop reading this book, because life would have no purpose or meaning or significance."
What rot! His argument is that a lack of a belief in his god automatically leads to nihilism. I vehemently disagree with such bigoted and small minded crap. I find meaning in many aspects of my life. In my interaction with friends and family, my relationship with my wife and children, my performance (or lack of it) in various sports and hobbies, and from my work. All of this without a magic sky fairy to give me the disease (original sin) and then offer me the cure in return for 10% of my income and lots of my time, all the while believing LIES.
What about the people in the world that find meaning and purpose from Buddhism, extreme ironing, planking or bicycle tricks? Are any of these more or less valid that trying to validate yourself by believing in bronze age nonsense? |
The last time I actively engaged in beekeeping was about a month before Ruby was born (so about 18 months ago or so). In the swirl of life the followed the arrival of one little bundle, I cannot remember exactly what the state of things was heading into that winter. I do know that none of the hives survived the winter but that some equipment remained out at the edge of the garden and wooded area. With such a small one in tow, I decided not to get any bees in 2013, but to wait and live vicariously through my mom’s bees. In the meantime, she helped pull in some of the hive bodies and supers but we didn’t get it all. In June, our little family moved, making it even easier to put off cleaning up the hive that stood out by the garden. One covered super and one full hive remained, all winter long. That long, epically cold, Polar Vortex of a winter. I was sure that in my neglect, wax moths and earwigs had taken over in the fall, and I was hoping the long winter had killed them off.
Which brings us today, a cold, yet springy day when I finally stopped procrastinating and went to collect the hive boxes. I was ready for a mess, maybe a mouse nest or two. The hive looked rather worse for wear, covered in insect poop. We lifted the lid and to my complete surprise, the soft hum of bees escaped.
I was shocked! I whooped, hollered, and even swore in front of my mother. There is a live and healthy hive!! It’s unlikely, though not impossible. My best guess is that a hive swarmed sometime last spring or early summer and found the vacant accommodations to their liking and set up house. I also wonder if the cold helped keep out the humidity, which can be harder on the bees the cold. And this just might be an opportunity to make it up to those bees to whom I neglected. |
GLAMPING: Luxury of Freedom with BIG BERRY
I am not sure about you, but as for me, I grew up in a city my whole life therefore if you leave me stranded in the middle of the forest – I’ll die. I have zero survival skills when it comes to the wild, I mean, I had my first camping experience this year at the age of 25! How pathetic is that? Don’t get me wrong; I love nature! I just have no clue how to survive if we are left alone. Anyway, what does this blabber has to do with this article? Well, not sure if you’ll ask but I’ll answer that for you anyway: BIG BERRY luxury landscape resort happened! You see, BIG BERRY has this awesome theme called “Glamping” and it stands for “Glamorous Camping” – and yes, they have Wifi.
Slovenia’s BIG BERRY is located just by the Kolpa River, a river that serves as a division between Slovenia and Croatia, and as well situated in a lovely village called Primostek. It is very easy to get to BIG BERRY from different location point, for instance, I came from Zagreb, and it took us only one hour from Zagreb’s bus station to Metlika (Croatia-Slovenia border) and then to BIG BERRY. You can also come to the resort quickly from Ljubljana (one and a half hour) and Novo Mesto (about one hour).
I was fortunate to visit BIG BERRY this year and had the opportunity to discover many great things about Slovenia’s countryside and as well had the chance to meet its friendly locals. The latter being the best experience I’ve had during my stay! In fact, BIG BERRY has this concept whereas the resort only supports local small businesses from the neighboring villages. How cool is that?
My early arrival at BIG BERRY from Zagreb went bliss; the travel time was convenient, and the lovely staff left me a welcome kit basket filled with snacks and stuff catered by their local partners. I was delighted by the hospitality! My first day was already looking promising, and BIG BERRY did not disappoint till the end!
WHAT IS BIG BERRY ANYWAY, YOU MAY ASK?
BIG BERRY is a unique luxury landscape resort located in a beautiful region called Bela Krajina with amazing landscape and nature surrounding it. They adapted the idea of camping with a twist of modernity to appeal to us, 21st-century folks. That said, their mobile houses are fully equipped with modern amenities to cater our needs:
Photo by BIG BERRY
Photo by Hrvoje Grguljaš
Photo by Matko Mestrovic
Photo by Matko Mestrovic
- Temperature adjustable rain shower
- Proper toilet and bidet
- Fully equipped kitchen
- Flat screen TV with Netflix – Where I watched Sex and the City with no shame because I think I am a Carrie that dresses badly and Helsinki is my New York (Yes, you can judge me)
- Inside lounge
- Terrace dining area
- Jacuzzi on the porch overlooking Kolpa River (It is awesome)
- Comfortable beds
Now, who would like to go glamping with me again to BIG BERRY? Millenials raise your hands!
Yikes, so many hands! Glad to say though that a BIG BERRY mobile glamping house can accommodate between two to six people depending on which mobile house booked. The more, the merrier, am I right? So bring friends and enjoy!
WHAT DOES BIG BERRY OFFERS ITS VISITORS?
Well, glad you asked! BIG BERRY luxury landscape resort takes you to a whole new level of comfort during your holiday, hence their title “Luxury of Freedom”. Not only they are located in a quiet area blossoming with nature for your eyes to feast, they will also introduce you to a laidback lifestyle with a bit of countryside simplicity and a touch of modern minimalist overall design.
As I’ve mentioned, the resort is partnered with several local businesses from around the area therefore not only you’ll get a chance to enjoy Slovenia’s beautiful nature; you’ll also learn a lot about the village’s local culture through its local producers who has been living in the area for generations. What is great about this, by coming to BIG BERRY, you’ll also be supporting these small businesses! And if you ask me, I honestly believe in organizations and companies which support local producers because not only they are growing on their own, they are also helping their neighbors grow with them!
BIG BERRY will introduce you to some of the beautiful and hidden parts of Slovenia you’ll never find elsewhere, and that is the countryside’s beautiful nature, hospitable locals, and the undying opportunity to camp with Wifi – Yes! That means internet, Facebook, Instagram, etc.! You’ll stay connected. The luxury of Freedom they say, Luxury of Freedom it is!
I mean, seriously, that was such a treat to be in the middle of nowhere with internet (call me a loser, but I love my Wifi). When I went camping this summer, and all of my electronics died on me, I had Wifi withdrawal. So, let’s just say I enjoyed staying connected.
BIG BERRY PARTNERS YOU’D WANT TO VISIT
As I mentioned above, BIG BERRY is a fan of its neighboring small business – BUT, these partners are carefully chosen for their quality products and amazing history regarding the villages they are situated. Some of them have been continuing the same business for three generations! Now, that is a dedication to their family’s craft I must say.
Every day during my stay at BIG BERRY, the lovely staff leaves a basket filled with breakfast food on my mobile house porch. What impressed me is the quality of dairy this region has, I’m a huge fan of anything dairy for breakfast and every day my basket have a small jar of quality yogurt with jam and fresh milk, and it was perfect!
If you’re interested in dairy manufacturing, or just cows in general (no pun intended), you can always visit their farm located in Gradac!
Oh, and if you stay at BIG BERRY, you’ll have these delicious Kmetija Štrucelj dairy products at your porch pretty much every morning for breakfast.
For about 20 minutes drive, BIG BERRY can take you to Semič, a municipality within Bela Krajina, where you’ll find fields after fields of wine yards and as well to this small winery, Vinogradništvo Malnarič.
Vinogradništvo Malnarič is owned and run by Samoel Malnarič, a third generation winemaker from Bela Krajina. We visited his winery and sampled some of his fine works from Slovenian favorable table wine to good-quality white, red and sweet dessert wines.
Not to mention, Samoel is a family man who could tour you around his wine yards and winery. Plus, you get to taste his fine wines! At the moment, Vinogradništvo Malnarič only manufactures locally, and a big hit amongst the locals.
BIG BERRY can arrange tours to this winery upon request! If you’re not intrigued enough, you can watch this video where BIG BERRY visits the winery.
I’m a huge natural oil fan and if you have read my post about beauty products I can’t travel without then it is safe to assume that I do splatter natural oils all over my body and use different oils when cooking. My point is, I enjoyed our tour of this place!
We visited Oljarna Pečarič’s oil factory to learn a little bit about this small business and as well about several essential oils they have. Apart from learning about how this business started, we were also briefed about each oil’s properties and health benefits when used. Not only I learned lots of information and new found oil favorites, but I also had the opportunity to taste all of them!
Best of all, Oljarna Pečarič’s oil products are cold pressed from 100% organic seeds. Not only that makes their oils healthy but also beneficial in so many ways!
You might want to know what my new favorite oils are? Well, Oljarna Pečarič produces tasty Pumpkin Seed oil and as well Black Cumin Seed oil! Both are not only delicious but also healthy. Good for me!
Čebelarstvo Veselič is a family beekeeping business run by a third-generation beekeeper, a man called Jože.
Jože is a former policeman who decided to continue the family business and owns about 300 bee hives which he keeps in different locations therefore he can produce several sorts of honey with unique flavors from each other.
When we visited Jože’s bee farm, he toured us around and showed us how he takes care of his bee hives and as well showed us a little sneak peak of his small honey production factory explaining to us his methods.
Čebelarstvo Veselič not only produces high-quality honey, but he also produces other quality bee products such as beeswax, propolis, bee pollen, and honey liqueur.
Plus, Jože is a funny man!
Domače Dobrote Mojca is a bakery located in Metlika where we had the pleasure to enjoy a snack prepared by its chief baker and owner, Mojca. She served us a delicious plate of different hams and salad with her homemade bread and a wonderful platter of freshly baked pastries; Mojca is also a lovely lady full of life! It was such a pleasure to visit her lovely bakery.
Also, have I mentioned already about the awesome breakfast basket I got every morning on my mobile house porch? Well, to make it even better, I also got Mojca’s freshly baked Pocačia in my goody breakfast basket every morning!
What is Pocačia, you may ask? It is a traditional Slovenian salty flatbread seasoned with sea salt and cumin seed! I would say it is quite similar to Italy’s Focaccia. If you’re intrigued about this bread, you can watch this video created by BIG BERRY as Mojca demonstrates how to make Pocačia!
What I have mentioned above are only few of BIG BERRY’s partners and if you’re interested in learning more about the small businesses they support, please refer to this link and find out more about Bela Karjina and surrounding area’s small producers!
THINGS TO DO IN BIG BERRY RESORT
Now that we tackled few of the awesome things you’ll find at BIG BERRY’s surrounding areas, let me introduce you to few of the many activities you can do while in the resort! What? You think that’s about it? Wrong! I told you there’re tons to do here even though it is in the middle of nowhere! Haven’t I? Well, read on, and I’ll tell you!
Apart from the mobile houses located just beside the Kolpa River, and a revelation on its own, the resort also offers tons of things to do while you’re on the premises!
- You can swim across the river to Croatia (no kidding)
- Use the jacuzzi overlooking the gift of mother nature
- Rent a canoe and paddle your way around Kolpa River
– You can also canoe across to Croatia (it is quite easy to do this if you don’t know how to canoe)
- There’s a swimming pool built on the river
- Rent a bicycle and explore BIG BERRY’s surrounding areas
- Beach Volleyball with your friends
- Playground for kids (and adults, if you wish)
- Beautiful grill area
- Laundry service
- Yoga classes
- Outdoor fitness
- Wifi (!!!)
From my experience, there’s more to do while in BIG BERRY enough to fill a week’s stay. The surrounding areas are so beautiful to explore that it gets overwhelming! Otherwise, a chill stay will suffice as well. I was so relaxed after four nights stay at BIG BERRY and nearly every day we had full day excursions!
INTERESTED ON GLAMPING AT BIG BERRY?
If you’re looking for a different way to spend your holiday in a laidback manner and near nature, I highly suggest BIG BERRY in Slovenia. Not only you’ll see one of the most beautiful countrysides in Slovenia, but you’ll also get a chance to spend quality time with family or friends during your stay.
Glamping is a whole new way to see and experience a new place, and BIG BERRY is one of the leading resorts to cater to that way of traveling. If you enjoy nature with the luxury of our generation, I’m sure you’ll love the luxury of freedom BIG BERRY can offer.
If you’re interested, please refer to the contact details below.
BIG BERRY in Kolpa River
Address: Primostek 50, 8332, Gradac, Slovenia
I must say, the experience at BIG BERRY was something I would love to go back to. I’ve been living in the city for the past 26 years of my life that I forgot that nature is just around the corner. That said, glamping is my way of camping thats for sure! BIG BERRY has surprised me in many ways and it will be a bliss to visit again and truthfully, it was so hard to go back to my old past paced routine once I set foot in a city!
I think that this whole new glamping experience will be a hit for many people who would like to explore nature and still have the luxury of freedom in a more relaxed and comfortable way.
If you want to experience glamping at BIG BERRY, check below for any available dates for next summer and go glamping with family or friends!
NOTE: Thanks to BIG BERRY for inviting me over to experience a whole new way to describe a fulfilled holiday. All opinions stated are all mine and written with honesty, as always.
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- Have you tried glamping before?
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- Let us know in the comment section below!
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The Chain Bridge Honey Farm is a flourishing family business, started by beekeeping advisor William Selby Robson in 1948.
The enterprise at Chain Bridge Honey Farm is ‘vertically integrated’, in so far as all relevant jobs are carried out by the existing staff and this includes constructing the buildings, making the beehives (plus all the relevant parts), modifying and installing machinery, beekeeping and preparation of honey and by-products, wholesaling the products to retailers and retailing the product at Chain Bridge Honey Farm and online.
The farm currently employs 15 people including Willie and Daphne and their three children, Stephen, Heather and Frances. |
To stay up to date with the latest in the apiculture industry to can check out our apiculture latest news. On the other hand in case you’re beginning apiculture and would like to start professional apiculture now get a copy of our beekeeping for beginners ebook.
Beekeeping can either be a full time profession or a hobby that is simple. Yet, more often than not, what began as a hobby would become a profession. But you cannot just determine and tell yourself you will start to do beekeeping. You need to have adequate knowledge and comprehension on the subject that you’re going to enter before beginning on any hobby or profession. If you’ve been putting off your curiosity about beekeeping for quite a while, then it is about time to indulge yourself. Bee farming may not look difficult; learning the fundamental beekeeping lessons can enable you to get off to a good start.
What does a beekeeper must understand?
First, you should have interest that is total on beekeeping to start at the right foot. You should also have consented to share your dwelling space with the bees. There are possible dangers in beekeeping that can hurt you but your family also. Your focus is not just to build an income by selling honey; a good beekeeper should have fire and a keen interest in raising bees.
An apiarist should know the right place for the beehives. If you decide to put your beehives you need to make sure beekeeping is allowed in your town. There are several places restricted to beekeeping; you have to get permission concerning this.
Beekeepers must understand whether beekeeping supplies are offered in the area where the beehives are situated. When you must attend a local beekeeping store you may never understand; it’s best that a nearby beekeeping store is not inaccessible.
Equipment and protective supplies will also be very important to beekeepers to understand. Beekeepers are prone to bee stings; the right ensemble must be worn during beekeeping sessions. Understand the right kind of suit to select to keep you from any potential risk in beekeeping.
Last but definitely not the least, among the beekeeping lessons you should know is that: it is not unimportant for the beekeeper to understand the appropriate way of harvesting honey. In case you are not able to harvest honey from your bees all the attempts that are beekeeping would be useless. The procedures should be known by a beekeeper in gathering the honey from the comb; beeswax is also part of the yields in beekeeping. |
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Imagine a cobalt-blue lake with a romantic island, a medieval cliff-top castle and a backdrop of snowcapped mountains. This is Bled, one of Slovenia’s top attractions. Feel the serenity of the place. Enjoy honey tasting and experience the beneficial effect of apitherapy. Learn about the medicinal use of bee products like pollen, honey and beehive air.
Visiting the Ambrožič beekeeping can be an enlightening experience. Enjoy the benefits of apitherapy and learn about the modern way of beekeeping with the Carniolan bee. A special built apiary makes it possible to watch through a large window the hardworking bees, while special apiary rooms are designed to allow you to boost your health by inhaling air from the hive.
Perched on top of a steep cliff, the oldest medieval castle in Slovenia traces its history back to 1004. Explore the mysterious past of Bled Castle and visit the small museum that houses a permanent exhibition on the history of Bled. Besides an exceptional view of Lake Bled, the castle invites you to discover the old printing house, a wine cellar and a shop of honey products.
Reach Bled island the way it’s been done for centuries – by riding the traditional “pletna” (wooden gondola). Once you arrive, climb the 99 steps to the church dedicated to the Assumption of Mary, ring the ‘wishing bell’ in the 15th-century church belfry, and make a wish. Visit Bled Island ‘Potičnica’ and taste the traditional Slovenian cake – potica with honey. |
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
They are having a good time except for a little misadventure involving a stolen camera, and they could use some material assistance. Details from Padre Mickey, the rockin' guitar-playin' priest, are here, with a link to a secure contribution thingie, and I encourage friends and fans to donate. I'm getting paid tomorrow, May 1, and in honor of International Workers' Day and the Month of Mary (hey who says you can't celebrate both? Mickey will agree) I am going to shell out a tiny bit myself. Go 'long now. And Mickey didn't pay me to say this. Not that he could, because have you looked at Episcopal missionary salaries recently?
We are entering Reading Days, which come before Finals, except that I don't believe in giving final exams for religious studies courses. I require a final research paper (on which the students have been working for weeks, in stages) and after that's all done, a final reflection paper so people can think about their learning experience of the past few months.
These are Reading Days for me too, and for others on the faculty, since I have to read all those student papers, plus the three last senior theses which the little darlings are "defending" tomorrow afternoon.
But tonight and tomorrow night I have final meetings of my evening classes* and in addition to handing out evaluations (required here in U.S. colleges and universities so students can --anonymously-- evaluate the course and the instructor, and yes, it counts toward tenure) and having a short discussion of one piece of reading, I am showing a movie.
* really class, this semester I had two sections of the same course, first time that has ever happened, so I teach the same course twice -- and the dynamics couldn't be more different, but more on that some other time.
I had scheduled the movie for a few weeks ago when it fit into the syllabus sequence, but someone (a faculty member whose name I am not allowed to know) did not return the DVD to the library. I had reserved it three months ago, too, AND my teaching assistant had contacted the library to remind them ten days before the class. Long story short, the library rush-0rdered a new copy of the DVD and it arrived before the end of term, hallelujah thank you Jesus, so I am showing "Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin" and if you have not seen it, you must must must.
Don't know who Bayard Rustin was? Have a look here.
Remember the March on Washington? The 1963 one with MLK, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech? Rustin organized it. The whole thing.
He has many other claims to fame, too. A remarkable man in the 20th century.
He was, by the way, an out gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. Which is part of why we don't read about him in the history books.
Bayard Rustin, ¡Presente!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
So, here is the shameless publicity in the form of an aesthetic experience.
Want to know more about the book? Have a look here.
Someone asked whether it would be available at the online places. Yes, of course, but also in your local independent bookstore. Not till fall, though. Stay tuned. Alleluia.
The return of the rain this spring has been a happy occurrence because we have been in drought since last summer. Usually we have a thunderstorm in the late afternoon almost every day in the summer, but last summer we had perhaps three in the entire month of August, if that, and the water levels went down dangerously, though not as badly as in Atlanta and some other parts of the Southeast. We also didn't get much precipitation in the winter. So when it rains these days, nobody gripes and everyone rejoices.
In case you were wondering why I speak of Maya Pavlova during the working day, I work at home in the mornings this semester, 'cause I teach in the evenings a fair amount. It's nice to be within chatting distance of the local feline therapist. Mrrrow.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
It is Orthodox Easter (Pascha), and this comes with prayers for our Orthodox Christian sisters and brothers and thanksgiving for their witness.
Ormonde Plater has a lovely post on this occasion, with music, so I'll just send you there. Thank you, Ormonde.
Episcopal deacon (deaconissimus!) Ormonde Plater blogs at Through the Dust.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
This week's portion: leaving Mitzrayim
Calendar Christians: The "Torah portion" is the liturgical and spiritual equivalent of our weekly Gospel passage in the lectionary. "Leaving Mitzrayim," as you saw in the previous post, means "leaving Egypt" (as in the Exodus) but also "leaving the narrow place."
Make sure you read the comments there and at the other posts, too.
A reflection on Pesach as a festival of new creation. Remember many Jewish festivals are both agricultural and historical, so the life of the land and the history of the people are both present.
A tale of two seders
Foodies: there is a recipe for Persian haroset in here. Liturgical types: there are blessings and prayers and reflections on the wording and the texts. Everyone: we all enjoy tales of festive gatherings.
The first day of the Omer
Yes, there is a link explaining what "counting the Omer" means. And there are links to music. Hear chants both haunting and lively.
This week's portion: Gevurah (Kedoshim)
With a poem, which you can read and also listen to via an audio link. I think the Velveteen Rabbi wrote it and that it is her voice we hear.
Some thoughts, and prayers, on yoga, on life with G*d "who releases the bound."
Kol b'seder ("everything's okay") in the J-blogosphere
Lots of music here! Enjoy. Go find the link to Roman --yes, Roman Jewish-- songs! Jewish liturgical tradition, especially at Passover, is sober and serious, but also joyous and playful.
Now be nice and stop stereotyping Pharisees. Rabbinic Judaism in all its richness descends directly from them.
Many of you know that the Hebrew name for Egypt, mitzrayim, means "the narrow place," and that contemporary Jews meditate each year on the meaning of "leaving mitzrayim," the liberation from mitzrayim, back then in Egypt and now in our own narrow places.
So Velveteen Rabbi asks three questions, with three traditional answers, which are a Sephardic custom at the beginning of the Passover Seder.
Who are you?
*****I am Yisrael.
Where are you coming from?
*****I am coming from Mitzrayim.
Where are you going?
*****I am going to Yerushalayim.
She then develops her own introspective* meditations on the questions and answers.
*Passover is a time for introspection as well as reflection on justice in the world and the place of G*d both outside us in history and in our own story -- not that they are ever separate.
Read it all (it's not long, and it is both provocative and inspiring) here.
Once the catalogue is out and Sorin Books / Ave Maria Press has launched the publicity, I'm sure I can post the picture, so watch for it on this blog.
Publication date still in the fall sometime. Stay tuned for updates.
Your Score: Habanero Pepper
You scored 75% intoxication, 75% hotness, 50% complexity, and 75% craziness!
You are Habanero! You're hot and very flavourful. Unlike most hot peppers, your fruity goodness really comes through. You're great in unexpected situations, and quite vibrant, to boot. You're fun, spontaneous, and have been known to cause intense giggle fits. Woot!
The "Which Spice Are You?" silly test.
Friday, April 25, 2008
I'm also happy to say that this interview confirmed a lot of the information and analysis I shared on the panel about Rev. Wright a few weeks ago. I never did find time to summarize that panel for you. But if you watch this show, you'll get a lot of what we said and evoked on the panel, and directly from the person at the heart of the controversy.
Make no mistake: This is about what it means to live as Christians and to do so in the real world in which we live, in a world with poverty, in a world where empires rule, in an America where racism endures and where God calls us to break down, or melt down, the barriers we have set up against one another, and to do justice.
The realities on this show are why, for the most part, I don't get terribly involved in the minutiae of "As the Anglican World Turns." Not, mind you, that biblical interpretation and the nature of the church and the way we live our relational and sexual lives aren't important.
But let's get a sense of proportion here.
Here endeth the sermon. Go listen to Pastor Wright, and to Bill Moyers's calm, measured, careful interview (which of course is getting criticized already, on his show's blog and elsewhere, by people who did not take time to listen and understand), and if you are not African American and do not know the history and sociology and culture of the Black Church, learn something about it.
(I had to get that in, I'm a Taurus too. As, by the way, is my friend Paul, a.k.a. the Byzigenous Buddhapalian. Our birthdays are just a day apart. And my new godson and I, as it turns out, have the same birthday! Grandmère Mimi, alert: the BB's birthday will take place while he is in NOLA. Write me off-blog at I'll tell you when so you can feed him a Sazerac. Also, as we know, he likes flowers.)
Murrow is one of our local celebrities here in Greensboro. We have four. (Hey, we're a small city. At least by my snooty standards.) Dolley Madison, O. Henry, Edward R. Murrow, and Joey Cheek.
So, from our fair city and its municipal website, I bring you...
Today's Bicentennial Minute:
April 25, 1908
Edward R. Murrow was born in Guilford County near Greensboro on this day in history. Although his family moved to Washington state a few years later, Greensboro has always been proud of its native son, who became a famous radio and TV journalist known for his broadcasts from London during World War II.
Bicentennial Minutes are provided by the Greensboro Public Library and the Greensboro Historical Museum. Visit the official Greensboro Bicentennial website.
Yes, this is our bicentennial year in Greensboro.
The 1781 Battle of Guilford Courthouse (a couple of miles up the road from where I live - see also here) preceded the founding of the city, which is named for General Nathanael Greene. Greene also served at Valley Forge, and you can read more about him here.
Many moons later, the General (a Quaker, by the way) gave his name to a local downtown pub, Natty Greene's, and to the brewery that runs the pub.
Cheers, all y'all.
...from last year.
I note that in last year's post I mentioned senior thesis defenses. Yup, that time of year again right now. And this year we have not two but seven little darlings writing theses. My colleague and I have agreed that is too many.
Nevertheless, we have to read seven theses. They are undergraduate theses, but still. And everyone gets a one-hour defense, really more of a celebratory conversation in our context. But that's two hours tomorrow (yes, Saturday) afternoon, two hours Sunday afternoon, and three hours next Thursday.
And they wonder why we don't get any academic writing done.
St. Mark, pray for us.
We’ve already had The Prayer of the Little Ducks and Noah’s Prayer.
The Prayer of the Dog
I keep watch!
If I am not here
who will guard their house?
Watch over their sheep?
No one but You and I
what faithfulness is.
They call me, "Good dog! Nice dog!"
I take their pats
and the old bones they throw me
and I seem pleased.
They really believe they make be happy.
I take kicks too
when they come my way.
None of that matters.
I keep watch!
do not let me die
until, for them,
all danger is driven away.
The Prayer of the Cat
I am the cat.
It is not, exactly, that I have something to ask of You!
I ask nothing of anyone–
if You have by some chance, in some celestial barn,
a little white mouse,
or a saucer of milk,
I know someone who would relish them.
Wouldn’t You like someday
to put a curse on the whole race of dogs?
If so I should say,
The Prayer of the Mouse
I am so little and grey,
how can You keep me in mind?
Always spied upon,
Nobody ever gives me anything,
and I nibble meagrely at life.
Why do they reproach me with being a mouse?
Who made me but You?
I only ask to stay hidden.
Give me my hunger’s pittance
safe from the claws
of that devil with green eyes.
And of course the French had the cultural scoop. Hasn't hit the English-language headlines yet.
There will be two movies, presumably Hobbit Part One and Hobbit Part Two.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Why should everything be new all the time?! Revisiting the old is part of a good and holy life. And, by decree of Acts of Hope, part of blogging as well. So here is a link to last year's St. George's Day post, and I am posting here the beautiful icon from last year.
You will also find that icon, and two other icons, at Padre Mickey's Dance Party, along with a fine and fascinating post on St. George. So the new in blogland is good too. Go have a look, and ponder the "ever ancient, ever new" aspects of Christian tradition.
So, we've had a lot of end-of-life posts here, and it's time for some children. The blog Civic Center (as in the San Francisco Civic Center) has a delightful photo essay with running commentary about a program the San Francisco Symphony (sigh, I miss them even though I barely ever got there when I was an impoverished middle-aged doctoral student in the Bay Area during MTT's first decade as Music Director) runs called Adventures in Music. Thanks to sfmike for his report about it.
Kids! Tuba players! Kazoos! The physics of music! Have a look. Great fun, great photos.
Adventures in Music, part I (Fewer kids in this one, but start there or you won't get the drift, and the final photo of brass players is priceless.)
Adventure in Music, part II
Thank you, San Francisco Symphony.
ART TO THE PEOPLE!
P.S. In addition to the regular SFS website linked above, there is a San Francisco Symphony Kids' Site (SFSKS). Kultchah for the kids!
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Article from the U.K. on "biodegradable" plastics.
You can read it here.
By happy coincidence, the beautiful Nativity on this week's Daily Episcopalian at the Episcopal Cafe is by our friend Luiz Coelho, Brazilian artist and seminarian. We are honored to be in the company of his work.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Eddie and Joan Bass are long-time and faithful members of St. Mary's House (my congregation), where Joan is our pianist. Eddie is a composer and retired professor of composition and he also has served on the Diocesan Council, the diocesan higher education ministries committee (or whatever we are calling it these days), and numerous other commissions of the Diocese of North Carolina, some of which he has chaired. "Devoted church person" doesn't even begin to describe him. And he's a wonderful composer. He wrote a Mass for St. Mary's House's 100th anniversary a few years ago and we still sing those Mass parts at Sunday liturgy. I'm excited about hearing the Appalachian-inspired pieces.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
For now, some posts from last year, when I was with out of town friends-as-family for the beginning of Passover and had a little more time. (Whew, I posted a lot about Passover last year. What has become of me this year?)
Exodus, Cargo of Hidden Stories.
This one is funny if you're Jewish... (The two-minute Haggadah)
The two-minute Haggadah was a joke, but this one's for real!
Also in today's WaPo: the ambassadors' Seder.
I promised you Miriam's Cup...
... and the orange on the Seder plate.
Pesach check-in with Velveteen Rabbi.
And always, an important reflection for Christians during Passover and the Easter season:
Jews and the death of Jesus.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Here is the Commendation from today's liturgy:
My sisters and brothers, we have been gathered here around
*****this dead body,
what is left to us of this man, to pay our last respects to him
and to seek to do some justice to his life and death.
Keeping our eyes fixed on the cross of Jesus Christ
we say in groping faith that this is not the end,
that our God is a God of the living.
Rather than his body
we will finally be left with the name of this man, Krister,
which we speak with reverence and affection.
Lord God, remember this name which he was given by
***** other people
and by which he is known even though he is dead,
the name that you have written on the palm of your hand. Amen.
As a sign of our hope and to bear witness to our faith in
I bless this body
in the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit.
Let us now go in peace.
We let him go out of our keeping
and return him to the elements of air and earth, in the care of
*****the living God.
May our prayers accompany him,
and may we remember that, as the apostle wrote,
no one lives for herself, no one dies for herself.
We live and we die for God our Lord, and we are the Lord's.
I have kept updating the post from Tuesday with various obituaries and tributes. The latest comes from the World Council of Churches. There are also links at the bottom of that post for the two organizations to which friends may make memorial gifts, the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter and the International Rescue Committee. The family has requested this in lieu of flowers and in honor of Krister's memory.
* as it was with Luiz last month in Atlanta and LJ in October and Ed (Where are you, Ed? We miss you sorely.) in Los Angeles in June.
what a menagerie!
Between Your downpour and these animal cries
one cannot hear oneself think!
The days are long,
All this water makes my heart sink.
When will the ground cease to rock under my feet?
The days are long.
Master Raven has not come back.
Here is Your dove.
Will she find us a twig of hope?
The days are long,
Guide Your Ark to safety,
some zenith of rest,
where we can escape at last
from this brute slavery.
The days are long,
Lead me until I reach the shore of Your covenant.
Because the number of students in the seminar is small, I teach it at home and Miss Maya Pavlova is a regular participant. Being a heterosexual girlcat, she favors the one young man in the class and always ends up settling on his lap, but this time she went to a woman, and she loooooved our esteemed scholarly visitor. So much so that I had to fetch a towel to put on the visitor's lap, because said visitor was of course wearing a beautiful black pantsuit, and you know what cats with white bellies do to black pantsuits.
Maya Pavlova sat on that scholarly lap for over an hour and listened to the whole talk and the questions and answers.
So here, in memory of beloved Krister Stendahl, whose funeral was today (I was not able to go to Cambridge for it, sadly, but hope to make it to the humongous memorial service up there on May 16) and in honor of the new generation of biblical scholars, of whom Musa Dube is a worthy and wonderful representative, we bring you Maya Pavlova, intercultural ambassador and intellectual cat. And, as always, world-class flirt.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Memorial service for Krister Stendahl (1921-2008) and some obituaries and tributes -- and recent words by Bishop Stendahl
David Hartman writes, toward the end of his tribute (link below): We live now in a profound void. My prayer is that Krister's memory and life's work should serve as an inspiration for new Krister Stendahls to emerge in the modern world.
The New York Times obituary (4/16/08) is here.
A tribute from the Shalom Hartman Institute, written by Alan Abbey with a moving tribute by Institute co-director David Hartman, is here.
The fine, detailed obituary from Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is here. A short message from the current HDS dean William Graham is here.
Short 2007 interview with KS on the topic of leadership. Read it if you are interested in any of the following: church, power, Jesus, lgbt issues, humility, discernment, pastoring, priesthood, intellectual life, accountability.
Krister Stendahl's delicious 2007 essay "Why I Love the Bible."
Nice obit with many quotes from colleagues in the 4/17/08 Boston Globe.
Video: Krister Stendahl and Tikva Frymer-Kensky at the National Catholic speaking on Jewish-Christian relations, 2002. (Thanks to Deirdre Good for the referral to the link.)
Short tribute by a blogging member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (a.k.a. Mormons).
World Council of Churches obituary and tribute.
From the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries.
I will keep updating with links to obituaries and tributes in this space.
Bishop Stendahl's family and church have suggested that those who wish to make a memorial gift do so to one of the following two organizations:
The Harvard Square Homeless Shelter
The International Rescue Committee
Funeral this Friday at University Lutheran Church, Harvard Square.
Memorial Service in Memorial Church, Harvard Yard, sometime in May, date to be announced.
I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord;
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;
and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God;
whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold,
and not as a stranger.
For none of us liveth to himself,
and no man dieth to himself.
For if we live, we live unto the Lord.
and if we die, we die unto the Lord.
Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's.
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord;
even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.
From Salon.com: Iraq: The ten commandments. In honor of Charlton Heston, here are 10 lessons we should engrave on our foreign policy tablets as we prepare to leave Iraq. By Gary Kamiya. Read it here. At least someone is talking common sense.
Monday, April 14, 2008
give us a flood of water.
Let it rain tomorrow and always.
Give us plenty of little slugs
and other luscious things to eat.
Protect all folk who quack
and everyone who knows how to swim.
* * * * * *********************Amen
I will, however, post interesting analysis and commentary when I find it and as time allows.
Mary E. Hunt, Catholic feminist theologian whom I have mentioned and quoted here before (full disclosure: she's an old friend), has a new piece out on a website I didn't know of and will now bookmark, Religion Dispatches (subtitled "Critical Analysis for the Common Good.") Read Dr. Hunt's piece here. (Make sure you click to the next page once you've gotten to the bottom -- it's a three-page piece. Three short pages.)
I'm noticing how much media criticism is becoming a part of our lives. I certainly spend more and more time doing and teaching it in my religious studies courses.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Saturday, April 12, 2008
No Farmers' Market. I hadn't been since the day before Easter. I often wake up too late to go. The downtown Farmers' Market is at the uncivilized hour of Saturday 6 a.m. to 12 noon, and woe to those who get there after 9 a.m., a lot of the good stuff is gone by then. But sleep is more important especially since all the other days of the week require at least two alarm clocks. Last Saturday there was an additional reason for not going, which was that I was driving to Burlington, NC to chair a diocesan anti-racism committee meeting and thus had to leave home at 9 a.m. Nine a.m. on a Saturday! That's the middle of the night as far as I am concerned. But Jesus calls and we follow. So off I went, and a good meeting it was, thanks be to Godde.
So then I get back from Burlington, do house things, have a nap, and on and off I'm thinking, gee, it has been more than two years since I heard about this place called Jerusalem Market and I still haven't been to it. Greensboro, you see, is not my kind of transportation town and though I have a good sense of direction (genetic, from Daddy, and also acquired, from seven years of girl scouts) I find the whole Southern sprawl-and-mall thing utterly disorienting and somewhat depressing. So I have my little patterns and periodically I add another route to someplace interesting. Jerusalem Market is interesting. There are two Palestinian foodie families in town. One is the family that owns Zaytoon restaurant, which has long been on the blogroll to the right. They are Palestinian Muslims, very involved in the local Slow Food movement, using as many organic products as possible, and their kids go to the Quaker school next to our campus. They also have a booth at the downtown farmers' market so I met them early on; we also have had them cater a lot of department and private functions. Then there are the Palestinian Christian family, and they own Jerusalem Market (no website), which is a combination shop and deli, and not heavily involved in the local-and-organic movement as far as I know, but for imported food, they are the greatest. And both families, as it turns out, make fresh Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food. So there is also local food at Jerusalem market.
I found out on the Web how to get to Jerusalem Market and off I went. It isn't as far as I thought. It is naturally, in a mall, but a little one, on the edge of town, and I overshot it and had to make a U-turn because despite the mall sign with store names, it is easy not to see the name while you are also trying to figure out where you are going and watching for street numbers. If you can call this a street. It's a flippin' highway. Once you get in the store, though, you are back in a real city store. There is a deli counter at the back, there are bins in the front, and there are shelves and shelves stacked with goodies from Greece, Bosnia, Lebanon, Croatia (yes, I checked labels and bottoms of boxes), Italy, Sweden, and many other countries, goodies savory and sweet. Jars of grape leaves, capers, vegetable spreads, and roasted peppers, boxes of crackers and pasta, roasted and unroasted nuts in bulk, boxes of lokoum (Turkish Delight) and chocolate and marzipan, bags of chick peas, fava beans, lentils, spices, cornmeal, oh my.
The deli counter in the back is apparently known for its sandwiches, but sandwich-making stops at 6 p.m on Saturdays. Who cares, the place was open till 8 p.m., it was 7 p.m., payday was just a few days before, and I was in heaven. At the deli counter I asked about the feta cheese. (I'd had some at the home of my foodie friends who first told me about the place.) The young man of the house (probably the son of the owner) told me about two kinds, both properly made from sheep's milk, one Bulgarian and stronger, the other French and milder. Reader, I bought some of both. The feta comes in bulk and it is fresh, or as fresh as it gets when it has traveled in a big tub with its milky briny liquid across the ocean. Then there were the other cheeses. Peccorino Romano! Misto Classico Stagionato! (I got some of both.) Asiago! Cheese from Spain and Italy and France!
(Note: I later discovered there are massive feta cheese disputes in Europe. But I digress.)
There was also baklava at the deli counter, homemade, some with walnuts, some with pistachios. I resisted. The Ph.D. Pounds are still clinging to my body and it is time they left and jumped off the cliff with a herd of pigs.
Then I met the owner. He found out where I teach, at the local Quaker-founded college. There is a Quaker-Palestinian connection in town. The Friends School in Ramallah, West Bank, always sends us a few of its alumns; our Quaker head of campus ministry also did his alternative service as a C.O. there during the Vietnam war. (How did he manage that one, I once asked. Friendly draft board in Indiana, said he. Place was full of Quakers and Mennonites so the draft board was used to them.) The Jerusalem Market owner, as it turns out, attended this same Ramallah Friends School. The headmistress at the time was my campus minister colleague's aunt, the shop owner told me, and a fearsome Quaker lady she was.
We chatted at the front of the store, where I had stacked my purchases on the counter: the feta, a jar of capers from Greece, a red pepper spread (Ajvar) from Macedonia, a jar of marinated kosher herring made for Denmark in Germany (?!) and marked "Product of the European Community," a huge round package (at least one foot in diameter) of knäckebröd (Swedish flatbread or hardtack -- this one had a bilingual label in Swedish and Finnish and the names of both countries on it; after doing some research I have discovered the Finns have this as their national cracker-bread too and it's pure rye -- but this was much much lighter and crispier than the rectangular flatbread you buy in little packages), a packet of dark German whole grain rye bread, and a small jar of taramosalata. Back to the deli counter we went. It was after sandwich time, but I read the board on the wall and realized there were still all kinds of homemade things. The deli was out of ful medames (a.k.a. fool), but they did have baba ghanoush, so I got a container of that (the owner sprinkled fresh parsley, pine nuts, and a bit of paprika on the top and drizzled a bit of olive oil on it after asking me whether I wanted some) and also a container of yogurt-cucumber-garlic dip. That dip goes very well on the side of various Middle Eastern dishes, especially to spice up a simple lentil and rice dish, but it will go with just about anything Mediterranean. It has a little bite to it and the yogurt has been strained and is quite thick. And olives, they have olives, in big bins with brine. You want calamata olives? The owner asked. Yes, I wanted some of those. And then I asked whether he had Moroccan oil-cured olives. He looked at me with new appreciation. Those are the real olives. They are intense, salty, and dark. I got some of those also. The owner walked me to the car with the bags and gave me a hug.
I went home and ate half the baba ghanoush with some of the Swedish cracker bread (in the interests of North-South understanding, eh Paul?) and the cucumber-yogurt dip. It was delicious. It also involved no cooking at all. And I ate olives, of course, on the side. Voilà. Supper.
Last Sunday: (I am adding this note about last Sunday a day after writing the rest of the post. How could I forget? I am going to have to start keeping a "blog: to do" list.)
Lynne Rossetto Kasper of radio deliciousness fame has two special editions of The Splendid Table. Instead of the usual features, last Sunday's show and today's (I am writing this paragraph on Sunday) are about the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, the foodiest of foodie regions. They are reruns of shows I had missed in 2006. Missed the show? Go listen on the Web. And it's not only about food. (Food is never only about food.) Technology, economics, health, agriculture, travel, culture, and history. With the sounds of the beautiful Italian language. And food, glorious food. Enjoy.
A week later, today:
Made it to the Farmers' Market. Late: it was 10 a.m. by the time I got there (not quite the middle of the night). But the mostly-organic farmers had baby lettuce left and some Italian arugula, and also shiitake mushrooms. Mmm. Later this week we are going to do something with garlic and ginger and a touch of tamari and those mushrooms. Besides being delicious, they are good for the immune system. The egg people were also at the market, or rather one of the sets of egg people (there are two), so I got a dozen eggs from allegedly happy chickens (the egg people advertise the chickens as free-range and happy; since this is the South, the chickens are doubtless spinning loquacious tales of their family's lives in love and war, chicken-style). Stopped by the other organic people, who had fresh cilantro, and I got a bunch. Wasn't sure what I would make with it, but it was cheap and fresh and pretty, so into the bag it went.
Off to the Shrimp Man I went. He wasn't there last week. He wasn't there this week either, technically speaking. His Shrimp Man sign with the newspaper story was there, but the person there was Shrimp Woman who may or may not be related to him. I splurged. I am mostly a vegetarian at home but sometimes the circumstances demand brain food, and believe me, I have circumstances these days. Also, serious protein is in order. (See above under "not gonna eat that baklava.") I got salmon (yes, wild caught), tilapia (cheaper), and big fat shrimp. I think the last time I bought shrimp was two New Year's Days ago. I hardly ever eat out, not even those lattes that make me an NPR liberal (I make 'em at home these days, or rarely, get 'em at the student co-op coffeehouse), so I figure the expense evens out.
Then there is my current favorite florist. The other one was either not there or gone already. This one is a lady of many years, white, with fine wrinkles and a serious North Carolina accent. Her flowers look like they are straight out of the garden. This is not commercial production and I am happy to pay the price --which is not that different from the imported whatevers in the supermarket. I bought two kinds of bright yellow flowers: one bunch of daffodils and one bunch of something else, some kind of jonquils, which the flower lady said would last longer than the daffodils. And the first lilacs are out! In Boston, Lilac Sunday isn't until well into May and in Vermont the lilacs are out even later. So I bought a small, fragrant bunch of lilac-colored lilacs.
We have goat cheese in this part of North Carolina. The farm has been on my blogroll since the beginning. It is called Goat Lady Dairy (there really is a goat lady) and it is located an hour or two from here in, are you ready, Climax, North Carolina. There is a Baptist church in Climax and one passes it on the way to the farm. I don't think it is called Climax Baptist. The farm has an "open farm" twice a year including one at the very end of April, which is at the end of term here (classes end the last of April or the first of May and then we have Reading Days and Finals) and a couple of years ago a bunch of faculty piled into my colleague Shelini's car to get away from our tall stacks of papers and exams and went off to goat-land. You haven't lived till you've hugged baby goats. Shelini took photos but has yet to get them to me. If she does before leaving (she is our department member who is leaving and for whose replacement we had the search this year) I will post one. There is also a sheep farm nearby by the name of Rising Meadow Farm. It sells fleece, wool, and meat. Yes, meat from the darling lambies. Mostly vegetarian though I may be, I have broken down and had some of this meat once in a long while, because it is sustainably raised. At any rate, back to the goat farm. I bought fresh soft spreadable goat cheese (just plain -- they also sell it doctored up with all manner of flavors: pimientos, horseradish, figs and honey, fresh herbs, et al., but I like the plain stuff) and a little round ash-covered slightly aged goat cheese; that one needs to age a bit more and I am keeping it out of the fridge.
I also bought Ohio Amish raw milk cheddar cheese (one mild, one sharp) from one of the Amish families who have a booth at the market.
Then I went to the beekeeping man, who knows me and greeted me (the cheese people know me too, this is part of the fun of frequenting farmers' markets, you get to enjoy the people and the interdependence of city and country) and from whom I hadn't gotten anything in a while. I bought a jar of honey and a tall pair of beeswax candles for my fabulous teaching assistant whose birthday was two days ago (Ima, I hope you're not reading this, it's supposed to be a surprise) -- the candles are for her and her boyfriend's next romantic evening. (Yes, I know the boyfriend, and he's a romantic.) I also bought some shea butter from Ghana, 99% pure shea butter and 1% lavender fragrance, that's it. Great for skin.
When I got home, there was the matter of all the fresh fish. Best to cook some of it soon since cooked it will live in the fridge a day or two longer. I have now given all or most of the tilapia to my adopted nephew (not officially adopted and not my blood nephew, I just have become Auntie Jane over the past couple of years), who is a student from Rwanda and likes cooking with it, and to his beloved, who is one of our alumnae. I made a salad with the baby lettuces and with a decidedly non-organic but heavenly avocado from the supermarket, because I have been craving avocado. (Are there perimenopausal cravings the way there are pregnancy cravings?) While I was eating the salad, the salmon was baking. I made a marinade of olive oil, lemon juice, capers (from the jar I bought a week ago), and crushed fresh garlic, put it on the salmon, wrapped it all up in parchment paper and put it in the oven for a little over 20 minutes (it was a thick piece of salmon) at about 400 degrees. (Can be lower -- recipes vary, I took a quick look at oven temps for salmon in parchment and they go all the way from 325 to 475 degrees, go figure.) Since I am mostly a vegetarian at home and not all that expert at non-veggie dishes and since I am also an absent-minded professor and daydreamy mystical type, burning and overcooking food has become a problem unless I stay in the kitchen the whole time, and with this crazy job I can't always stay in the kitchen. So parchment-wrapped fish is a great solution, because the fish stays moist and if you go a couple of minutes over it's not a disaster. Yes, I have a kitchen timer, but even with a timer I've been known to mess up.
The salmon was delicious. I added a little bit of salt and pepper when I took it out of the parchment, but for those of you who are watching your salt intake, this recipe works fine without since the citrus and garlic and capers add quite a bit of zip. I rinsed the capers before putting them into the marinade so they wouldn't be too salty or vinegar-y.
And then I was full and didn't crave anything sweet. Which was part of the idea.
For supper I had yet more bounty from the sea. It is a rarity for such fishyness to happen twice a day, but I had to cook the shrimp while it was fresh. I skimmed a few recipes for "shrimp scampi" (a misnomer if there ever was one, scampi means "shrimp"!) which I had around to check on cooking times and then scanned my brain and my refrigerator for ingredients that would match the food. In a pan I put Umbrian olive oil (from the supermarket, no less -- they have started a new line of regional Italian olive oils), lime juice (I keep bottles of organic lemon juice and lime juice in the fridge), fresh crushed garlic (yes, again; you can't have too much garlic in your diet), and a dash of vodka for fun and because I had no wine in the house and there was vodka in the freezer left over from the Christmas/New Year's season (shows you how much I drink). Then the shrimp. A bit of coarse sea salt and then a handful of the fresh cilantro, chopped. Sauté a few minutes and voilà. Not much sauce, light, and very good. Serve over rice if you need a carb. I just had the shrimp "as is" and it was very satisfying. First course was Very Veggie juice. (Which, if you decide to go on the South Beach Diet, is very nice as your vegetable course if you don't have time to cook or if you are figuring out how in the world you are going to have vegetables with breakfast or brunch. It's like V8, only better.)
Sorry, no photos of the cooked dishes, I don't own a digital camera. Use your imagination. :-)
Fort-de-France, Martinique -- Poet Aime Césaire, one of the founders of the négritude movement, is very ill. I didn't even realize he was still alive... He is 94.
Better news story, the original one I saw, here, but it's in French so if you're not a francophone, you'll have to pick your way through it. The picture accompanying it is the one I have posted here.
More on Césaire and négritude here (in English) and here (also in English).
The other founders of the négritude movement are Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal and Léon Gontian Damas. Négritude, a cultural movement of Africa and the African diaspora, was and is the original black-is-beautiful movement in the former colonies of France in the African world. Interestingly and not surprisingly, some of its leaders were in touch with and sometimes influenced by literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Both Césaire and Senghor were statesmen as well as poets during their long and fruitful lives and are major poets in the French language. I know less about Damas and must go read up on him.
May Aimé Césaire's last days be gentle on the earth and may he hear the poetry of angels in his ears. In Caribbean French.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Just a year ago (a year ago tomorrow, to be exact) I posted about him following an excellent post by Deirdre Good.
I have been grieving him for several weeks already, sensing that I would not see him alive again. This is a death I have been dreading for years. Bishop Stendahl is dying in the fullness of years, but this is someone who has been a true spiritual father to me and there will never be anyone like him again.
I pray for him, ask for your prayers for him, for his wife and partner Brita, and for their children and family.
I can't find a photo of him on the web, except for a not very good one. The link to a photo on the link above is broken (the link to my post does work fine, though) and all the photos seem to have disappeared.
When the obits are out (they will be everywhere, he is world famous) there will be photographs, I am sure. Meanwhile we wait and pray and give thanks
P.S. I found one of the photos I was looking for. This one is of Brita and Krister Stendahl in the audience at a lecture at Harvard Divinity School (HDS). Both are in their eighties.
(To Brita and Krister's left --to their right in the photo-- is noted scholar of religion and ecology Mary Evelyn Tucker. To her left is HDS professor Kimberly Patton, my Guilford colleague Eric Mortensen's mentor and friend. In the row above them you can see emeritus professor Gordon Kaufman and next to him, Mary Evelyn Tucker's husband John Grim, also a noted scholar of religion and ecology.)
Got the icon from here.
Anonymous painter. Triptych with Virgin and Child Flanked by archangels, scenes from the life of Christ, apostles and Saint George and Saint Mercurius. Ethiopia (Gojjam?), late 17th century. Tempera on panel.
This of course does not include the perch I cleared for her some months ago at the top of a low bookcase in my study by the window. That is where she watches Kitty TV every morning and sometimes every afternoon. But in between, there must be naps.
This week she is fond of the very top of the high narrow bookcase in the living room. She jumps up there in a flying leap and naps there in the evenings. I assume she likes it not only because it is just the size of a small curled-up cat but also because it is close to the standing lamp, which is on in the evenings, so she gets the warmth from it. If it's a warm spot, it will attract a cat. She can, of course, survey the premises from the top of the bookcase when she opens an eye or two.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
And although it is now the 10th in the evening, I am posting this with a date of April 9, because I did visit Padre Mickey's Dance Party on day of the feast.
So thanks to Mickey for this.
And here is a link to my Bonhoeffer post from last year. It's long, so maybe it's good for two feasts.
We give thanks, O giver of life,
for Dietrich our brother,
disciple of Jesus,
proclaimer and doer of the Word,
witness to Cross and Resurrection.
In Christ's name, Amen.
Monday, April 7, 2008
The old man on the screen sang
in a loud and shaky voice
and had probably never been very clean
in addition he had hardly any teeth left
a miner with black lung
of course he spoke dialect and his grammar was bad
why after all should he
show his best side to the camera
When god turns on his tv
he sees old people like that
in a loud and shaky voice
and the camera of the holy spirit
shows the dignity of these people
and makes god say
that is very beautiful
when we have abolished tv as it exists
and are allowed to look at the skin of aging women
and are unafraid of eyes
that have lost their lashes in weeping
when we respect work
and the workers have become visible
in a loud and shaky voice
Then we shall see
and be happy about it
Part of the texts at the end of chapter 6, "Gazing: Icons, Images, and the Depths of God" in When in Doubt, Sing.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Tomorrow I will chair a diocesan anti-racism committee meeting in the morning and later in the day or weekend* we will remember Brothers Martin and César here.
May we listen to their lives, walk with them, and not keep them on pedestals far, far away.
Thus will we honor their memories.
* or more like Tuesday. (Added Monday evening.)
Kitty TV: hours of entertainment on the Bird and Squirrel Channel.
Caption contest, anyone?
Maya watches the sunset.
Photos by Jane Redmont. A Maya Pavlova Production.
Don’t believe that because you are not pleasing to yourself
you are not pleasing to God.
God does not ask for results.
God asks for love.
Another quote I use in When in Doubt, Sing... Rediscovered it today. I don't know about you, but I need to remember this one.
It looks like a direct relative of my Maya Pavlova and several other cats I know, and according to the photographer, it is.
The photographer is James Warwick from the UK. Says Warwick, a wildlife photographer, "I had seen this individual a number of times resting up in the same tree during the day. On this occasion I could not have wished for a more perfect pose. After a few minutes he resumed his afternoon nap. African wild cats are the main relative of all domestic cats."
C'mon, click. You need that daily "aaaawwww."
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
*which is already past midnight, but I am cheating and changing the post time so that it is still Wednesday in blogtopia.
This is a bit of the courtyard and entrance to the Cluny museum. This is Paris's museum of medieval art and, as you can see, it is in a fine late 15th century building. The English-language website for the museum is here. Click on "The Hôtel de Cluny" in the left-hand column to read about the building. The other links are fun, too.
I just realized I already posted this photo two months ago, but I didn't say what it was and you can't look at Paris courtyards too often.
As Mother of Acts of Hope would say, it's The Decline of Western Civilization.
To: The Associated Press (AP) (I sent this to the general e-mail on the news website, so my letter will probably end up in the cyber-trash, but I couldn't stand it any more. If anything drives me away from teaching, it will be the pain of correcting bad writing. Especially since I am not a professor of writing.)
Aargh! As a college professor, writer, and daughter and sister of journalists (including two AP staff or former staff) I am appalled. Your writer Devlin Barrett managed to make not one but TWO mistakes in the final sentence of his story on Senator Obama and former Vice President Gore.
See below for the mistakes and corrections.
It's bad enough that I have to correct these very same mistakes in my students' papers. What am I to do when they read the news and find the very same problems there?
This is not the AP with which I grew up. Please watch your copyediting and proofreading.
Obama would consider Gore for major post
By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 43 minutes ago
WALLINGFORD, Pa. - Democrat Barack Obama says as president he would consider putting Al Gore in a Cabinet-level position — or higher.
A woman at a town hall asked the Illinois senator if elected president would he consider tapping the former vice president for his Cabinet, or an even higher level office, to address global warming.
"I would," Obama said. "Not only will I, but I will make a commitment that Al Gore will be at the table and play a central part in us figuring out how we solve this problem. He's somebody I talk to on a regular basis. I'm already consulting with him in terms of these issues but climate change is real."
Gore, who's work on climate change earned him a Nobel Prize, he is popular among Democrats.
* * * * * * * * *
That should be whose work on climate change. There is no need for the word he.
Gore, whose work on climate change earned him a Nobel Prize, is popular among Democrats.
(Either that or change the sentence to: Gore's work on climate change earned him a Nobel Prize. He is popular among Democrats.)
Please stop using people who write like junior high school students to write your stories!
Okay, now I'm all peaceful and nonviolent and centered again. OOOMMMMMMMM... |
NEW efforts are being made to protect bees, which have been reducing in number because of parasites such as the Varroa mite.
Of the UK’s estimated 44,000 beekeepers in the UK, around 99% are amateurs, according to Defra.
The department and the Welsh government have published a joint consultation to gather views from both amateur and commercial bee farmers on the best way to provide support to improve bee health.
Animal welfare minister Lord de Mauley said: “Honeybees are an iconic species which are vital to the environment and I want to make sure that we do all we can to safeguard their future.
“But these bees are susceptible to pests and diseases and need to be cared for properly to aid their long-term survival, which is why we’re consulting on new measures to help beekeepers and improve bee health.”
The consultation’s proposals include increasing efforts to tackle the management of the Varroa mite, with better guidance for bee keepers from the National Bee Unit (NBU) and a new training programme run by the NBU and beekeeping associations for all bee keepers.
Bee farmers demonstrating good management of their hives will face fewer official inspections and a new welfare code to remind beekeepers of their responsibility to their bees will be introduced.
The plan also places renewed emphasis on increasing the resilience and preparedness for exotic threats, such as the small hive beetle.
The consultation, drawn up by beekeeping experts, will run until March 9. |
Catherine Lawton is publisher and editor-in-chief. She has a BA in English (Pasadena College/Point Loma Nazarene University), has done graduate-level studies in theology, and is a published freelance writer of many articles, stories, and poetry, and the author of four books. She finds refreshment in playing piano, hiking, gardening, birding, road trips. The Lawtons are blessed with two married children and their spouses, and six grandchildren. Read a longer bio here.
Larry Lawton is director of finance, warehousing and fulfillment. Most of his career, he worked as a corporate accountant (in the lumber, natural foods, newspaper, and printing industries), he played college basketball (BA in Business, PC/PLNU) and directed a church choir. He enjoys model railroading, hiking in the mountains, and backyard beekeeping. His team has won four gold medals in state-level Senior Games basketball tournaments, and the silver medal at the 2017 National Senior Games.
Christina Slike assists with marketing and editing at Cladach, using her education (BA in Business, PLNU) and talents (administration, social media, communications) in many ways. She is married to Cliff, and their three children keep her hopping. She enjoys playing violin, reading novels, raising chickens, kids’ play dates and coffee with friends. She also is a part-time substitute teacher.
Cladach is pronounced: Kla’ dak ~ This Scottish Gaelic word means “shore” as in “seashore.” “Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore” (John 21:4). The Lord sends us forth on life’s sea to venture for him, then welcomes us to the safety of his shore; and always he is with us.
We are a family-owned, small press publishing in these categories:
We purpose to:
- know God as loving Creator, Father, and Redeemer.
- witness to God’s loving and gracious presence and work in all creation.
- through artful stories, depict grace in a postmodern world.
We believe in historic, biblical Christianity expressed through a personal faith in Jesus Christ and a life of love and service to God and others through the transforming and enabling presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
We may be contacted at:
PO Box 336144
Greeley, Colorado 80633
office (at) cladach . com |
Cullman EC’s 77th Annual Meeting set for Sept. 21 AUGUST 2013 • POWERING YOUR COMMUNITY
Cullman Electric Cooperative
Trip of a lifetime Maneka Blackwood, left, of Addison,
and Nesha Small, of Hancevile, represented Cullman Electric Co-op at the annual Washington, D.C. Youth Tour www.cullmanec.com
Where food comes from Annual summer event gives
children an education on the value of farming
Farm Y’all Festival Make plans to attend
Cullman’s newest event all about agriculture
7/17/13 4:31 PM
Grady Smith Co-Op Editor
Brian Lacy Alabama Living is delivered to some 420,000 Alabama families and businesses, which are members of 22 not-for-profit, consumer-owned, locally directed and taxpaying electric cooperatives. AREA cooperative member subscriptions are $3 a year; non-member subscriptions, $6. Alabama Living (USPS 029-920) is published monthly by the Alabama Rural Electric Association of Cooperatives. Periodicals postage paid at Montgomery, Alabama, and at additional mailing office. POSTMASTER send forms 3579 to: Alabama Living, P.O. Box 244014 Montgomery, Alabama 36124-4014.
Alabama Rural Electric Association
AREA President Fred Braswell Editor Lenore Vickrey Managing Editor Melissa Henninger Creative Director Mark Stephenson Art Director Michael Cornelison
Vol. 66 No. 8 AUGUST 2013
6 Down on the farm
The 13th Annual Touring Farms for Kids event gave children, parents and grandparents a chance to find out where food comes from and learn important lessons about the role farmers play in our society.
16 Youngest gardeners The youngest students at the University of West Alabama are getting a firsthand education on the unique agriculture of Alabama through a garden project with the Center for the Study of the Black Belt.
ON THE COVER Maneka Blackwood and Nesha Small in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. PHOTO BY MICHAEL CORNELISON, AREA
Advertising Director Adam Freeman Advertising Coordinator Brooke Davis Recipe Editor Mary Tyler Spivey Intern Jordan Pittman
24 Busy as a bee
Alabama beekeepers know better than anyone how important bees are, not just for their honey, but for the vital role they play in the nation’s food chain.
ADVERTISING & EDITORIAL OFFICES:
340 TechnaCenter Drive Montgomery, Alabama 36117-6031 1-800-410-2737 E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.org www.areapower.coop NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE:
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departments 9 10 18 28 3 0 32 34 41
Spotlight Power Pack Alabama Gardens Safe at Home Consumer Wise Worth the Drive Cook of the Month Fish & Game Forecast
Printed in America from American materials
August 2013 3
7/17/13 4:31 PM
Cullman Electric Cooperative Board of Trustees
Co-ops change lives in communities they serve
President & CEO, Cullman Electric Cooperative
District 3 (Chairman)
James Fields, Jr.
J. David Hembree
4 AUGUST 2013
August 2013 Alabama Living pages.indd 4
Loyalty is a prized virtue — to country, family, even the schools we attend. We keep those ties strong throughout our lives. As a new school year is set to begin, keep an eye on just how many “school colors” you notice being worn by people around town. People love their schools and communities, and take pride in supporting them long after they graduate. We at Cullman Electric Cooperative also have loyalties, to the members and communities we serve. We have deep connections here because this is our home, and you are our neighbor. When you signed up for service with Cullman EC, you became a member, not a customer — because each of our 36,000 consumer-members owns a portion of the utility. That means we care about improving the quality of life in the areas we serve. From helping put lights up at football stadiums to hosting blood drives at our office, Cullman EC invests in the places where you live and work. Cullman EC doesn’t exist to make profits for distant investors on Wall Street. We exist to provide you with safe, reliable, and affordable electric service — and doing so in a way that makes things better for future generations. Because electric co-ops operate
on a not-for-profit basis, we have no need to increase revenues above what it takes to run our business in a financially sound manner. This structure helps keep your electric bills affordable. We take our jobs seriously, but we also take our community roles seriously, too. That’s why we offer scholarships to college-bound students, and send two high school juniors to Washington, D.C., every summer to learn about history and government (see page 8 for more details about this year’s trip). We don’t participate in these activities simply because it’s nice to do, or even the right thing to do. We do it because we remain loyal to our members, our neighbors, our home — and a mission to make life better in the areas we serve. Tell me what makes life better in your community? How are you giving back? Share a story of how you or someone you know is helping make a difference, and your story could be featured in a future edition of Alabama Living magazine. Send an email to email@example.com with the subject “Making life better.” I look forward to reading your emails, and I hope you have a great month. A
7/17/13 5:02 PM
Cullman Electric Contact Information
Time to update your membership Cullman Electric Cooperative is extending a special opportunity to members who need to update their account. Starting Aug. 1, and continuing through Sept. 19, any member needing to change an account from the name of a deceased person will not be charged. Cullman EC will waive the $30 origination fee for those living at a residence where the power is in a deceased person’s name. You will simply need to provide appropriate documentation and sign the standard origination forms. The fee waiver applies only to existing accounts, and only to those transferring accounts from the name of a deceased person. To update your account, bring a copy
Why update? • If your spouse has passed away and the account was in his or her name. • If the account at the home where you live is in the name of a parent, grandparent or other relative who has passed away. Remember — the fee waiver applies only to existing accounts, and must be completed between Aug. 1 and Sept. 19.
of your bill and a form of identification to Cullman EC’s office, and a member service representative will be happy to help you.
2013 Cullman EC Annual Meeting
Mark your calender!
Office locations Cullman - headquarters 1749 Eva Road NE Cullman, AL 35055 Addison - branch office 31132 US Hwy 278 West Addison, AL 35540 Phone 256-737-3200 or (800) 242-1806 Website www.cullmanec.com Find Cullman Electric Cooperative on Twitter (twitter.com/cullmanec) and on Facebook
Payment Options Draft Pay your bill by automatic draft from your checking account or credit card. Online Payments may be made 24 hours a day by check, credit card or debit card on our website at www.cullmanec.com Kiosks Payments may be made 24 hours a day at Cullman EC’s office on Eva Road. Kiosks located at Cullman EC’s Addison office and Hooper’s Family Market in Fairview are available during regular business hours
Saturday, Sept. 21 • 8 a.m. - noon Activities end & business meeting begins @ 11 a.m.
Northbrook Baptist Church on Hwy 157 See Page 34 for a recap of proposed bylaw changes that will be on the ballot for this year’s Annual Meeting Alabama Living
August 2013 Alabama Living pages.indd 5
By Mail Cullman Electric Cooperative Dept 3155 PO Box 2153 Birmingham, AL 35287-3155 Night Deposit Available at both office locations AUGUST 2013 5
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Story and Photos by Jessica Wood
Tour gives children & adults a taste of life on the farm The 13th annual Touring Farms for Kids proved to be an extremely educational and entertaining experience for children and adults alike. Children went home with sticky smiles and dirty hands, and everyone who participated walked away with a better understanding of where the food they eat comes from. After a brief welcome speech delivered by Dr. Tom Williamson, the eager crowd boarded a bus to begin the journey through two days in the life of a farmer. The first stop was Kress Farms. There, the children were given the opportunity to gather a sack of Irish potatoes and a basket of strawberries to take home to their families. “I think it’s important for people to know that you just don’t go to Wal-Mart and there’s your food,” said Brian Kress, one of the farmers who hosted the tour group. “They need to know where it comes from. I’ve had people in the past ask me how we pick these (potatoes) off trees, and not even know.” Doris Patterson brought five of her grandchildren to the Touring Farms for Kids event because she is well aware of the declining knowledge about 6 AUGUST 2013
August 2013 Alabama Living pages.indd 6
agriculture. “I worked at Peinhardt farms one time, and we showed the kids some squash,” Patterson said. “It was canned, and somebody said, ‘What are those?’ and the little boy said, ‘lemons?’” The children learned about dairy and poultry at the Boyd’s Harvest farm where they were given a milking demonstration and saw a pen full of young chickens. It was at the Harvest farm that the Touring Farms for Kids participants first realized farming is not just for old people — they saw children their own age assisting with daily tasks. The participants caught a glimpse of what it is like to work in the Alabama heat and humidity. The Touring Farms for Kids event proved to be a well-organized and exciting couple of days for the children, parents and grandparents involved. Tour coordinator Rachel Dawsey said the annual event would not be possible without the support of local farmers. “Thankfully everybody pitches in,” Dawsey said. “The farmers who let us come to visit are so helpful and have so many great things planned for us. We www.cullmanec.com
7/17/13 5:02 PM
Cullman Electric “I think it’s important for people to know that you just don’t go to Wal-Mart and there’s your food. They need to know where it comes from.” BRIAN KRESS, Cullman County farmer definitely couldn’t do it without them being willing to open up their farms for us.” Hooper’s Farm was the next destination on the tour. There, the children went fishing and were given a tour of the deer facilities. Several of the children were given a ride through the pastures to see the cattle. Sadly, the day came to a close, but the children were back on Thursday to experience even more. They went to the farmer’s market to see how the produce goes from the fields to the customers, and visited a horticulture facility known as the Experiment Station. There were also two more farms to visit — Calvert’s Farm in Bremen and the beloved Peinhardt Farm that so many third graders have had the opportunity to explore over the years. The tour was hosted by the North Alabama Agriplex Board, which was created in
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2001 by the state legislature in order to promote agriculture. “We (the Agriplex Board) preserve our history and our heritage by educating young people about where our food and fiber comes from,” Williamson said. “We try to get young folks interested in agriculture to save our farm land. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. We have to try and teach people how to make a living from soil.” Each man, woman and child who attended the thirteenth annual Touring Farms for Kids event left with a better understanding of the hard work that goes into getting food on the dinner plates. Because farms are becoming less prominent, the future of agriculture relies on events like Touring Farms for Kids to spark people’s interest in farming and to educate the public on an occupation that everyone would go hungry without. A
Make plans to attend Farm Y’all Festival Good food, agriculture and friendly competition will surge through Cullman on Aug. 24, 2013, as the first Farm Y’all — Farm to Fork Festival will take place at the Festhalle Market Platz from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. Admission to the festival is free. “Cullman is the largest agricultural producing county in the state of Alabama,” County Extension Coordinator Tony Glover said. “Since it is such an important part of our economy, we thought that a festival to celebrate that fact was long overdue.” People who attend the festival can sample cooking from celebrity chefs, enjoy live music and games, and check out the festival’s main event — the giant pumpkin and watermelon competition. Trent Boyd is a Cullman County farmer who last year broke the state record for the largest pumpkin at 885 pounds. In the past, he has competed in national competitions held in the Midwest region of the United States. Glover said one of the inspirations behind the Farm Y’all Festival is to create an annual event where farmers from all over the Southeast can bring their prize produce to be entered into competition. “Many farmers choose not to compete in such competitions because the climate in the Southeast causes crops to mature earlier than crops in the Midwest,” Glover explained. “Normally, the prize melons and pumpkins have spoiled before the competitions in the Midwest take place.” For more information, visit the festival website at www.farmyall.com, or call the Cullman Area COC at 256734-0454. A AUGUST 2013 7
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Alabama youth make trip of a lifetime to nation’s capital Forty-five Alabama students joined nearly 1,600 of their fellow young electric cooperative consumers for a week in June as part of the 49th annual NRECA Electric Cooperative Youth Tour in Washington, DC. The teenagers, accompanied by eight chaperones, toured muse-
ums and monuments, and brought a fresh and unique perspective to elected officials as they visited with congressional representatives at the U.S. Capitol. “I saw a lot of things I never would have seen if I hadn’t gone on this trip,” said Maneka Blackwood of Cullman Electric Cooperative. “I probably never would have gone to D.C. if not for this trip, so I’m really glad I had the chance and the opportunity to enjoy this experience.” Many of the teenagers were especially moved by a visit to Arlington National Cemetery, home to some 400,000 graves of American service personnel. “I think it meant the most to everybody on this trip because we got to see the
(graves of) people that gave their lives for you and for your family to be safe,” said Nesha Smalls of Cullman Electric Cooperative. “We were all thanking their families for their loved ones giving their lives to protect us and to keep us safe. We got to put flags by the gravesites, and it was something I’ll never forget.” Blackwood agreed. “Listening to the stories of the family members who were coming to pay their respects, and just looking at the cemetery was awe-inspiring,” Blackwood said. “To think that that many people would lay their life down and make that sacrifice for our freedom, it really touched me to know people really do that.” continued on page 43
Maneka Blackwood, left, of Addison, and Nesha Smalls, of Hanceville, represented Cullman EC in the Alabama delegation at the 2013 Washington, D.C. Youth Tour in June.
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Get a taste of Alabama cuisine during Restaurant Week Culinary travelers should mark their calendars for Alabama Restaurant Week, which begins Friday, Aug. 16, and runs through Sunday, Aug. 25. Sponsored by the Alabama Department of Tourism, the event will highlight Alabama’s diverse eateries with participating restaurants offering a pre-fixed two-course lunch and/or three-course dinner at a set price. Alabama’s Martie Duncan, a finalist on the hit show, “Food Network Star,” also will be visiting several of the participating restaurants for a social media “meet and greet” with the public. A three-course dinner meal should include a starter, main course and dessert while the two-course lunch meal should include a main course and either a starter or dessert. Patrons should simply ask for an Alabama Restaurant Week meal at a participating restaurant during the promotion time period. Participating restaurants are listed at www.alabamarestaurantweek.com/restaurants.php with exact meal offerings once they are known. The Alabama Restaurant Week pricing is fixed at $10, $20 and $30 for dinner and $5, $10 and $15 for lunch.
Events Aug. 3
Wild game cooks will compete in Millbrook Wild Game Cook Teams from 13 competitions across the state will battle it out Saturday, Aug. 3 at Lanark Pavilion in Millbrook for a $1,000 first prize and bragging rights to the title Alabama Wildlife Federation-Alabama Army National Guard Wild Game Cook-Off State Champion. Festivities kick off at 5:30 p.m. and will include a silent auction, raffle and musical entertainment. The Alabama Army National Guard will also be sponsoring a “People’s Choice Award” which will be voted on by those in attendance. Each cook team will prepare its tables and their specialty of wild game, fish or fowl for the judges and attendees. Tickets are available for $35 per person or $50 per couple. Proceeds benefit Alabama Wildlife Alabama Living
Belle Chevre Cheese Shop and Tasting Room in Elkmont will take part in Alabama Restaurant Week. Wintzell’s Oyster House restaurants, including the Mobile location, is among the restaurants participating.
Federation’s programs and projects. For ticket information contact the Alabama Wildlife Federation at 1-800-822-WILD. Driving directions can be downloaded at www.alabamawildlife.org.
Follow us on Pinterest at www.pinterest.com/ AlabamaLiving, where you can find yummy recipes, travel ideas, gardening tips and inspiring stories about Alabama and its people, places and things!
Luverne hosts Peanut Boil Festival The 4th Annual Peanut Boil Festival will be Saturday, Aug. 31 in Luverne. Sponsored by the Crenshaw County Chamber of Commerce, the event will feature arts and crafts, food, entertainment, a car show, a Biker Run, rides for kids and other activities. The festival will be located at the intersection of Highway 10 and Highway 331S in Luverne. A 5K run/ walk is also planned for Saturday, Aug. 24 on Airport Road in Luverne. Registration is at 6 a.m. and the run starts at 7 a.m. For more information about either event, call 334-335-4468. AUGUST 2013 9
Reflecting on 78 years of Social Security By Carolyn W. Colvin Acting Commissioner of Social Security
There are special moments when people look back and evaluate a life or an era: birthdays, class reunions, holidays, anniversaries. Time is, after all, simply the stringing together of a number of events; some small, others significant. These events can speed by quickly, but each one can have an effect on the greater whole. A lifetime of seemingly mundane events can pass in what seems like the blink of an eye … until one looks back to examine them and realizes just how much has filled the space. When I think about Social Security on the eve of the program’s 78th anniversary, I am amazed by what a significant difference it has made, one event at a time, one person at a time. Over Social Security’s long history, every single monthly payment has made a difference to an American somewhere. But when you string those payments together, it’s remarkable what a huge and positive effect Social Security has had on the people and economy of our nation. Social Security has been a cornerstone of our nation, touching the lives of almost every American at one time
or another, for 78 years. It’s the most successful domestic program in our nation and, arguably, the world. When President Franklin D. Carolyn Colvin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935, he said, “The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.” The same can be said of the current information age, with our rapidly evolving digital revolution and periods of economic instability. Social Security is a safety net cast to help those who need it. President Roosevelt knew that the cornerstone of his administration would offer security, but he also understood that Social Security would need to evolve as new changes challenged the nation. “This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete,”
he admitted. “It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.” Today, Social Security is much more than just a retirement program. We provide benefits to disabled individuals and their families. We provide survivors benefits to widows, widowers and the minor children of deceased workers. We provide Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to aged and disabled people who have low income and resources. We provide work incentives to help people work. We even provide extra help with Medicare prescription drug costs. In so many ways, Social Security benefits America. Milestones come and milestones go. But looking back over the past 78 years of the nation’s most important program, it is those millions of individual moments — the monthly benefit payments — that have made a tremendous difference. In good times and bad, in sickness and health, Social Security has helped Americans. Each payment has helped someone, somewhere. But place them side by side and the difference Social Security has made in the lives of Americans is certainly something to celebrate.
D.C. Youth Tour a hit with 45 lucky students Some 45 students from 17 of Alabama’s electric cooperatives recently returned from Washington D.C. for the week-long National Rural Electric Cooperative Youth Tour, joining more than 1,600 students from across the nation. Students met with U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, of Alabama’s 7th Congressional District, (far left) and other members of Congress and toured the U.S. Capitol (left) and other sites of interest. See more photos at http:// photos.youthtour.org/2013YouthTour/ Alabama-WashingtonDC/29559417_ CTFsn3#!i=2527868037&k=NPswjhj and on Facebook at AREA Youth Tours. 10 AUGUST 2013
‘Back to school’ sales tax holiday set for Aug. 2-4 The state of Alabama will have a “Back to School” sales tax holiday weekend Aug. 2-4. Items eligible for discount include clothing under $100; school supplies under $50; books under $30; and computers and computer equipment under $750.
To see the list of localities participating in the sales tax holiday, visit the Alabama Department of Revenue’s website at www.revenue.alabama.gov/salestax/stholiday.cfm. The list of supplies that are eligible is located at http://revenue. alabama.gov/salestax/STHolidayQuickRefSheet13.pdf. For more information, call 334-242-1490 or 866-5766531.
Paying for college: Four tips parents should know Financial specialist shares ways to help your child while protecting your retirement From $20,000 to $65,000 a year – that’s the tuition cost for one year of college, says John McDonough, a money expert who helps retirees and parents plan for their families’ futures. “For the 2012–2013 academic year, the average cost for an in-state public college is $22,261. A moderate budget for a private college averaged $43,289,” says McDonough, CEO of Studemont Group College Funding Solutions, www. studemontgroup.com. “But for elite schools, we’re talking about three times the cost of your local state school. Either way, your kid’s higher education can easily shoot into six figures after four years.” Along with worrying about rising tuition prices, parents also fear for their own futures if their retirement savings are drained by children’s college costs, McDonough says. Only 14 percent, for example, are very confident they’ll have the money to live comfortably in retirement, he says, citing a 2012 survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. “Families feel they’re faced with conflicting goals, but there are numerous ways to pay for college while investing in your future retirement,” says McDonough, who offers insights for parents to keep in mind while planning for their child’s education: • The ROI of a college education: At a time when so many American families are financially strapped, college is an especially stressful topic because parents know higher learning will help their kids succeed. College graduates earn 84 percent more than those with only a high school diploma, according to Georgetown’s Center on Education Alabama Living
and the Workforce. Here is how earning breaks down over one’s lifetime, based on education: a doctoral degree-holder will earn $3.3 million over a lifetime; $2.3 million is estimated for a college graduate; those with only a high school diploma can expect $1.3 million. • Move retirement assets to qualify for grants: Most parents know about the 529 savings account, but that’s not necessarily the best or only option. Reallocating your retirement assets, such as 401(k)s, can better position a child to qualify for grants and scholarships. This legal and ethical maneuvering may be the single most important factor when considering how to pay for college. • Know your student’s strengths and weaknesses: Consider independent and objective analysis of your future college student. Assessment might include a personality profile and a detailed search for a future career. Also think about a more nuts-and-bolts approach, including scholarship eligibility, SAT and ACT prep courses, review of admissions essays and an in-depth analysis of chances for enrollment in a student’s top four choices of colleges. • Make a checklist of financial aid forms: In order to maximize a fair price of higher education, remember there is plenty of data to review. McDonough recommends a checklist with a timeline and notable deadlines. Be ready to troubleshoot the “alphabet soup” of data forms: FAFSA – Free Application For Federal Student Aid; CSS profile – College Scholarship Service; SAR – Student Aid Report; and more. Think about this process as a second job, or find professional help you can trust. AUGUST 2013 11
Defying the myths A conversation with Alabama School Superintendent Dr. Tommy Bice
Later this month, school doors will reopen for more than 700,000 Alabama public school children. Alabama Living recently sat down with Alabama School Superintendent Dr. Tommy Bice to talk about some of the positive things happening in our schools. A former teacher, principal and superintendent in the Alexander City school system, Bice had been the state’s deputy superintendent of education instruction before officially taking office as superintendent in January 2012. Portions of our interview with Dr. Bice covered elements of the state’s new strategic plan for education, Plan 2020. To read and download a copy of the plan, visit www.alsde.edu/Home/General/PLAN_2020.aspx. Video excerpts from the interview may be viewed at http://vimeo.com/70582219 and http://vimeo.com/70582394. Alabama Living: We hear a lot about the bad things in our public schools, but we want our readers to know about the good things. Tell us about some of those. Bice: I think the most exciting thing at the moment is that we’ve redefined the “high school graduate” for the state of Alabama. As part of that, we set a goal of a 90 percent graduation rate by 2020. We took a baseline last year and we were at 72 percent, which to some may not sound like a positive thing. It’s actually higher than it’s ever been since records have been kept in Alabama. And we set a trajectory through 2020 of increasing it by 2 percent each year to make that goal. But in the first year we increased about 3 percent which again, doesn’t sound like a huge amount. But, if we continue on that trajectory, we’ll get to 90 percent even before 2020. 12 AUGUST 2013
And the significance of that is two-fold. Number one, what it means for those individuals that are actually now high school graduates rather than high school dropouts and their options for future choices of continuing their education or certain jobs that they would have not been eligible for. But as a state, it also means people (graduates) have greater income. And if you have greater income, you spend more. So for our economy, it’s a huge boost. What we’re trying to get across to our legislature is the two main funding sources that fund public education are income tax and sales tax. If we are able to get them behind us on some of the things that we are trying to do and actually get to this 90 percent graduation rate, we can be our own solution to our funding problem for the education budget, because we’ll have a greater number of people with higher income who are spending more.
Which, obviously, will enhance the education trust fund. So it helps the individual and it helps the state. Alabama Living: What specifically are we doing inside the schools to keep students in the classroom? Bice: The Department of Education is a huge bureaucracy and bureaucracies tend to treat whoever they serve as if they’re all the same. And we’ve done that for a long
time in public education. We’ve reorganized the department, we changed a lot of our rules and regulations so that we’re actually rewarding and supporting innovation. And removing some of the rules and regulations that have held people back from doing things that could create more opportunities for children to be more engaged. There’s a school in rural Talladega County, Winterboro, that was having issues with dropouts and [they] visited schools around the nation looking for a new solution. They had tried a lot of things and they weren’t working. They came up on Project-Based Learning and they partnered with business and industry to come in and look at teaching math, science, social studies and English around solving real world problems provided by business and industry. One of the first things they did was tear down walls between classrooms, so that teachers…
Bice: I was just there this morning. To kick off an initiative that we’re calling “Ending Childhood Hunger in Alabama,” one of the areas that we are focusing on is to begin to teach children how to have gardens. So that they can learn about sustainability, building their own gardens at home and making sure that as they become adults, they understand that they can have control over their hunger needs. It was just remarkable. And they are again teaching science, math, social studies, and English through this work in the garden. After the formal press conference, they turned the children loose and they immediately got engaged telling everybody about their plants and what’s going on. One of the neatest stories was from a first-grader. I asked her, I said “What are some of your challenges?” She says, “You know, we’re just so challenged right now because we have cabbage worms that are attacking our cabbage.”
some schools that are underperforming? Absolutely we do, but those are by far the minority. And we are dealing very aggressively with those right now, to turn them around so that those students have options just like other students. But, by far, the majority of our students, once we’ve removed some of those rules and regulations that have kind of held them captive for years, the innovation that’s coming out of these schools is just remarkable. Alabama Living: And who’s really to be credited for that? Teachers there, parents or…..?
Bice: It’s a combination in these schools where it’s really taking off. It’s where the school community has partnered with business and industry and with parents. It’s really a collective community effort. Sometimes schools try to do their own Alabama Living: The physical walls? thing aside from the community and especially aside from the business and industry. And where we’re Bice: Physical walls, and they seeing the greatest move forward created learning suites. Where is where business and industry groups of students come in and have paired with education. Bework with teachers who have cause as I have shared openly, planned their lessons around solving that problem. And it’s remarkultimately business and industry are our customers of public eduable. Since they have done that for cation. Whether it’s straight out the last three years, they have had of high school, two years later afone student to drop out of school, ter a technical degree, four years their graduation rate is at 98 percent and their discipline referrals Alabama schools must realign their limited resources more later a B.S. degree, or ten years later. Those people go into the are almost nonexistent. Because strategically to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse they are providing education in student population, Bice says. work force, so we want to make Photos courtesy Alabama State Department of Education sure that we are partnered with a different sort of environment from the way we traditionally them along the way, so there is a And I’m thinking, OK, a first-grader connection between what we do and what provided education. talking about cabbage worms. So I say, they’re expecting. Alabama Living: And just that one simple “How are you handling this?” and she says, “We come out every morning and Innovation and community change has made that much difference? pick off the cabbage worms because if we partnerships can help students Bice: Absolutely. One of the biggest changes don’t, they are going to eat up our cabbages. succeed that occurred… most of the faculty that But we’ve also left a few, so we could see had taught there many years chose to leave what happens to the cabbage worms after Alabama Living: Any other positive stories because they weren’t willing to make the they eat the cabbage. They actually build that you’ve encountered in junior high or shift. And that’s another area of work that a chrysalis, become a chrysalis and hatch high schools? we are being very strategic on. If the adults into cabbage butterflies that are just as bad that are teaching our children aren’t willing as the worms, but they trick you because Bice: Our Torchbearer Schools are those to shift to a 21st century sort of learning they’re pretty. So we go after those as well.” that are defying the myth about some of the things people say that prevent children environment for children, then we’re helping them find other ways to earn a living. Alabama Living: How often do you get from learning. These are schools that have Because we need people that are connected out? over 80 percent free or reduced lunch population, which means most of their children to our students. Bice: I purposely go once a week to a live in some level of poverty. Alabama Living: You were telling me ear- school and spend time with students and We have a group of schools now that lier that another classroom was involved in just see what’s going on. I’m amazed at seven or eight years ago were some of our a garden. what’s going on. You know, do we have lowest performing schools in the state. And Alabama Living
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because of great leadership being brought in and giving them flexibility to do things that they knew they needed to do, they are now some of our highest performing schools in the state. The analogy I use is eight years the children were poor, lived in public housing, many of them lived in single parent homes where their parents were under-educated because we didn’t do a good job with them either. Black, Hispanic, speaking a different language -- all the reasons we sometimes use as excuses as to why the children can’t learn. Eight years later, after a lot of work, the children are still poor, they still live in inner city housing, and all those variables are still exactly the same. But those children are performing at levels comparable to any of our highest performing schools in the state. Which are models for us to take away from those best practices to share with all of our schools.
Partnerships with business, industry and parents are key to progress Alabama Living: You mentioned flexibility as a factor. Bice: Yes. For teachers and others to be able to come together and develop curriculum, outside of things we have typically done in education.
start to get the services their children need, how do they ever get there?” So it’s our responsibility to break down that bureaucracy to the level that it can be accessed at the local level. Alabama Living: The Common Core came under some attack during the last legislative session. Is there anything the public needs to know about this that hasn’t already been said? Bice: I was involved with this when it first was set up in 2007. It was a time when a group of governors and a group of educators thought, “We’ve got 50 states that are working every so often to redo their standards for math, and the English, language arts and algebra can’t be that different in 50 different states. We’re spending enormous amounts of money and time for different states to be doing what they could do collectively, possibly learn from each other and
standards that were developed through that collaborative and brought it back to Alabama. Alabama educators, teachers, principals, university faculty and laypersons, which is the way we’ve always done it, took those and Alabama standards to look at the two and compare them. They took the best of both and combined them into what we refer to as Alabama’s College and Career Ready Standards for Math and English Language Arts. We don’t report our work to anyone outside of the state of Alabama. When people ask me what’s the big difference between our previous standards and our new standards, this sounds awfully simple, but it’s really a change in the verb. In our old standards it would say, “Compute three digit numbers to come up with the correct sum.” In our new standards in the same grade it would say, “Given this real world situation, based on what you’ve learned, determine the mathematics that is required to solve the problem. Work with three or four of your peers to come up with as many solutions to it as you can. Choose the one that you feel best answers the question and explain to the rest of your class why you chose that solution.” The arithmetic is still the same. Alabama Living: Right.
Bice: Still adding three digit numbers. But what we’re asking Teachers are encouraged to come up with ideas outside of what students and teachers to do difhas typically taken place inside Alabama classrooms. ferently is to think, work together Bice: [Yes,] to think outside the box. I don’t come up with something that’s even better and to solve problems. Which is, when you own a box, I burned all that a long time than what they could’ve done individually. talk with business and industry and higher ago because boxes don’t serve well to serve To me, that was, for lack of a better term, education, the skill set that has been missing. Under the previous way we have been the diverse population of students we cur- a no-brainer. So we came back and asked our board teaching, for almost a decade now, to pass rently serve in Alabama. It’s more diverse than it’s ever been with poverty being our if they would be interested in us working a test. Now we want them to take what biggest challenge. We have to be able to re- on that, to which they said yes. We began they’ve learned and apply it to something align what we do and our limited resourc- working on the process of working with they may have never even seen before. es more strategically to meet the needs of 48 other states and a multitude of other That is what’s exciting. It changes the role those children. entities, pulling together the best of all the of the learner and it changes the role of the You know, I’ve worked in some of the states’ standards. We actually started with teacher. It also equips children to take on poorest counties in the state. I worked in all the states’ standards and looked at those situations and issues that they may have Coosa County for a while; it’s very rural, internationally because many of our gradu- never had the ability to do before. great place, wonderful people and very little ates now are going to be competing, not just economic growth there at this point. And within the United States, but for jobs inter- Alabama Living: So this is what you were many of those parents have lived there for- nationally. What can we do to make sure talking about when we started this interever and have needs for those children. I the standards get them there? We came up view. You’re changing what a high school look at these big white buildings here in with, throughout that process, input from graduate will be. Montgomery that are filled with bureau- every state that was participating before cracy, ours being one of them, and think, anything was finalized and finally came up Bice: Exactly. You know, I spent probably “How does that parent that may not even with a set of standards. Alabama, unlike the first six months on the job meeting with have the capacity to even know where to some other states, took the Common Core business and industry and higher education; Alabama Living: [To] think outside the box.
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which, I realized immediately on being hired that there was a disconnect between us and them. The whole purpose of that time was to ask them that question. What is it about Alabama high school graduates that is missing when you get them? Interestingly and somewhat unexpected, the response from business and industry and higher education was identical. That they have some of the basic math, English, science and those sorts of skills that you would expect them to have, but they don’t appear to know what to do with them. And they are so programmed to take the test and move on, they don’t want to continue to learn. Just give me the answer, tell me what you want me to do with it and let me go. So we want to create a graduate that is a lifelong learner, that has intellectual curiosity, that isn’t afraid to experiment with what they’ve learned and work with their peers to come up with solutions, which is what the real world looks like. So that’s what we are trying to prepare them for.
weekends. I have a son that took a Latin course from a teacher at another school because they didn’t offer it at his school and it couldn’t be worked into his school day. So he took it at night on his own in a blended model with his teacher from another school system. It worked out beautifully and more efficiently. Rather than building something, there are a lot of empty buildings in the world today. If we opened up, and they’ve done a lot of this in the urban areas, go to the empty storefronts in local neighborhoods and open up “schools.” They might be Twilight Schools, it means it’s after hours, so that kids who have had to drop out of schools and support their families could actually have an opportunity to return to school, be successful and be this higher wage earner to support their families. But it takes us rethinking how we deliver education. Bice: Probably the question that I am asked
Alabama Living: Ten years from now, what are our schools in Alabama going to look like? Bice: I challenge people to think about that very question. I actually met, about a week or so ago, with all the plant managers from all the school systems in the state.
Bice: For years at the Department of Education, we’ve made rules and regulations for years because a school did something wrong. So we do a rule to address that, but then it applies to everybody else. So over the years, you have squelched all that creativity and innovation. I am a firm believer, and I have this little rule that everybody here will tell you and anybody who has ever worked with me before knows, if somebody comes to me and says “they said,” I can’t really do much about it unless I know who “they” are. So I require them to go back. Once you can identify who “they” are and what those problems are associated with whoever “they” are, then come back to me. It is amazing how many non-revisits I have. So [we are] removing some of the things that just through urban legend we’ve been programmed to think we can’t do. And we’re removing them right and left to try and give schools the flexibility they need, because they’re all different. You’ve got a school in Mobile that has a huge number of Vietnamese children because of the parents that work in the oyster industry in a certain area of Mobile. They have a very unique need in school culture that is totally different than in … Alabama Living: Albertville, where you have a large Hispanic population.
Alabama Living: The physical Ten years from now, classrooms won’t look like what they do plant? today.
Bice: The physical plant managers, because they are an integral part of what we do as well. And I challenged them to think 10 years from now about what their job might look like that is different. We get real caught up in building these big places to public education, but with technology and some of the examples I’ve given you, learning can occur in a lot of different places and a lot of different times. We’ve got to begin to look at education through that lens rather than it being a place. It really could be, with technology, a 24/7 anywhere and anytime experience for students. Not for all, but for those that can handle that sort of thing. We have distance learning now where we offer hundreds of courses so that students, no matter where they live, can take courses. That doesn’t have to happen during the school day. That can happen in the evenings and that can happen on the Alabama Living
the most, that drives people crazy when I say, “Ask for flexibility.” They say, “What can we ask flexibility from?” I refuse to give them the list, because the minute I give them the list I have now, again, taken over the thinking process. What might be thought of and created within a faculty in Dekalb County versus what might be thought of in Wilcox County could be totally different and of equal value. So, we have 134 school systems and 1,500 schools. So we could have 1,500 different ways this looks. Alabama Living: It doesn’t look like the school you and I went to. Bice: Exactly, it doesn’t need to. Alabama Living: We hear so many negative things about our schools that it’s great to sit down with you and hear about some of the good things.
Bice: Exactly, or across over in Dekalb County or some of the other areas.
Alabama Living: Or west Alabama. Bice: Right, they’re all different. This gives you a chance to embrace the differences in culture, children, community, families and actually engage it. What this looks like, which administratively drives people crazy because it’s a lot easier to administer with a one-size-fits-all approach. It’d be a whole lot easier for me to lead this department if we were treating all students the same. Alabama Living: Well, that’s the way we used to do it. Bice: Right. It’s a lot harder to do it this way, but it is so much more effective and efficient financially….It’s about the children. It’s not about Tommy Bice and it’s not about any of the adults’ turf here. This is their school system and we have to make sure that we respond that way. A AUGUST 2013 15
Whole Kids Garden grows in state’s Black Belt Young students establish ‘four seasons garden’ at University of West Alabama
he youngest students at the University of West Alabama in Livingston are getting a firsthand education on the unique agriculture of Alabama through a garden project with the Center for the Study of the Black Belt. The first installment of their “four seasons garden” was planted in early summer, and the students are reaping quite a harvest.
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Students at the UWA Campus School have dubbed the summer installation of their year-round garden “The Pizza Garden” because it’s filled with the tomatoes, peppers, onions, and herbs they like on their pizza. The project gives children ages 5 to 11 firsthand knowledge of how a garden grows and how a community can thrive on its natural resources to grow its own food.
Through a garden grant, Whole Kids Foundation has provided the seeds, literally and figuratively, to grow healthy children and communities in rural west Alabama. The year-round garden is intended to jump start a supplemental science curriculum for students and to promote a healthy lifestyle among the community by reaching children first in an area plagued by high rates of obesity and poverty. Project coordinator Annie Upchurch, director of the UWA Campus School, says having the assistance of gardening and nutrition experts has been essential in demonstrating to the children the connection between planting a garden and a healthy lifestyle through better nutrition. “Our students have shown so much enthusiasm in every aspect of the process from learning about agriculture and the skills of tending a garden to the importance of nutritious foods and how to plan healthy meals,” Upchurch explained. The garden, which is located at the Campbell Environmental Education Cen-
In the state’s Black Belt region, young students are learning how a garden grows as well as good eating habits with the help of gardening and nutrition experts.
ter at UWA and is connected to the UWA Campus School by a stretch of one of the campus’s nature trails, has served as an outdoor classroom for the young students. Here, horticulturist Sam Ledbetter of the Black Belt Garden teaches them about the planting and care for the garden. “It’s where they’ve learned about life cycles of plants and have seen firsthand the stages of plant growth. By putting their hands in the dirt and growing vegetables they know they’ll eat at harvest time, they’ve come to understand and appreciate the process,” Upchurch said. In their regular classrooms, students learn each week from Debra Clark of the Health and Wellness Education Center for Sumter County about the nutritional value and benefits of eating the vegetables they grow in the garden. The classes help re-associate “fast food” from being a drive-thru meal to fresh vegetables from the backyard. Alabama Living
HWEC is the community partner for the project. Other community groups and organizations take part in the program. Alfa Women’s Organization assisted with the installation and planting of the garden, and Livingston’s Primrose Club, a ladies group founded in 1901 as a study club, provides recipes and will help the students cook for the harvest time pizza party. As with any Alabama garden, aesthetic appeal and an element of style are priorities. In classroom craft projects the children have constructed and decorated their own watering cans using recycled containers. They have decorated the wash area with tile mosaics they created with the assistance of artists who also teach the technique in continuing education classes. The garden shares its home with a community orchard established in 2012. All the plant life in the garden offers an agricultural history lesson to the community, which Educational Outreach Dean Tina N. Jones says keeps with the mission of UWA’s Center for the Study of the Black Belt and the University as a whole. “The flora in the garden and orchard is native to Alabama’s Black Belt. These are the plants, vegetables, and fruits that would have grown in Alabama on homesteads like the Campbell Center’s original site more than 100 years ago,” Jones explained. “These fruits and vegetables thrive in the rich, dark soil for which the Black Belt region is named, and they have worked their way into our culture over the years both by the tradition of working to grow a crop and through the experiences we share while enjoying the harvest.” The double-dog trot house that is the Campbell Environmental Education Center was moved to the UWA campus in 2010 and has been renovated to offer classroom and meeting space. The structure sits in close proximity to the Alamuchee Covered Bridge and historic Cedarwood. Plans are in place to relocate a historic chapel to the same area on the UWA campus. The Center for the Study of the Black Belt was established in 2005 on the belief that people develop a shared sense of pride and stewardship of their homeland if they understand its history, culture, and natural environment. The Center encourages scholars and citizens to address the region’s challenges by promoting its abundant and unique natural, historical and cultural resources. A AUGUST 2013 17
Hit the road this month for garden visits across Alabama Summer is drawing to an end and vacation time is running short, but there’s still time for a last-minute garden getaway. By Katie Jackson
eed a day trip just to get you and the kids out of the house and home garden? Visit one of the many botanical gardens or arboretums that are located throughout the state and are as educational as they are beautiful. Typically, botanical gardens contain a wide range of plants, from trees and shrubs to herbaceous perennials and annuals, while arboretums tend to focus more on trees and shrubs. Both types of gardens are meant to be teaching and research sites, so the plants there will be labeled and admission fees are affordable—sometimes even free. Another garden-related outing that also provides a glimpse of history is to visit one of Alabama’s gorgeous estate gardens, such as Arlington Antebellum Home and Gardens in Birmingham, Jasmine Hill between Montgomery and Wetumpka or Bellingrath Gardens and Home in Theodore. These and other similar gardens often offer home and museum tours along with garden visits, so you can enjoy them indoors and out. A more hands-on garden outing is to visit one of Alabama’s many u-pick operations. While some fruits and vegetables are out of season by this time in the summer, many others are at their height and new ones are coming in. In fact, the Katie Jackson, who recently retired as chief editor for the Auburn University College of Agriculture and Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, is now a fulltime freelance writer and editor. Contact her at firstname.lastname@example.org.
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year’s first apples are available this month at Mountain View Orchards in Chilton County (more on them in the October issue). If you’re looking for a romantic, grownup getaway, take a trip along Alabama’s Wine Trail (www.alabamawinetrail.net), which features vineyards and wineries throughout the state offering tours and tastings of everything from blueberry and muscadine wines to pinot noirs and cabernets. (You’ll remember the Wine Trail was the cover story in June’s Alabama Living.) Even if you don’t want to plan an entire trip around gardens, keep in mind that lovely gardens can be found almost any place you visit, from municipal parks to church grounds to native plantings in state parks, so you can enjoy a garden-related getaway wherever you go. A great list of Alabama public gardens can be found at www.ilovegardens.com/ or search the Alabama Tourism Department’s site at http://alabama.travel for garden destinations and events. A map of many Alabama u-pick farms is available at www.fma.alabama.gov/UpickCounty.aspx and others can be found with a basic Web search. Don’t neglect plants while you’re away
As you set out to explore, though, don’t neglect those plants back at home. If you’re going to be gone for several days or longer, protect your turf by mowing the lawn, then deeply watering it and your landscape plants just before you leave. If you don’t have an automatic sprinkler system, ask or hire a friend or neighbor to water for you every few days.
For container plants—whether they are on the porch and patio or in the house— try using watering globes or water spikes, which are available at most nursery centers. These devices allow you to fill a bottle or the globe reservoir with water that will gradually seep into the soil during your absence. Or set plants on risers in a tray or bathtub filled with an inch or two of water so they can benefit as the water evaporates. And make sure you harvest any ripe vegetables or arrange for a friend to pick the garden in your absence. A
August Gardening Tips d Plant fall vegetables, such as cabbage, collards and broccoli, and fall-bearing beans and peas. d Plant a winter cover crop in your garden as it finishes its growing season. d Keep an eye out for insects and disease on all ornamental and vegetable plants and treat for problems before they get out of hand. d Prune blackberry canes. d Keep an eye out for seed catalogues, which should be arriving in your mailbox soon. d Continue to mow and water lawns as needed. d Divide irises and other perennials that have become overcrowded. d Keep fresh water in birdbaths. d Plant seeds of cool-season flowers such as snapdragons, dianthus, pansies, calendulas and other cool-season flowers in flats or in the garden for midto-late fall bloom. d Order fall bulbs. d Use mosquito repellant and sunscreen when you’re out in the yard or garden.
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Marveling at Mims: The trouble in paradise Bicentennial event will feature reenactment of Fort Mims battle By John Brightman Brock
ne day, in the year 1813, fear changed everything. Cries of “Indians in the fort!” resounded inside hastily constructed timber walls in the Tensaw region of Alabama. Those gathered on the Samuel Mims Plantation, near Stockton, had screamed in disbelief and later in horror as 250 of the 400 inhabitants were slaughtered in a fiery clash of cultures. The settlers, protected by 100 Mississippi Territorial Volunteers, had gathered after reports of Red Stick Creek Indians procuring guns, possibly from the British or Spanish. This was followed by a report that the militia had failed to intercept them at a place called Burnt Corn Creek. Now the Red Sticks, known for their red-tipped war clubs, turned their fears of an encroaching white culture onto the fort, including nationalized Creeks and African slaves. The hand of fate seemed cruel that Aug. 30, as rain-hardened sand held open the fort’s eastern gate allowing 700 Indians to enter at noon, fight and hours later destroy by fire Fort Mims, located in present-day Baldwin County. The blaze grew hot enough to melt 20 AUGUST 2013
cast iron, ravaging many of the fort’s wooden structures and fences, and horridly illuminating the scalpings of hundreds of settlers before the Red Sticks left with their captives. A burial party would not arrive until three weeks later, constructing mass graves that remain in memorial to the beginnings of the Creek Indian War. A struggling young America, already at war with the British, would later avenge the deaths of those killed that day. News of “Massacre at Fort Mims!” would sound the death knell for these Red Stick Creek Indians who had attacked the fort in civil war action against Creeks who had settled with the whites. A shocked nation dispatched an angry Gen. Andrew Jackson and his army, which devastated the Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend on March 27, 1814. Remaining Creeks were taken from the land and more than 20 million acres were ceded to the United States, signaling an end to Creek Indian traditional hunting grounds where they had hunted deer for many years.
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A volatile clash of cultures
The enraged Red Stick Creeks had actually “raised the red stick of war” against their own National Council, says Kathryn E. Holland Braund of Auburn University, who edited a book of essays on the war, Tohopeka: Rethinking the Creek War and the War of 1812. “The War of 1812 was going on,” says Braund. “There had been tremendous Creek opposition to the Federal Road. The people in what is now South Alabama were expecting an Indian war and perhaps even wanted it as an excuse to claim more territory and dislodge the Spanish and even the Indians. And on the Creek side, there were divisions. When the Creek National Council sent warriors to execute other Creeks for crimes committed against Americans, it resulted in a civil war among the Creeks.” The Red Sticks saw American demands for things like roads as an encroachment on their sovereignty. “They feared the increasing settlements of whites all around them and resented the demands for land by Americans. And they opposed the accommodation the Creek National Council represented. Many of these members of the National Council were profiting from the accommodation with Americans while most Creeks weren’t,” Braund says. The tipping point came when the Creek National Council began to take unprecedented powers and usurp clan authority by executing people, she says. “A sizeable portion of the Creek people raised the red stick of war against their own leaders and laid siege to Tuckabatchee (where the Creek National Council convened in current day Elmore County). A contingent went to Pensacola for supplies to use against their own people; and the Mississippi Territorial Militia thought a preemptive strike would prevent an attack on the Tensaw settlements by destroying the arms the insurgents possessed. “It backfired, and the Red Sticks changed their target to Fort Mims as an act of revenge,” Braund says. “The ensuing fierceness of the attack on the fort shocked Americans ... especially the size of the death toll. News of the attack transformed a Creek civil war into an American war against the Creeks.”
Excavations have unearthed evidence of several buildings in the fort, including the Mims house, the kitchen, a blacksmith shop and a cabin. Archaeologists collected artifacts, among them a large cast iron kettle as evidence of the fire set that day, with a chunk of the iron kettle completely melted. After years of random excavation diluted the site’s remains, however, archeologists like Bonnie Gums, with the University of
South Alabama in Mobile, have been able to further piece together the massacre. Gums, who works with archeologist Dr. Gregory A. Waselkov, published their official chronology in 2007 as “Archaeology at Fort Mims: Excavation, Contexts and Artifact Catalogue.” Sometimes digging, sometimes using ground penetrating equipment, their onsite work discovered stark evidence of the disastrous turmoil inside the fence, says Gums. They found that two months before the massacre, settlers had built the fort fence in about a day around a 200- by 200-foot land area, then laying timbers side by side, possibly as a fence. But previous researchers in 1953 “took a bulldozer to it to find the walls…not the best way to do it,” Gums says. The five acres that holds the fort had been deeded to the state with the stipulation that it make it into a park in 10 years, and “after nine and a half years, the state had done nothing.” She said those researchers went in there in a hurry to find any evidence the fort had existed. Those findings were inconclusive. A decade later, the Department of Conservation excavated the site, this time discovering two wells inside the fort area and artifacts. After digging out the wells, they found an ax head in the bottom of one well, bearing the initials ZM, believed to belong to Zachariah McGirth, a survivor, Gums says. So, in 2000, when the Alabama Historical Commission asked Waselkov and Gums “to gather everything that’s ever been done at Fort Mims,” they took more than five years, including 25 days on site, before publishing their findings. They determined that “walls” found in 1953 were actually burned trees from the massacre; so they decided to look for themselves - to find the walls. They discovered real evidence of west, north and east walls of the fort, after evidence of the south wall had been discovered in a 1970s excavation. The key to finding the remains of walls, actually, was defining a “darker stain in the ground,” Gums says. “They (settlers) had built a trench…it’s easier to build a trench than to build a post hole. The trench was only a couple of inches deep, less than a foot; it wasn’t very stable. They would have stuck timbers in there, and packed the timbers in place, to stay in place.” The Mims plantation actually existed from the late 1790s, and had been a plantation for about 15 years prior to the fort and the massacre. “It was really a fort for only about two months. So many artifacts we found were in the ground prior to the battle, meaning they were plantation artifacts,” Gums says. “The ones found from the battle were burned, melted bottle glass, burned ceramics, burned and melted lead ... we can pretty much say were from the battle that day.” A
Bicentennial will feature battle reenactment Descendants of the survivors of the Fort Mims massacre will make their way to Baldwin County for a bicentennial reenactment Aug. 30-Sept. 1, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Activities each day will start with a reenactment of the Battle of Burnt Corn Creek in the mornings, and the Battle of Fort Mims in the afternoons. Re-enactors will be there with tents, blacksmithing, period 22 AUGUST 2013
Photo by John Nelson
music, booths and will provide covered wagon rides led by mules. Claudia Slaughter Campbell, president
of the Fort Mims Restoration Association, expects a large turnout. It will be portrayed on the actual anniversary date and time, 200 years later, she says. “Descendants of Fort Mims from all over the nation will be making their pilgrimages to this site in north Baldwin County to honor their ancestors who were in some way a part of this day in early American history.” Directions to Fort Mims: (45 miles from Mobile) 12 miles north of Stockton on Highway 59, turning west on County Road 80 for three miles until you see the signs. www.alabamaliving.coop
AUGUST 2013  23
Busy as a
Beekeepers work to get food to the nation’s table By Lori Quiller
ven after more than 20 years as a beekeeper, Gerry Whitaker of New Brockton takes great care when approaching his honey hives. After all, he’s allergic to them. “Got stung once right through my glove,” he says as he splayed out his hand to show his rough-hewed farm work glove. “You wouldn’t think a little honeybee could sting through a cowhide glove, but that one did. And my eye was pretty swollen before I could get back to the shop.”
He wears protection from head to toe when working with the hives. The familiar white suits that beekeepers wear are durable but hot, topped off with a caged-in helmet that zips onto the neckline of the suit, and the beekeeper is ready to check on the health of his hives. Whitaker’s white boxes may look innocent enough dotting the landscape of his farmland in rural Coffee County, but they each contain between 30,000 and 60,000 of nature’s little honey makers. Although the boxes appear to be cabinets with drawers that slide out, they actually come apart from the top, and that’s where Whitaker begins his 24 AUGUST 2013
Gerry Whitaker inspects bee boxes.
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inspection by easing the lid off the top and being careful not to stand in front of the hive when he does. “I wouldn’t stand in front of the box when I lift the lid,” he says. “That hole at the bottom is where they come and go from. They might decide to go in a minute.” This gentle man takes all the care in the world as he lifts the lid of the hive and slides a rack of bees from its resting place. He was correct, too. The bees in the bottom of the hive got the signal that something was amiss…and the escape hatch was filled with angry bees in a split second ready to protect their home, queen and their hard work for the season - honey. As he raised the rack and the bees slid away, the sealed comb became visible. Each tiny octagon was filled with the golden honey and capped with wax. This is a healthy hive, and Whitaker is taking great care to keep it that way.
Bees are an important link in the food chain
“People naturally think about honey when they think about honeybees,” Whitaker says, “but honeybees are so much more important to our food chain than most people realize. Without them and the work they do, the food we eat wouldn’t make it to our tables. Now that’s even in danger.” Today’s families and restaurant owners are more conscious about farm-to-table food and keeping produce as fresh and as organic as possible for purchase. However, it all starts with a single bloom fertilized with the pollen scattered on the legs of the humble honeybee. “Pollination is responsible for $15 billion a year in the U.S. when it comes to agricultural production. There is not a fruit that doesn’t require pollination. A healthy hive has between 30,000 and 60,000 bees. To pollinate one acre of apple trees, you’ll need one hive of healthy bees. When we pollinate a watermelon field, we take 3-4 hives for about 7 acres, and we don’t get any honey back from that. The issue there is that we need the pollen. The important part is the pollination, but everyone focuses on the honey,” Whitaker says. 26 AUGUST 2013
Pollination is responsible for $15 billion a year in the U.S. when it comes to agricultural production Whitaker offers a cautionary note for consumers trying to eat primarily organic produce. If you see a bottle of honey with a certified organic or organic label attached to it, be suspicious. “It’s difficult to say that this honey is from this crop because the bees can travel up to 2.5 miles away from the hive to forage. I may not use pesticides on my fields, but I don’t know what’s being used on anyone else’s fields where those bees have been. There’s no way to certify honey as organic even though it is a purely natural food,” he says. While honeybees are the best pollinators for the produce that we eat, they are under attack by a mysterious disease called Colony Collapse Disorder. The disease, which remains a mystery, is being investigated at the state and federal levels. The Agricultural Research Service, the USDA’s internal research agency, is leading several efforts into possible CCD causes of the disease that has proven to be an international phenomenon.
According to Whitaker, who is also president of the Southeast Alabama Beekeepers Association, he lost about 70 percent of his bee colonies last October due to Colony Collapse Disorder and the national loss is projected to be 50-90 percent for this year. “Because we can’t predict CCD, we inspect the hives closely. There are signs of an unhealthy hive, so close inspection is very important,” Whitaker says. Beekeeping is a process and some look at it as farming as with cows or pigs. With farming comes education, and the Southeast Alabama Beekeepers Association and the Alabama Beekeepers Association provide educational programs for those interested in learning how to keep honeybees and harvest the honey during the two harvesting seasons. There are levels of education from apprentice, journeyman, master, to master craftsman beekeeper with the master beekeeper program taking four years to complete. Those just starting out are expected to register their honeybee colonies with the Alabama Department of Agriculture, pursuant to state law, and state societies can assist with the registration. To contact the associations for more information, visit www.alabamabeekeepers.com, www.southeastalabamabeekeepers.com, and Whitaker’s company, Beeginnings, at www.beeginnings.net. A
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Protect yourself online
Safe @ Home
Cybersecurity: Protecting your identity online
Careful What You Download. When you download a program or file from an unknown source, you risk loading malicious software programs on your computer. Fraudsters often hide these programs within seemingly benign applications. Think twice before you click on a pop-up advertisement or download a “free” game or gadget.
2 Don’t Respond to Emails Requesting
his column is typically concerned with our day-to-day physical safety but I thought I would take this opportunity to discuss our security in cyberspace, or cybersecurity. It’s vital that those using the Internet (and that’s most of us today) should be guarding our information as close as possible, because there are certainly thieves who have adapted to this new territory. A good first step to take with your computer is securing your web browser. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team has thorough tips on how to secure browsers including Microsoft Internet Explorer and others at www.us-cert.gov/ publications/securing-your-web-browser. It is important to ensure that your browser is secure because the operating system software often comes without this security set up upon installation. The failure to take this necessary precaution could lead to Spyware, or Malware, which is defined as malicious software programs, being installed without your knowledge. Identity thieves can obtain your information in a variety of ways, including via your home computer and electronic devices. If you notice unusual charges on
Michael Kelley is manager of Safety & Loss Control for the Alabama Rural Electric Association.
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your bills, or bills for services and products that you do not use, you may have been a victim of identity theft. To keep your information safe, it’s best to do business with companies you trust. The Better Business Bureau has lots of resources that will show you whether a business is rated well. You can type in a business or charity name at this link: www.bbb.org/us/bbbaccredited-businesses/. It’s also important to be aware of your online footprint, which includes the information that you post. It’s best to be guarded about your personal information when you are on public forums, such as Facebook. Make sure your security settings and passwords are as secure as possible. Passwords should include a mix of numbers, letters and special characters; they should also be changed often. Though it’s not always possible to prevent identity theft regardless of taking safety procedures, they certainly limit your exposure to this possibility. If you’re browsing, be safe! A
DNT TXT & DRV According to the National Safety Council, at least 28 percent of all traffic crashes – or at least 1.6 million crashes each year – involve drivers using cell phones and texting. NSC estimates that a minimum of 200,000 additional crashes each year involve drivers who are texting. Most states, including Alabama, have passed legislation outlawing texting while driving. Please don’t text while driving – for your safety, and the safety of others.
Personal Information. Legitimate entities will not ask you to provide or verify sensitive information through a non-secure means, such as email. If you have reason to believe that your financial institution actually does need personal information from you, pick up the phone and call the company yourself.
2 Use Extra Caution with Wireless Con-
nections. Wireless networks may not provide as much security as wired Internet connections. In fact, many “hotspots” - wireless networks in public areas like airports, hotels and restaurants - reduce their security so it’s easier for individuals to access and use these wireless networks. Unless you use a security token, you may decide that accessing your online brokerage account through a wireless connection isn’t worth the security risk. You can learn more about security issues relating to wireless networks on the website of the Wi-Fi Alliance, www.wi-fi.org.
2 Log Out Completely. Closing or min-
imizing your browser or typing in a new web address when you’re done using your online account may not be enough to prevent others from gaining access to your account information. Instead, click on the “log out” button to terminate your online session. In addition, you shouldn’t permit your browser to “remember” your username and password information. If this browser feature is active, anyone using your computer will have access to your brokerage account information. Courtesy U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Around Alabama Mentone
August 16 - 18
Mentone Old Time Music and Dance Weekend On the third weekend in August each year, Birmingham FOOTMAD puts on its annual Old-Time Music and Dance Weekend at Camp Riverview in the resort town of Mentone. For the past 23 years the weekend has featured great old-time bands and musicians, but the core activity of the weekend is dancing. There will also be a Sunday morning gospel singing, a clogging workshop, swimming and a wacky waterfront drama or pageant. Campers stay in cabins or bring their own tents. Some also stay in bed-and-breakfasts or rent chalets in the area. FOOTMAD furnishes two breakfasts and campers
August 1-3 • Foley, Jennifer Claire Moore 16th Annual
Professional Rodeo, City of Foley Horse Arena. Prerodeo activities begin each night at 7, followed by the rodeo at 8. From bareback bronco riding and barrel racing to children’s activities, the rodeo is fun for the whole family. Contact: Millie Shamburger, 251-971-3633 or rodeo@ jennifermoorefoundation.com 4 • Talladega, Afternoon of Praise Talladega’s Historic Ritz Theatre, 2:30 and 4:30 p.m. Dove Award nominee Richard Kingsmore will direct the orchestra as Talladega First United Methodist Church Choir Director Susannah Herring leads a choir of more than 100 local voices in a community-wide praise experience. Tickets: $10 Contact The Ritz at 256-315-0000. 9 & 10 • Albertville, Main Street Music Festival Downtown Albertville Two-day event includes entertainment and activities on three stages featuring Night Ranger, Lonestar and John Stone. Children’s inflatable water park, arts and crafts, food vendors, cooking demonstrations, cooking competition, dog show, petting zoo and an excerpt from “The Wizard of Oz.” Admission: Free www.mainstreetmusicfestival.com
are asked to bring a contribution to the Saturday night potluck and any other food or beverages they need. Everyone at the camp is expected to volunteer for a congenial bit of cooking or cleaning during the weekend, which helps FOOTMAD keep costs low. The Old-Time Music and Dance Weekend is popular and usually fills up quickly. Registration is limited to 280 persons on a first-come-first served basis, with genderbalance taken into consideration. Those who would like to attend should request to be placed on the mailing list by writing FOOTMAD, 1452 Milner Crescent, Birmingham, AL 35205, or emailing email@example.com.
10 • Weogufka, Catfish Dinner and Gospel Show Weogufka Center Featuring the Diplomats and Sounds of Jericho Quartets. Tickets and information: www.weogufkacenter.com
31-September 1 • Decatur, Battle for Decatur Reenactment, Point Mallard Drive Camps open to the public at 10 a.m. daily. Battles begin at 2 p.m. daily. Reenactments of battles using infantry and cavalry, as well as cannon and battle tactics unique to the War Between the States. Ladies tea, period church service and period ball. Reenactor registration: $6 adults, $3 children 3-13, under 2 free Event Coordinator: Larry Thomson, SCV Camp 580 Adjutant, 256-520-2906
16 & 17 •
Russellville, 33rd Annual Franklin County Watermelon Festival, Downtown Russellville Fri. 6-9 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Admission: Free Contact: Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, 256-3321760 or www.franklincountychamber.org 17 • Priceville, Annual Cruise-In Car Show Veterans Park, Hwy 67, 6-10 p.m. Entertainment: Natchez Trace Contact: 256-355-5476, ext. 0 23 & 24 • Centre, Weiss Lake Regatta Sponsored by The Rome Sailing Club Information: 706-266-0321 www.theromesailingclub.org 29- September 2 • Bryant, Mountain Trails 5th Annual 50 Mile Yard Sale, Hwy 71/73 eight-community yard sale from Section to Bryant. Information: Chamber of Commerce, 256-259-5500 or Wanda Wilson, 334-312-0286
To place an event e-mail to firstname.lastname@example.org. or visit www.alabamaliving.coop. You can also mail to Events Calendar, P.O. Box 244014, Montgomery, AL 36124; Each submission must include a contact name and phone number. Deadline is two months prior to issue date. We regret that we cannot publish every event due to space limitations.
September 19 • Dothan, Low Country Boil Stokes Activity Barn at Landmark Park Annual fundraiser featuring food, music, a silent auction and wagon rides. Advance tickets required. Information: Laura V. Stakelum, 334-794-3452, or email@example.com 19 • Atmore, Taste of the South Atmore Heritage Park, 5-8 p.m. A fabulous food festival showcasing local restaurants and organizations sponsored by Leadership Atmore. Taste tickets available for purchase. Tickets: Sheryl Vickery, 251-368-3305, or firstname.lastname@example.org www.atmorechamber.com
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AUGUST 2013 29
Send your questions to: James Dulley
Alabama Living 6906 Royalgreen Dr. Cincinnati, OH 45244
You can also reach Dulley online at: www.dulley.com
How to insulate attic access cover In a well-insulated house, even just several square feet of uninsulated floor—like the attic access cover—can lose a considerable amount of heat
I just had a house built and discovered no insulation on the attic opening cover. Shouldn’t the cover be insulated and sealed? If I add folding stairs, how can I insulate them?—Mike M.
Builders don’t always insulate and seal the attic access opening cover, but it certainly should be added for energy savings. Most often, just a scrap piece of plywood or drywall is cut somewhat close to the correct size and placed in the opening, resting on a strip of molding. That type of cover’s insulation value is less than R-1 and it leaks air like a sieve. Because the attic access is often in the ceiling of a bedroom closet or a hallway, the air leakage and heat loss/gain are seldom noticeable. During summer, attic temperatures can get extremely high and the air is humid, so you don’t want it in your living space. During winter, the heated air in the house, because it is less dense, tends to leak up and out. The simplest fix is to attach insulation to the top of the cover and weatherstripping underneath where it rests on the lip of the opening. Measure the cover to make sure it fits the opening, with the cover overlapping the molding lip so the weatherstripping seals well. If you have to make a new one, a piece of 1/2-inch drywall works well and is fire resistant. The insulation on the top of the cover should be up to the recommended code ceiling R-value for your area—find out what that is at www.ornl.gov/~roofs/Zip/ ZipHome.html. (Adding more insulation above this level will not help appreciably.)
is a nationally syndicated engineering consultant based in Cincinnati
30 AUGUST 2013
In a well-insulated house, even just several square feet of uninsulated floor can lose a considerable amount of heat. Before you add weatherstripping to the molding lip, place the cover over it and check whether it’s even. The lip often consists of pieces nailed to the sides of the opening and aren’t level. You may have to pry a side or two loose and reattach it. If it’s very uneven, it will be difficult to get a good seal under the cover no matter how compliant the weatherstripping is. In my own house, I first nailed a piece of 1/2-inch drywall to the plywood cover to give it some additional weight. Next, I glued a few layers of 3/4-inch polyurethane foam sheets on top of it. I added four layers to get three inches of foam insulation. I used foil-faced insulation so it would reflect the heat from the hot roof back up during the summer. The next step is to attach adhesivebacked foam weatherstripping to the top edge of the lip around the opening. Use as thick a foam as you can find to accommodate any out-of-level edges. The weight of the plywood and drywall should be adequate to compress the foam weatherstripping. If you plan to go up into your attic often and want to install pull-down stairs or a ladder, or your attic currently has one, buy a special insulated cover for the attic access opening. You could attempt to make one yourself, but its weight may be hazardous to open and manage when you are on the stairs. One of the least expensive options is basically a three-sided heavy duty cardboard box. It’s easy to open and assemble, and then you can attach your own insulation to the top and sides. It’s very lightweight and easy to lift and handle when you enter the attic on the stairs.
An efficient option is a lightweight large rigid-foam domed device that covers the folded stairs or ladder from above. It’s strong, and the foam provides adequate insulation. Another design uses a flexible zippered insulated cover that is permanently attached to the attic floor for a good airtight seal. The zipper provides a large opening for easy access to the attic. A TogetherWeSave.com, an energy efficiency website from the nation’s electric cooperatives, has two videos on this subject as part of its “Watch & Learn” series; visit http://energysavings.togetherwesave.com/watch-andlearn and click on the Sealing & Insulation tab, then scroll down to find how-to videos on insulating attic hatches and attic pulldown stairs. The following companies offer attic entrance products: Atticap, 781-259-9099, www.draftcap.com; Attic Tent, 877-660-5640, www.attictent.com; Battic Door, 508-320-9082, www. batticdoor.com; Calvert Stairs, 866-477-8455, www.calvertusa.com; and Rainbow Attic Stairs, 203-322-0009, www.rainbowatticstairs.com.
Southern Occasions CO O K B O O K You’ll find recipes like these and more inside!
Italian Chicken Sticks Mexi Muffins Apricot Jam Bars Caramel Corn Orange Slush Deer Meat Enchiladas White Chicken Chili Take-Along Cake Swiss Cheese Dip Italian Tiramisu Blueberry Dream Dessert
CO O K B O O K
AUGUST 2013 31
Worth the Drive
Huggin’ Molly’s embraces visitors with great food, warm service
f you’re anything like me, you love food. But has your food ever loved you back? More specifically, have you ever gotten a big ole hug from your food? If not, stop into Huggin’ Molly’s the next time you’re any where near Abbeville. The tree-lined main street in Abbeville’s downtown area is bustling with life. Almost every storefront is filled with an office or shop or eatery of some sort. An awning pushing its way between branches announces the entrance to Huggin’ Molly’s. While the restaurant was opened in 2006, it lives up to the motto on its menus: “frozen in the fifties.” The restaurant’s old-fashioned soda fountain — complete with a marble top and red vinyl stool seats that spin on polished chrome stalks — was plucked out of an early-20th century drug store in Pennsylvania and has been perfectly preserved; it is so authentic, a Hollywood set dresser preparing the site for a period film would have very little work to do. Glass cases display antique pharmacy items and penny-candy promotions, and vintage signs, mostly marketing Coca Cola, adorn the walls. Through the fountain area and to the left is the dining room, a space decorated with old movie posters and a few bits of “yella fella” marketing materials, alluding to Huggin’ Molly’s owner and Abbeville native Jimmy Ranes. Owner of Great Southern Wood Preserving, which is headquartered in Abbeville, Ranes made selling pressure-treated wood fun when he adopted the “yella fella” persona. The oversized cowboy clothed completely in yellow is the spokesman for the company’s YellaWood brand pressure-treated products, and despite his strong resemblance to a big banana, “yella fella” works. Great Southern Wood has been successful, maintaining 15 stand-alone treating and distribution facilities servicing markets across the country and distributing YellaWood all over the world. While donning his yella hat and running a huge business no doubt keeps Ranes busy, he added one more thing to his “to-do” list, when, following in his grandfather Anthony’s footsteps (who worked in food all his life) he opened Huggin’ Molly’s. Ranes took the name from a ghost that he’d heard tales of as a kid. Local legend says that a seven-foot-tall woman who is as “big around as a bale of hay” roams the streets of Abbeville at night, searching for victims to sweep up and squeeze tight. The story was most often used by parents hoping to scare their kids home well before dark. But the hug I mentioned before has nothing to do with an overly affectionate specter; at Huggin’ Molly’s, the entire dining experience can be compared to Jennifer Kornegay is an embrace. the author of a new Exhibit A: Hugs children’s book, “The Alabama Adventures are welcoming. of Walter and Wimbly: (What’s more welTwo Marmalade Cats on a Mission.” She travels coming than open to an out-of-the way arms beckoning you restaurant destination in in?) So, too, is HugAlabama every month. She may be reached for comment at gin’ Molly’s. You’re email@example.com. greeted with a smile 32 AUGUST 2013
right inside the door as the hostess smiles hello. The friendly servers threaten to put you in a sugar coma, routinely dropping “sweetie,” “hon” and “darling” at the end of basic wait staff inquiries like “need more tea?” or “everything all right?” Exhibit B: Hugs are warm and comforting. So is Huggin’ Molly’s food. Diner classics like club sandwiches, French dips, burgers and chicken fingers (at lunch) or steaks, chicken pot pie and pork chops (at dinner) are done right (homemade with fresh ingredients) and deliver exactly what your taste buds are expecting and anticipating. That’s not to say the fare is ordinary. Special touches like a spicedup kick in the “comeback sauce” served with hand-battered chicken fingers, plus a few unexpected items like crisp and chewy fried cheese biscuits served with cinnamon butter keep things plenty interesting. Final Exhibit: Hugs are sweet. Serving yesterday’s soda-fountain favorites like Brown and Black Cows (root beer and Coke floats), milkshakes, malts, sundaes and cherry or vanilla Cokes with the syrup added in, as well as a dessert menu boasting huge brownies, blondies and the pie of the day, Huggin’ Molly’s draws plenty of folks who come in for the sweet stuff alone. I encourage you to make a trip to Abbeville when you find some extra time; you can enjoy the delicious food, plus get something extra for your drive over. At Huggin’ Molly’s, a little nuzzle and some nostalgia are always on the menu. A Need a Hug? Visit Huggin’ Molly’s for breakfast, lunch, dinner or just a sweet treat at 129 Kirkland St., Abbeville, Ala. 334-5857000. www.hugginmollys.com.
In our June issue, Jennifer Kornegay’s article on Ugwee’s Ice Cream Shop incorrectly stated that the shop’s ice cream is milk-free. It actually contains less than 2 percent of milk protein. It is still free of milk fat and is completely lactose-free.
AUGUST 2013  33
Ice Cream Cook of the Month: Ann K. Covington, Cherokee EC
PEACH ICE CREAM
3 cups ripe peaches, chopped and sweetened 1 can sweetened condensed milk 1 large can evaporated milk 1/2 cup sugar 1 package vanilla instant pudding mix 1/2 pint of half and half
1/2 pint whipping cream 1 can apricot or peach nectar 1 teaspoon almond flavoring 8 ounce carton Cool Whip Extra milk 3 pounds crushed ice 1 box ice cream salt
Set aside peaches after chopping. Mix other ingredients, folding in Cool Whip last. Pour into one-gallon freezer tub. Add peaches and stir. Add extra milk to the fill line, if needed. Close and begin to turn tub. Add crushed ice and salt (3 cups of ice, then 1 cup of salt) until ice covers top of tub. Freeze until freezer strains or stops running. Unplug freezer. Remove ice and salt from top of tub. Serve immediately for soft serve ice cream. For firmer ice cream, add more ice and salt; cover freezer with newspapers, aluminum foil and towels and let ripen 30 minutes to 1 hour. This also can be used for vanilla ice cream by omitting the peaches. It can be made with less fat by using the fat-free versions of the ingredients. Makes one gallon.
In the summertime, who doesn’t love a great big heaping bowl of homemade ice cream? Why do we like it so much? It’s comfort food. You can add any ingredients you like such as fruit, candies, and toppings galore to fix it exactly like you want it. One of my earliest memories with my grandmother is when a storm rolled through one night. She had the ingredients to make homemade vanilla ice cream with a manual ice cream maker. We churned that ice cream by candlelight in the dark and I think we ate the whole tub by the time the lights came back on!
You could win $50!
October November December
Upcoming recipe themes and deadlines are: Smoothies/ Milkshakes Barbecue Cookies
August 15 September 15 October 15
Please send all submissions to: Recipe Editor, P.O. Box 244014, Montgomery, Al 36124. Or e-mail to: firstname.lastname@example.org. Be sure to include your address, phone number and teh name of your eletric cooperative.
34 AUGUST 2013
Editor’s Note: Alabama Living’s recipes are submitted by our readers. They are not kitchen-tested by a professional cook or registered dietician. If you have special dietary needs, please check with your doctor or nutritionist before preparing any recipe.
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Please mail to: Alabama Living Survey • P.O. Box 244014 • Montgomery, AL 36124 No purchase necessary. Eligibility: Contest open to all persons age 18 and over, except employees and their immediate family members of Alabama Rural Alabama Living and Alabama Electric Cooperatives; and their respective divisions, subsidiaries, affiliates, advertising, and promotion AUGUST 2013 35 Electric Association, agencies.
Homemade Butter Pecan Ice Cream 5 eggs, well beaten 1/2 cup, white granulated sugar 1 box dark brown sugar 11/2 cups butter-toasted pecans, chopped
1 pint half and half 1/2 pint whipping cream 1 gallon whole regular milk
Coat pecans in butter, place in greased pan and bake at 250 for about 15 minutes. You must check them and stir often to prevent them from burning. Beat eggs, white sugar and brown sugar together until well mixed. Add pecans and half and half with the whipping cream. Beat until frothy. Place in ice cream freezer. Use regular milk to fill the freezer tank to the “fill” line. Pack ice and sprinkle ice cream salt around freezer tank. Freeze according to ice cream maker instructions. Kathy Pittman, Wiregrass EC
Chocolate Cheesecake Ice Cream 1/2 pint heavy cream 1/2 pint sour cream 6 ounces cream cheese 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3/4 cup granulated sugar 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 ounces grated milk chocolate
Melt chocolate over double boiler or in microwave. Let cool at room temperature. Place the cream cheese into a mixing bowl and beat until soft and smooth. Slowly add the sugar and then beat in the sour cream and chocolate followed by the double (heavy) cream. Add the vanilla extract and lemon juice and mix until thick and smooth. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours. Take the chilled mixture and beat until creamy, then transfer the complete mixture into an ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer’s instructions. Pamela Parker, Arab EC
Ice Cream Layer Cake Ice cream sandwiches (amount varies depending on size) Cool Whip Hershey’s syrup or chocolate sauce
Butterfinger candy bars (2-3) crumbled, for topping (optional)
The first thing you want to do is determine how many sandwiches you’ll need and the layout for your 9x13 Dish. Arrange them, wrapped. You’ll need two layers. The one sticking out on the side will be broken in half and stacked to fit the small spot in the corner. It doesn’t matter if the sandwiches don’t touch the edges of the dish. Unwrap and place the first layer of sandwiches in your dish, and then cover with Cool Whip and drizzled chocolate syrup. Repeat the layers of ice cream sandwiches, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce. Finish the dish by adding the crushed candy bar on top. Carmen Bishop, Wiregrass EC
Pop Rouge Ice Cream In a 4-quart ice cream maker, combine two cans of sweetened condensed milk and two liters of red pop. Stir well and turn on. Enjoy. Liz Nichols Spicer, Covington EC 36 AUGUST 2013
Editor’s Note: Alabama Living’s recipes are submitted by our readers. They are not kitchen-tested by a professional cook or registered dietician. If you have special dietary needs, please check with your doctor or nutritionist before preparing any recipe.
‘Handmade’ Ice Cream
Ice Cream Cake
21/2 cups Oreo cookies 1/4 cup melted butter 1 8-ounce carton Cool Whip
1 cup half and half cream 1/4 cup sugar 1-2 teaspoons of real vanilla extract
1 cup salt 4-6 cups crushed ice A gallon-size ziplock bag A quart-size ziplock bag
In the quart-size bag combine cream, sugar and vanilla. Try to get the air out carefully and seal. Place the salt and ice in the gallon bag. Then place the quart size bag inside the gallon bag, seal and allow to sit for three minutes. Then begin to shake and knead for 5-10 minutes until cream mix is thick. Eat immediately or freeze. Only enough for one person. My son enjoys making this Ice cream. Good for little ones. Laura Symonds, Joe Wheeler EMC
1 jar chocolate fudge 1/2 gallon vanilla ice cream
Crush cookies to a fine consistency. Mix cookie crumbs with melted butter. Press into a 13×9 pan or a spring form pan. Divide slightly softened vanilla ice cream into sections and press into cookie crust. Spread fudge over the ice cream; it is a little easier to work with if it is slightly warm. Top with Cool Whip. Freeze at least 3 to 4 hours before serving. Rene’ R. Mason, Dixie EC
Peanut Butter Ice Cream
1 quart half and half 2 cans of Carnation evaporated milk 1 sweetened condensed milk 11/2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla extract 1 small tub Cool Whip 15 ounces crunchy peanut butter
Heat peanut butter on stove top with approximately 11/2 cups of the milk, stirring continually. Mix with remaining ingredients. Freeze in electric freezer and enjoy. Brenda Gunnells, Marshall DeKalb EC
1 can Eagle Brand condensed milk 1 can crushed pineapple (20 oz)
1-2 liter Sunkist orange drink 16 oz Cool Whip (thawed)
Combine all ingredients, stir well. Pour into the canister of an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions. Ruth Clements, Cherokee EC
AUGUST 2013 37
Market Place Miscellaneous KEEP POND WATER CLEAN AND FISH HEALTHY with our aeration systems and pond supplies. Windmill Electric and Fountain Aerators. Windpower (256)638-4399, (256)899-3850
WALL BEDS OF ALABAMA / SOLID WOOD & LOG FURNITURE / HANDCRAFTED AMISH CASKETS / ALABAMA MATTRESS OUTLET – SHOWROOM Collinsville, AL – Custom Built / Factory Direct - (256)490-4025, www.andyswallbeds.com, www.alabamamattressoutlet.com
WWW.GULFSHORES4RENT.com Beautiful west beach in Gulf Shores – 4 great condos, each sleeps 6. Call (404)219-3189 or (404)702-9824 GATLINBURG, TN CHALET - 3BR/3BA – BASKINS CREEK - Pool, 10 minute walk downtown, Aquarium, National Park – (334)289-0304
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AERMOTOR WATER PUMPING WINDMILLS – windmill parts – decorative windmills – custom built windmill towers - call Windpower (256)638-4399 or (256)638-2352
CHURCH FURNITURE – Does your church need pews, pulpit set, baptistery, steeple or windows? Big sale on new cushioned pews and upholstery for hard pews – (800)2318360 or www.pews1.com
PIANO TUNING PAYS – Learn with American Tuning School home-study course – (800)497-9793
FT. WALTON BEACH HOUSE – 3BR / 2BA – Best buy at the Beach – (205)566-0892, firstname.lastname@example.org
EARN 55,000/YR PART TIME IN THE FARM EQUIPMENT and LIVESTOCK APPRAISAL BUSINESS. Ag background required – Classroom and Home Study courses available. (800)488-7570 or visit www. amagappraisers.com
HOUSE IN PIGEON FORGE, TN – Fully furnished, sleeps 6-12, 3 baths, creek, no pets – (256)997-6771, riverrungetaway.org
USED PORTABLE SAWMILLS – Buy / Sell. Call Sawmill Exchange (800)4592148 or 713-sawmill. USA & Canada – www.sawmillexchange.com
FLOORING FOR YOUR HOME! 1st Quality – NO Seconds: Hardwood, Laminate, Carpet, Luxury Vinyl Tile & Planks, Sheet Vinyl, Ceramic Tile – In Home Estimates and Professional Installation available – ProTrax Flooring (334)531-3020, protraxinfo. gmail.com
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LUMBER FOR SALE: Circular Saw Red & White Oak, Hickory, Ash - $1.20 BFT; Heart Pine - $5.00 BFT – Loring White (334)782-3636 (Tallapoosa)
HELEN GA CABIN FOR RENT – sleeps 2-6, 2.5 baths, fireplace, Jacuzzi, washer/dryer – (251)9482918, www.HOMEAWAY.com/101769, email email@example.com
NEW AND USED STAIR LIFT ELEVATORS – Car lifts, Scooters, Power Wheelchairs, Walk-in Tubs – Covers State of Alabama – 23 years (800)682-0658 18X21 CARPORT $695 INSTALLED – Other sizes available - (706)383-8554 DIVORCE MADE EASY – Uncontested, Lost, in Prison or Aliens. $149.95 - 26 years experience – (417)443-6511 FINANCIAL HELP LINES FOR AL FAMILIES BANKRUPTCY ADVICE FOR FREE (877)933-1139 MORTGAGE RELIEF HELP LINE (888) 216-4173 STUDENT LOAN RELIEF LINE (888)694-8235 DEBT RELIEF NON-PROFIT LINE (888) 779-4272 Numbers provided by www.careconnectusa.org A Public Benefit Organization METAL ROOFING $1.79/LINFT – FACTORY DIRECT! 1st quality, 40yr Warranty, Energy Star rated. (price subject to change) 706-383-8554
38 AUGUST 2013
PIGEON FORGE, TN – 3 bedroom, 2 bath house – Walking distance to parkway, light# 1 - $75.00 / night – (256)309-7873, (256)590-8758 GULF SHORES / FT. MORGAN / NOT A CONDO! The original “Beach House” on Ft. Morgan peninsula – 2BR/1BA – Wi-Fi, pet friendly, nonsmoking – $895/wk, (256)418-2131, www.originalbeachhouseal.com AFFORDABLE BEACHSIDE VACATION CONDOS – Gulf Shores & Orange Beach, AL. Rent Direct from Christian Family Owners. Lowest Prices on the Beach – www.gulfshorescondos.com, (251)550-9421, (205)556-0368, (205)752-1231 SNOWBIRDS!!!! ORANGE BEACH, SUMMER BREEZE CONDO - 1,000 sqft on the beach – Ground Floor – 2BR / 2BA – Bunk room, kitchen, Washer/ Dryer, pool, gated parking. Available November – March. Owner rented (205)822-4876, (205)613-1023 GULF SHORES PLANATION CONDOS – Beachview sleeps 6, Beachfront sleeps 4 – (251)223-9248
APPALACHIAN TRAIL – Cabins by the trail in the Georgia Mountains – 3000’ above sea level, snowy winters, cool summers, inexpensive rates – (800)284-6866, www.bloodmountain. com
PENSACOLA BEACH CONDO – Gulf front – 7th floor balcony – 3BR / 2BA, sleeps 6, pool – (850)572-6295 or (850)968-2170 – www. ss703pensacola.com ORANGE BEACH, AL CONDO – Sleeps 4, gulf and river amenities – Great Rates – (228)3694680 – firstname.lastname@example.org GULF SHORES CONDO BEACHSIDE – 2 Bed, 2 Bath, 2 Pools, Wireless Internet, Non-Smoking, No Pets (256)287-0368, (205)613-3446 SPRING & SUMMER SPECIALS ON CABINS IN PIGEON FORGE – (865)712-7633 DISNEY - TIME SHARE, VACATION VILLAGE, GUEST RENTAL FEE – Call Owner 205-822 4876 GULF SHORES CONDO – 1BR, sleeps 4, Gulf-front – (251)342-4393 MENTONE, AL – LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN – billiard table, Jacuzzi, spacious home, sleeps 14 – www. duskdowningheights.com, (850)7665042, (850)661-0678. GULF SHORES / FT. MORGAN – AFFORDABLE Private Beach & Bay Homes, 1-9 Bedrooms, Pet Friendly Available – (800)678-2306 – http:// www.gulfrentals.com GULF SHORES RENTAL– Great Rates! (256)490-4025, (256)523-5154 or www.gulfshoresrentals.us GULF SHORES COTTAGE – Waterfront, 2 / 1, pet friendly – Rates and Calendar online http://www.vrbo.com/152418, (251)223-6114
GATLINBURG, GULF SHORES, DAYTONA BEACH – Beautiful condos available now – Call Jennifer in Scottsboro at (256)599-4438, www. funcondos.com GULF SHORES PLANTATION - Gulf view, beach side, 2 bedrooms / 2 baths, no smoking / no pets. Owner rates (205)339-3850 GULF SHORES CONDO – 2BR / 1.5BA, sleeps 6, pool, beach access – (334)790-9545 CABINS / PIGEON FORGE, TN – Quiet, Convenient – (251)6493344, (251)649-4049, www. hideawayprop.com ORANGE BEACH CONDO, 3BR/3BA; 2,000 SQ.FT.; beautifully decorated; gorgeous waterfront view; boat slips available; great rates - Owner rented (251)604-5226 CABIN IN MENTONE – 2/2, brow view, hottub – For rent $100/night or Sale $199,000 – (706)767-0177 GATLINBURG – DOWNTOWN LUXURY CREEKSIDE CONDO – 2BR / 2BA, sleeps 6 – aubie12@centurytel. net, (256)599-5552 www.vacationsmithlake.com – NICE 3BR / 2BA, deep water, covered dock - $75.00 night – (256)352-5721, amariewisener@ gmail.com PINE MOUNTAIN, GA – 3 or 4 BR chalets overlooking a 12 acre lake – Tennis, swimming, fishing, basketball, game room, canoeing and restaurant or premises – Only 1 mile from Callaway Gardens – Call (800)535-7622 and ask for Chalets #72, #75 or #86 PIGEON FORGE, TN: $89 - $125, 2BR/2BA, hot tub, air hockey, fireplace, swimming pool, creek – (251)363-1973, www. mylittlebitofheaven.com FT. WALTON CONDO – 1BR, sleeps 6, gulfside – (251)342-4393 KATHY’S ORANGE BEACH CONDO – 2BR/2BA, non-smoking. Best rates beachside! Family friendly – (205)253-4985, www.KathysCondo. eu.pn GATLINBURG TOWNHOUSE on BASKINS CREEK! GREAT RATES! 4BR/3BA, short walk downtown attractions! (205)333-9585, email@example.com GATLINBURG / PIGEON FORGE – 2 and 3 BEDROOM LUXURY CABINS – Home theatre room, hot tub, gameroom – www. wardvacationproperties.com, (251)363-8576
GULF SHORES PLANTATION – Beachview – 2BR / 2BA, Sleeps 7, Golf, Tennis, Pools – www.vrbo. com/474704, (251)948-8030 PANAMA CITY BEACH CONDO – Owner rental – 2BR / 2BA, wireless internet, just remodeled inside and outside – (334)790-0000, firstname.lastname@example.org, www. theroneycondo.com GATLINBURG, TN – Fond memories start here in our chalet – Great vacation area for all seasons – Two queen beds, full kitchen, 1 bath, Jacuzzi, deck with grill – 3 Night Special - Call (866)316-3255, Look for us on FACEBOOK / billshideaway PIGEON FORGE CONDO – 2BR / 2BA, Ground Floor, Pool, Hottub, Patio – (256)601-7193, www.facebook.com/ rusticwoodsgetawaypf/info GULF SHORES, GULF FRONT – 1BR / 1BA - Seacrest Condo - King bed, hall bunks free Wi-Fi – Owner rates (256)352-5721, amariewisener@ gmail.com
Real Estate Sales HUNTING / FISHING CAMP FOR SALE: 15+ Acres – all wooded, adjacent to Skyline WMA. Like new 2BR / 2BA 16x57’ Trailer (868sqft) with Fireplace. Call Craig Buchanan (256)797-1999 GULF SHORES CONDOS - 4.7 miles from beach, starting prices $56,900 www.PeteOnTheBeach.com, click on Colony Club – (251)948-8008 – Century21 Meyer Real Estate BEAUTIFUL SOUTHERN LIVING HOME WITH LARGE FRONT PORCH – ForSaleByOwner.com ID# 22890092 – New Red Bay, AL
Travel CARIBBEAN CRUISES AT THE LOWEST PRICE – (256)974-0500 or (800)726-0954
Musical Notes PIANOS TUNED, repaired, refinished. Box 171, Coy, AL 36435. 334-337-4503
PLAY GOSPEL SONGS BY EAR - 10 lessons $12.95. “LEARN GOSPEL MUSIC”. Chording, runs, fills - $12.95 Both $24. Davidsons, 6727AL Metcalf, Shawnee Missions, Kansas 66204 – (913)262-4982
Education FREE BIBLE CORRESPONDENCE COURSE – write to 23600 Alabama Highway 24, Trinity, AL, 35673 BECOME AN ORDAINED MINISTER correspondence study. Founded in 1988. Free info. Ministers for Christ Outreach, 6630 West Cactus #B107767, Glendale, Arizona 85304. http:// www.ordination.org
Critters CHIHUAHUA PUPPIES. Registered, guaranteed healthy, raised indoors in loving home, vet records and references. (256)796-2893
How To Place a Line Ad in Marketplace Closing Deadlines (in our office):
October 2013 – Aug. 25 November 2013 – Sept. 25 December 2013 – Oct. 25
-Ads are $1.75 per word with a 10 word minimum and are on a prepaid basis -Telephone numbers, email addresses and websites are considered 1 word each -Ads will not be taken over the phone. You may email your ad to email@example.com or call (800)410-2737 ask for Heather for pricing. -We accept checks, money orders and all major credit cards Mail ad submission along with a check or money order made payable to ALABAMA LIVING, P.O. Box 244014, Montgomery, AL 36124 – Attn: Classifieds.
AUGUST 2013 39
For summer crappie, think like a spider! By John N. Felsher
s the late summer Alabama sun bakes down on the Heart of Dixie, many anglers forget about chasing crappie, one of the most abundant and delicious fish anywhere. Many Alabama anglers consider crappie “cold weather species” and only target them during winter or early spring, but the fish must eat all year long. “A lot of people think crappie fishing is seasonal, but I fish 52 weeks of the year and catch fish each time,” says Mike Baker, a professional crappie angler. “After they spawn, crappie scatter and are just harder to find, but they still have to eat.” Frequently, the higher and hotter the sun goes, the deeper and cooler crappie go. To find crappie in deep water, first check the electronics. Modern depth finders can provide extremely detailed information. Not as subject to capricious weather variations, deep water remains relatively stable all year long and can provide cooling comfort even on blistering hot days. In addition, deep water does not suffer as much turbulence from boat wakes or other activities like shoreline shallows. Once anglers find the fish, they can usually catch a bunch rapidly. “In the summer, crappie normally move from the creeks back out to deeper water,” says Janette Carter, a professional crappie angler. “We look for them 15 to 25 feet deep in open water. When it gets really hot, fish seek shady cover. Shade is more important than water temperature.” Electronics can give information on bot-
Spider rigging involves vertically dropping several rods off the bow of a boat. Photo by John N. Felsher
40 AUGUST 2013
tom cover, but anglers still need to probe the depths to locate fish and determine what they want to eat. For finding crappie in deep water, many anglers fish several rods simultaneously in a spider rig. With eight 12- to 16-foot long rods arrayed in holders off the bow, anglers can plow a huge swath through the water. The angler looks like prey trapped in a web, but this technique can find fish and put a lot of them in the boat quickly. “With eight rods up front, it looks like a spider web,” says Phil Rambo, a professional crappie angler. “It’s a really slow type of fishing, almost vertical. The line is at about a 40-degree angle with the bait dangling in a crappie’s face until it can’t resist.” Many anglers bait their rods with multiple combinations of soft-plastic jigs or live minnows. Some anglers tip their jigs with minnows for double the temptation. With multiple rods holding various baits, anglers can zero in on what fish want to bite. With the rods arrayed off the bow, push forward slowly with an electric motor to locate feeding fish. After finding fish, keep circling a hot honey hole. “Finding one fish is the tough part,” says Don Collins, a professional crappie angler. “Once we find good fish, we go over the same area several times. When I’m searching for fish, I look for rises, ledges or creek channels, anything different on the bottom contour. A creek or river channel coming into a lake is just like a highway to fish. We use several different bait colors until we de-
termine what the fish want. If we start catching more fish on one color, we change most of the baits to that color. That allows us to continue to catch fish while still looking for other colors that fish might like better.” With a spider rig, anglers can simultaneously fish just off the bottom or way up the water column to precisely locate where fish want to suspend at any given time. Always dangle a bait slightly above the depth where crappie suspend. Crappie usually look up to spot baitfish silhouetted against surface glare. Crappie might rise three or four feet to hit a jig or minnow, but might not even see a bait dangling just below them. “In the summer, crappie hang around the river ledges, points and deep ditches,” says Cody Young, a crappie guide from Eufaula (334-687-3200, 334-370-3450). “In the summer, once we establish the pattern on how to find fish, we can catch a bunch of crappie all summer long. In August at Lake Eufaula, crappie are in the brush piles in 15 to 19 feet of water.” Young frequently supplements natural cover by building his own fish-attracting artificial reefs. The guide drills holes in large wooden cable spools. He then sticks bamboo stalks in the holes and wraps wires around the bottom of the spool to secure the stalks. Finally, he fills the center of each spool with concrete to make it sink and stand up vertically in the water column. As a result, it creates a brush pile that provides cover from the bottom up about 15 to 20 feet. More like hunting than fishing, searching for deep crappie normally takes effort and patience, but anglers could load the boat in a good spot – even on the hottest summer days. A John N. Felsher is a professional freelance writer and photographer who lives in Semmes, Ala. He’s written more than 1,700 articles for more than 117 magazines. He co-hosts a weekly outdoors radio show. Contact him through his website at www. JohnNFelsher.com.
Tables indicate peak fish and game feeding and migration times. Major periods can bracket the peak by an hour before and an hour after. Minor peaks, half-hour before and after. Adjusted for daylight savings time. a.m. p.m. Minor Major Minor Major
AUG. 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
- - 01:22 01:52 08:37 09:37 10:52 - - - - - - 01:07 02:52 03:52 04:52 - - - -
06:22 07:07 07:52 02:37 03:22 04:07 05:22 06:37 08:07 09:22 10:22 11:07 11:52 05:37 06:22
07:22 12:52 07:52 01:22 08:22 01:52 02:37 08:37 03:07 09:07 03:37 09:37 01:07 10:22 03:37 11:22 08:52 04:37 10:07 05:07 10:52 05:37 11:37 06:07 12:07 06:37 06:52 12:22 07:07 12:52
SEP. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
07:07 07:52 08:22 09:07 10:07 11:22 - - - - - - 01:22 02:52 03:52 04:52 05:37 - - 07:07 07:52 08:52 09:52 11:07 - - - - - - 01:22 03:07 04:22 05:07 05:52 - - - -
01:07 01:37 02:22 02:52 03:22 04:07 05:22 06:37 08:07 09:22 10:07 10:37 11:22 11:52 06:22 12:52 01:22 02:07 02:52 03:37 04:52 06:07 07:52 09:07 10:07 10:52 11:22 11:52 06:37 07:07
07:37 01:22 01:52 07:52 02:07 08:07 02:37 08:22 02:52 08:52 02:52 09:07 - - 09:22 06:07 09:37 09:52 04:52 10:22 05:07 10:52 05:22 11:07 05:37 11:37 05:52 12:22 06:07 06:37 12:22 01:07 07:07 01:37 07:22 02:07 07:52 02:52 08:22 03:37 08:52 01:22 09:37 10:52 03:07 09:22 03:52 10:07 04:22 10:37 04:52 11:22 05:22 05:37 11:52 05:52 12:07 12:22 12:37 12:52 06:37
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Proposed bylaw changes Changes to the Cullman EC bylaws will be voted on at this year’s Annual Meeting. Ballots will be sent to members in the mail later this month. A complete list of the bylaws, along with information on the proposed changes, was published in the July edition of Alabama Living. Below is a summary of the proposed changes. Bylaws in Article One deal with co-op membership. Section 1.01 adds language to make clear that “no matter how many accounts a person has they are required to only have one membership in the cooperative.” Section 1.02 more clearly defines when a person becomes a member. Membership will begin when the Cooperative accepts the member’s application and when the member begins to receive power from CEC. Language was also added to provide that member applications may be in formats other than writing such as forms filled out over the internet. Section 1.04 was changed so that service to a married couple for a dwelling jointly owned by a husband and wife will automatically be a joint membership and that both spouses will have access to all of their account information. Section 1.06 defines the limits of liability of the Cooperative in providing electric service. Language was added to this bylaw clarifying that the Cooperative’s liability is regulated by State and Federal law. Section 1.09 was changed to clarify the fact that communication services provided by entities other than the Cooperative (cable television, telephone, etc.) are attached to Cooperative power poles using Cooperative easements. The language was also changed to make clear that trees and bushes may be trimmed if they are in the Cooperative right 42 AUGUST 2013
August 2013 Alabama Living pages.indd 34
••• Article Two covers membership suspension and termination. Section 2.02 specifies the procedure for terminating and renewing membership, and how members can appeal a suspension. Section 2.03 was changed to provide that member resignations do not have to be approved by the Board of Trustees to be effective. ••• Article Three of the bylaws deals with the member meetings. Language for Section 3.01 was changed to provide that door prizes and incentives could be given to members who attend the annual meeting not only to produce a quorum but also to encourage attendance at the annual meeting. Section 3.05 (c) & (d) were modified to provide that all mail-in ballots must be received by the auditors by the close of business on the Thursday before the annual meeting on Saturday and that those wishing to vote after that date should vote in person at the annual meeting. Section 3.06 provides a means for candidates who lost election to the Board of Trustees to challenge the tabulation of mail in votes, and sets the rules for an automatic recount. These changes would make this bylaw consistent with Alabama State law regarding recounts of election results for state elected officials. •••
Some important changes have been proposed in Article Four, which sets the rules and regulations for the Board of Trustees. The qualifications for serving as a trustee for CEC — Section 4.02 — were modified in three ways as: (a) Language was added to provide that a Trustee’s domicile for Cooperative elections shall be defined in the same way that the State of Alabama determines domicile in state elections. (b) Language was removed prohibiting persons selling electrical or plumbing appliances or services from serving on the Board of Trustees. Language was added to clarify that persons who are employed by or have substantial financial interest in a business selling electrical power or energy to the public is prohibited from serving on the Board of Trustees. (c) State, local and federal elected officials who receive compensation for their duties will be prohibited from serving as a member of the Board of Trustees. Section 4.06, which previously stated two persons must be nominated for each trustee position, would be changed to be consistent with Section 4.03, which governs elections and provides a means of election when only one member was nominated for election. This proposed change in no way limits the opportunity for any co-op member to run for the Board of Trustees. All a member is required to do in order to qualify www.cullmanec.com
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Cullman Electric as a candidate for the Board of Trustees is to present a simple petition signed by 25 other co-op members and to meet the qualifications outlined in Section 4.02 of the co-op bylaws. Section 4.08 ensures that persons filling a Board of Trustee vacancies must meet all the requirements of a regular Trustee. The Board also has the option to leave a vacant position open until it can be filled by election at the next annual meeting ••• Board meetings are covered in Article Five. Section 5.01 provides for meetings of the Board of Trustees after meetings of the members. Language was added to
hold board meetings after special meetings of the members in the same way that board meetings are held after the annual meeting. Section 5.05 is a new section to the bylaws. It provides that Trustees who are physically unable to attend a board meeting may attend a board meeting by electronic means (Skype, conference call, etc.) as long as they can hear and be heard by all present at the meeting. ••• In Article Six — Officers, Miscellaneous — Section 6.02 will be changed to make clear that Board officers shall hold office until their successors are elected. Section 6.07(a) defines the du-
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The timing was especially meaningful for Caitlin Cobb of Dixie Electric Cooperative. “I think because it was Father’s Day and seeing all the little girls and boys without fathers there, that was really sad,” she said. Alabama’s group, representing 17 of the state’s 22 cooperatives, heard updates from and asked questions of five of the state’s congressional delegation: Rep. Robert Aderholt, Rep. Terri Sewell, Rep. Martha Roby, Rep. Mike Rogers and Rep. Mo Brooks. Lawmakers answered questions on everything from energy policy to world affairs, said chaperone Scott Bobo, assistant general manager of MarshallDeKalb Electric Cooperative. “Lawmakers understand that these young people are our future. They are our future community leaders and they will play a huge part in the nation’s future economy.” For Aaron Estes of Joe Wheeler EMC, the visit to the Holocaust Museum was the most memorable. While he’s studied World War II, seeing the images and videos of people in concentration camps was quite different. “It just really touched my heart,” Estes said. “It hurt.” A universal sentiment expressed by all of the students was the privilege of meeting teens from Alabama Living
August 2013 Alabama Living pages.indd 35
ties of the secretary of the board, and allows the board to designate a special assistant or recording secretary to take minutes at board meetings. Section 6.11 provides that all employees and Trustees who have authority to handle funds of the Cooperative must be bonded or insured. ••• Article Nine provides for the procedural rules to be used in member and board meetings of the Cooperative. Language was added so that the Board of Trustees may adopt specific rules of procedure to conduct meetings, however if the board does not adopt specific rules, then Robert’s Rules of Order shall be used. A
other electric cooperatives across Alabama and the country. “Getting to meet that many students from all over our country was amazing,” Blackwood said. “To talk with them and hear their accents and swap stickers and pins with them and to see what it was like where they live, I really liked that. “Coming from Addison, you don’t get to meet a lot of people. But to realize you can be from another state and still relate to people, that really opened my eyes. The people we met were also from little towns all over our country. It was amazing to me that I could relate to them.” The 2013 Youth Tour delegates join more than 50,000 other young people who have participated in the program since 1957, when then Sen. Lyndon Baines Johnson, D-Texas, urged co-op officials to offer young people such opportunities. NRECA has sponsored annual Youth Tours since 1964. Blackwood and Smalls were selected to attend the Washington, D.C., trip after participating this spring in the AREA Montgomery Youth Tour. Each year, 11 students from high schools in Cullman EC’s service area are selected by their school counselor to attend the statewide event with more than 150 high school juniors from across Alabama. A
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Our Sources Say
Alabama Transmission Update
hen people ask what I do for the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, my response is usually quite simple: “I help keep the lights on.” As our nation’s largest public power provider, TVA is responsible for making and delivering electricity to 155 local power companies and 57 directly served customers. This electricity keeps the lights on for more than 9 million end-use customers across the Tennessee Valley – an 80,000-square mile area spanning portions of seven states. We understand consumer expectations when it comes to electric service: Home owners want to know when they flip the switch the lights will come on, and those in business and industry want to know that electricity will be there to operate and run their equipment. For the nearly 1,700 employees who make up our energy delivery organization, simply transporting electricity on our system is not enough; we must do so consistently and reliably. I am pleased to say that since 2000, TVA has delivered 99.999 percent reliability. We’re staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, so that we can respond quickly to service issues; and our robust network includes 16,000 miles of transmission line – enough to span the country more than six times – and 509 substations and switchyards. Through our partnerships with local power companies and directly served large industrial customers, we ensure that businesses receiving TVA power enjoy one of the most reliable power systems in the nation. In Alabama, several key projects are planned or under way that will help us maintain the excellent record we’ve established in reliability. In the Athens area, plans call for a new 161-kilovolt (kV) substation to meet service demands for Carpenter Technology Corporation’s new 400,000 square-foot manufacturing facility. This project will help drive economic growth in the region by adding approximately 240 new jobs.
System Facts TVA System (Tennessee Valley) Circuit miles of transmission line Power stations and switchyards Square-mile service area
16,086 509 80,000
TVA System (Alabama) Circuit miles of transmission line Power stations and switchyards Square-mile service area
2,400 79 8,980
Another new project planned for the Geraldine area will also help increase load capacity and improve reliability. TVA will be constructing a new 161- kV substation to supply additional loads in the next several years due to a new school and an expansion by Lee Energy. Additionally, a new hatchery is being considered in the area which could also bring additional jobs and an additional 600 kW of load to the area. In Decatur, we’re working closely with Joe Wheeler EMC on a power quality and load expansion project that will allow Toray Carbon Fibers to expand its operations. A significant benefit of the project will be the additional jobs Toray will add through this expansion. All of these projects, along with the day-to-day work we do to maintain our system, will help us meet the service requirements of Alabama well into the future. At TVA, we’re committed to providing all of our customers with safe, clean and reliable energy. We value the public power partnerships that we share with you. A
Rob Manning is executive vice president and chief energy delivery officer for the Tennessee Valley Authority. Alabama Living
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AUGUST 2013 45
Alabama Snapshots 2
Back to school
Submit Your Images! october Theme:
“Favorite electric appliance”
Send color photos with a large self-addressed stamped envelope to:
Photos, Alabama Living, P.O. Box 244014 Montgomery, AL, 36124 Rules: Alabama Living will pay $10 for photos that best match our theme of the month. Photos may also be published on our website at www.alabamaliving.coop. Alabama Living is not responsible for lost or damaged photos. Deadline for october: August 31
46 AUGUST 2013
1. Isabella Grace Wright visits her Head Start c l a s s r o o m submit ted by Michael Wright, Baileyton 2. “BFFs” Kenley and Will submit ted by Kamie Graves, Warrior 3. “First day of a new school year”: Leanne and Ella Timmons submitted by Beth Gray, Rainsville
4. Tucker Hayes, age 4 submitted by Sheila Smothers, Addison 5. Robyn LeeAnn George’s first day of kindergarten submitted by Ricky and Pamela George, Prattville |
A trip to Athens County is a sentimental journey to the heart of Ohio's magnificent Hocking Valley hill country.
It's a straight shot out of Columbus on route 33 to the hills of southeast Ohio, and I waste no time putting the airport and the All-American City's fast, busy outer belt behind me. Columbus was home for eight years, and I remember—with some disbelief, now—how I used to thrive on early morning competitive car-dodging, a rush-hour ritual that was at least as good as a couple of cups of black coffee in sheer wake-up power. Now I just want to get away from the traffic; I barely glance at familiar buildings and landmarks. In the decade-plus since I left the area, Columbus has become a much bigger town—and I've become a much smaller-town person. Finally, the city fades in my rearview mirror.
Flat. Sheesh, I'd forgotten how flat central Ohio is. "Only" 2 million years ago, as geologists blithely put it, the entire state was rolling or steep hill country, the eroded remains of primordial seabeds after some 60 million years of wind and rain, freezing and thawing, heaving and upheaving. Then came the last ice age, when sheets of ice up to a mile thick slowly ground over the region, sandpapering the hills, filling in deep river valleys and generally leveling the land encompassing 56 of present-day Ohio's 88 counties. The glaciers stopped just short of southeastern Ohio, leaving the rugged terrain there intact but adding new streams and rivers created by glacial meltwater.
As I drive south, passing beyond the bustling, industrial town of Lancaster, in Fairfield County, the countryside begins to change from glaciated flat to unglaciated rolling, and off to my left a wide plain of farmland is bisected by a winding path of willows and oaks, trees tracing the banks of one glacier-spawned tributary, the Hocking River. This is the northernmost end of the Hocking River Valley, a region of rich history and natural beauty that embraces all or portions of six Buckeye counties: Fairfield, Hocking, Perry, Vinton, Morgan and Athens. It's October, and the hills, growing increasingly steep and close now, are aglow in vibrant gold and yellow fall foliage.
In Hocking County, I pass the exits for Hocking Hills State Park—actually a cluster of state-managed parks and woodland encompassing some 9,000 spectacular acres of forests, gorges and caves. The entire valley offers much, but I've decided to focus on Athens County (pop. 57,592) for its affordable real estate, cultural diversity, near-but-far proximity to major cities, and other reasons both objective and, I admit, subjective.
When I think of the first time I came to Athens County, I have to laugh and shake my head at the peculiar workings of fate and time. It was 19 years ago—1970—and I'd driven down from Columbus for the weekend to visit a friend who'd rented an old farmhouse in the hills. No one was home when I arrived, so I settled into a mostly seatless rocking chair on the front porch and picked up a copy of a strange little pulp-paper magazine I'd never seen or heard of before. The cover portrayed a couple holding hands in a farm field, watching a sunrise, over which was a banner that read "How to Get Out Of the City and BACK TO THE LAND." It was issue 2 of THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS.
I cross the line into Athens County, Ohio. Here I am, almost two decades later, an editor for that little magazine, come to rediscover the county in which I discovered MOTHER.
With the exception of some plateaus in the south, Athens County's 508 square miles are mostly up, down or in between—ridgetops and river valleys and hills. The terrain has an embracing quality; not only are the people here warm and friendly, but the countryside itself seems to welcome you.
And so it has always been. The area has enticed settlers for at least the past 2,000 years. The first were the Moundbuilders, or Adena Indians, whose earthen burial mounds can still be seen throughout southern Ohio. Most of the mounds in Athens County have been destroyed, but some survive—particularly in and around the small village of The Plains, where archaeologists believe the Adenas established their largest and most important population center.
The county's more recent history, like that of all Appalachia, is one of boom and bust. The first white settlers arrived here from New England in the late 1700s, finding a wilderness thickly forested and teeming with wildlife—including buffalo, bear, wolf and mountain lion. But by the mid- 1800s settlers had cleared the forests for farming even on the steep slopes—and most of the wildlife was gone. In 1880, an incredible 91% of the county's acreage—294,807 acres out of a total of 325,120—was listed as farmland.
From about 1870 to 1925, coal was king in Athens County. Coal had been discovered in the area decades earlier, but large-scale mining began only when the railroads reached south of the county line. Every time a new railroad line or spur reached farther into the hills, mines opened and towns sprang up. In 1920, the peak of the boom, over six and a half million tons of coal were shipped from Athens County.
Then came the bust years—brought on by labor unrest and, later, the popularity of gas and fuel oil for home heating. By the onset of World War II, most of the mines had shut down, and many of the people had moved on, leaving poverty, piles of mining wastes, and empty storefronts behind. After the war and until the mid-1960s, the coal companies strip-mined some parts of the county, again creating ugly scars, but those operations, too, have ceased—for now, anyway.
Though the countryside is occasionally broken by reminders of the past—by gob piles and the ramshackle remnants of tiny mining towns near abandoned railroad spurs—Athens County clearly is in renewal. You can see the signs everywhere; in thriving community centers, village-wide cleanup campaigns, and school renovations. The hills, once denuded, are again covered with mature trees; nearly 56% of the county is back in forest. Wildlife—deer, ruffed grouse, wild turkey, quail, squirrel, rabbit, raccoon, beaver—is again abundant, providing excellent hunting (and fishing) on the county's numerous public lands and lakes: Wayne National Forest, Zaleski and Waterloo state forests, Stroud's Run and Burr Oak state parks.
In Nelsonville (pop. 4,210), the county's largest city before World War II and once a major coal and brick-making center, residents have launched an ambitious Renaissance Restoration Project. The town's handsome, New England-style village square has been lovingly restored. The old brickyards, with their huge domed kilns, have been turned into a tourist attraction. And the town still has a bustling industry: The Brooks Shoe Company factory keeps nearly 300 workers on the job producing more than 2,000 pairs of boots and running shoes a day.
Just outside of Nelsonville is another major employer and economic force, Hocking Valley Technical College, with 19 modern buildings spread over a 250-acre campus. More than 4,000 students from all over Ohio, 28 other states and 26 foreign countries are enrolled there, nearly doubling Nelsonville's population. And right next door is Hocking Valley Tech's close ally, Tri-County Joint Vocational School, which provides training for hundreds of high school students from Athens, Hocking and Perry counties.
To Ohioans there is Athens, the county, and then there is Athens, the centrally located county seat (pop. 20,870) and the home of Ohio University. The college, or the core of it at least, is smack in the middle of town, where the campus's stately, Corinthian-columned brick buildings and hushed, tree-shaded green add an air of classic dignity.
The sense of decorum is almost, but not quite, enough to offset the energy generated by some 16,500 students. Day and night during the school year, downtown Athens is abuzz. Bookstores, clothing stores, restaurants and taverns line Washington, Court and State streets. The flow of students cruising the sidewalks and driving the streets never really stops, though during the day there is a discernible rhythm of rise and fall, rise and fall, with the changing of classes. Music spills from passing cars and tavern doors; street vendors hawk burritos, tacos and T-shirts; footsteps and laughter and conversations blend into a single, continuous, carnival-crowd murmur.
And though the street scene sometimes gets loud and boisterous, Athens always retains its friendly small-town flavor and charm. Most of the buildings downtown date from the turn of the century or earlier. The massive brick Athens County Courthouse, built in 1879 and a landmark ever since, stands imposingly facing Court Street, its white, slate-roofed spire visible from almost anywhere in town. Narrow, brick-paved side streets lead to quiet residential areas.
Come summer, when most of the students leave, reducing the town's population by more than half—to about 10,000—Athens is a typical (though perhaps unusually cosmopolitan) small, rural town. "Summer is always such a shock," one year-round resident tells me. "You just wake up one day and you think, 'what's that? And then you realize: It's the quiet! "
Regardless of the time of year, Athens benefits from the art, music, drama and other events produced or brought in by the university, making the small town something of a cultural oasis in southeastern Ohio. Likewise, the college's extensive libraries are available to the community, as are sports and recreational facilities—including a golf course and an indoor swimming pool. "Communiversity" classes, in which professors and townspeople alike teach the subjects they love most, are popular. And the university's College of Osteopathic Medicine operates a medical center in which more than 35 teaching physicians provide community outpatient care; this is in addition to the fine facilities offered by O'Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens and Doctors Hospital of Nelsonville.
Ohio University's economic impact on the county is immense. With nearly 3,000 faculty and staff members, OU is the area's largest employer. Jobs are scarce elsewhere and generally don't pay as much. "Everybody's trying to get a job at OU," one Athenian tells me. In addition, the annual influx of students pumps over a million dollars a year into the county's economy, supporting hundreds of local businesses. One study estimates that nearly half the county's total work force is employed directly or indirectly as a result of OU's presence. "The simple fact is, Athens is a company town," a long-time resident says. "It's just that the company happens to be a university."
As in all university towns, conflicts do sometimes arise between the academic community and the nonacademic community, the university and local factions. In most cases, the issues are minor and fleeting, if not trivial. When I was there, the hot controversy was over whether the city's mayor would allow the students to put up a bandstand on Court Street for the Halloween Bash, an annual but unsanctioned street party in which more than 10,000 costumed ghouls, goblins and what-have-you parade up and down and haunt the night away. Other issues are weightier, such as the ongoing discussion over the fate of the old OU-owned Athens Mental Health Center grounds: over 600 acres of prime land and a complex of ornate, strikingly beautiful High Victorian and Second Empire-style brick buildings.
One of the buildings, at least—a stately, slate-roofed dairy barn that housed the center's champion herds back in the days when patients tended cows as therapy has already been saved from demolition. In 1977, when the state threatened to tear the barn down, citizens successfully rallied to save the structure and then refurbished it and organized a variety of local and national events there. Today the Dairy Barn Southeastern Ohio Cultural Arts Center is a major showcase for contemporary and traditional arts and crafts, and plays host to such noteworthy events as the National Jigsaw Puzzle Championship.
"This is a wonderful community for getting geared up on an issue," says Roxanne Groff, one of Athens County's three commissioners. Certainly Roxanne, who came to the county as an OU student in 1968, knows of what she speaks. During the late '60s and early '70s, the university was a hotbed of student antiwar activism, and the county a mecca for back-to-the-landers. Thousands of young people, students and non-students, chose Athens County in which to explore alternative rural lifestyles. Swelling the county by nearly half again as many people as were there the previous decade, they built their own homes, attempted subsistence farming, established cooperative communities.
Most of those idealists eventually moved away, but many stayed, becoming teachers and lawyers and craftspeople and shop owners—and public officials.
"If anyone had told me 15 years ago that I'd be a county commissioner here, I would've said they were insane," says Groff, laughing. But in 1978, when loggers and oil drillers stepped up operations close to her home near Amesville, Groff started going to township meetings to demand reparations for the damage the machinery was inflicting on area roads. "I pestered the trustees to do something until one of them finally said, 'Well, Roxanne, if you think you can do this job better, why don't you run for township trustee yourself?'" she remembers. "So I thought, 'Hmmmm, maybe it's worth a try,' and pretty soon there I was in my bib overalls and braids knocking on doors and asking for votes." She won the election, and three years later ran successfully for county commissioner. Roxanne shares her responsibilities with the county's two other commissioners, Dean Kahler (who is confined to a wheelchair as a result of being shot at Kent State on May 4, 1970) and Karen Harvey (who, since I visited, has left office to complete her studies for a law degree).
Because so many from the '60s and '70s chose to remain in the area and are now members of the mainstream, much of today's Athens County is imbued with a distinct counterculture flavor. Unique handmade homes dot the countryside. A number of intentional communities, with names like Sunflower and The Far, remain active. Natural foods co-ops and restaurants, crafts shops and organic truck farms are numerous. And a sense of political, social and environmental consciousness abides, spawning a strong network of effective citizens' organizations.
Over the past 10 or 15 years, whenever a coal company has announced plans to strip-mine in Athens County, a citizens' group has emerged, challenged the company in court or through the regulatory process and essentially brought the project to a halt. "One of the reasons this is still such a nice place to live," says Donald Wirtshafter, an Athens attorney, "is that we've been successful at defending it."
Other groups have taken on such problems as unemployment. Athens' unique Worker-Owned Network (WON) helps low-income and unemployed people start cooperative businesses. Two popular Athens eateries, Crumbs Bakery and Casa Nueva Restaurant, and at least eight other businesses—involving some 105 jobs—have been saved or created through WON's assistance.
June Holley, the group's coordinator, gives much of the credit to the community itself. "Unemployment in the county ranges from 8 to 9%," she says. "But this community is extremely supportive of efforts to find solutions, to explore alternatives. That's what we're doing here. I love it. I've lived in 28 places in my life, and this is it for me."
Tom O'Grady, who works for the health department as program manager for the county's litter control and recycling program, echoes Holley's sentiments. "Being a city boy from Cleveland, I can't really say why I feel such a strong bond with the soil and the trees and the people here," says Tom, "but I do. I love this place."
O'Grady came to Athens as an OU student in 1980 and, while studying for his master's degree in environmental planning and design, started working part-time for the health department surveying illegal dump sites and working as a litter enforcement officer. "I drove all over the back roads in the county and located something like 150 major dump sites and innumerable smaller ones," he recalls. "That was in 1982. Since then, with the help of literally thousands of county residents—sometimes whole communities—we've cleaned up virtually every one of those sites. The people here really get involved in projects like this; it's just a tremendous pleasure to work with them." Athens County's voluntary recycling program has become the largest in the state.
Land here remains surprisingly inexpensive. Undeveloped land—typically hilly or steeply sloping, in mixed brush and second-growth timber—can be had for about $250 to $350 an acre, and sometimes less. Good farmland might go for $500 and up, with prime bottomland selling for perhaps $800 to $1,000. When I was there, a 220-acre parcel of brush and second-growth timber was selling for $40,000, and an 80-acre tract part of which was bottomland—was going for $28,000. A pretty little farm with a nice three-bedroom, oil-heated house on a paved road, a small barn, several thousand marketable Christmas trees and 80 level, tillable acres—with about 10 acres in corn—was on the market in the low $60s.
Generally, the farther away from town you get, the lower the price—and the fewer services available. Many smaller communities lack a municipal water or sewer system, and often wood and electricity are the only heating choices. A three-year drought and, in patches within old coal-boom regions, lingering water pollution from deep-shaft mines make it advisable to check the dependability and quality of a prospective property's water supply.
In some parts of the county, mineral rights, too, are a consideration. Coal companies still hold claim to these in about 10 to 15% of the county—wherever there are, or were, coal seams. Ownership entitles the company—in the view of most such firms, at least—to come onto the property at any time to explore for or extract minerals pretty much any way it sees fit. Because of low mining activity, vigilant citizens and regulatory procedures, such incidents are currently rare, but if ownership of mineral rights is not specifically warranted on a piece of property, you may want to ask an attorney for a full mineral rights title search before signing any agreement. (A standard title search goes back only 40 years, and most rights deals were made before that.)
Also, many farms have leased natural gas (or oil) rights to coal or utility companies in exchange for royalties based on well production (the income is usually little or nothing) and for free gas from the well (a more powerful incentive, especially after a few winters of chopping wood). Some leases are more benign than others; an existing lease doesn't necessarily make a property undesirable, but buyers are cautioned to review it with an attorney.
Of course, there's one big reason behind Athens County's low land prices: Jobs are hard to come by, and wages tend to be low. Per capita income in 1985 was $7,178 compared with $10,371 for Ohio overall. Competition for jobs can be fierce; when a new factory came to Athens recently with 300 openings, over 6,000 people applied. More than a few county residents commute to jobs in Columbus every day, a drive of about 75 miles.
Often, making a living is more a matter of creating a niche than of finding one. Jack Kuehn, who came here in 1976 to homestead with his wife, Ellie, has turned his love for bees and beekeeping into a healthy retail and mail-order business, Ohio Bee Supply. "We joined an intentional community, built our own house and lived cheap—real cheap—for a long time," says Jack. "But business is doing OK now—I just mailed out 10,000 catalogues." Jack and his wife, who works for the Tri-County Mental Health Agency, now have a son, Seppe, and a daughter, Erika, and live in a pleasant older home in the town of Athens.
Just outside of Amesville, Ron Chacey raises and breeds longhaired sheep on a 100-acre-homestead he shares with his wife, Windsor, a teacher for the Athens city school system. Ron sells the thick, luxuriant, naturally colored pelts, markets the wool to spinners and weavers (and to doll manufacturers for hair) and sells breeding stock. He makes most of his income, though, as a craftsman, doing intricate custom metal-engraving and ivory inlay work for the Stewart MacDonald Company, an Athens-based maker of guitars and banjos. "The main reason why I started raising sheep," he says with a grin, "is that I've got a lot of land out there that I want to keep clear, but I hate to mow. So I figured sheep would do the work for me."
Down near the tiny town of Shade, Rick Duff makes his living fulfilling a lifelong dream: farming. “I always wanted to farm,” says Rick, who grew up in New Jersey. "In high school they'd ask me what I wanted to be, and I'd tell them a shepherd. Farming is just in me; I think a lot of people have the same instinct. Hey, we were all farmers three generations ago." So in 1980, Rick came here with his wife, Ginny—and no experience—to farm. The Duffs' 140-acre operation is diversified, to say the least: They raise beef and lamb for market, and also produce and sell maple syrup, honey, fresh vegetables and greenhouse-grown garden starts.
Over in the small farming community of Albany (pop. 1,030), life runs to the slow, steady cadence of customers coming to pick up a bale of hay at Clara and Albert Hutchison's Tri-County Feed & Farm Supply, or maybe a box of nails down the street at Mac 'n Bec's Hardware Store, run by Becky McCutcheon. The McCutcheons moved to Albany in 1973 when Becky's husband got a job at the OU Airport outside of town. "We were really young," recalls Becky, "and it was unusual back then for a young couple to move here for a job; most young people were moving away for work." The couple built their own home and started a family (they now have a son and daughter). "Then one day I picked up the paper and saw that the hardware store was for sale," says Becky, "and I couldn't leave it alone." Why would a young woman with no experience in hardware decide to run a hardware store? "Well," says Becky, "you know how they say life changes every seven years? I decided it was my seventh year." Learning the business, she claims, was mostly a matter of listening to her customers. "They'd describe what they were doing, and we'd just kind of have to figure out together what they needed. There's still a lot of that," she says. "My customers are terrific, patient people; we all get along real well—nobody talks religion or politics at Mac 'n Bec's," she laughs.
Though the town of Athens is the county's cultural and economic center, it's the smaller communities, the hills and forests, the farms and homesteads tucked into the hollows and coves that are the real heart and beauty of Athens County. I spent my last several days in the area driving the gravel back roads (there are over 800 miles of them in the county), discovering at every turn another slice of postcardlike Americana, another soaring view, another old barn or log cabin or hand-built house, another placid ridgetop, another bib-overalled farmer with time enough to look up, smile and wave.
There's something just naturally comfortable about the county, something that says "home" even if you're a stranger. I think of the dozens of amiable, open people I met, and how the same words kept popping up when they described the county: community, friendly, neighbors, network, supportive. "I hope you get more than just facts about Athens County while you're here," Tom O'Grady told me. "I hope you get a feeling for the land and the people here, because that's what Athens County is about: It's a feeling."
"Tell your readers this is a wonderful place to live," one 20-year resident said. "Tell them there's still lots of room here, and newcomers are welcome. Oh—and tell them not to be surprised if they have company on moving day," he added, smiling. "Folks just sort of automatically turn out to help."
Just the right kind of place, it seems to me, to heed the advice in that old issue of MOTHER. Just the right kind of place for folks who want to "get out of the city—and back to the land."
Ohio 41,004 sq. mi.
Athens Co. 508 sq. mi.
Athens Co. 57,592
Ohio 262.1 per sq. mi.
Athens Co. 113.3 per sq. mi.
Ohio 1. mining, 2. manufacturing, 3. transportation and utilities
Athens Co.1. state and local government, 2. transportation and utilities, 3. mining
Per Capita Income (1985)
Athens Co. $7,178
Ohio Taxes: 5% sales tax; 14.7¢ gasoline tax; 0.743%–6.9% state income tax
Athens Co. Taxes: combined city, county property and school taxes per each $1,000 property valuation: $33.49-$62.48, depending on municipality; 5.5% sales tax; 1.5% municipal (city of Athens) income tax. Median house value: $45,000; median rental: $275. Average monthly utilities: houses, $100; apartments, $50.
Athens Co. 8.5%
Ohio Avg. precipitation: 37.5" per year. Growing season: 193 days. Average daily temperature: January, 28'F; July, 77'F.
Athens Co.Avg. precipitation: 39.6" per year. Growing season: 193 days. Average daily temperature: January 29'F; July, 76'F.
Athens Co. 17 elementary, 4 junior high, 6 high schools. Average teacher's salary (1986): $24,599. Student-teacher ratio: 20:1; attendance rate: 93%; dropout rate: 1%.
Whether you want to learn how to grow and raise your own food, build your own root cellar, or create a green dream home, come out and learn everything you need to know — and then some!LEARN MORE |
While we are still putting together a game plan on moving Marge’s hive, I thought it would be a good idea to run a post mortem on my experience with this hive. Not only will it help me formalize my approach to urban beekeeping in the future, but hopefully it will help some new beekeepers out there avoid an experience with an agressive and possibly AHB hive.
Talk to Beekeepers in the Area
If possible, get in touch with beekeepers who have hives in the general vicinity of where you plan on placing yours. Ask about the prevalence of AHB in the area, and if they personally experienced problems before. When I spoke to Konrad about Marge, he said that his hives south and south east of the river always seem to run hotter than his hives up north. Having this information ahead of time can help you make decisions on hive management and/or factor in to your decision on placing a hive in a certain area.
My initial game plan was to let my hives requeen themselves the old fashioned way with the thought of taking advantage of the feral bee population that had the genetics to survive the often extreme Texas seasons. In the case of Knives, this worked out well. The hive overcame a lot of initial hardships (pesticide poisoning, worst drought in 50 years, etc.), survived the winter, and is still mostly calm during inspections. Marge, not so much.
My new game plan is to requeen with known genetics for all my hives in urban areas. I’m lucky that Marge’s hive is in a location with no real neighbors on the sides or back of the property line otherwise the situation could have ended up a lot worse. My beekeeping friend said it best, “Queens are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.” This is especially true if they are mating with drones of unknown and potentially AHB origins.
While it will be more expensive to buy new queens, the expense totally outweighs the pain (literally) and heartbreak this hive has caused. It can also give you a chance to experiment with a lot of different breeds that are now available to see which works best for your style and area. I mean, who wouldn’t want to tell their beekeeping buddies about the new Tiger Queen you just installed.
Urban Beekeeping is a great hobby, and I hope my posts about this hive don’t discourage anyone from picking it up. I’ll be sure to have a follow up on moving Marge, and if I decide to requeen Knives this spring or wait until fall. |
After our visit with Matt Moore earlier in the week, we stopped by Nani Moon Mead today and met with owner Stephanie Krieger for a 5 flight mead tasting.
Stephanie produces small batches of mead using honey and fruit produced on Kauai and the other islands of Hawaii. Matt Moore is one of her suppliers of honey which made the visit to Nani Moon a nice bookend to our beekeeping adventure on Kauai.
After the tasting, we decided to go with the Winter Sun which is made with Kauai wildflower honey, starfruit, and passionfruit. Here is a picture of the mead with a bottle of Matt’s BeeWise Honey.
Here is a video of Stephanie talking about her mead and all five varieties she produces.
After Matt Moore took us on a tour of the gardens, we suited up to go visit the apiary. Before I get into that, here are some facts I learned about beekeeping in Hawaii:
- Kauai is one of the few places left that doesn’t have Small Hive Beetles or Varroa Mite (I think it is ok if we hate Hawaiian beekeepers a little bit for that)
- They do have wax moths and do have to worry about the common bee ailments like chalkbrood and nosema.
- Starting a hive in Kauai is actually pretty hard because of all the restrictions on importing bees. Most folks have to either catch a swarm or make friends with a local beekeeper to get a split.
- Coconut husks make great smoker fuel
I really liked this sign as we walked towards the apiary. The farm is 10 acres with fruit trees all over the place so this is a nice reminder you are entering an area with lots of bees.
Here is a shot of the apiary.
This is Matt Moore taking a cover off of one of the hives.
Matt has an interesting way of removing supers (at least interesting to me). Instead of stacking supers as he removes them, he upends them as shown in the picture. He feels he squishes less bees this way.
Matt’s lit smoker with coconut husk as fuel. It burns really well and produces a nice cool smoke.
Matt and I opening up one of his hives.
We spotted a queen on one of the first hives we opened up. Matt says the golden color is very typical of a Hawaiian Queen.
This was a nice frame of honey pulled from one of the hives.
I was going to make this a two part post, but I still have a bunch of miscellaneous photos from our visit that I’ll post soon. All in all, this was a great visit, and it is amazing how bees can adapt to all sorts of climates and geography.
Aloha from the beautiful island of Kauai. Gitanjali and I will be spending the next week visiting our 50th State along with our friends Matt and Brenna. I was very curious about beekeeping practices in Hawaii so I arranged to meet up with Matt Moore who is a local beekeeper on the island. He keeps 30 or so hives on a beautiful 10 acre farm just northwest of Kapaa which is on the east side of Kauai. Before taking a peak at the hives, we explored the farm and got a sense of what the bees are currently using for pollen and nectar sources.
This is Okinawa Spinach which is an edible ground cover.
This is another shot of the spinach showing the pollen sac of a bee.
This is Malabar Spinach which is a perennial vine found in the tropics that also has edible leaves.
This is Tulsi Basil which is a variety of basil found in India.
Here we have the flower from a native Hawaiian yam.
I didn’t catch the name of this plant but it was similar to a Bird of Paradise.
While not a good source of nectar, the pollen from coconut trees was very attractive to the bees.
These were just a handful of the flora around the farm that the bees were visiting. With so much in bloom, I figured the girls would produce honey all year, but this side of the island is very rainy and during the winter months, it rains a lot off and on through March. So even though the bees don’t slow down due to colder weather, they do go through a “winter” cycle as the rain keeps them in the hive more often than not during these months.
Stay tuned for Part II. Mahalo. |
11 December 2014
The Short Answer (TSA)
In general appearance, the Rose Bee Hive looks similar to a Langstroth or British Standard Beehive. The Rose is a “tall” structure with brood boxes and supers stacked one upon another unlike the, generally, long horizontal “tub-like” design of the Top-Bar hive. The Langstroth and B. S. Beehive allow the bees to build their combs in frames fitted into drawers that can be removed and inspected. The Top Bar hive uses only bars across the top of the “tub” to support the combs built by the bees.
But the Rose hive has a subtle structural difference from the Langstroth or B. S. hive. The brood box and supers are of the same size – the same depth. This allows the beekeeper to use only one size of frame in the hive’s drawers. The interchangeability is intended to give more than the convenience of using only one size of frame. The uniform size allows each unit to be stacked in any order. This minimizes the necessary lifting because the boxes do not have to be arranged in a certain order.
Increasing stock (number of bees) is often done by dividing a hive in two and adding a queen. The Rose Bee Hive makes this easy, again, because all the boxes are the same size. So, no lifting and rearranging of the boxes are needed. A board is simply inserted between two of the vertically stacked boxes, which neatly divides the hive into two, upper and lower, hives. Then, a new queen is added.
The creator of the Rose Hive has also developed a method of beekeeping, which has grown out of the unique Rose Hive design. In the traditional hive, brood combs, in which the queen lays eggs and the young bees are raised, are strictly separated from honey combs in which the bees store their honey.
This division is done through the use of a “queen excluder” which allows worker bees to enter the area of the hive dedicated to honeycombs, but keeps the queen out — forcing her to lay her eggs in another area dedicated to brood combs. But what would happen if you left the excluder out?
Although this would allow the bees to develop brood combs anywhere in the hive, bees generally locate brood combs toward the bottom and honey combs toward the top. But some random brood combs toward the top and honey combs toward the bottom could create some real inconvenience in a standard hive. The brood and honey comb boxes and drawers are each of a different size and dedicated to one type of comb or the other.
But not in the Rose Hive.
With the Rose hive, the uniform size of all the boxes, frames and drawers makes the problem go away. The beekeeper simply replaces brood combs and extracts honeycomb wherever each is found. This has the added advantage of allowing the bees to expand the brood naturally at will without the need for intervention from the bee keeper.
One of the best features of the Rose hive is its dimensions. Not only are all the boxes, brood and honey comb, the same size, but the general dimensions of the hive match both the Langstroth and B. S. Hives. So, if you have an on-going beekeeping concern and use standard hives, you can replace your existing hives gradually, piece by piece, by replacing your old hive boxes with the new Rose boxes.
The Rose Bee Hive was developed by Tim Rowe of Ballylickey, Bantry, Co.Cork Ireland. He provides a basic, yet thoroughly instructive, presentation at the Rose Bee Hive website: |
After reading about them for several months and an overall curiosity in the subject, I have finally purchased some honey bees. (thus adding to my collection of rather disjointed interests.)
Rather than bore you with all the details, in short, I began reading and studying beekeeping for the past few months and found them truly fascinating. There's still alot that is unknown about the honey bee, but their behavior has been documented for centuries. Most recently is the plague of the mysterious CCD (colony collapse disorder). To help fight this, Burt's Bees is giving away free wildflower seed so you can aid the dwindling honey bee population. To read more on the art/science of beekeeping, here's the link to the Beekeeping article on Wikipedia.
For some pictures of my setup and me in a goofy hat, I've created a thread in the forums. I'll probably post future pictures in the forums, and post any updates to the project here on the main page.
update: Pictures are here. |
The 2013 India DM is focused on identifying social enterprise projects that have the potential to scale the impact of their work in the States of Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Read more about the eligibility criteria for the 2013 India DM.
The call for proposal was launched in January 2013 and we received over a 190 proposals in response. After a series of rigorous, merit based evaluations by a panel of development experts from inside and outside the World Bank, 30 projects were shortlisted for the due diligence and capacity building diagnostic. Seven teams comprising of senior assessors from the World Bank, Innovation Alchemy and independent subject matter experts have been traveling all across the country in the last two weeks to meet with the teams at the head office as well as in the field to identify the gaps in the model (if any) and determine how the World Bank could support these projects in addressing them, if they won the grant funding.
Following the in-depth evaluation and needs assessment review of the projects, 20 projects have been invited to showcase their projects at the Development Marketplace event in Bhopal on 1st May 2013.
An Introduction to the finalists
The projects include a very rich and diverse range of products & services targeted to impact the base of the pyramid in these states. Models built around low-cost infant warmers; mobile science labs for rural schools and mobile phone based information & case research systems demonstrate innovative application of technology. Other programs target complex social challenges such as adolescent girl trafficking; connecting school drop out youth to skills & jobs; managing tuberculosis treatment in very poor communities and facilitating use of organic fertilizers. And some of the projects demonstrate extensive experiments in enhancing business models, such as a hybrid model for facilitating bee keeping, exploring sustainable business through carbon credits, agro forestry and rural productivity hubs for farmer collectives.
Of the twenty finalist projects, seven of them are registered for-profit organizations, twelve projects have a non-profit base and one operates as a hybrid. Six of the finalist projects are targeting Madhya Pradesh for scale and replication; seven projects are targeting their work in Jharkhand; 4 in Chhattisgarh and 3 projects intend to work in more than one target state.
Four projects are intended to directly impact women and another four projects are seeking to impact children, including one that is focused on the girl child. Apart from that projects are designed to impact tuberculosis patients in poor communities, farmers, rickshaw drivers and the youth.
Projects Targeting Jharkhand
- SOUTH VIHAR WELFARE SOCIETY FOR TRIBALS – Combating human trafficking by empowering adolescent girls and improving their health status.
- ALTERNATIVE FOR INDIA DEVELOPMENT – Delivery of banking/ financial inclusion products/ services to excluded families by combining Panchayat kiosk banking outlets and Self Help Group strategies.
- WATER LIFE INDIA – Sustainable community water systems for safe drinking water.
- EMBRACE INNOVATION – Deployment of Embrace infant warmers in low-resource government hospitals and measuring impact over time.
- OPERATION ASHA – Implementation of eCompliance to supplement their treatment/ prevention of tuberculosis and turn the tap off on Multi-Drug Resistant TB in Jharkhand’s tribal regions.
- DIMAGI SOCIAL INNOVATION – Working on using/ developing technology to increase the quality of services provided by community health workers.
- IMERIT TECHNOLOGY SERVICES – Empowering marginalized women by training them in IT-based livelihoods.
Projects Targeting Madhya Pradesh
- ACCESS DEVELOPMENT SERVICES – Help aggregate small and marginalized farmers to create Producer Companies/ Cooperatives.
- AGASTYA INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION – Facilitating hands on education by developing Mobile Science Labs.
- REAL MEDICINE FOUNDATION – Empowering women as a means to address malnutrition in India.
- RANG DE – Enabling individuals to become rural entrepreneurs with cost effective micro-credit for enterprise development and education.
- AGA KHAN RURAL SUPPORT PROGRAMME – To reduce the cost of cultivation at a large scale by using organic fertilizers.
- UNDER THE MANGO TREE – Using beekeeping to supplement income of tribal farmers.
Projects Targeting Chhattisgarh
- BILT TREE TECHNOLOGY – Changing lives of tribal farmers of Chhattisgarh through sustainable agro-forestry.
- MICRO INSURANCE ACADEMY – Help facilitate self-reliant community based health insurance schemes of and for low income communities in remote regions of India.
- VIGYAN ASHRAM – Empowering youth to build a human powered generator, solar lighting and laptop charging system.
- VRUTTI – Aims at re-strategizing extension services through demand led market based farmer enterprises focusing in accelerated growth in agriculture.
Projects Targeting Multiple States
- KHERWADI SOCIAL WELFARE ASSOCIATION – Looking to provide vocational training with inputs in life skills and work readiness to 1 million school-dropout youth.
- SMV WHEELS – Provide a unique solution to cycle rickshaw drivers to become owners of their own vehicle in just over a year along with vocational support services.
- ESAF – Provide clean energy solutions to lower income groups with the help of Micro-credit programs.
This blog was originally posted in the Innovation Alchemy blog. |