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The National Cattlemen's Beef Association has criticized a review of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter. Conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the study was done as part of a required review of the coarse particulate matter standards. In effect, EPA is looking at the impact of duct. According to a statement from NCBA, coarse particulate matter is "nothing more than dust kicked up by cars and trucks traveling on dirt roads, a tractor tilling a field or cattle moving around on dirt," says Tamara Theis, NCBA's chief environmental council. "Studies do not show that rural dust is a health problem." EPA, back in 2006, set a coarse particulate matter standard of 150 micrograms per cubic meter of air, and when reviewing the standard in 2008, determined that the evidence on health effects from this level of dust was inconclusive. However, in July 2009, EPA reinterpreted what NCBA calls "the inconclusive evidence" and made use of what the group calls a flawed study to suggest that there are adverse health effects from dust at leves that are 10 times lower than the current standard. Theis says EPA is suggesting 12 to 15 micrograms of dust per cubic meter of air, which is below the naturally occurring levels of dust through most Western states - including "pristine National Parks," she says. If EPA were to set air standards at this level, much of the country would be over the limit. Cattle producers are concerned because it would limit the ability to raise livestock, but the issue goes beyond agriculture, Theis says. "States would be required to impose extreme control requirements and limitations on many businesses to ensure that the standard is met." The group is urging EPA to reject the study results and refrain from tightening the dust standard further.

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Grain farmers could make more money be switching to organic grain crops according to a new study released at last week's American Agricultural Economics Association's annual meeting. Records showed that organic crops fetched much more than conventional crops: soybeans, up to $14 more per bushel; corn, up to $3 more; and wheat, up to $5 more. Organic alfalfa hay is too new to have a track record, so researchers recorded it as selling for the same price as conventionally grown hay. Over four years the study analyzed both economic risks and transition effects of switching to organic farming of the Agricultural Research Service's Swan Lake Research Farm near Morris, Minn. The 130-acre Swan Lake farm is representative of typical corn-soybean farms in Minnesota. ARS economist David Archer and soil scientist Hillarius Kludze compared an organic corn-soybean rotation and an organic corn-soybean-spring wheat/alfalfa rotation - half grown with conventional tillage and half with strip tillage - with a corn-soybean rotation using conventional tillage. Strip tillage involves tilling only the middle of the seedbed. The scientists found that when strip tillage is used with organic farming, one of the transition risks is an increase in weeds until farmers learn to manage the system. Computer simulations projected costs, yields and risks over a 20-year period, using yield and economic data from the four-year study, as well as crop price records of recent years. Another computer model projected that farmers would net an average $50 to $60 more per acre a year by going organic, even with the highest transition costs. The premium price advantage would outweigh the initial higher costs and possibly lower yields, even if organic prices were to drop by half.

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Basic Use To make a new number, a simple initialization suffices: var foo = 0; // or whatever number you want foo = 1; //foo = 1 foo += 2; //foo = 3 (the two gets added on) foo -= 2; //foo = 1 (the two gets removed) Number literals define the number value. In particular: They appear as a set of digits of varying length. Negative literal numbers have a minus sign before the set of digits. Floating point literal numbers contain one decimal point, and may optionally use the E notation with the character e. An integer literal may be prepended with "0", to indicate that a number is in base-8. (8 and 9 are not octal digits, and if found, cause the integer to be read in the normal base-10). An integer literal may also be found with "0x", to indicate a hexadecimal number. The Math Object Unlike strings, arrays, and dates, the numbers aren't objects. The Math object provides numeric functions and constants as methods and properties. The methods and properties of the Math object are referenced using the dot operator in the usual way, for example: var varOne = Math.ceil(8.5); var varPi = Math.PI; var sqrt3 = Math.sqrt(3); Methods random() Generates a pseudo-random number. var myInt = Math.random(); max(int1, int2) Returns the highest number from the two numbers passed as arguments. var myInt = Math.max(8, 9); document.write(myInt); //9 min(int1, int2) Returns the lowest number from the two numbers passed as arguments. var myInt = Math.min(8, 9); document.write(myInt); //8 floor(float) Returns the greatest integer less than the number passed as an argument. var myInt = Math.floor(90.8); document.write(myInt); //90; ceil(float) Returns the least integer greater than the number passed as an argument. var myInt = Math.ceil(90.8); document.write(myInt); //91; round(float) Returns the closest integer to the number passed as an argument. var myInt = Math.round(90.8); document.write(myInt); //91;

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LANs to WANs(c) The Complete Management Guide Authors: Muller N.J. Published year: 2003 |< Day Day Up >| Depending on the situation facing network managers, bridges can be used to either extend or segment LANs. At one level, bridges can be used for segmenting LANs into smaller subnets to improve performance, control access, and facilitate fault isolation and testing without impacting the overall user population. At another level, they are used to create an extended network that greatly expands the number of devices that can be supported and the services available to each user . Bridges may even offer additional features such as data compression, which has the effect of providing greater throughput over low-speed lines. Compression ratios of 2:1 all the way down to 6:1 may be selected by the network manager, depending on what the vendor offers with a specific product. As noted, bridging occurs at the data link layer (see Figure 5.1), which provides physical addressing, manages access to the physical medium, controls data flow, and handles transmission errors. Bridges analyze incoming frames, make forwarding decisions based on the source and destination addresses of those frames, and then forward the frames to their destinations. Sometimes, as in source-route bridging, the frame contains the entire path to the destination. In other cases, as in transparent bridging, frames are forwarded one hop at a time toward the destination. Figure 5.1: Bridge functionality in reference to the OSI model. Bridges can be either local or remote. Local bridges provide direct connections between many LAN segments in the same area. Remote bridges connect LAN segments in different areas, usually over telecommunication lines. There are several kinds of bridging and all may be supported in the same device: Transparent bridging —used mostly in Ethernet environments that have the same media types, these bridges keep a table of destination addresses and outbound interfaces. Source-route bridging —used mostly in token-ring environments, these bridges only forward frames based on the routing indicator contained in the frame. End stations are responsible for determining and maintaining the table of destination addresses and routing indicators. Translation bridging —used to bridge data between different media types, these devices typically go between Ethernet and FDDI or token ring to Ethernet. Source-route translation bridging —this is a combination of source-route bridging and transparent bridging that allows communication in mixed Ethernet and token-ring environments. (Translation bridging without routing indicators between token ring and Ethernet is also called source-route transparent bridging.) The engine for transparent bridging is the spanning tree algorithm (STA), which dynamically discovers a loop-free subset of the network’s topology. The STA accomplishes this by placing active bridge ports that create loops into a standby or blocked condition. A blocked port can provide redundancy in that if the primary port fails, it can be activated to take the traffic load. The spanning tree calculation is triggered when the bridge is powered up and whenever a change in topology is detected . A topology change might occur when a forwarding port is going down (blocking) or when a port transitions to forwarding and the bridge has a designated port, which also indicates that the bridge is not standalone. Configuration messages known as bridge protocol data units (BPDUs) actually trigger the spanning tree calculation. These messages are exchanged between bridges at regular intervals set by the network manager, usually 1 to 4 seconds. Once a change in topology is detected, this information must be shared with all bridges on the network. This is a two-step process that starts when a bridge notifies the root bridge of the spanning tree by sending it a special BPDU known as a topology change notification (TCN). The bridge sends the TCN out over its root port. The root bridge acknowledges the message by sending back a normal configuration BPDU with the topology change acknowledgment (TCA) bit set. The second step in the topology update process entails the root bridge sending out configuration BPDUs with the topology change (TC) bit set. These BPDUs are relayed by every bridge, so they can become aware of the changed topology. There are some problems associated with spanning tree. The more hosts on the network, the higher the probability of topology changes. For example, a directly attached host, such as a client or server, will trigger a topology change when powered off, then go on to clear an operating system problem. In a large, flat network, the point can be reached when it is continually in topology change status. The resulting high level of flooding can lead to an unstable STP environment. To deal with this problem, vendors have come up with ways to avoid TCN generation for certain events. For example, the network manager can configure the bridge so that it issues a TCN when a server is power cycled, but not when client devices are power cycled. If a bridge port going up or down is not deemed an important event, this event too can be programmed not to issue a TCN. Source-route bridging (SRB) is used in the token-ring environment as the method by which a station establishes a route through a multiple-ring network to its destination. The first step for a station to reach another is to create a packet called an explorer. This packet is copied by all bridges in the network, with each of them adding information about itself before passing it on. The explorer packet’s routing information field (RIF) contains the information of where it has traversed through the network and within the RIF; a route descriptor stores the path it has taken through the network. As the explorer packet is constructed on its way through the network, the destination station will start receiving data packets from the originating station. Based on the contents of the explorer packet, the destination station will then decide which route to use to send data packets back to the originating station. Or it will send its own explorer packet so that the originating station can determine its own route. The explorer packet is limited in terms of how many rings it can hold in the routing information field. Although the RIF can hold a total of 14 rings, IBM long ago limited this to seven. Other vendors also adopted this limitation. Consequently, an explorer packet that has traversed seven rings will be dropped in the network. To control traffic in the network with more precision, parameters can be set in the bridge to decrease this number even further, so that packets that reach X number of rings (any number below seven) will be dropped. While explorers are limited to traversing only seven rings, in a meshed ring environment, one explorer can finish being copied by many bridges, which can cause too many explorers. Explorer storms can be prevented in redundant network topologies by setting the bridge to filter out explorers that have already been forwarded once. Since explorer traffic can be distinguished from regular source route traffic, the network manager can issue commands that check the bridge for various parameters, such as the number of explorers that were dropped outbound on that interface. While Ethernet has become the network of choice for new installations, there is still a good amount of token ring in use, making it necessary to mix the two environments for data exchange. Doing so is complicated because some very fundamental differences between Ethernet and token ring must be reconciled. Token ring has functional addresses, while Ethernet primarily relies on broadcasts. Furthermore, MAC addresses on the Ethernet are different from MAC addresses on the token ring. Ethernet does not have a source-route bridging capability and token ring has a routing information field. Finally, token ring and Ethernet use different methods to read the bits into their adapters. To unify the two environments, vendors have come up with various methods such as translation bridging. This is a type of bridging that is implemented on networks that use different MAC sublayer protocols, providing a method of resolving differences in header formats and protocol specifications. Since there are no real standards in how communication between two media types should occur, however, no single translation implementation can be called correct. The only consideration for network managers is to select a method of translation and implement it uniformly throughout the network. Essentially, the bridges reorder source and destination address bits when translating between Ethernet and token-ring frame formats. The problem of embedded MAC-addresses can be resolved by programming the bridge to look for various types of MAC addresses. Some translation-bridges simply check for the most popular embedded addresses. If others are used, the bridge must be programmed to look for them as well. But if translation-bridging software runs in a multi-protocol router, which is very common today, these protocols can be routed and the problem avoided entirely. Token ring’s RIF field has a component that indicates the largest frame size that can be accepted by a particular source-route bridging implementation. Translation bridges that send frames from the transparent-bridging domain to the SRB domain usually set the maximum transfer unit (MTU) field to 1,500 bytes to limit the size of token-ring frames entering the transparent-bridging domain, because this is the maximum size of Ethernet frames. Some hosts cannot process this field correctly, in which case translation bridges are forced to drop the frames that exceed Ethernet’s MTU size. Bits representing token-ring functions that are absent in Ethernet are discarded by translation bridges. For example, token ring’s priority, reservation, and monitor bits are discarded during translation. And token ring’s frame status bits are treated differently, depending on the bridge manufacturer; the products of some manufacturers may even ignore these bits. Sometimes, the bridge will have the C bit set, indicating that the frame has been copied, but not the A bit set, indicating that the destination station recognizes the address. In the former case, a token-ring source node determines if the frame it sent has become lost. Advocates of this approach claim that reliability mechanisms, such as the tracking of lost frames, are better left for implementation in Layer 4 of the OSI model. Advocates of setting the C bit argue that this bit must be set to track lost frames, but that the A bit cannot be set because the bridge is not the final destination. Translation bridges also can be used to create a software gateway between the token ring and Ethernet domains. To the SRB end stations, the translation bridge has a ring number and a bridge number associated with it, so it looks like a standard source-route bridge. In this case, the ring number reflects the entire transparent-bridging domain. To the transparent-bridging domain, the translation bridge is just another transparent bridge. When bridging from the SRB domain to the transparent-bridging domain, SRB information is removed. Token ring’s routing information fields usually are cached for use by any subsequent return traffic. When bridging from the transparent bridging to the SRB domain, the translation bridge checks the frame to see if it has a multicast or unicast destination. If the frame has a multicast or broadcast destination, it is sent into the SRB domain as a spanning-tree explorer. If the frame has a unicast address, the translation bridge looks up the destination in the RIF cache. If a path is found, it is used and the RIF information is added to the frame; otherwise , the frame is sent as a spanning-tree explorer. Another solution to unify the Ethernet and token-ring environments is source-route translation bridging (SRTLB). This entails the addition of bridge groups to the interfaces of both the token ring and Ethernet bridges to create a transparent bridge domain between the two environments. The bridges at each end are responsible for establishing the path through the network. When a bridge on a token ring receives a packet from an Ethernet, for example, path establishment is handled as follows (see Figure 5.2): Figure 5.2: Source-route translation bridging, from token ring to Ethernet. Bridge-1 receives a packet from the Ethernet. This is from PC-1 to the host. Bridge-1 needs a RIF to reach the host, so it creates an explorer to learn the path to reach the host. After Bridge-1 receives the response, it sends the response (without a RIF) to the Ethernet station. PC-1 sends an exchange identifier (XID) to the host MAC address. Bridge-1 gets the Ethernet packet, attaches the RIF to the host, and sends the packet on its way. As far as the host is concerned , the Ethernet is sitting on a pseudo ring. This is configured with the source-bridge transparent command on the bridge. The pseudo ring makes the host treat the Ethernet as if it were a token ring. |< Day Day Up >| LANs to WANs(c) The Complete Management Guide Authors: Muller N.J. Published year: 2003

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Marion Levine teaches English, Literature and Film Production at Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, Los Angeles, CA Measure for Measure, Act 4 or 5 What's On for Today and Why Students will choose a character from Measure for Measure and create a "back story" for that character. This will encourage students to read the text closely looking for clues regarding a specific character's history. Students will re-read a portion of the text and then write about what has happened to the character before the play begins. They will then create an artifact, such as a diary or journal entry, written by the charcacter they have selected. This will allow them the opportunity to think like the character and to view the events of the play from a specific point of view. This lesson will take two 40 minute class periods. What You Need Measure for Measure, Folger Edition What To Do 1. Explain the concept of a "back story" as the important events that occur to a character before the play begins. You may need to prompt students with questions such as: What was the character like as a child? In what situation did he/she grow up? Students will need to show how the script supports their choices. 2. Have the students write a one or two page back story in either the first or third person. 3. Divide students into small groups of 4 or 5 and have them re-read Act 4 or Act 5, combing throught the text for character details. 4. Have students write a letter, diary or journal entry from their selected characters point of view (first person). This artifact should concern one or more characters in the play. 5. For increased authenticity, appropriate for an "Extra-Extended" book, students could write their letter, diary entry using calligraphy, a handwriting font or on a piece of yellowed paper. 6. Allow students time to read their pieces and share their artifacts with the class. How Did It Go? Were students able to justify their choices with reference to the text? Did their artifacts accurately portray character traits that can be interpreted from the text? Were students able to convey a sense of the character's perspective through this activity? This lesson could be applied to any fictional text that the students read in class. Through close reading and attention to a specific character, students are able to identify with, and understand the concerns of a character on a deeper level. Possible choices could include Jay Gatsby, Hester Prynne,and Atticus Finch. If you used this lesson, we would like to hear how it went and about any adaptations you made to suit the needs of YOUR students.

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Vanilla is a product of Lussumo:Documentation and Support. 1 to 16 of 16 This year’s Nobel Prize in medicine went to a trio of scientists who discovered the enzyme telomerase, which allows cells to divide without any limits, making them effectively immortal.It may be nature’s greatest double-edged sword. Coax cells into producing telomerase, and they will survive indefinitely, but they will also become cancerous. “In the absence of a comprehensive understanding, it’s very dangerous,” Muller said. “We have to figure out how to do maintenance on our telomeres.”Muller thinks humans could live for 90 to 210 years once scientists know more about the molecular basis of aging.“If we could figure out how to do maintenance, we could extend our lives,” he said. “But it has to be done very carefully, and we’d have to have a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism. ” It really does my heart good to know that I'm part of one of the last generations to not live forever.

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Cancer Fighting Foods/Spices The National Cancer Institute estimates that roughly one-third of all cancer deaths may be diet related. What you eat can hurt you, but it can also help you. Many of the common foods found in grocery stores or organic markets contain cancer-fighting properties, from the antioxidants that neutralize the damage caused by free radicals to the powerful phytochemicals that scientists are just beginning to explore. There isn’t a single element in a particular food that does all the work: The best thing to do is eat a variety of foods. The following foods have the ability to help stave off cancer and some can even help inhibit cancer cell growth or reduce tumor size. Avocados are rich in glutathione, a powerful antioxidant that attacks free radicals in the body by blocking intestinal absorption of certain fats. They also supply even more potassium than bananas and are a strong source of beta-carotene. Scientists also believe that avocados may also be useful in treating viral hepatitis (a cause of liver cancer), as well as other sources of liver damage. Broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower have a chemical component called indole-3-carbinol that can combat breast cancer by converting a cancer-promoting estrogen into a more protective variety. Broccoli, especially sprouts, also have the phytochemical sulforaphane, a product of glucoraphanin – believed to aid in preventing some types of cancer, like colon and rectal cancer. Sulforaphane induces the production of certain enzymes that can deactivate free radicals and carcinogens. The enzymes have been shown to inhibit the growth of tumors in laboratory animals. However, be aware that the Agriculture Department studied 71 types of broccoli plants and found a 30-fold difference in the amounts of glucoraphanin. It appears that the more bitter the broccoli is, the more glucoraphanin it has. Broccoli sprouts have been developed under the trade name BroccoSprouts that have a consistent level of sulforaphane – as much as 20 times higher than the levels found in mature heads of broccoli. Carrots contain a lot of beta carotene, which may help reduce a wide range of cancers including lung, mouth, throat, stomach, intestine, bladder, prostate and breast. Some research indicated beta carotene may actually cause cancer, but this has not proven that eating carrots, unless in very large quantities – 2 to 3 kilos a day, can cause cancer. In fact, a substance called falcarinol that is found in carrots has been found to reduce the risk of cancer, according to researchers at Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences (DIAS). Kirsten Brandt, head of the research department, explained that isolated cancer cells grow more slowly when exposed to falcarinol. This substance is a polyacethylen, however, so it is important not to cook the carrots. Chili peppers and jalapenos contain a chemical, capsaicin, which may neutralize certain cancer-causing substances (nitrosamines) and may help prevent cancers such as stomach cancer. November 20, 2008 at 3:27 pm Maybe you should be eating more beets, left, or chopped cabbage. (Credit: Evan Sung for The New York Times, left Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice. - Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters. How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power. - Cabbage: Loaded with nutrients like sulforaphane, a chemical said to boost cancer-fighting enzymes. How to eat: Asian-style slaw or as a crunchy topping on burgers and sandwiches. - Swiss chard: A leafy green vegetable packed with carotenoids that protect aging eyes. How to eat it: Chop and saute in olive oil. - Cinnamon: Helps control blood sugar and cholesterol. How to eat it: Sprinkle on coffee or oatmeal. - Pomegranate juice: Appears to lower blood pressure and loaded with antioxidants. How to eat: Just drink it. - Dried plums: Okay, so they are really prunes, but packed with cancer-fighting antioxidants. How to eat: Wrapped in prosciutto and baked. - Pumpkin seeds: The most nutritious part of the pumpkin and packed with magnesium; high levels of the mineral are associated with lower risk for early death. How to eat: Roasted as a snack, or sprinkled on salad. - Sardines: Dr. Bowden calls them “health food in a can.’’ They are high in omega-3’s, contain virtually no mercury and are loaded with calcium. They also contain iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese as well as a full complement of B vitamins. How to eat: Choose sardines packed in olive or sardine oil. Eat plain, mixed with salad, on toast, or mashed with dijon mustard and onions as a spread. - Turmeric: The “superstar of spices,’’ it has anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties. How to eat: Mix with scrambled eggs or in any vegetable dish. - Frozen blueberries: Even though freezing can degrade some of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables, frozen blueberries are available year-round and don’t spoil; associated with better memory in animal studies. How to eat: Blended with yogurt or chocolate soy milk and sprinkled with crushed almonds. - Canned pumpkin: A low-calorie vegetable that is high in fiber and immune-stimulating vitamin A; fills you up on very few calories. How to eat: Mix with a little butter, cinnamon and nutmeg. You can find more details and recipes on the Men’s Health Web site, which published the original version of the list last year. In my own house, I only have two of these items — pumpkin seeds, which I often roast and put on salads, and frozen blueberries, which I mix with milk, yogurt and other fruits for morning smoothies. How about you? Have any of these foods found their way into your shopping cart? Courtesy: New York Times July 1, 2008 at 9:06 am

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| Welcome to the lava tube portion of the Virtual Cave. Lava tube caves are found throughout the world in places where fluid lava has flown over the surface. The longest and most vertically extensive lava tubes known are on the Big Island of Hawai`i. Our idealized lava tube cross-section is based on the tubes there, and most of the photos are from there. Lava tubes are found in the western U.S.A. (Washington, California, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona), the Canary Islands, Galapagos Islands, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kenya, Mexico, and many other volcanic regions. Most tubes form when fluid lava flows down the sides of volcanoes, the upper layer begins to cool, and the lava beneath continues to flow in tubular conduits beneath the surface. Due to the insulating effects of the hardened lava above, molten lava is able to travel a considerable distance underground with very little cooling. In Hawaii, lava tubes have carried fluid lavas 50 or more miles from their source! Tubes may also form when lava follows trenches or gulleys on the surface, which then roof over as lava accumulates along the top edges. Lava tubes contain many features similar to those in limestone caves, such as stalactites and stalagmites, helictites, and a sort of flowstone. Most of the features in the diagram were made when the cave was active and during the early cooling stage. Secondary minerals may be deposited in the tubes later, such as gypsum or calcite crystals, but these tend to be on a much smaller scale than you can find in limestone caves. To take a tour of the wondrous world of lava tubes, select a feature in context on our very cool Virtual Lava Tube Map (drawn by master lava tube cartographer Carlene Allred) or choose from the list above it. Not all of the items in the text list are represented on the image map. Those are shown in all capital letters, so be sure to check these newer pages out. Start here: BIRTH of a LAVA TUBE Check out my new book on lava tubes, based on the Virtual Lava Tube, called CAVES OF FIRE: INSIDE AMERICA'S LAVA TUBES. It is both a guide to lava tube features (with many more examples of each than shown here on the website) and describes and pictures many lava tubes that you can easily find and visit in national, state, and county parks and forests. It has 128 pages with 345 color images. Now available through the National Speleological Society Bookstore |Created: August 4, 2000 Last update: December 11, 2008 Author: Dave Bunnell Reviewed by Kevin & Carlene Allred

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Question from Amanda: Where and what acids are found in wine. Which wines have more acid (dry or sweet) and why due to the climate. Explain why and how titration can be used to determine the relative acid content of wine. If you could help answer my question i would be very grateful. Answer: Hi, Amanda! Thanks for your question! I’ll do my best…. The main grape acid is tartaric, a relatively strong acid, unlike most fruits. It’s followed by malic (found in lots of fruits and vegetables) and there are trace amounts of lots of different acids. We have an article on wine components, including acid, at goosecross.com. Generally, white wines are higher in acid than reds, for aesthetic reasons. Sweet wines should be the highest of all, to offset the sweetness, or the wine will be cloying. Cool climates usually produce wines of high acid compared to warm climates because heat causes the sugar to go up and the acid to go down. A Chardonnay from Burgundy, France is almost always higher in acid than a Napa Valley Chardonnay because of the difference in climate. Imagine trying to ripen tomatoes in a cold climate–they will be quite tart! Titration is a simple color-change test. I’ve paraphrased this from a wine text: Titration is the process of determining the concentration of a substance, such as acid, in a solution by adding a carefully measured standard reagent (usually sodium hydroxide) until a reaction (change in color) occurs due to the presence of an indicator (phenolphthalein). Most home winemakers buy inexpensive kits to do this. I hope this helps you. Are you studying wine making?

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Westminster Confession of Faith The Westminster Confession of Faith is perhaps the most notable expression in creedal form of the truths of the Bible. It was the work of that assembly of divines which was called together by Parliament and met in London, at Westminster Abbey, during the years 1643-1648. It was this assembly which also produced the Larger and Shorter Catechisms. The Confession and the Catechisms are used by many churches as their doctrinal standards, subordinate to the Word of God. The text of the Confession as given in this document is in the form adopted by the Bible Presbyterian Church in 1938, and, except for a few revisions, which are largely concerned with eschatology, as well as with the relation of the civil magistrate to the church, it agrees with the text of the original manuscript of the Confession. A list of changes can be found here, together with the reading of the original.

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Most of us know someone with a food allergy. I certainly do-two of my children have been labeled with life threatening food allergies; one to peanuts and tree nuts and the other to soy. Every time I head to the grocery store I spend a tremendous amount of time reading each and every label-including labels that I am familiar with to be sure they haven’t changed. This is a necessity to keep my family safe and healthy. In January, 2006, the new Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA) took effect. The law requires food manufacturers to identify all ingredients in a food product containing one or more of the eight major allergens. The eight foods identified by the law are: - Fish (e.g., bass, flounder, cod) - Crustacean shellfish (e.g. crab, lobster, shrimp) - Tree nuts (e.g., almonds, walnuts, pecans) The law states that the name of the food source of a major food allergen must appear: - In parentheses following the name of the ingredient. Examples: “lecithin (soy),” “flour (wheat),” and “whey (milk)” – OR – - Immediately after or next to the list of ingredients in a “contains” statement. Example: “Contains Wheat, Milk, and Soy.” Most companies are very clear in their labeling and use the “contains” language in bold after their ingredient list. HERE’S WHERE IT GETS REALLY CONFUSING I have been scrutinizing food labels for years-I am noticing that I have to squint these days to read the fine print. Many labels contain language about cross-contamination-if the food was processed on shared equipment or shared processing lines with one of the 8 allergens. But not all manufacturers are listing cross-contamination information. The reason being- companies are not required to include this information. There are no particular regulations on whether they need to add statements such as “may contain traces of peanuts,” for example, for foods that aren’t supposed to contain such allergens. It is a company’s choice whether or not to include this information, and how to word it. How to decide if cross-contamination is an issue So the bottom line is YOU will need to determine what degree of risk you are comfortable with when purchasing foods. That is a lot of pressure when you are buying food for someone else. Here is my internal checklist for deciding whether or not to buy a product: - I first check the ingredients list for the 8 common allergens. - If there is no cross-contamination or “may contain” information I then look at the other same brand products on the shelf. If there are other products that have either nuts or soy I will more often than not assume there might be cross-contamination. - I might contact the manufacturer on occasion to ask specifically about a cross-contamination issue. Let me know how do you decide which products are safe to purchase? My Go-To Food Allergy Sites:

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The basics of heat stress When the thermometer rises, it can-and often does-create a multitude of problems. Anyone, given the right (or wrong) conditions, can get heat stress. Some are lucky enough to suffer only from heat cramps, while those who are less fortunate may be laid up by heat exhaustion or devastated by heat stroke. As the long, hot days of summer approach, it is helpful to review the effects of warm weather on the human body, the illnesses that may result and what you can do. How the body stays cool Unknowingly, you constantly engage your body in the life-and-death struggle to disperse the heat it produces. If allowed to accumulate, this heat would quickly increase your body temperature beyond its comfortable 98.6oF. This does not normally happen because your body is able to lose enough heat to maintain a steady temperature. You become aware of this struggle for heat balance during hard labor or exercise in hot environments, when your body produces heat faster than it can lose it. Under certain conditions, your body may build up too much heat, your temperature may rise to life-threatening levels, and you may become delirious or lose consciousness. This is called heat stroke, and it is a serious medical emergency. If you do not rid your body of excess heat fast enough, it cooks the brain and other vital organs. It often is fatal, and those who survive may have permanent damage to their vital organs. Before your temperature reaches heat-stroke levels, however, you may suffer heat exhaustion with its flu-like symptoms, and while treating its symptoms you avoid heat stroke. How does your body dispose of excess heat? Humans lose heat largely through their skin, similar to how a car loses heat through its radiator. Exercising muscles warms the blood, just as a car's hot engine warms its radiator fluid. Warm blood travels through the skin's dilated blood vessels losing heat by evaporating sweat to the surrounding air, just like a car loses engine heat through its radiator. When blood delivers heat to the skin, two of the most important ways the body loses heat are radiation and evaporation (vaporization of sweat). When the temperature is 70oF or less, the body releases its heat by radiation. As environmental temperatures approach your body temperature, you lose less heat through radiation. In fact, people working on hot summer days actually gain heat through radiation from the sun. This leaves evaporation as the only way to effectively control body temperature. Water loss Your body is about half water. You lose about 2 quarts every day (breathing, urinating, bowel movements and sweat). A working adult can produce 2 quarts of sweat per hour for short periods and up to 15 quarts per day. Because the body's water absorption rate of 1.5 quarts per hour is less than the body's 2 quarts per hour sweat rate, dehydration results. This happens because you cannot drink enough water to keep up with your sweat losses. If you drink only when you are thirsty, you are dehydrated already. Thirst is not a good guide for when to drink water. In fact, in hot and humid conditions, you may be so dehydrated by the time you become thirsty that you will have trouble catching up with your fluid losses. One guideline regarding your water intake is to monitor your urine. You are getting enough water if you produce clear urine at least five times a day. Cloudy or dark urine, or urinating less than five times a day, means you should drink more. In the Gulf War, American armed forces followed the practice of the Israeli army: drinking a minimum of 1 quart of fluid per hour. This tactic resulted in zero deaths from heat illness. In contrast, during the Six Day War of 1967, more than 20,000 Egyptian soldiers died3/4with no visible wounds3/4most likely from dehydration and heat illness because they were restricted to 3 quarts daily. While working in hot weather, drink 8 ounces of water every 20 minutes. Generally, 16 ounces is the most a person can comfortably drink at once. You cannot "catch up" by drinking extra water later because only about 1 quart of water per hour can pass out of the stomach. Therefore, if possible, workers should begin drinking water before they start work. Cool water (50oF) is easier for the stomach to absorb than warm water, and a little flavoring may make the water more tasty. The best fluids are those that leave the stomach fast and contain little sodium and some sugar (less than 8 percent). You should avoid coffee and tea because they contain caffeine, which is a diuretic that increases water loss through urination. Alcoholic beverages also dehydrate by increasing urination. Soda pop contains about 10 percent sugar and, therefore, your body does not absorb it as well as water or commercial sports drinks. The sugar content of fruit juices ranges from 11 to 18 percent and has an even longer absorption time. Commercial sports drinks contain about 5 to 8 percent sugar. Electrolyte loss Sweat and urine contain potassium and sodium, which are essential electrolytes that control the movement of water in and out of the body's cells. Many everyday foods contain these electrolytes. Bananas and nuts are rich with potassium, and most American diets have up to 10 times as much sodium as the body needs. Getting enough salt is rarely a problem in the typical American diet. In fact, most Americans consume an excessive amount of sodium-averaging 5 to 10 grams of sodium per day-although we probably require only 1 to 3 grams. Therefore, sodium loss is seldom a problem, unless a person is sweating profusely for long periods and drinking large amounts of water. Commercial sports drinks can be useful if you are participating in vigorous physical activity for longer than 1 hour (some experts say longer than 4 hours). Most of the time, however, people merely require water to remain hydrated. The truth is that excessive sodium can draw water out of the body cells, accentuating the dehydration. In addition, drinking large amounts of water (more than 1 quart an hour) can cause water intoxication, a condition that flushes electrolytes from the body. Frequent urination and behavior changes (irrationality, combativeness, coma, seizures, etc.) are signs of water intoxication. Effects of humidity Sweat can only cool the body if it evaporates. In dry air, you will not notice sweat evaporating. However, sweat cannot evaporate in high-humidity conditions; it just drips off the skin. At about 70-percent humidity, sweating is ineffective in cooling the body. Because humidity can significantly reduce evaporative cooling, a highly humid but mildly warm day can be more stressful than a hot, dry one. Therefore, the higher the humidity, the lower the temperature at which heat risk begins, especially those who are generating heat with vigorous work. Who is at risk? Everyone is susceptible to heat illness if environmental conditions overwhelm the body's temperature-regulating mechanisms. Heat waves can set the stage for a rash of heat-stroke victims. For example, during the 1995 summer heat wave in Chicago, the death toll reached 590. People who are obese, chronically ill or alcoholics have an increased risk. The elderly are at higher risk because of impaired cardiac output and decreased ability to sweat. Infants and young children also are susceptible to heat stroke, as well. The fluid loss and dehydration resulting from physical activity puts outdoor laborers at particular risk. Certain medications predispose individuals to heat stroke, such as drugs that alter sweat production (antihistamines, antipsychotics, antidepressants) or interfere with thermoregulation. Heat illnesses Several disorders exist along the spectrum of heat illnesses. Heat cramps, heat exhaustion and heat stroke are on the more serious side of the scale, whereas heat syncope, heat edema and prickly heat are less serious (see "Heat illnesses," page C 18). Only heat stroke is life-threatening. Untreated heat-stroke victims always die. * Heat cramps are painful muscular spasms that occur suddenly. They usually involve the muscles in the back of the leg or the abdominal muscles. They tend to occur immediately after exertion and are caused by salt depletion. Victims may be drinking water without adequate salt content. However, some experts disagree because the typical American diet is heavy with salt. * Heat exhaustion is characterized by heavy perspiration with normal or slightly above-normal body temperatures. A depletion of water or salt3/4or both3/4causes this condition. Some experts believe severe dehydration is a better term because it happens to workers who do not drink enough fluids while working in hot environments. Symptoms include severe thirst, fatigue, headache, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The affected person often mistakenly believes he or she has the flu. Uncontrolled heat exhaustion can evolve into heat stroke. * Heat stroke is classified in two ways: classic and exertional. Classic heat stroke, also known as the "slow cooker," may take days to develop. This condition is prevalent during summer heat waves and typically affects poor, elderly, chronically ill, alcoholic or obese persons. Because the elderly often have medical problems, heat stroke exacerbates the problem, and more than 50 percent of elderly heat-stroke victims die3/4even with medical care. Death results from a combination of a hot environment and dehydration. Exertional heat stroke also is more common in the summer. You see it frequently in athletes, laborers and military personnel who sweat profusely. Known as the "fast cooker," this condition affects healthy, active individuals who strenuously work or play in a warm environment. Exertional heat-stroke victims usually are sweating when stricken, while the classic victims are not sweating. Its rapid onset does not allow enough time for severe dehydration to occur. Because uncontrolled heat exhaustion can evolve into heat stroke, you should know how to tell the difference between them. If the victim feels extremely hot when touched, suspect heat stroke. Another mark of heat stroke is that the victim's mental status (behavior) changes drastically3/4ranging from being slightly confused and disoriented to falling into a coma. In between these conditions, victims usually become irrational, agitated or even aggressive and may have seizures. In severe cases, the victim can go into a coma in less than 1 hour. The longer a coma lasts, the lower the chance for survival, so rescuers must be quick. A third way of distinguishing heat stroke from heat exhaustion is by rectal temperature. Obviously, this is not very practical because conscious heat-stroke victims may not cooperate. Taking a rectal temperature can be embarrassing to both victim and rescuer. Moreover, rectal thermometers are seldom available, and the whole procedure of finding the appropriate thermometer and then using it wastes time and distracts from important emergency care. In most cases, an ambulance arrives within 10 to 20 minutes. * Heat syncope, in which a person becomes dizzy or faints after exposure to high temperatures, is a self-limiting condition. Victims should lie down in a cool place when it occurs. Victims who are not nauseated can drink water. * Heat edema, which is also a self-limiting condition, causes ankles and feet to swell from heat exposure. It is more common in women unacclimated to a hot climate. It is related to salt and water retention and tends to disappear after acclimation. Wearing support stockings and elevating the legs often helps reduce swelling. * Prickly heat, also known as a heat rash, is an itchy rash that develops on skin that is wet from sweating. Dry and cool the skin. Cooling methods Sometimes the only way to stop possible damage is to cool the victim as quickly as possible. However, it is important to pay attention to both the cooling methods and cautions. * Ice baths cool a victim quickly but require a great deal of ice3/4at least 80 pounds3/4to be effective. Needing a big enough tub also limits this method. Cool-water baths3/4(less than 60oF)3/4can be successful if you stir the water to prevent a warm layer from forming around the body. This is the most effective method in highly humid conditions (greater than 75-percent humidity). * Spraying the victim with water combined with fanning is another method for cooling the body. The water droplets act as artificial sweat and cool the body through evaporation. However, this method is not effective in high humidity3/4greater than 75 percent. * Ice bags wrapped in wet towels and placed against the large veins in the groin, armpits and sides of the neck also cool the body, though not nearly as quickly as immersion. Cautions to remember when employing any cooling method include: * Do not delay the onset of cooling while waiting for an ambulance. Doing so increases the risk of tissue damage and prolonged hospitalization. * Stop cooling when the victim's mental status improves to avoid hypothermia. * Do not use rubbing alcohol to cool the skin. It can be absorbed into the blood, causing alcohol poisoning. Its vapors are a potential fire hazard. * Do not use aspirin or acetaminophen. They are not effective because the brain's control-center temperature is not elevated as it is with fever caused by diseases. Adjusting to heat Most heat illness occur during the first days of working in the heat. Therefore, acclimation (adjusting to the heat) is the main preventive measure. To better handle the heat, the body adjusts by decreasing the salt content in sweat and increases the sweating rate. Year-round exercise can help workers prepare for hot weather. Such activity raises the body's core temperature so it becomes accustomed to heat. Full acclimation, however, requires exercise in hot weather. You can do this by exercising a minimum of 60 to 90 minutes in the heat each day for 1 to 2 weeks. The acclimated heart pumps more blood with each stroke than a heart unused to working in the heat. Sweating earlier and doubles the amount of sweat per hour from 1.5 quarts to 3 quarts or more. When new workers are exposed to hot weather, team them with veterans of the heat who know how much water to drink. Heat illnesses are avoidable. With knowledge, preparation, fluid replacement and prompt emergency care, heat casualties need not be a factor for those working in warm weather. Dr. Alton Thygerson is a professor of health science at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. He also serves as the technical consultant for the National Safety Council's First Aid Institute. Want to use this article? Click here for options! © 2013 Penton Media Inc.

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Contemporary world politics make it necessary for nations to integrate into international unions in the interest of their own national security and economy. In these international unions, which are usually based upon geographic location, such factors as natural resources, trading blocs, and even cultural values play an important role. Many neighboring countries combine their resources under the auspices of such organizations, create defensive alliances, and cooperate on a wide array of issues. The goal of such unions is to preserve peace, control the arms race, resolve disputes through diplomacy, promote socioeconomic development, and protect fundamental human rights and democracy. At the present time, NATO, the OSCE, the EU, NAFTA, OPEC, ASEAN, the G-8, the D-8, and APEC are the foremost international political, military, and economic unions. These institutions are subject to organizational reforms because of new members or a widening of scope. All of these organizations, formed in the aftermath of the Second World War, have contributed to creating stability and order in the world and have played a major role in global socioeconomic development. Member nations protect their economic and military interests, and also acquire a stronger regional and international position. Even the developed world perceives the necessity of such partnerships. The creation of free trade zones, regional trade agreements, abolished customs controls, and even a common currency (as in the EU) safeguard the future of member states. Defensive pacts enable member states to reduce military expenditures and to divert those resources to cultural and educational fields. A similar organization will provide considerable benefits to Muslim nations. For those that are desperate for technological as well as economic development, the foremost step toward stability is the creation of a central organization or, in other words, a unified Islamic world under the auspices of the Islamic Union. Economic Development and Increasing Prosperity Economic cooperation is necessary on two counts: stability and development. Muslim nations must bring stability and solidity to their economies. Developing industries and making the required investments is vital, as is the need for a comprehensive development plan and the simultaneous development of education, economy, culture, science, and technology. While various sectors are developed technologically, the labor force's educational levels and standards must be raised accordingly. Society must be motivated to become more productive, and the resulting economic cooperation will play a major role in eradicating poverty, illiteracy, the unjust distribution of wealth, and other socioeconomic problems rampant in Muslim countries. This partnership can be formed only by the creation of free trade zones, customs unions, and common economic areas. Most Muslim countries have geostrategic importance as well as rich natural resources (e.g., natural gas and crude oil). These resources and strategic opportunities, however, are not being used effectively. In the Islamic world, 86% of the population's living standards fall below $2,000, 76% under $1,000, and 67% under $500 per year. When the Islamic world's total resources are considered,(1) this is quite a paradox: Roughly half of the petrol consumed in the West is exported from the Islamic world, as is 40% of the world's agricultural production.(2) Many economists and strategists freely admit that the world economy depends upon the Islamic world's oil and gas exports, in particular those of the Persian Gulf.(3) The Persian Gulf holds two-thirds of the planet's discovered crude oil reserves. Data obtained from research concludes that Saudi Arabia alone holds 25.4% of the world's oil reserves, or 262 billion barrels. A further 11% is found in Iraq, 9.6 % in the UAE, 9.2 % in Kuwait, 8.6 % in Iran, 13% in other OPEC member states. The rest is distributed across the remainder of the world.(4) Research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy shows that between 2000 and 2020, oil exports from the area will increase by 125%.(5) This means that the world will continue to meet most of its energy needs by imports from the Gulf region. Moreover, the Middle East has 40% of the global natural gas reserves; 35 % of these reserves are in the Gulf region.(6) Algeria, Libya, and other North African countries have 3.7 % of the world's reserves. The Caucasus and Central Asia are also rich in oil, natural gas, and other natural resources. For instance, Kazakhstan has between 10-17.6 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, and its natural gas reserves are estimated at between 53 and 83 trillion cubic feet. Turkmenistan hasbetween 98 and 155 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, making it the fourth largest producer.(7) Some other Muslim countries have valuable mineral resources. For instance, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are two of the world's leading gold producers. Turkey has one of the world's richest boron reserves, only recently discovered to be very important, and Tajikistan has the world's largest aluminum producing facilities. These advantages will become more important in the twenty-first century, which some have already christened the "energy century." Energy is an essential element of modern society in terms of the military, industry, urbanization, and transport. Given that economic activity and manufacturing depend primarily upon energy, nations will do their best to achieve control over these energy resources. The Islamic world is not using its resources effectively, for many of its members lack the infrastructure and technology to increase the production and use their natural resources to develop their industries. Therefore, the resources' contributions to the country's economy are limited to export earnings. These countries do not have the means to process their own crude oil, use it in their industrial complexes, or to develop their industries. Worse still, some Muslim nations do not even have the necessary means to explore and research their natural resources or to discover and extract them. Explorations undertaken by foreign companies reveal that other Muslim nations have oil and gas reserves, but they cannot benefit from their resources. Naturally, the ineffective use of natural resources is not the Islamic world's only economic problem. However, solving this problem can begin the process of solving many other problems. The economies of Muslim nations contain differences in structure and functioning. Some nations' economies depend upon mineral resources, such as the members of OPEC, while other nations' depend upon agriculture. These differences are also reflected, to some extent, in their social structures, such as the widely varying degrees of rural and urban populations. Developing complementary relationships and helping each other in their respective areas of expertise can turn these differences into a source of riches. All of this will be possible with the Islamic Union. Joint ventures and project partnerships will be an important step in the right direction, for they will enable countries to benefit from one another's experiences and the income earned from investment projects will benefit all of the participating countries. Such mutual financial support is compatible with Islamic morality, for helping the needy and having a sense of social responsibility are important characteristics that Muslims strive to acquire. Many verses in the Qur’an remind Muslims to watch over the needy. Society's internal cohesion must be extended to international relations. As international cooperation within a partnership cannot be one-sided, employment and income levels will rise in both countries. For example, one country will produce oil and another one will process it, and agriculturally dependent countries will be able to import the food they need from agriculturally developed countries. A manpower-poor country’s need will be met by another Islamic country, while rich countries will be able to invest in and help out a manpower-rich country that does not have enough jobs for its people. This will be to the benefit of both. Sharing know-how and experience will increase prosperity, and all Muslims will benefit from technological developments. Joint ventures that realize the Islamic world's unification of opportunities and means will enable Muslims to produce hi-tech products. The Islamic common market will enable Muslim-made products to be marketed in other Muslim countries without the hindrance of customs, quotas, and other cross-border obstacles. The marketplace will grow, the market share and exports of all Muslim nations will rise, industrialization will speed up, and economic development will bring progress in technology. The living standards and wealth of Muslim nations will increase, and their existing inequalities will disappear. Some free trade agreements are already in place between countries in the Gulf, the Pacific Rim, and North Africa. Trade agreements signed by Turkey are already operational in the Islamic world. Bilateral cooperation exists in some regions; however, their scope must be widened. Such cooperation will safeguard the rights and interests of all Muslim nations and lead to all of them becoming developed—a result from which all of them will derive a far greater benefit than if they do not cooperate with each other. All of these can be realized only under a central authority's leadership and coordination. Achieving this will be possible if Muslim nations adopt the Qur'an's values and the Prophet's (May God bless him and grant him peace) Sunnah, or, in other words, if they adopt Islamic culture. The Islamic Union must lead the way to this cultural awakening, as well as the resulting political and economic cooperation. Mutual cooperation among Muslims, part of the Islamic code, must be adhered to by all Muslims, for God commands people to refrain from avarice and to guard the needy and support one another. In fact, destitute people have a due share of the believers' wealth (Qur'an, 51:19). As the Qur'an proclaims: Our Lord also reveals that believers are one another's guardians (Qur'an, 9:71). The word "guardian" conveys such meanings as friend, helper, mentor, and protector. It also expresses the importance of cooperation and solidarity between Muslim nations. The cooperation that will arise from this fraternal awareness between Muslim nations will bring prosperity and wealth to Muslims and eradicate poverty, an important problem of the Islamic world. Societies that follow the Qur'an's values will not experience famine, destitution, and poverty. Muslims will develop their nations by following rational and long-term policies, establishing good relations with other nations and people, valuing trade and development, and learning from other cultures' experiences. This was so in history and, God willing, under the Islamic Union's leadership it will be so once again. 1- Demetrios Yiokaris, Islamic Leage Study Guide-1997, United Nations: Study Guides. Online at: www.vaxxine.com/cowac/islmclg1.htm. 2- “Islamic Countries have the resources to match the west, scientist”, Arabic News.com, 28 May 2000. Online at: www.arabicnews.com/ansub/ Daily/Day/000628/2000062848.html. 3- Anthony H. Cordesman and Arleigh A. Burke, “The Gulf and Transition: Executive Summary and Major Policy Recommendations” (October 30, 2000). 4- Anthony H. Cordesman and Arleigh A. Burke, “The US Military and the Evolving Challenges in the Middle East” (March 9, 2002), 3. 5- Anthony H. Cordesman and Arleigh A. Burke, “The US Military and the Evolving Challenges in the Middle East” (March 9, 2002), 3. 6- Anthony H. Cordesman and Arleigh A. Burke, “The US Military and the Evolving Challenges in the Middle East” (March 9, 2002), 4. 7- Jim Nichol, “Central Asia’s New States: Political Developments and Implications for U.S. Interests,” CRS (Congressional Research Service) Issue Brief for Congress (June 13, 2003). Online at: www.ncseonline.org/NLE/CRS/abstract.cfm?NLEid=16833.

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Harold Urey was the teacher of the American researcher Stanley Miler at Chicago University. Because of Urey’s contribution to Miller’s 1953 experiment on the origin of life, this is also known as the Urey-Miller Experiment. This experiment is the only “proof” used to supposedly confirm the molecular evolution thesis, which is put forward as the first stage in the evolutionary process. However, the experiment was never able to offer any findings to support evolutionist claims regarding the origin of life. (See The Miller Experiment.) —See Miller Experiment, The.

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There could be genetic reasons why some women succumb to pressure to be thin, while others maintain a positive body image, according to US researchers. “We’re all bombarded daily with messages extoling the virtues of being thin, yet intriguingly only some women develop what we term thin ideal internalisation,” study author Jessica Suisman from Michigan State University said in a press release. “This suggests that genetic factors may make some women more susceptible to this pressure than others.” Suisman and her colleagues studied more than 300 female twins aged 12 to 22 to see whether genetic factors influenced how vulnerable women are to societal thin ideals. They measured how much the participants wanted to look like people from TV, movies and magazines, then compared identical twins, who share exactly the same genes, with fraternal twins, who share 50 percent of their genes. The researchers found identical twins had closer levels of thin idealisation, which suggested genetics plays a part in determining body image. “We were surprised to find that shared environmental factors, such as exposure to the same media, did not have as big an impact as expected,” Suisman said. “Instead, non-shared factors that make co-twins different from each other had the greatest impact. The broad cultural risk factors that we thought were most influential in the development of thin-ideal internalisation are not as important as genetic risk and environmental risk factors that are specific and unique to each twin." Megan O'Connor, from Eating Disorders Victoria, told ninemsn that experts are becoming increasingly aware of the potential genetic link. "There are often examples of a mother and two of her daughters having eating disorders –– anecdotally we are hearing of family traits," she said. O'Connor said families need to be aware of the possible genetic link and put responsible measures in place. "People can certainly modify the sorts of language they use in their family about weight, dieting and body shape," she said. "There is evidence to suggest that eating family meals together and having a healthy and relaxed relationship with food helps protect against eating disorders." The study was published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

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To learn more about cholesterol, browse any of the cholesterol topics below. About Cholesterol Cholesterol itself isn't bad. We all have and need this wax-like substance in our bodies. Learn about the so-called "good" and "bad" cholesterol, where it comes from, and why it's important for your health. Why Cholesterol Matters High cholesterol is one of the major risk factors leading to heart disease, heart attack and stroke. Discover the reasons to keep your cholesterol controlled. Understand Your Risk for Cholesterol High cholesterol levels can run in families, and women generally tend to have higher levels of HDL than men. Find out more about who has high cholesterol, and discover why managing cholesterol is important even for children. Prevention & Treatment of Cholesterol You can lower your cholesterol and reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke. Take responsibility for managing your cholesterol levels with healthy lifestyle choices and a sound medical treatment plan when prescribed. Cholesterol Tools & Resources Learn more with our online tracking resources, downloadable information pages and personal stories from people like you. Watch, Learn and Live Our Interactive Cardiovascular Library has informative illustrations and animations to help you learn about conditions, treatments and procedures related to heart disease and stroke.

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Trees or shrubs; petiole eglandular; lamina mostly bearing several–many glands on abaxial surface. Inflorescence terminal, unbranched or branched near base, each axis a raceme of short 1–7-flowered cincinni; lowest bracteole and alternate subsequent bracteoles bearing 1 large eccentric abaxial gland. Sepals all biglandular, leaving outermost petal exposed in bud; petals glabrous or bearing a tuft of hairs abaxially at base of claw; posterior petal strongly differentiated from the lateral 4, with a thick erect claw and large marginal glands on proximal half of limb or at apex of claw; receptacle glabrous on both sides of stamens; stamens all fertile or the posterior (1–) 3 bearing rudimentary anthers; pollen radially symmetrical, colporate; carpels completely connate in ovary; styles 3, slender and subulate with the stigmas very small, apical or slightly internal. Fruit dry, indehiscent, a nut without a bony endocarp, containing only 1 seed. Distribution: South America. The Mcvaughia clade is strongly supported by both molecular and morphological evidence. The phylogenetic tree shown above, from Davis & Anderson (2010 [pdf]), shows bootstrap values above the branches. Especially noteworthy among the morphological characteristics shared by these three genera are the shrubby or arborescent habit, the abaxial leaf glands, the flowers often in several-flowered cincinni, the large abaxial gland on alternate bracteoles, and the dry, indehiscent, one-seeded fruit.

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Contemporary full brown calf. Small paper spine label. Boards triple ruled in blind. edges speckled red. Boards and joints rubbed and bumped. Head and tale of the spine chipped. Some toning and browning throughout, but mainly to preliminary and final leaves. Leaves A2 and A3 with some chipping along fore-edge, not affecting text. A bit of marginal worming, not affecting text. Previous owner's old ink signature on title-page and some instances of marginalia and text corrections in the same hand. Overall a very good copy. “Bacon’s major contribution to the development of science lies in his natural philosophy, his philosophy of scientific method, and in his projects for the practical organization of science. During the last years of his life, he expounded these ideas in a series of works, of which the Twoo bookes was the first. The only work Bacon ever published in English, it was later expanded and latinized into De augmentis scientiarum (1623). In the Twoo bookes, Bacon concerned himself primarily with the classification of philosophy and the sciences and with developing his influential view of the relation between science and theology. While preserving the traditional distinction between knowledge obtained by divine revelation and knowledge acquired through the senses, Bacon saw both theoretical and applied science as religious duties, the first for a greater knowledge of God through his creation, and the second for the practice of charity to one’s fellows by improving their condition. This view of science as a religious function maintained its authority throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and was an important factor in the public success of the scientific movement” (Norman Library). Gibson 82. STC 1165. HBS # 65822 $850

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Henry Robinson has created an excellent series of articles on consensus protocols. Henry starts with a very useful discussion of what all this talk about consensus really means: The consensus problem is the problem of getting a set of nodes in a distributed system to agree on something - it might be a value, a course of action or a decision. Achieving consensus allows a distributed system to act as a single entity, with every individual node aware of and in agreement with the actions of the whole of the network. In this article Henry tackles Two-Phase Commit, the protocol most databases use to arrive at a consensus for database writes. The article is very well written with lots of pretty and informative pictures. He did a really good job. In conclusion we learn 2PC is very efficient, a minimal number of messages are exchanged and latency is low. The problem is when a co-ordinator fails availability is dramatically reduced. This is why 2PC isn't generally used on highly distributed systems. To solve that problem we have to move on to different algorithms and that is the subject of other articles. References allow you to track sources for this article, as well as articles that were written in response to this article.

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In the early 1900s, a dispute arose over who controlled Greenland—Norway or Denmark. The case was submitted to the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1933. The court ruled in Denmark’s favor. After WWII, the United States developed a geopolitical interest in Greenland. In 1946, they offered to buy the country from Denmark for $100 million dollars. Denmark refused to sell though. They did, however, allow the US to reopen Thule Air Base in 1950. From 1951 and 1953, the base was greatly expanded as a part of a NATO Cold War defense strategy. It is still the US Air Forces’ northernmost base, located inside the Arctic Circle. Though Xerxes did not found the Achaemenid Persian Empire, he ruled it at its greatest size, and made it the global force that it was at the time. His failed invasion of Greece has secured him a legendary place in not just Asian, but also Western culture. If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. —Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) Tritones is a musical interval that spans three whole tones. This interval, the gap between two notes played in succession or simultaneously, was branded Diabolus in Musica or the Devil’s Interval by medieval musicians. One historian said, on the tritone: “It apparently was the sound used to call up the beast. There is something very sexual about the tritone.In the Middle Ages when people were ignorant and scared, when they heard something like that and felt that reaction in their body they thought ‘uh oh, here come the Devil’.” The Devil’s Interval came back into vogue under Wagner, of all people, who used it in his operas. Since then, the tritone has been used for everything from ACDC to The Simpson’s theme song. The first light portrait and first human portrait every taken. From October or November, 1839. It is a self-portrait by Robert Cornelius. A caricature of Europe right before WWI. For a full explanation of the imagery for each country, click on the image. Around 300 BCE, the Maya began adopting a hierarchical system of government with rule by nobles and kings. This civilization developed into highly structured kingdoms during the Classic Period, around 200-900 CE. Their society consisted of many independent states, each with a rural farming community and large urban sites built around ceremonial centers. It started to decline around 900 CE when - for reasons which are still debated - the southern Maya abandoned their cities. When the northern Maya were integrated into the Toltec society by 1200 CE, the Maya civilization finally came to a close, although some peripheral centers continued to thrive until the Spanish Conquest in the early sixteenth century. Even today, many in Guatemala and Mexico identify first as Maya and second as their nationality. Fort Sumter, in Charleston, South Carolina, at the time of the American Civil War. In 98 AD, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote a detailed description about the Fenni, a people to the north. This is probably the earliest written reference to the Finnish people. According to him, these poor, savage Fennis lived somewhere in the northeast Baltic region — at the time inhabited by many other peoples, and the description also fits the Sami, another group still living near the Arctic Circle today. Given the name’s closeness to the modern Finns, they think it was probably them. Historians can never be certain exactly who Tacitus was referring to, however. Welcome to history class, guys! In the mid-1950s, Sammy Davis Jr was involved with Kim Novak, who was a valuable star under contract to Columbia Studios. The head of the studio, Harry Cohn, called one of the mob bosses. He paid the mob to threaten Sammy into ending the affair. Great Britain finished repaying the United States’ lend-lead aid from World War II in 2006. August 12, 1944: a band of battle-hardened nurses take a break to get their picture taken in a field close to the front lines in France. Successor of the unfortunate Pope Formosus, Pope Boniface VI joins the league of forgotten Popes. Very little is known about him, and what is known, he probably wishes we’d forget. Pope for just 15 days, Boniface died from gout. This nasty disease comes from eating too much red meat and other rich foods. This causes a build-up of uric acid (gross) leading to swelled joints and purplish skin. Two years after his death, John IX declared Boniface Vi’s election null and void but he is still included in the official list of Popes. This is the remarkable Lady Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton. In 1940 she was Natalie Latham, a former debutante and fixture at New York society balls, now 30, twice divorced with two children and still so beautiful that Vogue printed items about her. All this changed when German U-boats began their devastating attacks on the North Atlantic convoys supplying Britain. Although America had not entered the war, Natalie Latham decided to do something to help, and established Bundles for Britain, which began as little more than a “knitting bee” — albeit one convened by Natalie Latham and some of the grandest dames of the New York social scene. The group quickly expanded to over 1.5 million volunteers, with branches all over the country. Bundles for Britain started shipping over not just clothing but also blankets, children’s cots, ambulances, X-ray machines, hospital beds, oxygen tents, surgical instruments, blood transfusion kits, tinned food and children’s cots. Every item was labelled “From your American friends.” In Britain, she secured the support of Winston Churchill’s wife, Clementine, and of Janet Murrow, wife of the CBS reporter Ed Murrow, whose live radio broadcasts to America during the Blitz began with the words: “This is London.” When Bundles for Britain held a raffle, Queen Elizabeth donated items, including a piece of shrapnel that had hit Buckingham Palace. King George VI later appointed Natalie Latham an honorary CBE; she was the first non-British woman thus honored. After her fourth husband’s death in 1951, she arrived in London to promote Common Cause, an anti-communist organization she had founded, and met the third son of the 13th Duke of Hamilton, Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, MP for Inverness-shire and an ardent anti-communist. They eventually moved to the US, and she died on January 14, 2013.

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Business Language Learning From APEC HRDWG Wiki As part of International Education Week 2010, APEC has expanded on several themes of the seminar on "Language Education: An Essential for a Global Economy," to provide a guide for students and instructors interested in the critical importance of business language for strengthening business relations in a global context. These themes include Business in the 21st Century; Cross Cultural Awareness for 21st Century Business; Language for 21st Century Business; Business Language Learning; and Business Language Policy. In Business Language Instruction, we learn that different economies use different methodologies by which to teach and learn the subject of business. We find that conflict may arise when these differing methodologies come together in a single classroom. Another application of advanced communications technologies may be found in the classroom, where traditional textbooks may be supplemented with electronic media such as video clips, as well as live information from Internet newsfeeds, essentially making textbook materials come alive. Students today may not learn history, geography, and science as it was taught a few years ago. They may actually view and experience events via the Internet as if they were present during the moment in which they took place. Video conferencing in the classroom may have other applications, such as providing students access to language teachers in foreign countries and to subject matter experts thousands of miles away, who can appear in the classroom and guest lecture as if they were actually there. These powerful new communications technologies have enhanced business language instruction in schools and universities, as evidenced from the scenario presented below. - Technology provides web-based content to expand, complement, and supplement textbooks and teacher instruction. - Online educational materials blend face-to-face learning with digital teaching and curricula. - Technology such as virtual classroom fosters peer-to-peer and instructor-peer relationship building, collaboration, and social networking. - When designing lesson plans for international students, educators must consider how cultural values affect the way students respond to specific assignments. - Technology contributes to a green environment by saving paper and reducing travel. In the fictional scenario below, teaching and learning methodologies from different economies clash as they are brought together into a single classroom, made possible only by advancements in telecommunications technologies. A prestigious university located in collectivist Economy A invited a Marketing professor from a renowned university in individualistic Economy B teach a year-long course on the Fundamentals of Marketing to first-year business students. The professor had recently published a book on McBurger, the hamburger chain, and its success in Economy A. The students in Economy A viewed his book as a premier marketing book in the field of international business. Conducted virtually over Internet video stream, the course was the first [Ed Note: for which economy? Using a mix of traditional and technology-mediated instruction is not that new. It may be a stretch to say it was the first time for such a mix.] to integrate traditional methods of teaching with new technologies. The professor would present a traditional lecture from the university's video conferencing room in Economy B and the students in Economy A would view the lecture and participate in discussion as if the professor were in their classroom. Students would submit all assignments and exams to the professor through a "digital drop box," and the professor would return graded materials back to students via this medium. Using advanced technology in the classroom allowed students to learn from a renowned professor while enrolling in a "green course," one in which the professor did not need to travel to the economy and no paper would be used for assignments. To prepare for the course, the professor chose various marketing, advertising, and strategy cases from around the world. On the first day of class, he presented a case study on Boca Rola, and its advent into Economy C. He gave the students 30 minutes to read the case study, and then encouraged the students to share their views about: (1) Boca Rola’s strategy to enter the market in Economy C, (2) the barriers Boca Rola faced in entering the market, (3) perceptions of foreign products previously unavailable in a particular economy, and (4) consumers' reaction to the new product. He found the students reluctant to share their individual views in the class. Thus, he presented his own views from the perspective of an outsider to Economy C, and shared his views about how Boca Rola’s business culture may be different than the culture of Economy C in which it was operating. At the end of class, the professor gave the students a list of questions about the case study. He asked the students to form small groups of 3-4 students and discuss the answers to the questions. After they discussed the questions, he asked each team to submit a 5-6 page summary of the responses in three days. Additionally, he assigned another case study for the students to read – one that focused on a large multinational company’s entry into the beauty care segment in Economy D for future discussion. When the professor reviewed the students’ responses to the Boca Rola case study, he discovered that the 20 students had submitted 5 separate sets of case study responses, as required. However, each group provided the same responses to the same questions, with no variation. He knew that this could not be a blatant incidence of cheating. When the next class reconvened, he asked the students why they turned in identical sets of answers. The students looked surprised, believing that they had followed his instructions, but had perhaps misinterpreted them. Finally, one student raised his hand and stated that the class had formed groups of 3-4 students, but that each group tackled one question, and then shared the answers with the other groups. The students believed that it was not time efficient to discuss each question. Rather, they decided that each group would respond to just one question, and then share the response with the other groups, who would do the same. The professor smiled in exasperation, and, frustrated by his inability to engage the students in an open discussion, began discussing the beauty company’s entry into Economy D. Points to Consider - How has technology enhanced international educational opportunities for both students and instructors? Other than the examples cited, what other ways can technology facilitate international educational opportunities? - To what extent did the professor understand the students’ motivation to learn, the context in which they learn, and their willingness to experiment and use different approaches to demonstrate what they can do and what they know? - Why was the strategy of open classroom discussion widely popular in Economy B and a widely used strategy to introduce opposing views, and to encourage critical thinking? - To what extent can strategies such as lesson study encourage students in Economy A to demonstrate problem solving skills, critical thinking, and creativity? - What could the professor do to model how each group could engage in separate discussions to understand the various perceptions about Boca Rola’s strategy to enter the market in Economy C? - Individualistic cultures are those cultures in which the opinion of the individual is greatly sought after and deeply valued, even though it may differ from the views of the group. These cultures believe that it is a variety of individual opinions that produce the best solutions to problems and that promote success, whether in social relationships or in the workplace. - Collectivist cultures, on the other hand, value group consensus and harmony. These cultures believe that an environment conducive for business and personal success can only be created when members of the group align in sync with one another. Members of groups will first debate the merits of a question among themselves, and then choose the opinion that they deem most valuable before presenting it to a higher authority. - The Professor from Economy B was used to receiving individual responses to his case discussion questions, responses that varied greatly from one another. Although not all responses he received were correct, he enjoyed reading the individual opinions present in them before discussing the correct answers with the class during the following lecture. Economy A students were, however, from a collectivist culture and valued sharing their responses with their group first before reaching a consensus on a particular answer choice. - The professor noticed that, although he had received only one response per question, it was more or less correct, although there was not a way for him to ascertain which of his students had provided the response, how the learning had occurred, and what the viewpoints of those who disagreed might be. - Teaching Tips for IEW 2010 provided by TESOL - Teaching Tips for IEW 2009 submitted by teachers throughout the Asia-Pacific region - Videos from the APEC-RELC International Language Seminar presentation "Creating Prosperity: Using the Internet to Revolutionize Language Learning" - New paths of communication through: - Technology providing access to content beyond books - Video from the APEC-RELC International Language Seminar presentation "Changes in Our Field: Where are We Going?" - E-Language Learning for Students - a collection of online language learning resources from various APEC members - Related Tips for Teaching 21st Century Workplace Skills More content from International Education Week 2010

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Education and health outcomes for social minorities in India: An analysis using SUR model AbstractThe current study analyzes the health and education outcomes of fifteen year old children in India and investigates the question of inequality of such outcomes for socio-religious categories. To study the effect of health on education, SUR estimation has been undertaken. The comparison of SUR and OLS results shows that SUR estimates have smaller standard errors than the OLS estimates. Of the three categories analyzed in the data, STs have worst outcomes for both education and health and SCs lag behind in the health field. The results have important implications for policy regarding education and health of the socio-religious minorities. Download InfoIf you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large. Bibliographic InfoPaper provided by Agricultural and Applied Economics Association in its series 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington with number 124840. Date of creation: 2012 Date of revision: Contact details of provider: Postal: 555 East Wells Street, Suite 1100, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202 Phone: (414) 918-3190 Fax: (414) 276-3349 Web page: http://www.aaea.org More information through EDIRC Health Economics and Policy; This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: - Sonalde Desai & Veena Kulkarni, 2008. "Changing educational inequalities in india in the context of affirmative action," Demography, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 245-270, May. - Vani Borooah & Sriya Iyer, 2005. "Vidya, Veda, and Varna: The influence of religion and caste on education in rural India," The Journal of Development Studies, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 41(8), pages 1369-1404. - Vani K. Borooah & Sriya Iyer, 2002. "Vidya, Veda, and Varna: The Influence of Religion and Caste on Education in Rural India," ICER Working Papers 32-2002, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research. - Behrman, Jere R, 1996. "The Impact of Health and Nutrition on Education," World Bank Research Observer, World Bank Group, vol. 11(1), pages 23-37, February. - Dreze, Jean & Kingdon, Geeta Gandhi, 2001. "School Participation in Rural India," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(1), pages 1-24, February. - Jean Drèze & Geeta Gandhi Kingdon, 1999. "School Participation in Rural India," STICERD - Development Economics Papers - From 2008 this series has been superseded by Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers 18, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE. - Jean Dreze & Geeta Gandhi Kingdon, 1999. "School Participation in Rural India," Working papers 69, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics. - Ashwini Deshpande, 2000. "Recasting Economic Inequality," Review of Social Economy, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 58(3), pages 381-399. - Case, Anne & Fertig, Angela & Paxson, Christina, 2005. "The lasting impact of childhood health and circumstance," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 365-389, March. For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (AgEcon Search). If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about. If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form. If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form. If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation. Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

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Skip to Main Content Machine learning methods are known to be inefficient when faced with many features that are unnecessary for rule discovery. In coping with this issue, many methods have been proposed for selecting important features. Among them is feature selection that selects a subset of discriminative features or attribute for model building due to its ability to avoid overfitting issue, improve model performance, provide faster and producing reliable model. This paper proposes a new method based on rough set algorithms, which is a rule-based data mining method to select the important features in bioinformatics datasets. Amino acid compositions are used as conditional features for the classification task. However, our results indicate that all amino acid composition features are equally important thus selecting the features are unnecessary. We do confirm the need of having a balance classes in classifying the protein function by demonstrating an increase of more than 15% in accuracy. Electrical Engineering and Informatics, 2009. ICEEI '09. International Conference on (Volume:01 ) Date of Conference: 5-7 Aug. 2009

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Washington, DC. Public libraries have become essential points of access to the Internet and computers in local communities, with nearly every library in the country offering public internet access. Yet, individual library practices can have significant affect on the quality and character of this public service. Opportunity for All: How Library Policies and Practices Impact Public Internet Access, offers an analysis of the service in four public library systems and makes recommendations for strategies that help to sustain and improve public access service. The report was funded through a partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services and was produced by the University of Washington Information School. [Read more] Access to the Internet has become a central part of American society, helping all of us in many areas of our daily lives. Over the past twenty years, libraries and community technology centers have taken on the role of public access centers for those who are unable to reach the Internet at home or work, for reasons ranging from lack of financial resources to personal preference. The U.S. Impact Study is examining the users and use of these public services to better understand the impact of free access to computers and the Internet on the individuals, families and communities served by these public and private resources.

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The Javan rhinoceros is one of the most rare animals in the world and it was just spotted on video tape. Seamen have long reported miraculous sightings of luminous, glowing seawater. You know how animals are supposed to be able sense disasters before they happen? Well some believe it’s a myth, though there are lots of reports of animals behaving strangely days before the tsunamis hit in Indonesia. Hundreds of thousands of ants were seen scurrying away from the beach. Elephants, dogs, and zoo animals were all reported to have been acting strangely. What can explain it? Learn more on this Moment of Science.

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In a countless number of movies and novels set in the British Regency and Victorian Era women are plagued by headaches; oftentimes as a way to show them as fragile, or as a joke. It is not a trope used with male characters, but if it were would they be taken seriously? Probably not. What if it was all viewed from a different angle and headaches were considered as something that legitimately affected their well-being? Maybe they were getting out of a carriage earlier in the week and bumped their head on the door frame causing a very mild head injury. What if in present day your head bumped against the driver’s side window in a small accident with no other injury? Could that genuinely affect anyone’s overall health? A new study by Dr. Sylvia Lucas, coming out of the American Headache Society‘s Annual Meeting, states that those who experience milder head injuries tend to have more post-traumatic headaches as time progresses than those with severe injuries. Out of the 598 participants in the study “about 70% [were] more likely than … their counterparts with moderate or severe injury to develop new headache or have a worsening of preexisting headache over the next year,” Dr Lucas was quoted as saying. The majority of headaches were classified as migraines, though a large chunk was unclassifiable using the International Classification of Headache Disorders, second edition. They do not know why this occurs, but Dr. Lucas thinks it is related to the specific mechanics of the accident that caused the head injury. Breaking down the participants: 220 had mild traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and began the study the same week of their accident; the other 378 had moderate to severe traumatic brain injury and were admitted to rehabilitation facilities. They found that migraines and tension headaches were most common, and that cervicogenic headaches were less common. This was unexpected considering most of the incidents that led to the TBI stemmed from motor vehicle accidents. “Study results showed that the mild TBI group and the moderate or severe TBI group had an identical prevalence of headache before injury (17%). But the former had a higher incidence of new or worsened headache at baseline (56% vs. 40%), at 3 months (63% vs. 37%), at 6 months (69% vs. 33%), and at 12 months (58% vs. 34%).” If you are wondering how this might severely affect somebody’s life, about a year ago a story came out that soldiers were sidelined more from headaches than from other types of wounds. Headaches. For the study Dr. Steven P. Cohen and his colleagues “reviewed the records of 985 soldiers who had been evacuated from the wars during 2004-2009 with a primary diagnosis of headache.” The causes of the headaches ranged from physical trauma, psychological or emotional, to environmental. Only about a third of the patients in the study were able to return to duty. So maybe headaches can cause a bigger imposition in life than originally thought. And the next time someone tells you “it’s just a headache” this will give them something to think about. Check back again next week when we see what else is new on MD Consult.blog comments powered by Disqus

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Hospitals across the country are diligently working to reduce infection rates. According to the World Health Organization, hospital-acquired infections affect as many as 1.7 million patients in the United States each year. These infections come at an annual cost of $6.5 billion and contribute to more than 90,000 deaths. Proper hand hygiene is essential in helping to prevent hospital-acquired infections. A recent study performed by French researchers examined three types of healthcare workers. The first type spent a large amount of time with a discreet group of patients like a nurse would. The second group saw more patients but spent less time with each one - similar to doctors. Group three consisted of healthcare workers who interacted with every patient every day like therapists. The study found that if a healthcare worker in group three failed to wash their hands, the spread of disease was three times worse than if someone from group one or two didn't. The study was published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. To read more about the study, continue here. To read another take on hand hygiene and about the Joint Commission's national hand hygiene project, click here. Photo Credit: Jessica Flavin Almost two million patients hospitalized in the U.S. each year develop an infection. These infections occur in as many as one in every 10 patients, result in close to 100,000 deaths and cost upwards of $6 billion. The Wall Street Journal created a top 10 list of infection prevention strategies based on interviews with medical professionals, administrators a non profit company and the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. - Undercover Operations - Dr. Philip Carling, an epidemiologist at Caritas Carney Hospital in Dorchester, Mass. developed a solution to uncover how well patient rooms are cleaned. His invisible solution contains fluorescent markers which glow in black light. After spraying patient rooms with the solution, cleaning crews were brought in to perform their normal routine. Later, rooms were examined with a black light and areas missed by the cleaners glowed fluorescent. Sharing results with cleaners helped boost compliance with proper cleaning techniques. - High-Tech Cleaning Systems - When hospital equipment is disinfected by hand, bacteria often remains. For more thorough disinfecting hospitals are utilizing machines such as Bioquell which sprays a disinfecting hydrogen-peroxide vapor. - Data Mining - Many hospitals are tracking data to determine how to prevent infections. Lee Memorial Health System in Florida tracks infection rates by surgeon and reports on the results. Low ranking surgeons can then make adjustments to lower their infection rates and improve their ranking. - Patient Hygiene - Research suggests a daily wash with mild antibacterial soap can dramatically reduce the rate of bloodstream infections. The recommended cleanser is chlorohexidine glutonate. - Reporting Crackdown - Numerous states have passed laws which require hospitals to report on infection rates. In many cases the reports are publicly available. In addition, Medicare is limiting reimbursement for treatment of hospital-acquired infections. - Clean hands - Hospitals that utilize strategically-placed dispensers of hand sanitizer have noticed an increase in hand hygiene compliance from less than 50% to more than 80%. - Embracing the Checklist - Incorporating checklists into bedside medical charts can help reduce rates of infection by requiring shift nurses to answer questions such as: Does this patient have a catheter? If so, is it still necessary? - Portable Kits - Utilizing all-inclusive kits for common procedures such as intravenous line insertions or dressing changes can limit the possibility for infection. Kits contain all the items needed for procedures and prevent the nurse from running in and out of the patient room during a procedure to find a forgotten item. - Mouth Maintenance - Regularly cleaning patients' mouths, gums and teeth can help prevent ventilator-associated pneumonia, a common infection found in intensive care units. - Infection ID - Quick diagnostic tests can identify infected patients in a matter of hours rather than days. This allows for a quick response when patients show symptoms, are tested and found to be infected. To read the complete article with expanded descriptions of the top 10, click here. Photo Credit: Presta Hospitals in Michigan lowered the rate of bloodstream infections in their patients by following a five-step checklist. The study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that implementing the checklist reduced the rate of bloodstream infections related to catheter use by 66%. Despite this success, utilization of the checklist remains limited. The checklist itself isn't complicated: - Wash hands - Clean patient's skin with chlorohexidine - Wear protective cap and gown and use a surgical drape during the procedure - Avoid catheter insertion through the groin if possible - Remove unnecessary catheters Peter Pronovost, the patient-safety expert who led the study, spoke with The Wall Street Journal to share insights on why more hospitals haven't benefited from using the checklist. To read excerpts from his interview, click here. Photo Credit: Adesigna A recent study published in the American Journal of Infection Control examined the levels of bacteria on healthcare workers' lab coats. The study involved a cross section of medical and surgical grand rounds attendees at a large teaching hospital. Participants completed a survey and cultured their lab coat using a moistened swab on the lapels, pocket and cuffs. Of the 149 white coats in the study, 34 (23%) were contaminated with S aureus, of which 6 (18%) were methicillin-resistant S aureus (MRSA). Providers working with patients had higher contamination levels and the study suggests that white coats may contribute to patient-to-patient transmission of S aureus. Read the entire study in the March 2009 issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official journal of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). Photo Credit: Estherase Central venous catheters (CVC) are essential for treating children with cancer. They reduce the need for multiple needlesticks and the associated pain and anxiety. In addition, they can be used to deliver chemotherapy, parenteral fluids, blood products and analgesics. Despite the positives, children with CVCs are at increased risk for bloodstream infections. Complications associated with CVCs include pneumothorax, air embolism, nerve injury, catheter malposition, infection and occlusion. A recent study had four objectives: 1. To decrease CVC-related bloodstream infection rates in children with cancer through a comprehensive educational intervention. 2. To determine if the frequency of catheter hub colonization of CVCs in children with cancer would decrease following the educational intervention. 3. To evaluate nurses' knowledge of CVC care. 4. To determine risk factors influencing CVC-related bloodstream infections in children with cancer. The study was conducted in the cancer center of a large children's hospital and included patients ranging in age from infancy to 18 years. A 45 minute educational program on CDC guidelines, most frequent guideline violations and information on catheter-related infections was presented to all caregivers. Following the educational presentation, catheter-related bloodstream infections were tracked for six months in order to determine the rate of infection. Study findings showed that the educational program increased nurses' knowledge and instances of catheter-related bloodstream infections decreased. You can read the full article in the March 2009 issue of Oncology Nursing Forum or purchase it online here. Photo Credit: Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center According to a 2009 study, approximately 5 million central venous catheters are placed each year. Implantable ports provide reliable venous, arterial, epidural and peritoneal access and can be used to administer IV fluids, medications and to obtain blood samples. However complications including occlusion, infection, catheter migration and catheter separation from portal body can frequently occur. A recent study conducted in a rural hematology-oncology clinic focused on infection. A port infection can present as local tenderness, pain, erythema, induration or edema at the insertion or exit site or over the port pocket. Patients may also have purulent or serous drainage, fever and chills. To prevent infection, aseptic technique should be utilized for dressing changes. In addition, clinicians should follow accessing and deaccessing procedures and keep the exit clear of potential sources of infection. The 62 patients included in the study were receiving a minimum of two complete cycles of chemotherapy after port insertion. Ports were accessed and deaccessed following outlined protocol. *Steps for Accessing Ports: - Wash hands. Assess the port site for erythema, warmth or drainage. - Palpate the outline of the portal body. - Wash hands. - Apply nonsterile gloves. Cleanse port site with chlorohexidine swab in a circular motion for 30 seconds. Allow to dry for 30 seconds. - Spray ethyl chloride. - Stabilize portal body with one hand. Insert Huber needle (link to EZ Huber product page) into septum with other hand. Ensure patency by blood return. If no blood return, use interventions to assess port's patency. - Stabilize port with gauze and tape or apply transparent dressing. *Steps for Deaccessing Ports: - Wash hands. Apply nonsterile gloves. - Inspect exit site. - Flush device with 20 ml normal saline followed by 5 ml heparin flush (100 units/ml). During final flush, clamp tubing to port. - Stabilize port and remove needle. - Apply bandage. Six of the 62 patients in the study experienced a port infection, with four of the six ports requiring removal. The total number of catheter days for the implanted ports was 7,277. Patient catheter days ranged from 32-288. The study concluded that consistent, routine care is the best preventative measure against port complications. The entire study can be found in the October 2009 issue of the Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing. *The port access and de-access protocols are those that were used by the authors for this study. Please follow institutional policies and procedures regarding port access and de-access. Although many infection headlines are related to hospitals, individual doctor's offices are facing similar challenges. Almost 30 cases of hepatitis B were recently tied to one doctor's office in New Jersey. When health inspectors visited the office they found blood on the floor of a room where chemotherapy was administered, blood in a bin where blood vials were stored, unsterile saline and gauze as well as open medication vials. Inspectors also noticed cross-contamination of pens, refrigerators and countertops, use of contaminated gloves and misuse of antiseptics. Patients were sent a letter from state epidemiologist Dr. Christina Chan urging testing for hepatitis B. "Evidence gathered at this time suggests that since 2002, some clinic staff provided care in a manner that puts patients at risk for infection caused by bloodborne viruses, including hepatitis B," the letter told patients. "The investigation to date suggests that hepatitis B infections identified may be associated with the method by which medications were administered and procedures performed at the practice." Numerous checklists and recommendations have been published around infection control. The American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases and Committee on Practice and Ambulatory Medicine offers these infection control musts: - Hand washing - Barrier precautions to prevent skin and mucous membrane exposure - Proper handling of sharps and contaminated waste - Appropriate cleaning and disinfecting of surfaces and equipment - Aseptic technique for invasive procedures For the full recommendation on infection control in physician's offices, click here. To read more about the hepatitis B outbreak in New Jersey, continue reading here. Photo Credit: Hollywood Pimp The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare is working on its first improvement venture: The Hand Hygiene Project. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 2 million patients get a hospital-related infection every year and 90,000 die from their infection. Causes of Failure to Clean Hands - Ineffective placement of dispensers or sinks - Hand hygiene compliance data are not collected or reported accurately or frequently - Lack of accountability and just-in-time coaching - Safety culture does not stress hand hygiene at all levels - Ineffective or insufficient education - Hands full - Wearing gloves interferes with process - Perception that hand hygiene is not needed if wearing gloves - Healthcare workers forget Early results of the program found on average that caregivers washed their hands less than 50 percent of the time. "Demanding that healthcare workers try harder is not the answer. These healthcare organizations have the courage to step forward to tackle the problem of hand washing by digging deep to find out where the breakdowns take place so we can create targeted solutions that will work now and keep working in the future," said Mark R. Chassin, M.D., M.P.P, M.P.H., president, The Joint Commission. By January, 2010, the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare plans to have data to demonstrate whether the proposed hand hygiene solutions can be sustained to achieve a 90+ percent compliance rate. Eight hospitals are participating in this project: - Cedars-Sinai Health System, Los Angeles, California - Exempla Lutheran Medical Center, Wheat Ridge, Colorado - Froedtert Hospital, Milwaukee, Wisconsin - The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, Baltimore, Maryland - Memorial Hermann Health Care System, Houston, Texas - Trinity Health, Novi, Michigan - Virtua, Marlton, New Jersey - Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, Winston-Salem, North Carolina To read the full release from the Joint Commission for Transforming Healthcare, click here. Photo Credit: Mag3737 Healthcare providers are on alert due to an increase in a new strain of hospital-acquired infections. A recent study released by Arlington Medical Resources (AMR) and Decision Resources, found that recurrent Clostridium difficile is difficult to treat in a hospital setting. Clostridium difficile is a bacterium that can cause symptoms as minor as diarrhea and as life threatening as severe inflammation of the colon. The elderly are most at risk and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services is considering adding Clostridium difficile to its list of "never events" or preventable hospital-acquired infections. Hospitals will receive reduced or no Medicare payments for infections on the "never events" list. Read more about how the study was conducted as well as more information on Clostridium difficile here. Photo Credit: Big Grey Mare Jeanne Hahne was working as a nurse in a burn ward when inspiration struck. Because the patients were so vulnerable to infection, Hahne and other healthcare providers had to wear full protective gear including a cap to cover her hair and a mask that covered the majority of her face. Even though she worked with many of the burn patients every day, most couldn't recognize her. Flash forward almost 30 years and Hahne has designed a face mask made of clear plastic so patients can see her smile. Hahne believes she can reassure patients with a smile and help decrease their anxiety. The masks also have utility for patients and healthcare providers with hearing loss since they allow for lip reading. In addition, the masks have helped improve communication between healthcare workers which can help decrease the chance for mistakes or misunderstanding. To read more and see pictures of the face mask, click here. Photo Credit: Christiana Care

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There are many aspects to learning the creation of interactive fiction. Here we mostly undertake to explain approaches to using Inform, and leave the larger questions of craft and design for elsewhere. The two manuals There are two interlinked manuals built into every copy of the Inform application: if you've downloaded Inform, you already have them. But they are also available to read or download separately from this website. Writing with Inform is an overview of the language, beginning with the simplest kinds of construction (such as building a map of rooms, objects, and doors) and working its way up to more advanced tasks. It is meant to be read more or less sequentially, since later chapters build on the ideas in earlier ones; though some of the late chapters (such as those covering numbers, activities, or advanced text) might reasonably be read out of order. The Recipe Book approaches the problem of authorship from a different perspective. Instead of trying to teach the language from start to finish, it is organized for the author who wants to accomplish something specific, such as asking the player's name at the start of play or implementing a system of measured liquids. It shares the same set of examples that are keyed to Writing with Inform, but organizes them into a new order and accompanies them with text about design problems in creating interactive fiction, rather than explanation of language features. Following requests from partially sighted Inform users, we've also made two plain vanilla versions of the manual available - they have as little decoration or web design as possible, which means less clutter for screen-reading software to cope with. We offer a choice of: Minimally tagged HTML provides an archive containing the pages of the manuals and examples as vanilla-flavoured HTML files. Writing with Inform in plain text format is just what it claims to be - one single file containing only text, with no marking-up of any kind. This contains all of the examples, following the text in numerical order, but not the Recipe Book. (The whole idea of two interleaved manuals can't really be achieved in one flat text file.) We receive occasional questions about publishing a printed form of the manuals. The answer is that we intend to do exactly that, in due course, but that we expect the current text will be revised wholesale once the system is more mature. (The same thing happened with Inform 6, with the appearance of the printed Designer's Manual in 2001 essentially marking the end of its design cycle.)

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Flickr as a Paintbrush [cartogrammar.com] reveals the recorded colors of our surrounding landscape, both in a physical and cultural sense. In short, Andy Woodruff created a set of geographic heatmaps that represent the average colors of images taken on locations surrounding a specific landmark. In other words, the resulting maps reveal the colors that people on the ground should be looking at. Technically, these maps are based on the most recent 2,000 photos uploaded to Flickr that were geotagged within a specified bounding box. These were then averaged by hue. As an emergent result, the color red reveals the dominance of brick, while green/yellow colors naturally denote grass and trees. However, some unexpected patterns appear as well, such as blue/purple in the map of Boston.

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This is an old lecture by linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky (professor at MIT) given at UC Berkeley in 2003. For that evening in the Charles M. and Martha Hitchcock Lecture series, Chomsky examined biolinguistics - the study of relations between physiology and speech. A second video of Chomsky is featured below, which is the second half of this talk. Fair warning - this is not easy material - Chomsky is speaking to people who are well-versed in this field. Chomsky has been one the most influential scholars over the last three or four decades - between 1980 and 1992, he was cited as a source more than any other living scholar, and ranked eighth overall. As background for this lecture, Wikipedia offers a good summary of his influence in linguistics (below the video). Chomskyan LinguisticsChomskyan linguistics, beginning with his Syntactic Structures, a distillation of his Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (1955, 75), challenges structural linguistics and introduces transformational grammar. This approach takes utterances (sequences of words) to have a syntax characterized by a formal grammar; in particular, a context-free grammar extended with transformational rules. Perhaps his most influential and time-tested contribution to the field, is the claim that modeling knowledge of language using a formal grammar accounts for the "productivity" or "creativity" of language. In other words, a formal grammar of a language can explain the ability of a hearer-speaker to produce and interpret an infinite number of utterances, including novel ones, with a limited set of grammatical rules and a finite set of terms. He has always acknowledged his debt to Pāṇini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar although it is also related to rationalist ideas of a priori knowledge. It is a popular misconception that Chomsky proved that language is entirely innate and discovered a "universal grammar" (UG). In fact, Chomsky simply observed that while a human baby and a kitten are both capable of inductive reasoning, if they are exposed to exactly the same linguistic data, the human child will always acquire the ability to understand and produce language, while the kitten will never acquire either ability. Chomsky labeled whatever the relevant capacity the human has which the cat lacks the "language acquisition device" (LAD) and suggested that one of the tasks for linguistics should be to figure out what the LAD is and what constraints it puts on the range of possible human languages. The universal features that would result from these constraints are often termed "universal grammar" or UG. The Principles and Parameters approach (P&P)—developed in his Pisa 1979 Lectures, later published as Lectures on Government and Binding (LGB)—makes strong claims regarding universal grammar: that the grammatical principles underlying languages are innate and fixed, and the differences among the world's languages can be characterized in terms of parameter settings in the brain (such as the pro-drop parameter, which indicates whether an explicit subject is always required, as in English, or can be optionally dropped, as in Spanish), which are often likened to switches. (Hence the term principles and parameters, often given to this approach.) In this view, a child learning a language need only acquire the necessary lexical items (words, grammatical morphemes, and idioms), and determine the appropriate parameter settings, which can be done based on a few key examples. Proponents of this view argue that the pace at which children learn languages is inexplicably rapid, unless children have an innate ability to learn languages. The similar steps followed by children all across the world when learning languages, and the fact that children make certain characteristic errors as they learn their first language, whereas other seemingly logical kinds of errors never occur (and, according to Chomsky, should be attested if a purely general, rather than language-specific, learning mechanism were being employed), are also pointed to as motivation for innateness. More recently, in his Minimalist Program (1995), while retaining the core concept of "principles and parameters," Chomsky attempts a major overhaul of the linguistic machinery involved in the LGB model, stripping from it all but the barest necessary elements, while advocating a general approach to the architecture of the human language faculty that emphasizes principles of economy and optimal design, reverting to a derivational approach to generation, in contrast with the largely representational approach of classic P&P. Chomsky's ideas have had a strong influence on researchers of the language acquisition in children, though many researchers in this area such as Elizabeth Bates and Michael Tomasello argue very strongly against Chomsky's theories, and instead advocate emergentist or connectionist theories, explaining language with a number of general processing mechanisms in the brain that interact with the extensive and complex social environment in which language is used and learned. His best-known work in phonology is The Sound Pattern of English (1968), written with Morris Halle (and often known as simply SPE). This work has had a great significance for the development in the field. While phonological theory has since moved beyond "SPE phonology" in many important respects, the SPE system is considered the precursor of some of the most influential phonological theories today, including autosegmental phonology, lexical phonology and optimality theory. Chomsky no longer publishes on phonology.

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Chinese researchers have turned to the light absorbing properties of butterfly wings to significantly increase the efficiency of solar hydrogen cells, using biomimetics to copy the nanostructure that allows for incredible light and heat absorption. Butterflies are known to use heat from the sun to warm themselves beyond what their bodies can provide, and this new research takes a page from their evolution to improve hydrogen fuel generation. Analyzing the wings of Papilio helenus, the researchers found scales that are described as having: [...] Ridges running the length of the scale with very small holes on either side that opened up onto an underlying layer. The steep walls of the ridges help funnel light into the holes. The walls absorb longer wavelengths of light while allowing shorter wavelengths to reach a membrane below the scales. Using the images of the scales, the researchers created computer models to confirm this filtering effect. The nano-hole arrays change from wave guides for short wavelengths to barriers and absorbers for longer wavelengths, which act just like a high-pass filtering layer. So, what does this have to do with fuel cells? Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen takes energy, and is a drain on the amount you can get out of a cell. To split the water, the process uses a catalyst, and certain catalysts — say, titanium dioxide — function by exposure to light. The researchers synthesized a titanium dioxide catalyst using the pattern from the butterfly's wings, and paired it with platinum nanoparticles to make it more efficient at splitting water. The result? A 230% uptick in the amount of hydrogen produced. The structure of the butterfly's wing means that it's better at absorbing light — so who knows, you might also see the same technique on solar panels, too.

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4 Dice Helps Students Learn to Add, Subtract, Multiply, and Divide Fractions 4 Dice is an iPad app designed to help students learn to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions. The app was developed by the same people that built the popular 5 Dice app that helps students learn the order of operations. In 4 Dice students are shown a fraction and they have to drag four dice into position to complete the arithmetic that will result in the fraction that they were shown. It’s kind of like the Jeopardy concept applied to fractions mathematics. There are five modes in 4 Dice. There are the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division modes as well as a challenge mode that randomized the problems. At any point in a series of problems students can pause and use the whiteboard to work out possible solutions to a problem. 4 Dice does ask for an email address, but doesn’t ask users to confirm that email address. If your students don’t have email addresses you can use the Gmail+1 trick to create dummy addresses for them that you can monitor. 4 Dice costs $0.99. This app is appropriate for elementary and middle school students.

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Early Childhood Education - The American Academy of Pediatrics is dedicated to the health of all children and committed to the attainment of optimal physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents, and - The Center for Early Childhood Leadership is dedicated to enhancing the management skills, professional orientation and leadership capacity of early - The Child & Family WebGuide describes and evaluates web sites that contain research-based information about child development. - An organization of regional Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) agencies serving communities throughout the state of Illinois. - The Children's Book Council is dedicated to encouraging literacy and the use and enjoyment of children's books. - Children's Literature offers information on authors and illustrators, recommended books by theme, book award winners, etc. - The Circle of Inclusion web site is for early childhood service providers and families of young children. This web site offers demonstrations of and information about the effective practices of inclusive educational programs for children from birth through age eight. - Civitas is a national not-for-profit communication group that works to provide educational tools to all adults who live and work with young children. - The CLAS Early Childhood Research Institute collects and describes early childhood/early intervention resources that have been developed across the United States for children with disabilities and their families and the service providers who work with them. The materials and resources available on this site reflect the intersection of culture and language, disabilities and child development. - The Division of Early Childhood (DEC) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) is a nonprofit organization advocating for individuals who work with or on behalf of children with special needs, birth through age eight, and their families. There is also an Illinois Subdivision for the Division of Early Childhood (IDEC). - The Early Childhood Educators' and Family Web Corner contains articles, teacher pages, family pages, etc. - EdWorld.Resources covers a variety of areas of Early Childhood. - ERIC provides research-based information and articles in the field of early childhood. - I Am Your Child is a national public awareness and engagement campaign to make early childhood development a top priority of our nation. - The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services web site for information on day care licensing, etc. - The Illinois Department of Human Services Early Intervention site contains information for parents and service providers, including Child and Family Connections contacts. . - The Illinois Early Learning Web site provides evidence-based, reliable information for parents, caregivers, and teachers of young children in the State of Illinois. - Illinois Head Start Association information. - Lists of recommended children's books for birth to five and Early Childhood Block Grant professional development opportunities are available on the Early Childhood portion of the Illinois Resource Center's web site. - The Illinois Secretary of State's literacy program site includes grant applications and literacy resources. - Meld offers education and support for parents, trains family service providers to apply best practices in their work with families and publishes a broad range of resource materials for parents and the people who work with them. - The National Association for the Education of Young Children has for its purpose, “leading and consolidating the efforts of individuals and groups working to achieve healthy development and constructive education for all young children.” - The National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect is a resource for professionals and others seeking information on abuse and neglect and child welfare. - The National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center supports the implementation of the early childhood provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Their mission is to strengthen service systems to ensure that children with disabilities (birth through five) and their families receive and benefit from high quality, culturally appropriate, and family-centered supports and services. - The National Head Start Association is a private not-for-profit membership organization that provides a national forum for the continued enhancement of Head Start services for children ages 0 to 5 and their families. - The National Institute for Early Education Research supports early childhood education initiatives by providing objective, nonpartisan information based on research. - Ongoing update about the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHID) study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. - The Ounce of Prevention was established to promote the well-being of children and adolescents by working with families, communities, and policy-makers. - The Parents as Teachers National Center is committed to seeing that “all children will learn, grow, and develop to realize their full potential." The information is geared to parents but helpful to all programs in early childhood. - The Partnership for Reading continually creates resources and shares information about how scientifically based research can inform the acquisition of reading skills across the lifespan, from birth to adulthood. Visit the Early - Prevent Child Abuse America provides leadership to promote the prevention of child abuse and neglect at both the national and local levels. Information is also available in Spanish. - Reading Rockets, "launching young readers", contains resources, book lists, and tips on early reading. - The Society for Research in Child Development at the University of Michigan is a multidisciplinary, not-for-profit, professional association of approximately 5,000 researchers, practitioners, and human development professionals. - The U.S. Department of Education's Early Reading First site contains information on the status of Early Reading First grants. - The U.S. Department of Education main site includes information on No Child - Voices for Illinois Children works with families, communities, and policy-makers to ensure that all children grow up healthy, nurtured, safe, and well educated. - Zero to Three is a leading resource on the first three years of life. Its goal is to strengthen and support families, practitioners and communities to promote the healthy development of babies

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World’s poorest on front line in climate change fight 24 July 2008 | News story Climate change is already happening – and it hits poor people most. The effect of more frequent hurricanes, floods and droughts on developing countries is devastating, as this year’s cyclone Nagris proved again in southern Myanmar, leaving over 130,000 people dead or missing. To protect the world’s poor against today’s more frequent extreme weather events, some US$ 2 billion is required according to the Internacional relief agency Oxfam. However, commitments so far only total US$173. The need for innovative means to mitigate climate change impacts and help poor countries adapt is high on the agenda of the World Conservation Congress, held by IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature from 5-14 October in Barcelona. - In 2007, there were 950 natural catastrophes in 2007 compared with 850 in 2006, according to Munich Re, one of the world’s largest insurance companies. This is the highest number recorded since the company started compiling annual disaster reports in 1974. - The burden of the disasters fall on the poor who are least to blame for climate change. Benin, and Bangladesh, for example, are at particularly high risk from rising sea-levels and storm surges, yet their per capita contribution to greenhouse gas output is one eightieth that of the United States, according to the British Institute of Development Studies. - “What worries us the most is the impact on the poorest countries which have the least capacity to respond to the challenge,” said Yvo de Boer, secretary of the Convention on Climate Change. - A healthy environment can help people survive. Healthy mangrove forests and coral reefs, for example, can serve as barriers and prevent coastal erosion; a solid forest cover prevents flooding in times of heavy rainfall. - “There are positive examples of local level adaptation to the impacts of climate change, such as replanting mangrove forests that can serve as buffers against more frequent storms. But to implement these solutions on a larger scale, substantial financial support is required,” says Ninni Ikkala, Climate Change Officer at IUCN. Upcoming media products: 6 August – International Press Release – Primates Red List update 12 August – International Press Release – Cetacean Red List update Julia Marton-Lefèvre, IUCN’s Director General. Ninni Ikkala, IUCN Climate Change Programme Brian Thomson, IUCN Global Communications, m +417972182326, e email@example.com. Carolin Wahnbaeck, IUCN Global Communications, m +41 79 85 87 593, e firstname.lastname@example.org World Conservation Congress, Barcelona (5-14 October) The World Conservation Congress (WCC) brings together 8,000 leaders from the public sector, government, business and non-governmental organizations for what is the premier summit on sustainable development in 2008. Over ten days they debate the best ways to tackle environmental and development challenges. They share pragmatic solutions to pressing issues. And they commit to collaborative action.

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Link back to index.html The Death and Dying Process Death and Dying As caregivers, one either becomes a better person through compassion, patience, and humor, or they become embittered and angry. Wendy Lustbader is an author who has written a moving book entitled " Counting on Kindness: The Dilemmas of Dependency."1991. The Free Press, New York, New York. In the book she describes the importance of receiving gratitude when we help others; because giving help without recognition can embitter us as individuals. We need to be kind, in order to count on kindness as we age. The person who has dementia cannot always provide gratitude for their caregiver. Gratitude must be looked for in gentle ways and unassuming ways. Perhaps it is a smile, or a gesture, or an expression of love such as placing the head on the caregiver's shoulder. If gratitude is not felt even on an occasional basis, it is difficult to cope with death and dying. Death and dying as Dr. Kubler-Ross indicates, is the "final stage of growth". Death and Dying During the final stages of dementia due to Alzheimer's disease, an individual may lose his/her ability to ambulate, verbally communicate, swallow, or may become totally incontinent and continue to lose weight despite nutritional supplements. Usually people with Alzheimer's die of another problem---perhaps a stroke, or pneumonia due to aspiration. At this point, the caregiver must be aware that the only way a person can stay alive is by inserting a stomach tube that provides artificial nutritional sustenance. Caregivers may have different feelings about this intervention for religious or personal reasons. At the end stage of Alzheimer's the use of invasive procedures such as a stomach tube, can keep the persons alive from months to years. This important decision must be made by the family member and can create an "ethical dilemma". Families, should in no way feel pressured by a medical professional to insert life sustaining interventions. When family members are prepared with regard to the physical process of death and dying they are more able to accept death as an inevitable and peaceful process. The recent expansion of Hospice Services has done much to promote discussions about death and acceptance of withholding end-of-life medical interventions. Once a person is terminal, as determined by a physician who understands the disease process, a caregiver may decide to engage Hospice Services. The physician must be willing to certify that a person will die within six months. If the person does not die within six months, they are not disqualified from the program. Hospice Services are usually provided by a local Home Health Agency. Hospice services can be provided in the home, assisted living facility as well as a skilled nursing facility. When a family signs up for Hospice Benefits they agree to forgo extreme invasive procedures and agree to support procedures that alleviate pain for the person with dementia. This is known as "palliative care" or comfort measures. At the final stage of death, water and food are withheld as the individual no longer desires this. This is a part of the natural process of dying. Families can anticipate the final stages of death by the various physical stages a person may be going through. Barbara Karne, a Hospice R.N. developed a very comprehensive booklet entitled "Gone From My Sight: The Dying Experience" which delineates the various physical stages of death and dying. To obtain a booklet, contact her at the following address: Barbara Karnes, R.N., P.O. Box 335, Stillwell, Kansas, 60085, 1995. In Karnes' booklet she describes what occurs, one-three months prior to death, one to two weeks before death, days or hours before death, and then the final minutes. This information has been extremely helpful to families and can be summarized as follows: One to three months prior to death · Withdrawal from world and people · Decreased food intake · Increased sleep · Going inside self · Less Communication One to Two Weeks Prior to Death · Talking with Unseen · Picking at Clothes · Physical Changes o Decreased blood pressure o Pulse increase or decrease o Color changes; pale, bluish o Increased perspiration o Respiration irregularities o Sleeping but responding o Complaints of body tired and heavy o Not eating, taking little fluids o Body temperature hot/cold Days or Hours · Intensification of 1-2 week signs · Surge of energy · Decrease in blood pressure · Eyes glassy, tearing, half open · Irregular breathing, stop/start · Restlessness or no activity · Purplish knees, feet, hands, blotchy · Pulse weak and hard to fine · Decreased urine output · May wet or stool the bed · Fish out of water breathing · Cannot be awakened It is important that individuals be aware of their wishes and that the wishes be formally documented in a legal document that is known as an "Advance Directive". Each state has different instruments for these directives and the caregiver should contact the local medical facility to determine the appropriate document to be used. The Advance Directive delineates one's wishes regarding medical treatment and appoints a surrogate decision-maker on a person's behalf. Of course, the important aspect of the Advance Directive is to discuss end-of-life care before one becomes diagnosed with dementia or has an another debilitating illness. pp.309-311. Beckerman, Anita G. and Tappen, Ruth. M. 2000. It Takes More Than Love. Health Professions Press: Baltimore, MD. 1. Review the video clip on death and dying narrated by Dixie Merrill. Dixie Merrill is a caregiver who is also taking care of three sets of parents--in laws, step parents, as well as parents. Dixie has been part of a support group and has indicated how information learned in the group has helped her cope with the death and dying. Note how she describes the process of death and dying as peaceful and calming. She indicates talking about death and dying has made it less fearful and she also emphasizes the importance of advance directives. 2. Consider the following questions for reflection when watching the video: · What strategies helped the Merrill family cope with their mother's death and dying process? · How can "Advance Directives" help individuals cope with the dying process? Link back to index.html

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Friday, 11 December 2009 mental ray_Adding glow to the window glass The above image was produced whilst at GMJ Design Ltd In our latest book, we have covered a number of ways of emulating light without the need of creating a physical light. Production companies often adopt similar methods to reduce the rendering times and retain the overall quality. It is worth pointing out that the usage of Ambient Occlusion(i.e. AO) as a separate pass or/and directly from Max is utterly imperative for the final shot. The following exercise will take you through another unique methodology of achieving similar results with reduced rendering times: Another quick way of emulating “glow”/"light" on windows, is to in fact enable the glow function on the glass panes themselves. To do this, simply go to the main material parameters, under the "refraction" group. 1-Reduce the transparency to about 0.9 to prevent the surface from being fully transparent. 2-To add a bit of blur to the transparency, decrease the glossiness to about 0.78. Note that, these values may vary depending on one’s camera angle...and the level of transparency/blurriness intended. 3-Next,change the colour swatch from white to a warm yellow. Also, the "fast (interpolate)" function, can be enabled for quick and fast results, as the glossiness and its samples can often slow down the renders.However,it may create artifacts. 4-Pan down to the "self illumination (glow)" parameters and enable the "self illumination (glow)" function. 5-Under the "luminance" group, change it from "unitless" to "physical units: cd/m2)". Also, pick and choose any relevant bitmap (i.e. photo) that has a prominent light source. Note: The "unitless" function often creates artifacts on glossy reflections, therefore, to be avoided at all costs. Depending on time in hand, one can set the glow to generate light, or not, through the FG, by checking the "illuminates the scene (when using fg)" function. ...and... “...let there be light...”!!! The final rendered image below was achieved using this technique. I hope you like it. I hope you have found this post interesting. Also check this new article in this Blog: 3D Realism:Practical & Easy Workflows

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The most illustrious Czars and mighty Princes, John and Peter Alexewitz, my most gracious Lords, having in their Wise Council of State resolved to send a splendid Embassy, on some important affairs, to the Great Bogdaichan, or Sovereign of the famous Kingdom of Kitai, by us Europeans commonly called China: This obliged me with a welcoming opportunity of traveling through part of the famous, but hitherto unknown, Siberian and Kitaian Countries, (never before visited by any German) and informing my self by credible witnesses of the remainder of those Lands, as well as obtaining a certain knowledge of several things with which the World hath not been hitherto acquainted. Evert Ysbrants Ides was the first educated European to travel in Siberia and gather firsthand information about the collection of fossil ivory. Ides' opportunity to travel across Siberia was the direct result of the satisfactory settlement of a small war on the Chinese border. The speed with which the first wave of Russian fur traders, called promyshleniki, crossed Siberia created serious supply problems for them. Men carrying small loads of goods and supplies could easily cross Siberia using a network of rivers and short portages by boat in the summer and sled in the winter. Bringing large loads of bulky goods, specifically enough grain to feed a small settlement, was a much more difficult and expensive proposition. It could take three or four years for a shipment of grain to reach a remote place like Yakutsk and, by then, the majority of the load would be inedible. Because of this, the promyshleniki were relieved and excited when they began to hear rumors of the Amur, a valley in the south filled with grain, cattle, and silver. The first expedition to reach the Amur was a group of 132 cossacks under Vassily Poiarkov in 1643-46. The Amur natives, whom the Russians called Daurians, greeted Poiarkov with hospitality but the relationship turned sour as the Russians resorted to kidnapping, plunder, and, it is reputed, cannibalism to get what they wanted. This kind of behavior went over with the locals about as well as you might expect. Poiarkov had to fight his way out of the country and lost half of his command to native attacks and starvation. However, because he confirmed that the Amur was a land of cattle and grain (he didn't find any silver), the expedition was proclaimed a success. Several other Russians tried to map out a better route into the Amur valley. In 1651, Yerofey Khabarov fought his way down the river with even more brutality than Poiarkov had and built a fort near the site of the city that now bears his name. This is when things began to go to hell. Khabarov knew, but chose to ignore, that the Amur was within the Chinese sphere of influence. What he might not have known was that it was also part of the homeland of the new Qing dynasty of China. The only reason he was able to occupy as much land as he did was that most of the armed Manchu horsemen were still busy conquering China. A year after Khabarov built Achansk, a Chinese military expedition arrived to drive him out of the valley. This was the beginning of more than thirty years of seesawing occupation of the Amur country. By the early eighties, with most of China finally pacified, the Kangxi emperor was ready to deal with the Russians once and for all. Now it was the turn of Moscow to get alarmed. Moscow, in the 1680s, was infected with a bad case of "who's in charge here?" In April 1682, Tsar Fedor III died at the tender age of twenty one without leaving an heir. The succession fell on his brothers Ivan and Peter. The elder of the two, Ivan, was severely epileptic, nearly blind, and may have suffered from a variety of other problems (diagnosing the physical and mental health of historical figures is more of a parlor game than a science among historians). Peter was strong as an ox, but only ten years old. To further complicate matters, the two boys had different mothers and the two sets of in-laws formed powerful and antagonistic factions at court. Fedor's death was followed by a week of riot and rebellion (not all of which was related to the succession). When the dust cleared, Ivan and Peter had been declared co-tsars and their sister Sophia was the de facto regent ruling in their names. Except for a few years during the reign of Catherine the Great, historians have not been kind to Sophia. She has been reduced to cartoonish stereotype of a scheming woman (which is bad) who was finally put back in her place by a strong male (which is good). In fact, Sophia Alexeevna Romanov was an extraordinary woman. She was intelligent, well informed, and literate in three languages. She was comfortable giving orders and appearing in public at a time when most upper-class Russian women were kept in harem-like seclusion for their entire lives. During the seven years that she served as regent for the two tsars, Sophia had successes and failures no different than any other rulers’. For the advance of mammoth knowledge, her most important achievement was settling the Amur conflict. Since the beginning of the century, the tsars had recognized the potential for Siberia to become a private trade route to China, but every attempt at making official contact with the Chinese court had failed due to cultural misunderstandings. Despite that, the Kangxi emperor wanted to open trade with the Russians and hoped that a show of strength would be enough to drive the promyshleniki and Cossacks out of the Amur valley. In 1684 a large and well supplied Chinese army arrived on the lower Amur and began to move west driving the Russians before them. At Albazin, on the northern bend of the Amur, the Russians attempted to make a stand, but were soon defeated. The Chinese allowed the survivors to retreat, razed their fort, and moved down river to their base of operations. When word of the defeat on the Amur reached Sophia and her advisors, they quickly dispatched an envoy to make peace with the Chinese. This should have been the end of the crisis, but, before the envoy could arrive, the Siberian Russians returned to Albazin and built a new fort provoking the Chinese army to return and start a new siege. They were only saved by the arrival in Beijing of advance messengers from the embassy. The Kangxi emperor ordered his army to lift the siege and prepared his own diplomatic mission to meet the Russians. Further complications--and there are always further complications in diplomacy--delayed the meeting of the two missions until the summer of 1689. The negotiation took place at the Russian outpost of Nerchinsk on a tributary of the Amur almost 300 miles west of Albazin. Amid elaborate ceremonies by the official heads of the missions, the real negotiations were carried out in Latin by a Polish cavalry officer (for the Russians) and a French Jesuit (for the Chinese). The agreement, signed on August 27, the first formal treaty signed between China and a Western power, required the Russians to evacuate the entire Amur valley, but established formal trade through Nerchinsk. Sophia did not get to celebrate the Treaty of Nerchinsk. At the same time that the negotiations were wrapping up in the East, Sophia's regency was coming to an abrupt and unanticipated end in Moscow. Sophia's position had been dramatically weakened by two disastrous campaigns in the Crimea and by her half brother Peter turning seventeen in June. Amid rumors that Sophia was planning to murder Peter and rule in her own name, supporters of the two Romanovs engaged in a month of dramatic maneuvers that resulted in Peter taking control and Sophia retiring to a convent. Peter's half brother Ivan stayed on as co-tsar until his natural death seven years later. When word of the treaty reached Peter, he accepted the terms and began planning a trade mission to Beijing. Russia had a severe shortage of literate agents who were competent to make their way through foreign cultures, which explains the necessity of hiring Latin speaking Polish cavalry officers to conduct delicate diplomatic negotiations. For his first official trade mission to China, Peter hired a German, Dutch, or possibly Danish merchant named Evert Ysbrants Ides*. Ides had been in Russia since 1677, operating his own merchant house, first in Archangel and later in Moscow. In the spring of 1692, Ides left Moscow at the head of a 400 man caravan with instructions to exchange ratifications of the treaty, determine the best items for trade, feel out official attitudes toward the treaty, and request that a Chinese envoy be sent to Moscow. The most direct route from Moscow to China is the same one that the Trans-Siberian Railway follows today, around the southern end of the Ural Mountains, across the steppe lands at the center of Eurasia, across Lake Baikal, and on to the Amur. Unfortunately, the steppe lands were controlled by Kirghiz nomads and unsafe for Russian merchants. For this reason, Ides' caravan had to take a much more roundabout path to Baikal that took them across the Urals on the same path as Ermak a century before, down the Irtysh River to its junction with the Ob, up the Ob and its tributary the Ket, to a portage into the Yenisei basin, and up the Angara River to Baikal. By October, the mission had only reached the way station of Makofskoi on the Ket portage. It was here that Ides had had his encounter with fossil mammoths. Amongst the hills, which are situate North-East of [Makofskoi], and not far from hence, the Mammuts Tongues and Legs are found; as they are also particularly on the Shores of the Rivers Jenize, Trugan [Lower Tunguska], Mongamsea [Taz], Lena, and near Jakutskoi [Yakutsk], even as far as the Frozen Sea. ... I had a Person with me to China, who had annually went out in search of these Bones; he told me, as a certain truth, that he and his Companions found the Head of one of these Animals, which was discovered by the fall of such a frozen piece of Earth. As soon as he opened it, he found the greatest part of the Flesh rotten, but it was not without difficulty that they broke out his Teeth, which were placed before his Mouth, as those of the Elephants are; they also took some Bones out of his head, and afterwards came to his Fore-foot, which they cut off, and, carried part of it to the City of Trugan [Turukhansk], the Circumference of it being as large as that of the wast of an ordinary Man. The Bones of the Head appeared somewhat red, as tho' they were tinctured with Blood. This account by Ides is the first Western description of a frozen mammoth and the beginning of a scientific and popular fascination that hasn't ended over three hundred years later. Locating the mammoth to which Ides' unnamed traveling companion referred is a little tricky. Makofskoi was, and still is, a small town on the western end of the portage between the Ob and Yenisei Rivers. Ides gave no indication of how far he meant when he said mammoth remains were found in the hills to the Northeast. My conclusion, based on Ides' phrase "not far from hence," is that the find must have been close to Makofskoi. The explorer Adolf Nordenskiold, who traveled along the Arctic coast in the late nineteenth century, thought, because the hunter took the mammoth's foot to Turukhansk, that the find must have been close to that place. Turukhansk is 450 miles north of Makofskoi, which is not "not far from hence." In Ides' day there were two major towns on the Yenesei where his companion might have sold the ivory, Turukhansk and Yeneseisk, which is only eighty miles from Makofskoi. That argues in Nordenskiold's favor. If the find was closer to Yeneseisk the only reasons the hunter would have had for going all the way to Turukhansk would have been if Turukhansk was offering a better price for ivory or if he had other business there. Without more evidence there's no way to settle the matter. If we split the difference between Makofskoi and Turukhansk we arrive at the Stony Tunguska River. Maybe the site was blown up in 1908 by the Tunguska meteorite. Ides goes on to report what the locals believed about the remains. Concerning this Animal there are very different reports. The Heathens of Jakuti, Tungusi, and Ostiacki, say that they continually, or at least, by reason of the very hard Frosts, mostly live under ground, where they go backwards and forwards; to confirm which they tell us, That they have often seen the Earth heaved up when one of these Beasts was on the March, and after he was past, the place sink in, and thereby make a deep Pit. They further believe, that if this Animal comes so near to the surface of the frozen Earth as to smell, or discern the Air, he immediately dies, which they say is the reason that several of them are found dead, on the high Banks of the River, where they unawares came out of the Ground. This is the opinion of the Infidels concerning these Beasts, which are never seen. But the old Siberian Russians affirm, that the Mammuth is very like the Elephant, with this only difference, that the Teeth of the former are firmer, and not so straight as those of the latter. They also are of Opinion, that there were Elephants in this Country before the Deluge, when this Climate was warmer, and that their drowned bodies floating on the Surface of the Water of that Flood, were at last wash'd and forced into Subterranean Cavities... The description of the mammoth as a subterranean animal that dies on exposure to surface air is almost identical to that given by the Chinese writer Tung-fang So in the second century BC. The three "heathen" tribes that Ides mentions are names given by the Russian conquerors and used to lump together all of the peoples of the Lower Irtysh, Ob, Yenisei, and Lena river basins. That is to say, he was ascribing the belief in the mammoth as a giant mole to most of the people of Western and Central Siberia. Later travelers ascribed different beliefs to many of these peoples. Still other travelers confirmed Ides' observations. When Ides traveled across Siberia, most of these peoples had been under Russian rule for a century, giving them plenty of time to have heard about the ideas of tribes with which they had had very little contact and to have learned the Biblical stories of Noah and Behemoth. Today, it is virtually impossible to sort out which tribes believed what before their contact with the Russians. While Ides was the first educated European to travel in Siberia and report firsthand information on the collection of fossil ivory, he wouldn't be the last. Peter the Great's diplomacy, wars, economic needs, and personal curiosity would send a constant stream of educated Europeans into his Eastern realms. They in turn would send back a constant stream of information that would be eagerly consumed by a Europe that was looking at the world through an increasingly scientific lens. Hmmm. I still seem to be having trouble with that "keep your blog posts under a thousand words" thing. Oh well... * Ides nationality and name have been the source of much confusion over the years. Accounts of his journey describe him variously as Dutch, German, and Danish. In the opening quote he implies that he considers himself to be German, but the first edition of his book was published in Dutch. The confusion comes from the fact that his parents were Dutch immigrants to Holstein, a German-speaking province that is the home of many cows and was then ruled by the King of Denmark. It's likely that Ides was fluent in both German and Dutch. The possible spellings given for his first and middle names are even more varied than his nationality. Because his middle name is sometimes spelled Ysbrand, some writers have assumed that he and the mission's secretary, Adam Brand, were one person. Adding to that confusion was the fact that both of them published memoirs of the journey, which the same writers who thought they were the same person assumed were merely different editions of the same book. They weren't, it wasn't, and that's that.

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There's this kid who gets bullied a lot by everyone. What should I do? Hooray for the person who sent this question in to us! There are a lot more kids who witness bullying than there are victims of bullying. Often, people who see something happen are called bystanders. Wouldn't it be excellent if those bystanders would do something to help someone who's being bullied? But how exactly do you find your courage and do it? First, be sure to let an adult know what's going on. If it's happening at school, have a talk with a teacher or school counselor about it. If it happens at camp, the camp counselor is the one to talk to. Approach the adult and say you need to talk. Explain what's been going on the best you can. Give details. The adult can take steps to stop the bullying. Plus, once they know about bullying, adults can do things to help the kid who's been bullied feel better and stronger. Adults can also help the kid who bullies learn to treat others with respect, friendship, and kindness. After talking to an adult, here are some other things you can do. Be friendly to the kid who gets bullied. For example, say "hi" at the lockers or bus line, include that kid at your lunch table, or invite the kid to play at recess or to be in your group for a project. This helps for two reasons: Any kid who gets bullied is likely to feel left out and alone. Your friendship helps that kid feel included and welcome. Friendship also helps prevent bullying because bullies are less likely to pick on kids when they are with friends. And when you see the bully acting mean, you can say, "Hey, knock it off, that's not cool," and invite the kid who's being picked on to walk away with you. You can just say, "C'mon, let's go." This can work even better if you get a couple of your friends to join you in standing up for the kid. Tell your friends ahead of time: "I'm going to stick up for that kid. Will you do it with me?" Be sure to update the adult about what's going on until the problem is solved. This is also a very good thing to talk to parents about. Your parent will want to know about all this and can give you more advice and support. Plus, your mom or dad will be proud that you're the kind of kid who cares and who stands up for others and for what's right! Bullying makes kids feel terrible — and not just the kid who's being bullied. Just seeing someone else be bullied makes others feel bad. That's because meanness affects everyone in the environment. It's like meanness pollution, so let's all fight it!

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You may associate pneumonia with the melodrama of a soap opera: prolonged hospital stays, oxygen tents, and family members whispering in bedside huddles. It's true that pneumonia can be serious. But more often pneumonia is an infection that can be easily treated at home without a hospital stay. What Is Pneumonia? Pneumonia (pronounced: noo-mow-nyuh) is an infection of the lungs. When someone has pneumonia, lung tissue can fill with pus and other fluid, which makes it difficult for oxygen in the lung's air sacs to reach the bloodstream. With pneumonia, a person may have difficulty breathing and have a cough and fever; occasionally, chest or abdominal pain and vomiting are symptoms, too. Pneumonia is commonly caused by viruses, such as the influenza virus(flu) and adenovirus. Other viruses, such as respiratory syncytial virus(RSV), are common causes of pneumonia in young children and infants. Bacteria such as Streptococcus pneumoniae can cause pneumonia, too. People with bacterial pneumonia are usually sicker than those with viral pneumonia, but can be effectively treated with antibiotic medications. You might have heard the terms "double pneumonia" or "walking pneumonia." Double pneumonia simply means that the infection is in both lungs. It's common for pneumonia to affect both lungs, so don't worry if your doctor says this is what you have — it doesn't mean you're twice as sick. Walking pneumonia refers to pneumonia that is mild enough that you may not even know you have it. Walking pneumonia (also called atypical pneumonia because it's different from the typical bacterial pneumonia) is common in teens and is often caused by a tiny microorganism, Mycoplasma pneumoniae. Like the typical bacterial pneumonia, walking pneumonia also can be treated with antibiotics. What Are the Signs and Symptoms? Many symptoms are associated with pneumonia; some of them, like a cough or a sore throat, are also common with other common infections. Often, people get pneumonia after they've had an upper respiratory tract infection like a cold. Symptoms of pneumonia can include: unusually rapid breathing chest or abdominal pain loss of appetite vomiting and dehydration Symptoms vary from person to person, and few people get all of them. When pneumonia is caused by bacteria, a person tends to become sick quickly and develops a high fever and has difficulty breathing. When it's caused by a virus, symptoms generally appear more gradually and might be less severe. Someone's symptoms can help the doctor identify the type of pneumonia. Mycoplasma pneumoniae, for example, often causes headaches, sore throats, and rash in addition to the symptoms listed above. The routine vaccinations that most people receive as kids help prevent certain types of pneumonia and other infections. If you have a chronic illness, such as sickle cell disease, you may have received additional vaccinations and disease-preventing antibiotics to help prevent pneumonia and other infections caused by bacteria. People with diseases that affect their immune system (like diabetes, HIV infection, or cancer), are 65 or older, or are in other high-risk groups should receive a pneumococcal vaccination. They also may receive antibiotics to prevent pneumonia that can be caused by organisms they're especially susceptible to. In some cases, antiviral medication might be used to prevent viral pneumonia or to lessen its effects. Doctors recommend that everyone 6 months and older gets a flu vaccine. That's because pneumonia often happens as a complication of the flu. Call your doctor's office to see when these vaccines are available. Because pneumonia is often caused by germs, a good way to prevent it is to keep your distance from anyone you know who has pneumonia or other respiratory infections. Use separate drinking glasses and eating utensils; wash your hands frequently with warm, soapy water; and avoid touching used tissues and paper towels. You also can stay strong and help avoid some of the illnesses that might lead to pneumonia by eating as healthily as possible, getting a minimum of 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night, and not smoking. How Long Does It Last? The length of time between exposure and feeling sick (called the incubation period) depends on many factors, particularly the type of pneumonia involved. With influenza pneumonia, for example, someone may become sick as soon as 12 hours or as long as 3 days after exposure to the flu virus. But with walking pneumonia, a person may not have symptoms until 2 to 3 weeks after becoming infected. Most types of pneumonia resolve within a week or two, although a cough can linger for several weeks more. In severe cases, it may take longer to completely recover. If you think you may have pneumonia, tell a parent or other adult and be sure you see a doctor. Be especially aware of your breathing; if you have chest pain or trouble breathing or if your lips or fingers look blue, you should go to a doctor's office or to a hospital emergency department right away. How Is Pneumonia Treated? If pneumonia is suspected, the doctor will perform a physical exam and might order a chest X-ray and blood tests. People with bacterial or atypical pneumonia will probably be given antibiotics to take at home. The doctor also will recommend getting lots of rest and drinking plenty of fluids. Some people with pneumonia need to be hospitalized to get better — usually babies, young kids, and people older than 65. However, hospital care may be needed for a teen who: already has immune system problems has cystic fibrosis is dangerously dehydrated or is vomiting a lot and can't keep fluids and medicine down has had pneumonia frequently has skin that's blue or pale in color, which reflects a lack of oxygen When pneumonia patients are hospitalized, treatment might include intravenous (IV) antibiotics (delivered through a needle inserted into a vein) and respiratory therapy (breathing treatments). Antiviral medications approved for adults and teens can reduce the severity of flu infections if taken in the first 1 to 2 days after symptoms begin. They're usually prescribed for teens who have certain underlying illnesses such as asthma or who have pneumonia or breathing difficulty. If you have been exposed to influenza and you begin to develop symptoms of pneumonia, call a doctor. If your doctor has prescribed medicine, be sure to follow the directions carefully. You may feel better in a room with a humidifier, which increases the moisture in the air and soothes irritated lungs. Make sure you drink plenty of fluids, especially if you have a fever. If you have a fever and feel uncomfortable, ask the doctor whether you can take over-the-counter medicine such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen to bring it down. But don't take any medicine without checking first with your doctor — a cough suppressant, for example, may not allow your lungs to clear themselves of mucus. And finally, be sure to rest. This is a good time to sleep, watch TV, read, and lay low. If you treat your body right, it will repair itself and you'll be back to normal in no time.

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It's normal for parents to disagree and argue from time to time. Parents might disagree about money, home chores, or how to spend time. They might disagree about big things — like important decisions they need to make for the family. They might even disagree about little things that don't seem important at all — like what's for dinner or what time someone gets home. Sometimes parents can disagree with each other and still manage to talk about it in a calm way, where both people get a chance to listen and to talk. But many times when parents disagree, they argue. An argument is a fight using words. Most kids worry when their parents argue. Loud voices and angry words parents might use can make kids feel scared, sad, or upset. Even arguments that use silence — like when parents act angry and don't talk to each other at all — can be upsetting for kids. If the argument has anything to do with the kids, kids might think they have caused their parents to argue and fight. If kids think it's their fault, they might feel guilty or even more upset. But parents' behavior is never the fault of kids. What Does It Mean When Parents Fight? Kids often worry about what it means when parents fight. They might jump to conclusions and think arguments mean their parents don't love each other anymore. They might think it means their parents will get a divorce. But parents' arguments usually don't mean that they don't love each other or that they're getting a divorce. Most of the time the arguments are just a way to let off steam when parents have a bad day or feel stressed out over other things. Most people lose their cool now and then. Just like kids, when parents get upset they might cry, yell, or say things they don't really mean. Sometimes an argument might not mean anything except that one parent or both just lost their temper. Just like kids, parents might argue more if they're not feeling their best or are under a lot of stress from a job or other worries. Kids usually feel upset when they see or hear parents arguing. It's hard to hear the yelling and the unkind words. Seeing parents upset and out of control can make kids feel unprotected and scared. Kids might worry about one parent or the other during an argument. They might worry that one parent may feel especially sad or hurt because of being yelled at by the other parent. They might worry that one parent seems angry enough to lose control. They might worry that their parent might be angry with them, too, or that someone might get hurt. Sometimes parents' arguments make kids cry or give them a stomachache. Worry from arguments can even make it hard for a kid to go to sleep or go to school. What to Do When Parents Fight It's important to remember that the parents are arguing or fighting, not the kids. So the best thing to do is to stay out of the argument and go somewhere else in the house to get away from the fighting or arguing. So go to your room, close the door, find something else to do until it is over. It's not the kid's job to be a referee. When Parents' Fighting Goes Too Far When parents argue, there can be too much yelling and screaming, name calling, and too many unkind things said. Even though many parents may do this, it's never OK to treat people in your family with disrespect, use unkind words, or yell and scream at them. Sometimes parents' fighting may go too far, and include pushing and shoving, throwing things, or hitting. These things are never OK. When parents' fights get physical in these ways, the parents need to learn to get their anger under control. They might need the help of another adult to do this. Kids who live in families where the fighting goes too far can let someone know what's going on. Talking to other relatives, a teacher, a school counselor, or any adult you trust about the fighting can be important. Sometimes parents who fight can get so out of control that they hurt each other, and sometimes kids can get hurt, too. If this happens, kids can let an adult know, so that the family can be helped and protected from fighting in a way that hurts people. If fighting is out of control in a family, if people are getting hurt from fighting, or if people in the family are tired of too much fighting, there is help. Family counselors and therapists know how to help families work on problems, including fighting. They can help by teaching family members to listen to each other and talk about feelings without yelling and screaming. Though it may take some work, time, and practice, people in families can always learn to get along better. Is It OK for Parents to Argue Sometimes? Having arguments once in a while can be healthy if it helps people get feelings out in the open instead of bottling them up inside. It's important for people in a family to be able to tell each other how they feel and what they think, even when they disagree. The good news about disagreeing is that afterward people usually understand each other better and feel closer. Parents fight for different reasons. Maybe they had a bad day at work, or they're not feeling well, or they're really tired. Just like kids, when parents aren't feeling their best, they can get upset and might be more likely to argue. Most of the time, arguments are over quickly, parents apologize and make up, and everyone feels better again. Happy, Healthy Families No family is perfect. Even in the happiest home, problems pop up and people argue from time to time. Usually, the family members involved get what's bothering them out in the open and talk about it. Everyone feels better, and life can get back to normal. Being part of a family means everyone pitches in and tries to make life better for each other. Arguments happen and that's OK, but with love, understanding, and some work, families can solve almost any problem.

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You Baby's Development After many weeks of anticipation and preparation, your baby is here! Or maybe not — only 5% of women deliver on their estimated due dates, and many first-time mothers find themselves waiting up to 2 weeks after their due date for their baby to arrive. A baby born at 40 weeks weighs, on average, about 7 pounds, 4 ounces (3,300 grams) and measures about 20 inches (51 cm). Don't expect your baby to look like the Gerber baby right off the bat — newborns often have heads temporarily misshapen from the birth canal and may be covered with vernix and blood. Your baby's skin may have skin discolorations, dry patches, and rashes — these many variations are completely normal. Because of the presence of your hormones in your baby's system, your baby's genitals (scrotum in boys and labia in girls) may appear enlarged. Your baby, whether a boy or a girl, may even secrete milk from the tiny nipples. This should disappear in a few days and is completely normal. Right after birth, your health care provider will suction mucus out of your baby's mouth and nose, and you'll hear that long-awaited first cry. Your baby may then be placed on your stomach, and the umbilical cord will be cut — often by the baby's dad, if he chooses to do the honors! A series of quick screening tests, such as the Apgar score, will be performed to assess your baby's responsiveness and vital signs, and he or she will be weighed and measured. If your pregnancy was high risk, or if a cesarean section was necessary, a neonatologist (a doctor who specializes in newborn intensive care) will be present at your delivery to take care of your baby right away. If your baby needs any special care to adjust to life outside the womb, it will be given — and then your newborn will be placed in your waiting arms. This week you'll experience the moment you've been anticipating — your introduction to your baby! Before you can meet your baby, though, you have to go through labor and delivery. You may have learned about the three stages of birth in your prenatal classes. The first stage of labor works to thin and stretch your cervix by contracting your uterus at regular intervals. The second stage of labor is when you push your baby into the vaginal canal and out of your body. The third and final stage of labor is when you deliver the placenta. If you don't go into labor within a week of your due date, your health care provider may recommend you receive a nonstress test, which monitors fetal heart rate and movement to be sure that the baby is receiving adequate oxygen and that the nervous system is responding. Talk to your health care provider to find out more about this test. Sometimes mother nature may need a little coaxing. If your labor isn't progressing, or if your health or your baby's health requires it, your health care provider may induce labor by artificially rupturing the membranes or by administering the hormone oxytocin or other medications. If your pregnancy is high risk, or if there are any other potential complications, you may require a cesarean section delivery. Some women know ahead of time that they will be delivering via cesarean section and are able to schedule their baby's "birth day" well in advance. If you're one of them, you've probably been able to prepare yourself emotionally and mentally for the birth — which can help to lessen the feelings of disappointment that many mothers who are unable to deliver vaginally experience. But even if you have to undergo a cesarean section that wasn't planned, rest assured that you'll still be able to bond with your baby. It might not be the birth experience you imagined, but your beautiful newborn has arrived nonetheless. The months of waiting are over! Good luck with your baby!

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What Is It? Fertility awareness is a way to prevent pregnancy by not having sex around the time of ovulation (the release of an egg during a girl's monthly cycle). Couples who do want to have a baby can also use this method to have sex during the time that they are most likely to conceive. Fertility awareness can include methods such as natural family planning, periodic abstinence, and the rhythm method. How Does It Work? If a couple doesn't have sex around the time of ovulation, the girl is less likely to get pregnant. The trick is knowing when ovulation happens. Couples use a calendar, a thermometer to measure body temperature, the thickness of cervical mucus, or a kit that tests for ovulation. The ovulation kits are more useful for couples who are trying to get pregnant. The fertile period around ovulation lasts 6 to 9 days and during this time the couple using only fertility awareness for birth control who does not want to get pregnant should not have sex. How Well Does It Work? Fertility awareness is not a reliable way to prevent pregnancy for most teens. Over the course of 1 year, as many as 25 out of 100 typical couples who rely on fertility awareness to prevent pregnancy will have an accidental pregnancy. Of course, this is an average figure, and the chance of getting pregnant depends on whether a couple uses one or more of the fertility awareness methods correctly and consistently and does not have unprotected sex during the fertile period. In general, how well each type of birth control method works depends on a lot of things. These include whether a person has any health conditions, is taking any medications that might interfere with its use, whether the method chosen is convenient — and whether it is used correctly all the time. In the case of fertility awareness, it also depends on how consistent a woman's ovulatory cycle is, how accurately a couple keeps track of when she could be ovulating, and how reliably unprotected sex is avoided during the fertile period. Protection Against STDs Abstinence (not having sex) is the only method that always prevents pregnancy and STDs. Who Uses It? Fertility awareness is not a reliable way to prevent pregnancy for most teens. It is often very difficult to tell when a girl is fertile. Because teens often have irregular menstrual cycles, it makes predicting ovulation much more difficult. Even people who have previously had regular cycles can have irregular timing of ovulation when factors such as stress or illness are involved. Fertility awareness also requires a commitment to monitoring body changes, keeping daily records, and above all not having sex during the fertile period. How Do You Get It? For couples interested in this method, it is best to talk to a doctor or counselor who is trained in fertility awareness. He or she can then teach the couple the skills they need to know to practice this birth control method accurately. How Much Does It Cost? The tools needed for fertility awareness — such as ovulation detection kits and thermometers, for example — are available in drugstores. But they can be expensive. Again, it's best to talk to a doctor for advice on using this method. Reviewed by: Larissa Hirsch, MD Date reviewed: April 2010 Share this page using: Note: All information on TeensHealth® is for educational purposes only. For specific medical advice, diagnoses, and treatment, consult your doctor. © 1995- The Nemours Foundation. All rights reserved.

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What level of LabVIEW user are you—a developer, engineer, or architect? Is it even important? Absolutely. These categories make it easy for NI to tailor helpful resources to your individual needs. By visiting the LabVIEW Skills Guide, you can see what defines these levels and which trainings or guides we recommend each use to help them develop successful applications faster. Here are a few examples of skills you can learn from the latest guide: For Technicians or Basic Developers - Troubleshoot and debug LabVIEW code - Apply key LabVIEW elements for relating data (such as arrays, clusters, and typedefs) - Apply design patterns and templates For Software Engineers - Optimize reuse of existing code for your projects - Design, implement, document, and test code modules for each task - Derive a task list and high-level flowchart to guide design and development For Software Architects - Analyze, critique, and improve the architecture of a LabVIEW application - Optimize code and resources to effectively reduce development time and costs - Design an application using object-oriented design principles Best of all, many of these resources are free or available at a discounted price for students. Questions? Post your comments below and we’ll follow up on them personally.

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This “The Best…” list is a companion to The Best Sites To Learn About The U.S. Financial Crisis. Those sites tried to explain how we got into this mess. The resources on this list share what is happening to us as a result. These sites try to give a picture of the recession’s effects throughout the world. These sites, all relatively accessible to English Language Learners, are divided into three sections. The first are some narrative reports on what is occurring. The second are interactive charts or graphs that show “the numbers.” The third are multimedia presentations giving a human face to the recession (of course, most of my students are experiencing that human face directly in their own lives). Here are my picks for The Best Sites To Learn About The Recession: Voice of America’s Special English has a report (with audio support for the text) titled Trying To Live With A Recession In The World’s Largest Economy. Breaking New English has a lesson (again, with audio support for the text) called Huge U.S. Job Losses Spark Recession Fears. ESL Podcast Blog has an engaging report on ways a recession affects society CBBC has a good report on the recession in the United Kingdom. CHARTS & GRAPHS: Where Does Your State Rank? is a map from CNN showing the recession’s effect across the United States. Layoffs Pile-Up is a graph from the Wall Street Journal showing what economic sectors are experiencing the worst job loss. USA Today has a very complete analysis on jobs loss and growth in the United States. The National Conference of State Legislatures also has an interactive map on the effects of the recession in all fifty states. These would require some teacher explanation, but are intriguing nevertheless. They’re are two infographics showing how the proposed economic stimulus would be used — one from the Washington Post and the other from Credit Loan. CNN has a new interactive on the compromise that the Senate and House just agreed to. The Obamameter is a regularly updated visual representation of different aspects of the U.S. economy. It would be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners with some explanation. FinViz shows the stock market in a vivid color-code. The Economy Tracker from CNN shows the latest economic data on a map, and combines that with personal stories of those affected. The Geography Of A Recession comes from The New York Times and shows, in detail, unemployment rates throughout the United States. Maplibs has a color-coded world map that shows international financial centers. The key is the color — if it’s shown in red then it’s down, if it’s shown in green then it’s up. The Sacramento Bee has a scary map of unemployment in California. Economic Reality Check is from CNN and provide short facts about different aspects of the recession. The Sacramento Bee has just published an Income Gap Interactive Graphic. It’s based on Sacramento data, but I suspect the information is similar across the United States. It vividly, and in a way that’s accessible to English Language Learners, shows how long it takes for different people (by occupation, ethnicity, and educational background) to earn $100,000. MSNBC has developed what they call an Adversity Index. It’s an animated map that “measures the economic health of 381 metro areas and all 50 states.” It’s pretty intriguing, though would probably require some initial explanation before English Language Learners could fully decipher it. Right below the Adversity Map, you can also find a “Map:Recession-resistant areas” that highlights communities in the U.S. that have escaped the recession’s effects. The San Francisco Chronicle published a simple and very accessible chart today titled Unemployment Characteristics. It “breaks down” unemployment data by race, gender, and education background. Great Depression Comparison is an excellent interactive comparing the Depression to our present Recession. Here’s a very accessible infographic that shows the change in unemployment in major US cities over the past year. The Associated Press has an Economic Stress Index which shows, in an interactive graphic form, what is happening to every county in the United States economically. It measures bankruptcies, home foreclosures, and unemployment, and then interprets it into what they call a “stress index.” The New York Times has published an interactive graphic titled Broad Unemployment Across the U.S. It shows both the official unemployment rate, and what the rate would be if it included “ipart-time workers who want to work full time, as well some people who want to work but have not looked for a job in the last four weeks.” Moody’s has put together an impressive and accessible Global Recession Map showing how all the economies in the world are going. “Food Assistance” is a very simple and visual infographic from GOOD Magazine tracking the rise of food stamps over the past year. Times Of Crisis is an extraordinary interactive timeline showing the critical events of the economic recession over the past 365 days. The Geography of Jobs is an excellent animated map demonstrating the loss of jobs in different parts of the United States during the recession. Flowing Data has some maps that very visually show where unemployment has increased over the past few years. The Unemployed States of America, a nice infographic (in terms of accessibility, not because it shares good news) How the Great Recession Reshaped the U.S. Job Market, an informative (and a bit “busy” looking) interactive from The Wall Street Journal. “America’s 35 Hardest-Hit Cities” is a very accessible infographic showing the communities around the U.S. with the highest unemployment rates. Quite a few of them are located right here in California’s Central Valley. Comparing This Recession to Previous Ones: Job Changes is a New York Times graphic that very clearly shows we’re not doing so great right now. “How The Great Recession Has Changed Life In America” is an interactive from The Pew Center. Who’s Hurting? is a Wall Street Journal interactive showing which economic sector is losing/gaining jobs How Do Americans Feel About The Recession? is an infographic from MINT.It has some interesting information, and a teacher could ask similar questions of their students. “Decline and fall of the California job market” is a very good interactive from The Sacramento Bee showing the chronological progress of the monthly unemployment rate for each county in the state over the past three years. Visual Economics has published two good infographics in one place: “Cities That Have Missed The Recovery” and “Cities That Are Having A Great Recovery.” “How The Recession Has Changed Us” is what I think is a pretty amazing infographic from The Atlantic. Where Are The Jobs? is a very good interactive infographic from The Washington Post showing which economic sectors are increasing jobs and which are not doing so well. GOOD has just published a very good series of infographics explaining the economy. It’s called All About The Benjamins. VIDEOS & SLIDESHOWS: Boomtown To Bust is a New York Times slideshow on the recession’s effect in Florida. The Sacramento Bee has a series of photos Chronicling The Economic Downturn. Long Lines Of Job Seekers Continue is a slideshow from The Washington Post. Downturn Leaves More Families Homeless is another slideshow from The Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal has excerpts from recent songs that have been written about the recession. Following A Closing, The Struggle To Find Work is another slideshow from The New York Times. A Community Facing Hunger is a video from The New York Times. Out Of Work In China is a video showing the effects of the recession in that country. A Painful Return is a slideshow discussing the recession’s effects in China. Tough Times For Summitville Tiles is a Wall Street Journal slideshow about the closing of a factory. Black Thursday In France is a Wall Street Journal slideshow about protests in that country demanding that the government do more to stop the recession. Ohio Town Faces Economic Collapse is a slideshow from Pixcetra. The American Economy: Down and Out is a slideshow from TIME Magazine. Tough Times In Cleveland is another TIME slideshow. An audio slideshow from The New York Times called In Economic Vise, Pontiac Struggles. There Goes Retirement is an online video from The Wall Street Journal. The progressive magazine The Nation has a useful slideshow called The Great Recession. It’s a bit ideological, but provides a different kind of analysis and response to the recession. It also includes links to articles that would not be accessible to ELL’s. However, the images, teacher modifications of the articles, and lesson ideas provided by them could offer some good opportunities for student discussion and higher order thinking. The Faces Of The Unemployed is a slideshow from The New York Times. Searching For A Job is a series of photos from the Sacramento Bee. Looking For Work is an audio slideshow from Reuters. Desperately Seeking A Salary is another audio slideshow from Reuters. Job Seekers Flood Local Job Fair is a slideshow from The Sacramento Bee. Recession Hits The Saddle is a slideshow from The New York Times. Auto Town Struggles With Unemployment is a slideshow from The New York Times. Dark Stores from TIME Magazine. The New York Times has an audio slideshow about people looking for work in the state of Tennessee. Inside California’s Tent Cities is the newest addition to this list. It’s a New York Times slideshow on the growing number of homeless encampments around the United States, particularly here in Sacramento (which was recently featured on Oprah Winfrey’s show) and in Fresno. The Death of the American Mall is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal. Stimulus Watch is a site that doesn’t really fit into any of the categories on this list, but it’s intriguing. It supposedly lists all the projects different governmental projects have proposed to do with stimulus money, and then people can vote which ones they think are best. They’re categorized by community, so they’re very accessible. The only drawback to it is since it’s a wiki, even though all the projects are listed, many don’t have detailed information yet on what the project entails. Nevertheless, its interactivity could offer some good possibilities for student engagement. How Do You Feel About The Economy? is a great interactive graphic — especially for English Language Learners — from The New York Times. You’re supposed to be able to enter a word that indicates how you’re filling, and you’re given many choices. It’s a good opportunity for vocabulary development. Picturing The Recession is yet another exceptional interactive from The New York Times. It’s composed of photos contributed by readers, including captions, divided by topic or location. Adapting To Job Loss is a slideshow from The Washington Post. Survival Strategies is a new interactive feature from The New York Times. People offer brief ideas on how they’re saving money now in the recession. Readers can vote on which ones they think are best. You have to register in order to vote, offer suggestions, or contribute your own. Forced From Home is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal. Ghost Factories is a slideshow from The New York Times. “The Long-Term Unemployed” is a multimedia interactive from The Wall Street Journal. “America Out Of Work” is ongoing series of video interviews the Los Angeles Times is doing with the unemployed. America at Work is slideshow from The Atlantic. As always, feedback is welcome.

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Even though the CNC machines require little human intervention in the development process of the end desired product, human intervention is still needed when it comes to the computer software programming for the CNC machines. A CNC machine programmer must understand the programming, so that they are capable of accurately telling the machine what to do. CNC machines a programmed through a sentence like structure that is written in a code that it understands. Each axes that the machine uses, requires instructions for the development of the final project. If you forget to program one of the axes, the product will not turn out; in the same terms, if you program wrong, the axes will do what the program tells them and not what you want them to do. A CNC machine operator helps on the other end. The programmer writes the code for the machine, but the operator is responsible for downloading the program into the machine and getting the machine set up to properly do the job. The operator may have to set up the tools in the tool holder for the machine, position the material that is needed for the job in the machine, and then start the machine. If the CNC machine operator is experienced, they will begin to learn the different sounds that the machine makes and will be able to tell just by the sound whether there is a problem with the machine. A more experienced CNC machine operator is required to do this type of work. Once the machine completes the program and the work progress is done, operators may be switched. At this point in time, a less experienced operator can take over from here. Usually CNC machine operators will start out at the lower level and gradually work their way up as they become more experienced in this type of machining. Experienced CNC machine operators can detect program flaws and can usually make the modifications to the program themselves. If they notice that the end product is not to the specifications needed, they can fix the problem in the program and continue on with the job. They will not have to take the time to contact the programmer and wait for the program to be fixed. Limited input from the operator is needed to operate a CNC machine. It is because of this reason that one operator may be able to watch multiple machines. The machines do all of the work and only one person is required to do the set up of the machines. This enables companies to employ fewer people and saves them in the payroll department. CNC machine operators must adhere to safety precautions just like they would in any other machine shop. Even though the CNC machines are usually completely enclosed and can limit the noise, debris and so on, there are still dangers and the operator will need to abide by the safety rules and precautions. Wearing safety goggles/glasses and ear plugs are a good idea and can help to protect the operator.

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A nuzzle of the neck, a stroke of the wrist, a brush of the knee—these caresses often signal a loving touch, but can also feel highly aversive, depending on who is delivering the touch, and to whom. Interested in how the brain makes connections between touch and emotion, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have discovered that the association begins in the brain’s primary somatosensory cortex, a region that, until now, was thought only to respond to basic touch, not to its emotional quality. “We demonstrated for the first time that the primary somatosensory cortex—the brain region encoding basic touch properties such as how rough or smooth an object is—also is sensitive to the social meaning of a touch,” explains Michael Spezio, a visiting associate at Caltech who is also an assistant professor of psychology at Scripps College in Claremont, California. “It was generally thought that there are separate brain pathways for how we process the physical aspects of touch on the skin and for how we interpret that touch emotionally—that is, whether we feel it as pleasant, unpleasant, desired, or repulsive. Our study shows that, to the contrary, emotion is involved at the primary stages of social touch.”

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WE have in this chapter to consider why the females of many birds have not acquired the same ornaments as the male; and why, on the other hand, both sexes of many other birds are equally, or almost equally, ornamented? In the following chapter we shall consider the few cases in which the female is more conspicuously coloured than the male. In my Origin of Species* I briefly suggested that the long tail of the peacock would be inconvenient and the conspicuous black colour of the male capercailzie dangerous, to the female during the period of incubation: and consequently that the transmission of these characters from the male to the female offspring had been checked through natural selection. I still think that this may have occurred in some few instances: but after mature reflection on all the facts which I have been able to collect, I am now inclined to believe that when the sexes differ, the successive variations have generally been from the first limited in their transmission to the same sex in which they first arose. Since my remarks appeared, the subject of sexual colouration has been discussed in some very interesting papers by Mr. Wallace,*(2) who believes that in almost all cases the successive variations tended at first to be transmitted equally to both sexes; but that the female was saved, through natural selection, from acquiring the conspicuous colours of the male, owing to the danger which she would thus have incurred during incubation. * Fourth edition, 1866, p. 241. *(2) Westminster Review, July, 1867. Journal of Travel, vol. i., 1868, p. 73. This view necessitates a tedious discussion on a difficult point, namely, whether the transmission of a character, which is at first inherited by both sexes can be subsequently limited in its transmission to one sex alone by means of natural selection. We must bear in mind, as shewn in the preliminary chapter on sexual selection, that characters which are limited in their development to one sex are always latent in the other. An imaginary illustration will best aid us in seeing the difficulty of the case; we may suppose that a fancier wished to make a breed of pigeons, in which the males alone should be coloured of a pale blue, whilst the females retained their former slaty tint. As with pigeons characters of all kinds are usually transmitted to both sexes equally, the fancier would have to try to convert this latter form of inheritance into sexually-limited transmission. All that he could do would be to persevere in selecting every male pigeon which was in the least degree of a paler blue; and the natural result of this process, if steadily carried on for a long time, and if the pale variations were strongly inherited or often recurred, would be to make his whole stock of a lighter blue. But our fancier would be compelled to match, generation after generation, his pale blue males with slaty females, for he wishes to keep the latter of this colour. The result would generally be the production either of a mongrel piebald lot, or more probably the speedy and complete loss of the pale-blue tint; for the primordial slaty colour would be transmitted with prepotent force. Supposing, however, that some pale-blue males and slaty females were produced during each successive generation, and were always crossed together, then the slaty females would have, if I may use the expression, much blue blood in their veins, for their fathers, grandfathers, &c., will all have been blue birds. Under these circumstances it is conceivable (though I know of no distinct facts rendering it probable) that the slaty females might acquire so strong a latent tendency to pale-blueness, that they would not destroy this colour in their male offspring, their female offspring still inheriting the slaty tint. If so, the desired end of making a breed with the two sexes permanently different in colour might be gained. The extreme importance, or rather necessity in the above case of the desired character, namely, pale-blueness, being present though in a latent state in the female, so that the male offspring should not be deteriorated, will be best appreciated as follows: the male of Soemmerring's pheasant has a tail thirty-seven inches in length, whilst that of the female is only eight inches; the tail of the male common pheasant is about twenty inches, and that of the female twelve inches long. Now if the female Soemmerring pheasant with her short tail were crossed with the male common pheasant, there can be no doubt that the male hybrid offspring would have a much longer tail than that of the pure offspring of the common pheasant. On the other hand, if the female common pheasant, with a tail much longer than that of the female Soemmerring pheasant, were crossed with the male of the latter, the male hybrid offspring would have a much shorter tail than that of the pure offspring of Soemmerring's pheasant.* * Temminck says that the tail of the female Phasianus Soemmerringii is only six inches long, Planches coloriees, vol. v., 1838, pp. 487 and 488: the measurements above given were made for me by Mr. Sclater. For the common pheasant, see Macgillivray, History of British Birds, vol. i., pp. 118-121. Our fancier, in order to make his new breed with the males of a pale-blue tint, and the females unchanged, would have to continue selecting the males during many generations; and each stage of paleness would have to be fixed in the males, and rendered latent in the females. The task would be an extremely difficult one, and has never been tried, but might possibly be successfully carried out. The chief obstacle would be the early and complete loss of the pale-blue tint, from the necessity of reiterated crosses with the slaty female, the latter not having at first any latent tendency to produce pale-blue offspring. On the other hand, if one or two males were to vary ever so slightly in paleness, and the variations were from the first limited in their transmission to the male sex, the task of making a new breed of the desired kind would be easy, for such males would simply have to be selected and matched with ordinary females. An analogous case has actually occurred, for there are breeds of the pigeon in Belgium* in which the males alone are marked with black striae. So again Mr. Tegetmeier has recently shewn*(2) that dragons not rarely produce silver-coloured birds, which are almost always hens; and he himself has bred ten such females. It is on the other hand a very unusual event when a silver male is produced; so that nothing would be easier, if desired, than to make a breed of dragons with blue males and silver females. This tendency is indeed so strong that when Mr. Tegetmeier at last got a silver male and matched him with one of the silver females, he expected to get a breed with both sexes thus coloured; he was however disappointed, for the young male reverted to the blue colour of his grandfather, the young female alone being silver. No doubt with patience this tendency to reversion in the males, reared from an occasional silver male matched with a silver hen, might be eliminated, and then both sexes would be coloured alike; and this very process has been followed with success by Mr. Esquilant in the case of silver turbits. * Dr. Chapius, Le Pigeon Voyageur Belge, 1865, p. 87. *(2) The Field, Sept., 1872. With fowls, variations of colour, limited in their transmission to the male sex, habitually occur. When this form of inheritance prevails, it might well happen that some of the successive variations would be transferred to the female, who would then slightly resemble the male, as actually occurs in some breeds. Or again, the greater number, but not all, of the successive steps might be transferred to both sexes, and the female would then closely resemble the male. There can hardly be a doubt that this is the cause of the male pouter pigeon having a somewhat larger crop, and of the male carrier pigeon having somewhat larger wattles, than their respective females; for fanciers have not selected one sex more than the other, and have had no wish that these characters should be more strongly displayed in the male than in the female, yet this is the case with both breeds. The same process would have to be followed, and the same difficulties encountered, if it were desired to make a breed with the females alone of some new colour. Lastly, our fancier might wish to make a breed with the two sexes differing from each other, and both from the parent species. Here the difficulty would be extreme, unless the successive variations were from the first sexually limited on both sides, and then there would be no difficulty. We see this with the fowl; thus the two sexes of the pencilled Hamburghs differ greatly from each other, and from the two sexes of the aboriginal Gallus bankiva; and both are now kept constant to their standard of excellence by continued selection, which would be impossible unless the distinctive characters of both were limited in their transmission. The Spanish fowl offers a more curious case; the male has an immense comb, but some of the successive variations, by the accumulation of which it was acquired, appear to have been transferred to the female; for she has a comb many times larger than that of the females of the parent species. But the comb of the female differs in one respect from that of the male, for it is apt to lop over; and within a recent period it has been ordered by the fancy that this should always be the case, and success has quickly followed the order. Now the lopping of the comb must be sexually limited in its transmission, otherwise it would prevent the comb of the male from being perfectly upright, which would be abhorrent to every fancier. On the other hand, the uprightness of the comb in the male must likewise be a sexually-limited character, otherwise it would prevent the comb of the female from lopping over. From the foregoing illustrations, we see that even with almost unlimited time at command, it would be an extremely difficult and complex, perhaps an impossible process, to change one form of transmission into the other through selection. Therefore, without distinct evidence in each case, I am unwilling to admit that this has been effected in natural species. On the other hand, by means of successive variations, which were from the first sexually limited in their transmission, there would not be the least difficulty in rendering a male bird widely different in colour or in any other character from the female; the latter being left unaltered, or slightly altered, or specially modified for the sake of protection. As bright colours are of service to the males in their rivalry with other males, such colours would be selected whether or not they were transmitted exclusively to the same sex. Consequently the females might be expected often to partake of the brightness of the males to a greater or less degree; and this occurs with a host of species. If all the successive variations were transmitted equally to both sexes, the females would be indistinguishable from the males; and this likewise occurs with many birds. If, however, dull colours were of high importance for the safety of the female during incubation, as with many ground birds, the females which varied in brightness, or which received through inheritance from the males any marked accession of brightness, would sooner or later be destroyed. But the tendency in the males to continue for an indefinite period transmitting to their female offspring their own brightness, would have to be eliminated by a change in the form of inheritance; and this, as shewn by our previous illustration, would be extremely difficult. The more probable result of the long-continued destruction of the more brightly-coloured females, supposing the equal form of transmission to prevail would be the lessening or annihilation of the bright colours of the males, owing to their continual crossing with the duller females. It would be tedious to follow out all the other possible results; but I may remind the reader that if sexually limited variations in brightness occurred in the females, even if they were not in the least injurious to them and consequently were not eliminated, yet they would not be favoured or selected, for the male usually accepts any female, and does not select the more attractive individuals; consequently these variations would be liable to be lost, and would have little influence on the character of the race; and this will aid in accounting for the females being commonly duller-coloured than the males. In the eighth chapter instances were given, to which many might here be added, of variations occurring at various ages, and inherited at the corresponding age. It was also shewn that variations which occur late in life are commonly transmitted to the same sex in which they first appear; whilst variations occurring early in life are apt to be transmitted to both sexes; not that all the cases of sexually-limited transmission can thus be accounted for. It was further shewn that if a male bird varied by becoming brighter whilst young, such variations would be of no service until the age for reproduction had arrived, and there was competition between rival males. But in the case of birds living on the ground and commonly in need of the protection of dull colours, bright tints would be far more dangerous to the young and inexperienced than to the adult males. Consequently the males which varied in brightness whilst young would suffer much destruction and be eliminated through natural selection; on the other hand, the males which varied in this manner when nearly mature, notwithstanding that they were exposed to some additional danger, might survive, and from being favoured through sexual selection, would procreate their kind. As a relation often exists between the period of variation and the form of transmission, if the bright-coloured young males were destroyed and the mature ones were successful in their courtship, the males alone would acquire brilliant colours and would transmit them exclusively to their male offspring. But I by no means wish to maintain that the influence of age on the form of transmission, is the sole cause of the great difference in brilliancy between the sexes of many birds. When the sexes of birds differ in colour, it is interesting to determine whether the males alone have been modified by sexual selection, the females having been left unchanged, or only partially and indirectly thus changed; or whether the females have been specially modified through natural selection for the sake of protection. I will therefore discuss this question at some length, even more fully than its intrinsic importance deserves; for various curious collateral points may thus be conveniently considered. Before we enter on the subject of colour, more especially in reference to Mr. Wallace's conclusions, it may be useful to discuss some other sexual differences under a similar point of view. A breed of fowls formerly existed in Germany* in which the hens were furnished with spurs; they were good layers, but they so greatly disturbed their nests with their spurs that they could not be allowed to sit on their own eggs. Hence at one time it appeared to me probable that with the females of the wild Gallinaceae the development of spurs had been checked through natural selection, from the injury thus caused to their nests. This seemed all the more probable, as wing-spurs, which would not be injurious during incubation, are often as well developed in the female as in the male; though in not a few cases they are rather larger in the male. When the male is furnished with leg-spurs the female almost always exhibits rudiments of them,- the rudiment sometimes consisting of a mere scale, as in Gallus. Hence it might be argued that the females had aboriginally been furnished with well-developed spurs, but that these had subsequently been lost through disuse or natural selection. But if this view be admitted, it would have to be extended to innumerable other cases; and it implies that the female progenitors of the existing spur-bearing species were once encumbered with an injurious appendage. * Bechstein, Naturgeschichte Deutschlands, 1793, B. iii., 339. In some few genera and species, as in Galloperdix, Acomus, and the Javan peacock (Pavo muticus), the females, as well as the males, possess well-developed leg-spurs. Are we to infer from this fact that they construct a different sort of nest from that made by their nearest allies, and not liable to be injured by their spurs; so that the spurs have not been removed? Or are we to suppose that the females of these several species especially require spurs for their defence? It is a more probable conclusion that both the presence and absence of spurs in the females result from different laws of inheritance having prevailed, independently of natural selection. With the many females in which spurs appear as rudiments, we may conclude that some few of the successive variations, through which they were developed in the males, occurred very early in life, and were consequently transferred to the females. In the other and much rarer cases, in which the females possess fully developed spurs, we may conclude that all the successive variations were transferred to them; and that they gradually acquired and inherited the habit of not disturbing their nests. The vocal organs and the feathers variously modified for producing sound, as well as the proper instincts for using them, often differ in the two sexes, but are sometimes the same in both. Can such differences be accounted for by the males having acquired these organs and instincts, whilst the females have been saved from inheriting them, on account of the danger to which they would have been exposed by attracting the attention of birds or beasts of prey? This does not seem to me probable, when we think of the multitude of birds which with impunity gladden the country with their voices during the spring.* It is a safer conclusion that, as vocal and instrumental organs are of special service only to the males during their courtship, these organs were developed through sexual selection and their constant use in that sex alone- the successive variations and the effects of use having been from the first more or less limited in transmission to the male offspring. * Daines Barrington, however, thought it probable (Philosophical Transactions, 1773, p. 164) that few female birds sing, because the talent would have been dangerous to them during incubation. He adds, that a similar view may possibly account for the inferiority of the female to the male in plumage. Many analogous cases could be adduced; those for instance of the plumes on the head being generally longer in the male than in the female, sometimes of equal length in both sexes, and occasionally absent in the female,- these several cases occurring in the same group of birds. It would be difficult to account for such a difference between the sexes by the female having been benefited by possessing a slightly shorter crest than the male, and its consequent diminution or complete suppression through natural selection. But I will take a more favourable case, namely the length of the tail. The long train of the peacock would have been not only inconvenient but dangerous to the peahen during the period of incubation and whilst accompanying her young. Hence there is not the least a priori improbability in the development of her tail having been checked through natural selection. But the females of various pheasants, which apparently are exposed on their open nests to as much danger as the peahen, have tails of considerable length. The females as well as the males of the Menura superba have long tails, and they build a domed nest, which is a great anomaly in so large a bird. Naturalists have wondered how the female Menura could manage her tail during incubation; but it is now known* that she "enters the nest head first, and then turns round with her tail sometimes over her back, but more often bent round by her side. Thus in time the tail becomes quite askew, and is a tolerable guide to the length of time the bird has been sitting." Both sexes of an Australian kingfisher (Tanysiptera sylvia) have the middle tail-feathers greatly lengthened, and the female makes her nest in a hole; and as I am informed by Mr. R. B. Sharpe these feathers become much crumpled during incubation. * Mr. Ramsay, in Proc. Zoolog. Soc., 1868, p. 50. In these two latter cases the great length of the tail-feathers must be in some degree inconvenient to the female; and as in both species the tail-feathers of the female are somewhat shorter than those of the male, it might be argued that their full development had been prevented through natural selection. But if the development of the tail of the peahen had been checked only when it became inconveniently or dangerously great, she would have retained a much longer tail than she actually possesses; for her tail is not nearly so long, relatively to the size of her body, as that of many female pheasants, nor longer than that of the female turkey. It must also be borne in mind that, in accordance with this view, as soon as the tail of the peahen became dangerously long, and its development was consequently checked, she would have continually reacted on her male progeny, and thus have prevented the peacock from acquiring his present magnificent train. We may therefore infer that the length of the tail in the peacock and its shortness in the peahen are the result of the requisite variations in the male having been from the first transmitted to the male offspring alone. We are led to a nearly similar conclusion with respect to the length of the tail in the various species of pheasants. In the Eared pheasant (Crossoptilon auritum) the tail is of equal length in both sexes, namely sixteen or seventeen inches; in the common pheasant it is about twenty inches long in the male and twelve in the female; in Soemmerring's pheasant, thirty-seven inches in the male and only eight in the female; and lastly in Reeve's pheasant it is sometimes actually seventy-two inches long in the male and sixteen in the female. Thus in the several species, the tail of the female differs much in length, irrespectively of that of the male; and this can be accounted for, as it seems to me, with much more probability, by the laws of inheritance,- that is by the successive variations having been from the first more or less closely limited in their transmission to the male sex than by the agency of natural selection, resulting from the length of tail being more or less injurious to the females of these several allied species. We may now consider Mr. Wallace's arguments in regard to the sexual colouration of birds. He believes that the bright tints originally acquired through sexual selection by the males would in all, or almost all cases, have been transmitted to the females, unless the transference had been checked through natural selection. I may here remind the reader that various facts opposed to this view have already been given under reptiles, amphibians, fishes and lepidoptera. Mr. Wallace rests his belief chiefly, but not exclusively, as we shall see in the next chapter, on the following statement,* that when both sexes are coloured in a very conspicuous manner, the nest is of such a nature as to conceal the sitting bird; but when there is a marked contrast of colour between the sexes, the male being gay and the female dull-coloured, the nest is open and exposes the sitting bird to view. This coincidence, as far as it goes, certainly seems to favour the belief that the females which sit on open nests have been specially modified for the sake of protection; but we shall presently see that there is another and more probable explanation, namely, that conspicuous females have acquired the instinct of building domed nests oftener than dull-coloured birds. Mr. Wallace admits that there are, as might have been expected, some exceptions to his two rules, but it is a question whether the exceptions are not so numerous as seriously to invalidate them. * Journal of Travel, edited by A. Murray, vol. i., 1868, p. 78. There is in the first place much truth in the Duke of Argyll's remark* that a large domed nest is more conspicuous to an enemy, especially to all tree-haunting carnivorous animals, than a smaller open nest. Nor must we forget that with many birds which build open nests, the male sits on the eggs and aids the female in feeding the young: this is the case, for instance, with Pyranga aestiva,*(2) one of the most splendid birds in the United States, the male being vermilion, and the female light brownish-green. Now if brilliant colours had been extremely dangerous to birds whilst sitting on their open nests, the males in these cases would have suffered greatly. It might, however, be of such paramount importance to the male to be brilliantly coloured, in order to beat his rivals, that this may have more than compensated some additional danger. * Journal of Travel, edited by A. Murray, vol. i., 1868, p. 281. *(2) Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. i., p. 233. Mr. Wallace admits that with the king-crows (Dicrurus), orioles, and Pittidae, the females are conspicuously coloured, yet build open nests; but he urges that the birds of the first group are highly pugnacious and could defend themselves; that those of the second group take extreme care in concealing their open nests, but this does not invariably hold good;* and that with the birds of the third group the females are brightly coloured chiefly on the under surface. Besides these cases, pigeons which are sometimes brightly, and almost always conspicuously coloured, and which are notoriously liable to the attacks of birds of prey, offer a serious exception to the rule, for they almost always build open and exposed nests. In another large family, that of the humming-birds, all the species build open nests, yet with some of the most gorgeous species the sexes are alike; and in the majority, the females, though less brilliant than the males, are brightly coloured. Nor can it be maintained that all female humming-birds, which are brightly coloured, escape detection by their tints being green, for some display on their upper surfaces red, blue, and other colours.*(2) * Jerdon, Birds of India, vol. ii., p. 108. Gould's Handbook of the Birds of Australia, vol. i., p. 463. *(2) For instance, the female Eupetomena macroura has the head and tail dark blue with reddish loins; the female Lampornis porphyrurus is blackish-green on the upper surface, with the lores and sides of the throat crimson; the female Eulampis jugularis has the top of the head and back green, but the loins and the tail are crimson. Many other instances of highly conspicuous females could be given. See Mr. Gould's magnificent work on this family. In regard to birds which build in holes or construct domed nests, other advantages, as Mr. Wallace remarks, besides concealment are gained, such as shelter from the rain, greater warmth, and in hot countries protection from the sun;* so that it is no valid objection to his view that many birds having both sexes obscurely coloured build concealed nests.*(2) The female horn-bill (Buceros), for instance, of India and Africa is protected during incubation with extraordinary care, for she plasters up with her own excrement the orifice of the hole in which she sits on her eggs, leaving only a small orifice through which the male feeds her; she is thus kept a close prisoner during the whole period of incubation;*(3) yet female horn-bills are not more conspicuously coloured than many other birds of equal size which build open nests. It is a more serious objection to Mr. Wallace's view, as is admitted by him, that in some few groups the males are brilliantly coloured and the females obscure, and yet the latter hatch their eggs in domed nests. This is the case with the Grallinae of Australia, the superb warblers (Maluridae) of the same country, the sun-birds (Nectariniae), and with several of the Australian honey-suckers or Meliphagidae.*(4) * Mr. Salvin noticed in Guatemala (Ibis, 1864, p. 375) that humming-birds were much more unwilling to leave their nests during very hot weather, when the sun was shining brightly, as if their eggs would be thus injured, than during cool, cloudy, or rainy weather. *(2) I may specify, as instances of dull-coloured birds building concealed nests, the species belonging to eight Australian genera described in Gould's Handbook of the Birds of Australia, vol. i., pp. 340, 362, 365, 383, 387, 389, 391, 414. *(3) Mr. C. Horne, Proc. Zoolog. Soc., 1869. p. 243. *(4) On the nidification and colours of these latter species, see Gould's Handbook of the Birds of Australia, vol. i., pp. 504, 527. If we look to the birds of England we shall see that there is no close and general relation between the colours of the female and the nature of the nest which is constructed. About forty of our British birds (excluding those of large size which could defend themselves) build in holes in banks, rocks, or trees, or construct domed nests. If we take the colours of the female goldfinch, bullfinch, or black-bird, as a standard of the degree of conspicuousness, which is not highly dangerous to the sitting female, then out of the above forty birds the females of only twelve can be considered as conspicuous to a dangerous degree, the remaining twenty-eight being inconspicuous.* Nor is there any close relation within the same genus between a well-pronounced difference in colour between the sexes, and the nature of the nest constructed. Thus the male house sparrow (Passer domesticus) differs much from the female, the male tree-sparrow (P. montanus) hardly at all, and yet both build well-concealed nests. The two sexes of the common fly-catcher (Muscicapa grisola) can hardly be distinguished, whilst the sexes of the pied fly-catcher (M. luctuosa) differ considerably, and both species build in holes or conceal their nests. The female blackbird (Turdus merula) differs much, the female ring-ouzel (T. torquatus) differs less, and the female common thrush (T. musicus) hardly at all from their respective males; yet all build open nests. On the other hand, the not very distantly-allied water-ouzel (Cinclus aquaticus) builds a domed nest, and the sexes differ about as much as in the ring-ouzel. The black and red grouse (Tetrao tetrix and T. scoticus) build open nests in equally well-concealed spots, but in the one species the sexes differ greatly, and in the other very little. * I have consulted, on this subject, Macgillivray's British Birds, and though doubts may be entertained in some cases in regard to the degree of concealment of the nest, and to the degree of conspicuousness of the female, yet the following birds, which all lay their eggs in holes or in domed nests, can hardly be considered, by the above standard, as conspicuous: Passer, 2 species; Sturnus, of which the female is considerably less brilliant than the male; Cinclus; Motallica boarula (?); Erithacus (?); Fruticola, 2 sp.; Saxicola; Ruticilla, 2 sp.; Sylvia, 3 sp.; Parus, 3 sp.; Mecistura anorthura; Certhia; Sitta; Yunx; Muscicapa, 2 sp.; Hirundo, 3 sp.; and Cypselus. The females of the following 12 birds may be considered as conspicuous according to the same standard, viz., Pastor, Motacilla alba, Parus major and P. caeruleus, Upupa, Picus, 4 sp., Coracias, Alcedo, and Merops. Notwithstanding the foregoing objections, I cannot doubt, after reading Mr. Wallace's excellent essay, that looking to the birds of the world, a large majority of the species in which the females are conspicuously coloured (and in this case the males with rare exceptions are equally conspicuous), build concealed nests for the sake of protection. Mr. Wallace enumerates* a long series of groups in which this rule bolds good; but it will suffice here to give, as instances, the more familiar groups of kingfishers, toucans, trogons, puff-birds (Capitonidae), plantain-eaters (Musophagae, woodpeckers, and parrots. Mr. Wallace believes that in these groups, as the males gradually acquired through sexual selection their brilliant colours, these were transferred to the females and were not eliminated by natural selection, owing to the protection which they already enjoyed from their manner of nidification. According to this view, their present manner of nesting was acquired before their present colours. But it seems to me much more probable that in most cases, as the females were gradually rendered more and more brilliant from partaking of the colours of the male, they were gradually led to change their instincts (supposing that they originally built open nests), and to seek protection by building domed or concealed nests. No one who studies, for instance, Audubon's account of the differences in the nests of the same species in the northern and southern United States,*(2) will feel any great difficulty in admitting that birds, either by a change (in the strict sense of the word) of their habits, or through the natural selection of so-called spontaneous variations of instinct, might readily be led to modify their manner of nesting. * Journal of Travel, edited by A. Murray, vol. i., p. 78. *(2) See many statements in the Ornithological Biography. See also some curious observations on the nests of Italian birds by Eugenio Bettoni, in the Atti della Societa Italiana, vol. xi., 1869, p. 487. This way of viewing the relation, as far as it holds good, between the bright colours of female birds and their manner of nesting, receives some support from certain cases occurring in the Sahara Desert. Here, as in most other deserts, various birds, and many other animals, have had their colours adapted in a wonderful manner to the tints of the surrounding surface. Nevertheless there are, as I am informed by the Rev. Mr. Tristram, some curious exceptions to the rule; thus the male of the Monticola cyanea is conspicuous from his bright blue colour, and the female almost equally conspicuous from her mottled brown and white plumage; both sexes of two species of Dromolaea are of a lustrous black; so that these three species are far from receiving protection from their colours, yet they are able to survive, for they have acquired the habit of taking refuge from danger in holes or crevices in the rocks. With respect to the above groups in which the females are conspicuously coloured and build concealed nests, it is not necessary to suppose that each separate species had its nidifying instinct specially modified; but only that the early progenitors of each group were gradually led to build domed or concealed nests, and afterwards transmitted this instinct, together with their bright colours, to their modified descendants. As far as it can be trusted, the conclusion is interesting, that sexual selection together with equal or nearly equal inheritance by both sexes, have indirectly determined the manner of nidification of whole groups of birds. According to Mr. Wallace, even in the groups in which the females, from being protected in domed nests during incubation, have not had their bright colours eliminated through natural selection, the males often differ in a slight, and occasionally in a considerable degree from the females. This is a significant fact, for such differences in colour must be accounted for by some of the variations in the males having been from the first limited in transmission to the same sex; as it can hardly be maintained that these differences, especially when very slight, serve as a protection to the female. Thus all the species in the splendid group of the trogons build in holes; and Mr. Gould gives figures* of both sexes of twenty-five species, in all of which, with one partial exception, the sexes differ sometimes slightly, sometimes conspicuously, in colour,- the males being always finer than the females, though the latter are likewise beautiful. All the species of kingfishers build in holes, and with most of the species the sexes are equally brilliant, and thus far Mr. Wallace's rule holds good; but in some of the Australian species the colours of the females are rather less vivid than those of the male; and in one splendidly-coloured species, the sexes differ so much that they were at first thought to be specifically distinct.*(2) Mr. R. B. Sharpe, who has especially studied this group, has shewn me some American species (Ceryle) in which the breast of the male is belted with black. Again, in Carcineutes, the difference between the sexes is conspicuous: in the male the upper surface is dull-blue banded with black, the lower surface being partly fawn-coloured, and there is much red about the head; in the female the upper surface is reddish-brown banded with black, and the lower surface white with black markings It is an interesting fact, as shewing how the same peculiar style of sexual colouring often characterises allied forms, that in three species of Dacelo the male differs from the female only in the tail being dull-blue banded with black, whilst that of the female is brown with blackish bars; so that here the tail differs in colour in the two sexes in exactly the same manner as the whole upper surface in the two sexes of Carcineutes. * See his Monograph of the Trogonidae, 1st edition. *(2) Namely, Cyanalcyon. Gould's Handbook of the Birds of Australia, vol. i., p. 133; see, also, pp. 130, 136. With parrots, which likewise build in holes, we find analogous cases: in most of the species, both sexes are brilliantly coloured and indistinguishable, but in not a few species the males are coloured rather more vividly than the females, or even very differently from them. Thus, besides other strongly-marked differences, the whole under surface of the male king lory (Aprosmictus scapulatus) is scarlet, whilst the throat and chest of the female is green tinged with red: in the Euphema splendida there is a similar difference, the face and wing coverts moreover of the female being of a paler blue than in the male.* In the family of the tits (Parinae), which build concealed nests, the female of our common blue tomtit (Parus caeruleus), is "much less brightly coloured" than the male: and in the magnificent sultan yellow tit of India the difference is greater.*(2) * Every gradation of difference between the sexes may be followed in the parrots of Australia. See Gould, op. cit., vol. ii., pp. 14-102. *(2) Macgillivray's British Birds, vol. ii., p. 433. Jerdon, Birds of India, vol. ii., p. 282. Again, in the great group of the woodpeckers,* the sexes are generally nearly alike, but in the Megapicus validus all those parts of the head, neck, and breast, which are crimson in the male are pale brown in the female. As in several woodpeckers the head of the male is bright crimson, whilst that of the female is plain, it occurred to me that this colour might possibly make the female dangerously conspicuous, whenever she put her head out of the hole containing her nest, and consequently that this colour, in accordance with Mr. Wallace's belief, had been eliminated. This view is strengthened by what Malherbe states with respect to Indopicus carlotta; namely, that the young females, like the young males, have some crimson about their heads, but that this colour disappears in the adult female, whilst it is intensified in the adult male. Nevertheless the following considerations render this view extremely doubtful: the male takes a fair share in incubation,*(2) and would be thus almost equally exposed to danger; both sexes of many species have their heads of an equally bright crimson; in other species the difference between the sexes in the amount of scarlet is so slight that it can hardly make any appreciable difference in the danger incurred; and lastly, the colouring of the head in the two sexes often differs slightly in other ways. * All the following facts are taken from M. Malherbe's magnificent Monographie des Picidees, 1861. *(2) Audubon's Ornithological Biography, vol. ii., p. 75; see also the Ibis, vol. i., p. 268. The cases, as yet given, of slight and graduated differences in colour between the males and females in the groups, in which as a general rule the sexes resemble each other, all relate to species which build domed or concealed nests. But similar gradations may likewise be observed in groups in which the sexes as a general rule resemble each other, but which build open nests. As I have before instanced the Australian parrots, so I may here instance, without giving any details, the Australian pigeons.* It deserves especial notice that in all these cases the slight differences in plumage between the sexes are of the same general nature as the occasionally greater differences. A good illustration of this fact has already been afforded by those kingfishers in which either the tail alone or the whole upper surface of the plumage differs in the same manner in the two sexes. Similar cases may be observed with parrots and pigeons. The differences in colour between the sexes of the same species are, also, of the same general nature as the differences in colour between the distinct species of the same group. For when in a group in which the sexes are usually alike, the male differs considerably from the female, he is not coloured in a quite new style. Hence we may infer that within the same group the special colours of both sexes when they are alike, and the colours of the male, when he differs slightly or even considerably from the female, have been in most cases determined by the same general cause; this being sexual selection. * Gould's Handbook of the Birds of Australia, vol. ii., pp. 109-149. It is not probable, as has already been remarked, that differences in colour between the sexes, when very slight, can be of service to the female as a protection. Assuming, however, that they are of service, they might be thought to be cases of transition; but we have no reason to believe that many species at any one time are undergoing change. Therefore we can hardly admit that the numerous females which differ very slightly in colour from their males are now all commencing to become obscure for the sake of protection. Even if we consider somewhat more marked sexual differences, is it probable, for instance, that the head of the female chaffinch,- the crimson on the breast of the female bullfinch,- the green of the female greenfinch,- the crest of the female golden-crested wren, have all been rendered less bright by the slow process of selection for the sake of protection? I cannot think so; and still less with the slight differences between the sexes of those birds which build concealed nests. On the other hand, the differences in colour between the sexes, whether great or small, may to a large extent be explained on the principle of the successive variations, acquired by the males through sexual selection, having been from the first more or less limited in their transmission to the females. That the degree of limitation should differ in different species of the same group will not surprise any one who has studied the laws of inheritance, for they are so complex that they appear to us in our ignorance to be capricious in their action.* * See remarks to this effect in Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. ii., chap. xii. As far as I can discover there are few large groups of birds in which all the species have both sexes alike and brilliantly coloured, but I hear from Mr. Sclater, that this appears to be the case with the Musophagae or plantain-eaters. Nor do I believe that any large group exists in which the sexes of all the species are widely dissimilar in colour: Mr. Wallace informs me that the chatterers of S. America (Cotingidae) offer one of the best instances; but with some of the species, in which the male has a splendid red breast, the female exhibits some red on her breast; and the females of other species shew traces of the green and other colours of the males. Nevertheless we have a near approach to close sexual similarity or dissimilarity throughout several groups: and this, from what has just been said of the fluctuating nature of inheritance, is a somewhat surprising circumstance. But that the same laws should largely prevail with allied animals is not surprising. The domestic fowl has produced a great number of breeds and sub-breeds, and in these the sexes generally differ in plumage; so that it has been noticed as an unusual circumstance when in certain sub-breeds they resemble each other. On the other hand, the domestic pigeon has likewise produced a vast number of distinct breeds and sub-breeds, and in these, with rare exceptions, the two sexes are identically alike. Therefore if other species of Gallus and Columba were domesticated and varied, it would not be rash to predict that similar rules of sexual similarity and dissimilarity, depending on the form of transmission, would hold good in both cases. In like manner the same form of transmission has generally prevailed under nature throughout the same groups, although marked exceptions to this rule occur. Thus within the same family or even genus, the sexes may be identically alike, or very different in colour. Instances have already been given in the same genus, as with sparrows, flycatchers, thrushes and grouse. In the family of pheasants the sexes of almost all the species are wonderfully dissimilar, but are quite alike in the eared pheasant or Crossoptilon auritum. In two species of Chloephaga, a genus of geese, the male cannot be distinguished from the females, except by size; whilst in two others, the sexes are so unlike that they might easily be mistaken for distinct species.* * The Ibis, vol. vi., 1864, p. 122. The laws of inheritance can alone account for the following cases, in which the female acquires, late in life, certain characters proper to the male, and ultimately comes to resemble him more or less completely. Here protection can hardly have come into play. Mr. Blyth informs me that the females of Oriolus melanocephalus and of some allied species, when sufficiently mature to breed, differ considerably in plumage from the adult males; but after the second or third moults they differ only in their beaks having a slight greenish tinge. In the dwarf bitterns (Ardetta), according to the same authority, "the male acquires his final livery at the first moult, the female not before the third or fourth moult; in the meanwhile she presents an intermediate garb, which is ultimately exchanged for the same livery as that of the male." So again the female Falco peregrinus acquires her blue plumage more slowly than the male. Mr. Swinhoe states that with one of the drongo shrikes (Dicrurus macrocercus) the male, whilst almost a nestling, moults his soft brown plumage and becomes of a uniform glossy greenish-black; but the female retains for a long time the white striae and spots on the axillary feathers; and does not completely assume the uniform black colour of the male for three years. The same excellent observer remarks that in the spring of the second year the female spoon-bill (Platalea) of China resembles the male of the first year, and that apparently it is not until the third spring that she acquires the same adult plumage as that possessed by the male at a much earlier age. The female Bombycilla carolinensis differs very little from the male, but the appendages, which like beads of red sealing-wax ornament the wing-feathers,* are not developed in her so early in life as in the male. In the male of an Indian parrakeet (Paloeornis javanicus) the upper mandible is coral-red from his earliest youth, but in the female, as Mr. Blyth has observed with caged and wild birds, it is at first black and does not become red until the bird is at least a year old, at which age the sexes resemble each other in all respects. Both sexes of the wild turkey are ultimately furnished with a tuft of bristles on the breast, but in two-year-old birds the tuft is about four inches long in the male and hardly apparent in the female; when, however, the latter has reached her fourth year, it is from four to five inches in length.*(2) * When the male courts the female, these ornaments are vibrated, and "are shewn off to great advantage," on the outstretched wings: A. Leith Adams, Field and Forest Rambles, 1873, p. 153. *(2) On Ardetta, Translation of Cuvier's Regne Animal, by Mr. Blyth, footnote, p. 159. On the peregrine falcon, Mr. Blyth, in Charlesworth's Mag. of Nat. Hist., vol. i., 1837, p. 304. On Dicrurus, Ibis, 1863, p. 44. On the Platalea, Ibis, vol. vi., 1864, p. 366. On the Bombycilla, Audubon's Ornitholog. Biography, vol. i., p. 229. On the Palaeornis, see, also, Jerdon, Birds of India, vol. i., p. 263. On the wild turkey, Audubon, ibid., vol. i., p. 15; but I hear from Judge Caton that in Illinois the female very rarely acquires a tuft. Analogous cases with the females of Petrcocssyphus are given by Mr. R. Sharpe, Proeedings of the Zoological Society, 1872, p. 496. These cases must not be confounded with those where diseased or old females abnormally assume masculine characters, nor with those where fertile females, whilst young, acquire the characters of the male, through variation or some unknown cause.* But all these cases have so much in common that they depend, according to the hypothesis of pangenesis, on gemmules derived from each part of the male being present, though latent, in the female; their development following on some slight change in the elective affinities of her constituent tissues. * Of these latter cases Mr. Blyth has recorded (Translation of Cuvier's Regne Animal, p. 158) various instances with Lanius, Ruticilla, Linaria, and Anas. Audubon has also recorded a similar case (Ornitholog. Biography, vol. v., p. 519) with Pyranga aestiva. A few words must be added on changes of plumage in relation to the season of the year. From reasons formerly assigned there can be little doubt that the elegant plumes, long pendant feathers, crests, &c., of egrets, herons, and many other birds, which are developed and retained only during the summer, serve for ornamental and nuptial purposes, though common to both sexes. The female is thus rendered more conspicuous during the period of incubation than during the winter; but such birds as herons and egrets would be able to defend themselves. As, however, plumes would probably be inconvenient and certainly of no use during the winter, it is possible that the habit of moulting twice in the year may have been gradually acquired through natural selection for the sake of casting off inconvenient ornaments during the winter. But this view cannot be extended to the many waders, whose summer and winter plumages differ very little in colour. With defenceless species, in which both sexes, or the males alone, become extremely conspicuous during the breeding-season,- or when the males acquire at this season such long wing or tail-feathers as to impede their flight, as with Cosmetornis and Vidua,- it certainly at first appears highly probable that the second moult has been gained for the special purpose of throwing off these ornaments. We must, however, remember that many birds, such as some of the birds of paradise, the Argus pheasant and peacock, do not cast their plumes during the winter; and it can hardly be maintained that the constitution of these birds, at least of the Gallinaceae, renders a double moult impossible, for the ptarmigan moults thrice in the year.* Hence it must be considered as doubtful whether the many species which moult their ornamental plumes or lose their bright colours during the winter, have acquired this habit on account of the inconvenience or danger which they would otherwise have suffered. * See Gould's Birds of Great Britain. I conclude, therefore, that the habit of moulting twice in the year was in most or all cases first acquired for some distinct purpose, perhaps for gaining a warmer winter covering; and that variations in the plumage occurring during the summer were accumulated through sexual selection, and transmitted to the offspring at the same season of the year; that such variations were inherited either by both sexes or by the males alone, according to the form of inheritance which prevailed. This appears more probable than that the species in all cases originally tended to retain their ornamental plumage during the winter, but were saved from this through natural selection, resulting from the inconvenience or danger thus caused. I have endeavoured in this chapter to shew that the arguments are not trustworthy in favour of the view that weapons, bright colours, and various ornaments, are now confined to the males owing to the conversion, by natural selection, of the equal transmission of characters to both sexes, into transmission to the male sex alone. It is also doubtful whether the colours of many female birds are due to the preservation, for the sake of protection, of variations which were from the first limited in their transmission to the female sex. But it will be convenient to defer any further discussion on this subject until I treat, in the following chapter, of the differences in plumage between the young and old.

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color="#FFFFFF" size="2">Back to Regional News Digest Saturday, September 19, 1998 Last modified at 3:24 a.m. on Saturday, September 19, 1998 State gets more rain, except in plains ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - Slightly higher averages of rain in New Mexico this summer masked big differences in precipitation levels statewide, the National Weather Service said. The state's June-through-August average was 5 percent wetter than normal. But while summer rains fell on the western and northern parts of the state, the eastern plains were dry, said Charlie Liles, head of the weather service's Albuquerque office. Liles said you could draw a line south from Clayton and Las Vegas, N.M., through Cloudcroft to see the demarkation: It mostly was dry to the southeast and wet in the northwest. Part of weather systems that steered rain away from Texas did the same to eastern New Mexico. "The dry east and southeast plains shows the westward expansion of the Texas drought that has taken place the past three to four months," Liles said.ce Clovisn got 61 percent less rain this summer, he said. Monsoons caused an unusually wet July across the rest of the state but then stopped in August, said Dave Gutzler, a climate researcher at the University of New Mexico. Jal, in the southeast, was the driest spot for the three-month period, with just 1.43 inches of rain, 72 percent below normal. The wettest spot was Black Lake near Angel Fire, with 14.53 inches, Liles said. Albuquerque was two percent below normal with 3.42 inches, while Socorro was nearly 50 percent above normal with 5.6 inches. Santa Fe had 33 percent more rain at 7.15 inches, while Las Cruces was 47 percent below normal at 2.37 inches.

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Use of Biomedical Engineering and Music for K-12 Math/Science Education The study proposes the use of Biomedical Engineering (BME) Ph.D. track graduate students to assist middle and high school teachers to teach math/science skills, by providing additional tools and training to optimize their use. The emphasis is on the use of disciplinary knowledge to enhance how people learn with the aid of computer technology; showing the students the importance of this knowledge to solve real world problems. Three school districts have committed to participate in a cross-disciplinary education program (Shelby County, Shades Mountain Independent, and the Alabama School of Fine Arts). Students from UAB’s Biomedical Engineering (BME) and the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) departments will develop, implement, and evaluate the four interventions used to enhance math/science skills. - Music education - Math/Science kits and six-week projects - Science Fair project development - A technology of Fine Arts class When the cost-effectiveness of each intervention has been determined, decisions whether to expand the intervention, within each school system will be made. Information about successful programs would be made available, on the internet or other media, to interested groups. Trained personnel from this project would serve as facilitators for these groups. - Investigators: A. Eberhardt, R. Thompson, M. Froning, D. Kilpadi

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The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We also have completely practical lists — the shopping list, the will, the menu — that are also cultural achievements in their own right. …At first, we think that a list is primitive and typical of very early cultures, which had no exact concept of the universe and were therefore limited to listing the characteristics they could name. But, in cultural history, the list has prevailed over and over again. It is by no means merely an expression of primitive cultures. A very clear image of the universe existed in the Middle Ages, and there were lists. A new worldview based on astronomy predominated in the Renaissance and the Baroque era. And there were lists. And the list is certainly prevalent in the postmodern age. It has an irresistible magic. …We like lists because we don't want to die. Here is much more. Make sure you read the quotation under the photo; I don't want to reproduce it on a family blog. I wonder if this interview was translated from some other language, given the difference between "lists" and "enumeration." Here is an important MR post: Jeffrey Lonsdale writes. I thank Cardiff Garcia for the pointer.

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See also the Dr. Math FAQ: order of operations Browse High School Basic Algebra Stars indicate particularly interesting answers or good places to begin browsing. Selected answers to common questions: Solving simple linear equations. Positive/negative integer rules. Completing the square. Direct and indirect variation. Inequalities and negative numbers. - Normalization [08/01/2001] How do I figure out: 90 + 70 + 88 + 94 + x / 5 = 85 ? - The Nth Root of N [11/28/2000] Is the nth root of n (a whole number other than 1) ever a rational - Number of Equations Needed in a Simultaneous Linear System [10/29/2003] Could you tell me why we need the same number of equations as variables in order to get a unique solution to a system of simultaneous linear equations? - Number * Sum of Remaining Four Numbers [04/03/2003] Find 5 numbers such that when each number is multiplied by the sum of the remaining 4 numbers, the following values will result: 152, 245, 297, 320, 360. - Objects in a Pyramid [7/8/1996] Objects are stacked in a triangular pyramid... how many objects are in the nth layer from the top? - Old Test Questions Answered [1/23/1995] I am studying for my midterm, and I've come across two questions that I got wrong and don't understand why.... - One Variable Equations with Decimals [02/11/1997] How do you solve 8.25x + 3 = 17.5 + x? - Open Sentence, Statement [09/18/2001] What is an open sentence? - Operator Precedence [08/13/2003] Since the following statement is true: (1+1)**(5-2) is 8, why is the following statement true and not false: 2**1+1 is 3 and not 4, and 3*1**3 is 3 and not 27...' ? - Ordering Exponents and Variables [04/08/2000] Is there a rule for putting terms in descending order if the variables have the same exponent? What about negative exponents and descending - Ordering Products, Powers, and Parameters of Trigonometric Functions [10/31/2010] A student wants to know how to unambiguously interpret strings of trigonometric functions, multiplication, and exponentiation. Doctor Peterson digs into a history book -- as well as another math doctor's conversation -- to illuminate the vagaries of the - Order in Linear Expressions [11/20/2001] Can you give me a convincing argument as to why, in an equation such as y=13-7x, where y is a function of x, it should be written as y=-7x+13? - Order of Operations [05/19/1999] Given a, b, x, and y, find ax/by. - Order of Operations with Percentages [04/05/2001] Why does the order of operations exclude percentage, square roots, etc.? - Other Ways to Get the Quadratic Formula [02/19/2010] Doctor Jacques shares two ways to derive [-b +/- SQRT(b^2 - 4ac)]/2a without explicitly completing the square. - Pairs of Odd Integers [09/24/1997] Find all pairs of odd integers a and b that satisfy the equation: a + 128b = 3ab. - Parabola with Horizontal or Vertical Axis [05/03/2001] How can I find the focus and directrix of a parabola whose axis is either horizontal or vertical, like 2x^2 = -y? - Parabolic Golf Shot Equations [01/24/2002] Does the ball reach the green? - Parallel and Perpendicular Lines [01/14/1999] How do you tell without graphing whether the graphs of these equations are parallel, perpendicular, or neither? - Parallel Lines [12/31/1998] What are some ways of proving lines parallel - geometrically and - Parametric Form for Equation of a Line [6/30/1996] How can you convert an equation such as y = -3x/4 + 7/2 to parametric - Parity [8/2/1996] How do I determine if the given function is odd, even or neither? What's the symmetry of the graph? - Partial Fractions [01/29/1998] How do I express 3/1-(x^3) in partial fractions? - Pascal's Triangle Pattern [04/22/1999] What pattern does multiplying each entry by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... in order, and adding the products yield? - Perfect Square: Solving Two Equations [6/14/1996] x^2 + 5 is a perfect square, and x^2 - 5 is a perfect square. - Perimeter Equals Area in a Triangle [4/2/1996] When will the area and perimeter of a right triangle be numerically - Picture Frame, Triangle Measurements [5/20/1996] My teacher gave us ten questions to answer and I could do all except two: 1) A framed rectangular picture is 35cm long and 25cm wide... 2) The base of a triangle is 9cm more than the perpendicular height... - Plus or Minus Sign [03/08/2002] What does this equation mean: y = +- k ? The - sign is directly under the - Point Equidistant from 3 Other Points [04/11/1999] How do you find a point that is equidistant from three other points? - Point on a Line [03/23/2001] Can you please tell me a formula to find if a point exists on a line? Both are in x,y form. - Polynomial Brain-Twisters [12/4/1995] I'm stumped on some similar polynomial problems... - Polynomial Degrees and Definition of a Field [03/02/1998] The degree of polynomials added together, and definition of a field. - Polynomial Factoring Rules [04/02/1997] How do I apply the polynomial factoring rules to t^21+1 and 25y^2-144 = - Polynomial Problem [3/11/1995] A remainder of 9 results when the polynomial p(x) is divided by x-2, a remainder of -3 when p(x) is divided by x+2, and a remainder of 3 when divided by x-1. Find the remainder when p(x) is divided by (x-2)(x+2)(x- - Population and Percentage [03/07/1999] Given population data, find the number of women in two different years. - Positive Unit Fractions [10/02/2002] Find five different positive unit fractions whose sum is 1. (A unit fraction is a fraction whose numerator is 1. All denominators must also be natural numbers.) - Precedence of Unary Operators [09/01/99] The PEMDAS rule for order of operations ignores unary operators. Can you explain the proper precedence for them, and give an example showing how not knowing the rule can cause an incorrect result? - Preparing for an Algebra Test [11/1/1995] A 9th grade math student asks for help preparing for final exams. What is the difference between the terms: solve and simplify? How do you find the gradient in a graph? - Prize Money [09/04/1997] If first prize wins $1,000 out of $6,000 and twentieth prize wins $100, how much money do second through nineteenth place win? Is this a - Probability of a Function Having Complex Roots [05/11/2000] What is the probability that the function f(x) = x^2 + px + q = 0 will have complex roots when p and q lie between 0 and 1? ...when p and q lie between 0 and 5? ...when p and q are greater than 0?

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Hydrocele Operation: aka Hydroceles, Hydrocele Sac, Swollen Testicle, Hydrocelectomy What is it? Hydrocele operations or hydrocele surgery is to release fluid that forms in a sac within the scrotum. Typically hydroceles develop when the testicle passes into the scrotum but the passage through which this occur fails to close properly. Fluid can accumulate in this passage from the abdomen, and then enters the scrotum causing it to swell. This can cause one or both sides of the scrotum to swell and the testicle itself to swell or become damage and inflamed. Fluid can also block the tube where sperm typically flow from. Hydroceles are more common in newborn boys but are not exclusive to newborn boys. To diagnose a hydrocele typically a doctor will look for swelling in the scrotum caused primarily by fluid build up or will look for something solid like a fluid-filled sac in the scrotum. Typically fluid is removed from the hydrocele sac during a procedure called a hydrocelectomy. For the most part this is a straightforward and uncomplicated procedure that may produce a moderate amount of soreness for a few days following the procedure. The long-term benefits far outweigh any short-term soreness. Many times the patient is a young patient under the age of 10 or in many cases a newborn baby that is born with a hydrocele defect. Usually a surgery takes placed under general anesthesia. A surgeon will make a small incision in the scrotum that will allow fluid to be drained from the scrotum and then seal the passage from the scrotum to the abdomen. Usually the incision is then closed with stitches that will dissolve on their own so they do not have to be removed later. Alternatives to Surgery There are no known alternatives to this surgery currently. Before the Operation Prior to the operation the doctor will confirm a fluid filled sac exists by placing a light to the scrotum which will light up the testicles, veins in the scrotum and the fluid filled sac which will appear clear to the light. A doctor will also perform a comprehensive medical history and check any medications the patient is currently taking. Patients are advised not to eat or drink anything up to 12 hours before the procedure because it is performed under general anesthesia. After the Operation- At Home Once the operation is complete the patient will recover usually for a few hours in a day bed. The procedure is usually performed on an outpatient basis meaning the patient can usually go home on the same day. Most of the time it is best to wear looser fitting close that will prevent irritation and discomfort on leaving. There are some risks associated with this procedure as there are with any procedure including a small risk of infection. Other risks including the risk of bleeding during or after the procedure, and a risk of a blood clot forming in the area of the procedure. The doctor may accidentally damage the scrotum or the tissues surrounding this area too. Anytime a patient undergoes general anesthesia there are risks associated with this too including a risk of pneumonia following surgery. The nurse or doctor will encourage the patient to take deep breaths to clear the lungs following surgery. Many people especially younger children undergoing this operation may report feeling nauseous or dizzy following the procedure, a side effect largely associated with the general anesthesia. These complications are usually temporary however and resolve within a couple of days of treatment. A hydrocele procedure is generally performed to relieve fluid build up around the testicle or within the scrotum. This procedure is relatively simple with few complications. The primary risks include a risk of infection and risk of rupture or nicks to nearby tissues or structures. If you work with a competent health professional you reduce your odds of complications. Because these surgeries are often performed on younger individuals it pays to ask someone if they have experience working on youths or pediatric patients. You may need to pay a small amount extra to work with someone that specializes in pediatrics or even geriatrics if you are over 50 or 60 and have a fluid-filled sac in the scrotum that you require surgery for. Regardless of where you go or who you see make sure they practice safe hygiene practices to ensure your safety and wellness. Estimated Costs for Hydrocele Operation The cost of surgery varies widely and may depend partly on the patient’s age and overall health and wellness. Patients that do not require extensive health accommodations or hospital stays are likely to have to pay the least in adjunctive healthcare therapy. That said you should always be prepared to foot the bill for extra expenses including any complications that may rise from treatment. Health insurance may offset some of these costs. Keep in mind there may be separate fees associated with anesthesia. The hospital and anesthesia fees are usually separate from the fees charged for the procedure itself, although some medical tourism companies tend to provide all-inclusive packages for their patients. This may be the best option for individuals that plan to travel abroad already and want to fit in a little health care while traveling for pleasure. |Country||Costs Hydrocele Operation|

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The Centre is associated with several major research projects (especially the Dictionary of Old English), six publication series (Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, Toronto Medieval Bibliographies, Toronto Texts and Translations, Toronto Old English Series, Publications of the Dictionary of Old English—in addition to seven publication series and a prestigious journal published by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (PIMS), a medieval drama group, and a medieval music group. The result is a large interactive community of professionals working in many areas of medieval studies. Individual research projects have all thrived in this environment. Dictionary of Old English The Dictionary of Old English (DOE) defines the vocabulary of the first centuries (AD 600–1150) of the English language, using today’s most advanced technology. The DOE is based on a computerized Corpus comprising at least one copy of each text surviving in Old English. The total size is about six times the collected works of Shakespeare. The body of surviving Old English texts encompasses a rich diversity of records written on parchment, carved in stone and inscribed in jewellery.

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Other Proposed Treatments It is one of the cardinal principles of natural medicine that treatment should aim not only to treat illness but also to enhance wellness. According to this ideal, a proper course of treatment should improve your sense of general well-being, enhance your immunity to illness, raise your physical stamina, and increase mental alertness, as well as resolve the specific condition you took it for. Unfortunately, while there can be little doubt that this is a laudable goal, it is easier to laud it than to achieve it. Conventional medicine tends to focus on treating diseases rather than increasing wellness, not as a matter of philosophical principle, but because it is easier to accomplish. Probably the strongest force affecting wellness is genetics. Beyond that, common sense steps endorsed by all physicians include increasing exercise, reducing stress, improving diet, getting enough sleep, and living a life of moderation without bad habits, such as smoking or overeating. Beyond this, however, it is difficult to make strong affirmations, and the optimum forms of diet and exercise and other aspects of lifestyle remain unclear. In fact, they may always remain unclear, as it is impossible to perform double-blind, placebo-controlled studies on most lifestyle habits. (For information on why such studies are irreplaceable see "Why Does This Database Depend on Double-blind Studies?" ) Principal Proposed Natural Treatments In order to function at our best, we need good nutrition. However, the modern diet often fails to provide people with sufficient amounts of all the necessary nutrients. For this reason, use of a multivitamin/multimineral supplement might be expected to enhance overall health and well-being, and preliminary double-blind trials generally support this view. For more information, see the article on General Nutritional Support . The herb Panax ginseng has an ancient reputation as a healthful “tonic.” According to a more modern concept developed in the former USSR, ginseng functions as an “adaptogen.” This term is defined as follows: An adaptogen helps the body adapt to stresses of various kinds, whether heat, cold, exertion, trauma, sleep deprivation, toxic exposure, radiation, infection, or psychologic stress. In addition, an adaptogen causes no side effects, is effective in treating a wide variety of illnesses, and helps return an organism toward balance no matter what may have gone wrong. From a modern scientific perspective, it is not truly clear that such things as adaptogens actually exist. However, there is some evidence that ginseng may satisfy some of the definition’s requirements. In addition, ginseng has also shown some potential for enhancing immunity , mental function , and sports performance , all effects consistent with the adaptogen concept. For more information on these possibilities, as well as dosage and safety issues, see the full Ginseng article . Other Proposed Natural Treatments Numerous other alternative therapies are claimed by their proponents to improve overall wellness, including acupuncture , Ayurveda , chiropractic , detoxification , homeopathy , massage , naturopathy , osteopathic manipulation , Reiki , Tai Chi , Therapeutic Touch , traditional Chinese herbal medicine , and yoga . However, there is as yet little meaningful evidence to support these claims. For a discussion of homeopathic approaches to general wellness, see the Homeopathy database . - Reviewer: EBSCO CAM Review Board - Review Date: 07/2012 - - Update Date: 07/25/2012 -

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Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Edwin Martin seeks a resolution of support from the Organization of American States. Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson lays the matter before the U.N. Security Council. The ships of the naval quarantine fleet move into place around Cuba. Soviet submarines threaten the quarantine by moving into the Caribbean area. Soviet freighters bound for Cuba with military supplies stop dead in the water, but the oil tanker Bucharest continues towards Cuba. In the evening Robert Kennedy meets with Ambassador Dobrynin at the Soviet Embassy. After the Organization of American States endorsed the quarantine, President Kennedy asks Khrushchev to halt any Russian ships heading toward Cuba. The president's greatest concern is that a US Navy vessel would otherwise be forced to fire upon a Russian vessel, possibly igniting war between the superpowers.

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BINGE EATING DISORDER "Signs and Symptoms" To date, there has been some degree of confusion as to what exactly the term "binge eating" really means. Although the professional community still has yet to define [or quantify] what constitutes a binge-eating episode, it's reasonable to assume the signs and symptoms listed below are a good barometer of what is characteristic binge eating. In many respects, Binge Eating Disorder [BED] is similar to Bulimia without the compensatory behaviors. In addition, the term compulsive overeating may be "interchangeable" with BED - although some compulsive overeaters have a pattern of eating constantly ["grazing"] rather than experiencing episodes of binge eating per se. Signs and symptoms Binge Eating / Compulsive Overeating [COE] - Preoccupation with food. - Rapid consumption of food in significant excess of nutritional need - Sneaking or hoarding food - even immediately after meals. - Feeling ashamed or fearful when confronted about the problem. - Excessive concern about weight and body shape. - Sense of "losing control" during binge episode. - Feeling lonely, depressed, worried, self preoccupied - Spending a great deal of time alone / social isolation - Alternating between binge eating and "dieting" Treating BED at Milestones As with many other eating disorders, the characteristics of a binge eating disorder appear to mimic [inherent among] other dependencies or addictions - whether to a substance or set of behaviors. In fact, the most recent committee of the American Psychiatric Association "officially" included BED as a bona fide disorder [disease]. The link below lists the criteria for "dependency" and requires only three of the several criteria "fit" for a diagnosis of dependency [aka addiction] to be considered. The program offered at Milestones is comprised of two primary components, making the treatment experience unique in comparison to other programs. The first is the setting - utilizing apartment-style residences affording residential participants an opportunity to experience treatment in a "real world" environment. Participants grocery shop with our dietitian within the community, learn to prepare their own meals per the prescribed [meal] food / meal plan they have formulated with the dietitian, attend a full schedule of groups and individual therapies at our clinical campus [near the residential complex], attend local community support groups in the evenings, and visit with our physicians and clinical staff regularly throughout their stay. In effect, the experience is one of providing a supportive and structured setting without the restrictive elements of a "hospital" or institutional facility. A key element in providing the support necessary to begin recovery is remaining in the company of other participants during the initial phase of the treatment. This provides both a form of supervision and a deterrent from the behavior often associated with binge eating: namely eating in isolation or alone. Secondly, Milestones approaches treatment from a more "holistic" perspective. Doing so is best described by the acronym "SERF" - Spirituality, Exercise, Rest, and Food Plan. Spirituality need not equate with any religious or spiritual beliefs imposed on or by anyone. In fact, Spirituality at Milestones simply is left up to the individual to cultivate with his or her own working definition. For most, it is a belief in a "higher power" and still for others it may be a return to some of their original religious beliefs. For everyone, it is an individual journey. Exercise is individualized and represents collaboration between the resident and clinical team. It is meant to be in the service of restoring and maintaining a healthy body rather than an "intensive" means of controlling body weight. Rest is simply about finding the correct balance in recovery between work and play and narrowing the gap between an "all or none", "feast or famine" approach to daily living. The food plan suggested by Milestones is a blend of structured eating and a combination of healthy, whole foods that are bought and prepared by PARTICIPANTS with the guidance and supervision of our dietitian and ancillary staff. In brief participants select their own preferences within the guidelines of their individual food plans. The guidelines require participants to abstain from "junk foods" and eliminate most highly processed [sugar and flour laden] food products as well as weigh and measure portions per their food plan while in residence. It is important to mention most participants who seek treatment for most eating disorders may have a tendency to focus on "trading in the binging and/or "purging" to become better at restricting or "losing weight" and as such, it is important to understand the predisposition to replace one form of an eating disorder for another. Acknowledging this is helpful to maintaining the prescribed treatment plan both during and after the residential treatment experience. Body mass and subsequent weight loss will likely change as a result of abstaining from overeating and move in the direction [towards] of a healthy "set point" as an outcome of the recovery process. Each participant is assigned an individual therapist whom they meet with on a regular basis during their stay as well as attend groups and experiential therapies per the schedule In sum, the physical and emotional aspects of their eating disorder are addressed within these formats.

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A Reference Resource Life Before the Presidency Herbert Clark Hoover was born on August 10, 1874. For the first nine years of his life, he lived in the small town of West Branch, Iowa, the place of his birth. His Quaker father, Jessie Clark Hoover, a blacksmith and farm equipment salesman, suffered a heart attack and died when Herbert was six years old. Three years later, the boy's mother, Huldah Minthorn Hoover, developed pneumonia and also passed away, orphaning Herbert, his older brother Theodore, and little sister Mary. Passed around among relatives for a few years, Hoover ended up with his uncle, Dr. John Minthorn, who lived in Oregon. The young Hoover was shy, sensitive, introverted, and somewhat suspicious, characteristics that developed, at least in part, in reaction to the loss of his parents at such a young age. He attended Friends Pacific Academy in Newberg, Oregon, earning average to failing grades in all subjects except math. Determined, nevertheless, to go to the newly established Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, Hoover studied hard and barely passed the university's entrance exam. He went on to major in geology and participated in a host of extracurricular activities, serving as class treasurer of the junior and senior student bodies and managing the school baseball and football teams. To pay his tuition, Hoover worked as a clerk in the registration office and showed considerable entrepreneurial skill by starting a student laundry service. Career and Monetary Success During the summers, Hoover worked as a student assistant on geological survey teams in Arkansas, California, and Nevada. After his graduation in 1895, he looked hard to find work as a surveyor but ended up laboring seventy hours a week at a gold mine near Nevada City, California, pushing ore carts. Luck came his way with an office job in San Francisco, putting him in touch with a firm in need of an engineer to inspect and evaluate mines for potential purchase. Hoover then moved to Australia in 1897 and China in 1899, where he worked as a mining engineer until 1902. A string of similar jobs took him all over the world and helped Hoover become a giant in his field. He opened his own mining consulting business in 1908; by 1914, Hoover was financially secure, earning his wealth from high-salaried positions, his ownership of profitable Burmese silver mines, and royalties from writing the leading textbook on mining engineering. His wife, Lou Henry Hoover, traveled with him everywhere he went. Herbert and Lou met in college, where she was the sole female geology major at Stanford. He proposed to her by cable from Australia as he prepared to move to China; she accepted by return wire and they married in 1899. The couple was in China during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, a time when Lou helped nurse wounded Western diplomats and soldiers while Herbert assisted in the fighting to defend Tianjin, a city near the uprising. By the time the couple returned home to America in 1917, Lou had learned to shoot a gun and had mastered eight languages. Over the course of his career as a mining engineer and businessman, Hoover's intellect and understanding of the world matured considerably. Hoover was raised a Quaker and although he rarely went to Meeting as an adult, he internalized that faith's belief in the power of the individual, the importance of freedom, and the value of "conscientious work" and charity. Hoover also applied the ethos of engineering to the world in general, believing that scientific expertise, when employed thoughtfully and properly, led to human progress. Hoover worked comfortably in a capitalist economy but believed in labor's right to organize and hoped that cooperation (between labor and management and among competitors) might come to characterize economic relations. During these years, Hoover repeatedly made known to friends his desire for public service. Politically, Hoover identified with the progressive wing of the Republican Party, supporting Theodore Roosevelt's third-party bid in 1912. World War I brought Hoover to prominence in American politics and thrust him into the international spotlight. In London when the war broke out, he was asked by the U.S. consul to organize the evacuation of 120,000 Americans trapped in Europe. Germany's devastating invasion of Belgium led Hoover to pool his money with several wealthy friends to organize the Committee for the Relief of Belgium. Working without direct government support, Hoover raised millions of dollars for food and medicine to help desperate Belgians. In 1917, after the United States entered the war, President Woodrow Wilson asked Hoover to run the U.S. Food Administration. Hoover performed quite admirably, guiding the effort to conserve resources and supplies needed for the war and to feed America's European allies. Hoover even became a household name during the war; nearly all Americans knew that the verb "to Hooverize" meant the rationing of household materials. After the armistice treaty was signed in November 1918, officially ending World War I, Wilson appointed Hoover to head the European Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. In this capacity, Hoover channeled 34 million tons of American food, clothing, and supplies to war-torn Europe, aiding people in twenty nations. His service during World War I made Hoover one of the few Republicans trusted by Wilson. Because of Hoover's knowledge of world affairs, Wilson relied him at the Versailles Peace Conference and as director of the President's Supreme Economic Council in 1918. The following year, Hoover founded the Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University as an archive for the records of World War I. This privately endowed organization later became the Hoover Institution, devoted to the study of peace and war. No isolationist, Hoover supported American participation in the League of Nations. He believed, though, that Wilson's stubborn idealism led Congress to reject American participation in the League. Secretary of Commerce In 1920, Hoover emerged as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination. His run was blocked, however, by fellow a Californian, Senator Hiram Johnson, who objected to Hoover's support for the League. Republican Warren Harding won the White House in 1920 and appointed Hoover as his secretary of commerce, a position that Hoover retained under Harding's successor, President Calvin Coolidge. Under Hoover's leadership, the Department of Commerce became as influential and important a government agency as the Departments of State and Treasury. Hoover encouraged research into measures designed to counteract harmful business cycles. He supported government regulation of new industries like aviation and radio. He brought together more than one hundred different industries and convinced them to adopt standardized tools, hardware, building materials, and automobile parts. Finally, he aggressively pursued international trade opportunities for American business. To win these reforms, Hoover strengthened existing agencies in the Commerce Department, like the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, or simply established new ones, like the Bureau of Standards, for the standardization project. He also formed commissions that brought together government officials, experts, and leaders of the relevant economic sectors to work towards reform. The initiatives Hoover supported as commerce secretary—and the ways in which he pursued them—reveal his thinking about contemporary life in the United States and about the federal government's role in American society. Hoover hoped to create a more organized economy that would regularize the business cycle, eliminating damaging ebbs and flows and generating higher rates of economic growth. He believed that eradicating waste and improving efficiency would achieve some of these results— thus, his support for standardization and for statistical research into the workings of the economy. He also believed that the American economy would be healthier if business leaders worked together, and with government officials and experts from the social sciences, in a form of private-sector economic planning. This stance led him to support trade associations—industry-wide cooperative groups wherein information on prices, markets, and products could be exchanged among competitors—which Hoover saw as a middle way between competition and monopoly. He insisted, though, that participation in these associations remain voluntary and that the government merely promote and encourage, rather than require, their establishment. Hoover hoped that these innovations would strengthen what he saw as the central component of the American experience: individualism. In 1922, Hoover published a small book, entitled American Individualism, that examined the Western intellectual tradition's major social philosophies, including individualism, socialism, communism, capitalism, and autocracy. Hoover concluded that individualism was the superior principle around which to organize society. He rejected the laissez-faire capitalism of the Right and the socialism and communism of the Left because he believed that these ideologies hindered rather than helped the individual. Instead, Hoover sought a "balance of perspective" between Right and Left that theoretically would create and maintain opportunities for Americans to succeed. Through enterprises like those he championed as commerce secretary, Hoover believed the federal government could facilitate the creation of political, social, and economic conditions in which individual Americans could flourish. Hoover's positions and thinking placed him solidly in the progressive camp of the Republican Party. As secretary of commerce, Hoover emerged as a potential running-mate for Coolidge in the 1924 presidential election, though that effort fell short. Hoover's reputation with the American people reached its peak in 1927, when he took charge of relief efforts following disastrous floods along the Mississippi River. The episode displayed Hoover at his best: as a humanitarian and leader with the ability to solve problems. When Coolidge announced in 1927 that he would not seek reelection, Hoover became the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

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December 4 is a very special day for the mining industry. This is the feast day of Barbara, Patron Saint for Miners and Blasters, and globally for all the professions that relate to fire (firemen, fireworks specialists, etc.) From her tragic story, which appeared later to be a legend, "the belief became widespread that Barbara could control lightning and other manifestations of flame and fire. (...) Miners later developed the use of gunpowder for disintegrating rock, involving manifestations similar to thunder claps and lightning flashes. This led to their need for special protection against accidents from the use of explosives (...)" (Source: The Legend of Saint Barbara, Patron Saint of Mines in Infomine.com) Saint Barbara remains a vivid part of mining traditions and heritage. In Europe, a statue of Saint Barbara always stands at the entrance of a tunnel construction site. A lot of mining countries still honor Saint Barbara, from Latin America to Asia. Many extraction sites have been named after Saint Barbara (Compania Minera Santa Barbara S.A. in Chile, Complejo Minero Santa Bárbara in Mexico, Barbara Experimental Coal Mine in Poland, St Barbara's Southern Cross in Australia, etc.), thereby keeping alive the reputation of Saint Barbara as our patron saint.

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If it wasn’t for earthquakes, humans wouldn’t have innovated architecture They wouldn’t have looked into new ways of building homes, but the problem is that we got good at it – good to the points our homes won’t be destroyed frequently enough aka they won’t evolute frequently. If you look around you, there is very few free space - and in those spots you find big centers being eradicated everyday – safe and resistant enough – specially to earthquakes – what on earth will take down those inefficient dumb primitive beton monsters and make room for better buildings in the future ? So the problem behind this is the ever expanding gap between technology and architecture : our homes will always be behind technology/progress – they will be always less optimal. I can only imagine how better the earth will be if our houses were “smart” or modern enough – it is not science fiction – the way we build stuff is very retarded to say the least when it comes to the material used, energy saving, what a home can “do” and it is just not possible “business wise” to say : ok, let us destroy and rebuild. Before, nature took care of this, slowly and “less painfully” As little earthquakes happened, our primitive cities got “devastated”, we rebuilt them in a better way but the costs were small. We kept gradually improving till our cities became resistant to medium/high earthquakes. We reached this point of the graph where things slow down, become stable – it is cool not to have the tragedy and misery of earthquakes, but on the other hand there is the hidden and expensive cost of stability and non-progress. It is invisible and super slow but as devastating in its effect as that 2 minutes tragedy called earthquake Our homes are costing the earth dearly and suffocating it – we need earthquakes to give engineers another better large-scale chance/try. Before I start sounding too embarrassingly enthusiastic about earthquakes and destruction, here is a link on list of earthquakes – it has - Main lists of earthquakes - Historical earthquakes (before 1901) - List of 20th century earthquakes (1901–2000) - List of 21st century earthquakes (2001–present) - Lists of earthquakes by country - Largest earthquakes by magnitude - Deadliest earthquakes on record Enjoy the read !Read More

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Deep-space communication improved with electromagnetic radiation antenna - Robert C. Dye - Technology Transfer - (505) 667-3404 Electromagnetic radiation antenna has potential for deep-space communication - Directed Energy - Long-range communications - Medicine (Oncology) - RADAR imaging applications are countermeasure-resistant - Communications can be spatially-encrypted - 4-dimensional volumes of energy can be aimed at a single space-time point for directed energy applications - Nonspherical decay of the cusp enables low-power communications and propagation over great distances Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) researchers have developed the Lightslinger, a completely new type of antenna that produces tightly-focused packets of electromagnetic radiation fundamentally different from the emissions of conventional transmitters. The device has potential applications in RADAR, directed-energy (non-kinetic kill), secure communications, ultra-long-range communications (e.g., deep-space), medicine (oncology) and astrophysics. The Lightslinger functions by producing a moving polarization pattern in a ring of alumina. By careful timing of voltages applied to electrodes that surround the alumina, the polarization pattern can be made to move superluminally, i.e., faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Nobel laureate Vitaly Ginzberg showed both that such superluminal polarization patterns do not violate the principles of special relativity and that they emit electromagnetic radiation. Once a source travels faster than the waves that it emits, it can make contributions at multiple retarded times to a signal received instantaneously at a distance. This effect is already well known in acoustics; when a supersonic airplane accelerates through the speed of sound, a violent “sonic boom” is heard many miles away, even if the airplane itself is rather quiet. The Lightslinger enables the same thing to be done with electromagnetic radiation; i.e., a relatively low-power source can make an “electromagnetic boom”, an intense concentration of radiowaves at a great distance. The “electromagnetic boom” is due to temporal focusing, that is, focusing in the time domain. Because of this effect, part of the emitted radiation possesses an intensity that decays with distance r as 1/r rather than as the conventional inverse square law, 1/r2. These nonspherically-decaying wavepackets represent a game-changing technology in the applications of electromagnetic radiation. Development stage: Working prototype Patent status: Patent pending Licensing status: Available for exclusive or non-exclusive licensing

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This insightful research by respected Israeli scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan will confirm what Palestinian researchers have always known: Israel's prevailing culture of racism, fundamentalism, support for war crimes, and apartheid against Palestinians is mainly a product of an educational system that indoctrinates Jewish-Israeli students with militant colonial values and extreme racism that turn them into "monsters" once in uniform. Guardian: Academic claims Israeli school textbooks contain bias "Nurit Peled-Elhanan of Hebrew University says textbooks depict Palestinians as 'terrorists, refugees and primitive farmers" "Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has studied the content of Israeli school books for the past five years, and her account, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, is to be published in the UK this month. She describes what she found as racism– but, more than that, a racism that prepares young Israelis for their compulsory military service. "People don't really know what their children are reading in textbooks," she said. "One question that bothers many people is how do you explain the cruel behaviour of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians, an indifference to human suffering, the inflicting of suffering. People ask how can these nice Jewish boys and girls become monsters once they put on a uniform. I think the major reason for that is education. So I wanted to see how school books represent Palestinians." In "hundreds and hundreds" of books, she claims she did not find one photograph that depicted an Arab as a "normal person". The most important finding in the books she studied – all authorised by the ministry of education – concerned the historical narrative of events in 1948, the year in which Israel fought a war to establish itself as an independent state, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled the ensuing conflict. The killing of Palestinians is depicted as something that was necessary for the survival of the nascent Jewish state, she claims." Those who see this as an aberration of Zionism seem to lack sufficient understanding of what Zionism really is and the central role it plays as a patently racist ideology in justifying ethnic cleansing and racist domination over Palestinians. One should not wonder then why, at the height of the Israeli massacre in Gaza 2008-09, a Tel Aviv University poll (reported in the Jerusalem Post, Jan. '09) of Jewish-Israeli opinion showed a shocking 94% support for the assault, despite full knowledge of the enormous suffering this Israeli aggression had inflicted upon the 1.5 million Palestinians incarcerated in the Gaza "prison camp" and of the massive destruction of their civilian infrastructure. As in every other colonial system, only sustained and effective pressure from within as well as from without can put an end to this downward spiral of criminality, impunity and unspoken racism. More BDS is needed to end Israeli occupation, colonialism and apartheid. Other than the obvious benefits to indigenous Palestinians, suffering more than six decades of this three-tiered system of Israeli oppression, an end to this system of oppression may well transform most Israelis from colonial "monsters" into normal humans. (ed note: Nurit Peled-Elhanan is author of Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education. International publisher I.B.TAURIS description: "She analyzes the presentation of images, maps, layouts and use of language in History, Geography and Civic Studies textbooks, and reveals how the books might be seen to marginalize Palestinians, legitimize Israeli military action and reinforce Jewish-Israeli territorial identity. This book provides a fresh scholarly contribution to the Israeli-Palestinian debate, and will be relevant to the fields of Middle East Studies and Politics more widely.")

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|[This is a MPIWG MPDL language technology service]| Become (p. p.) of Become Become (v. i.) To pass from one state to another; to enter into some state or condition, by a change from another state, or by assuming or receiving new properties or qualities, additional matter, or a new character. Become (v. i.) To come; to get. Become (v. t.) To suit or be suitable to; to be congruous with; to befit; to accord with, in character or circumstances; to be worthy of, or proper for; to cause to appear well; -- said of persons and things.

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Historical Aerial Photographs Prior to the trial, Jan Schlichtmann, the plaintiffs attorney, hired a consulting firm to acquire and analyze historic aerial photographs of the Riley 15-acre property to estimate the times when the various drums, barrels, and debris piles first appeared. The consultants took this analysis and compared it to the 1985 field mapping of the debris piles, drums, and tanks on the 15-acre property by John Drobinski, a geologist hired by Schlichtmann. Drobinski's field map can be downloaded from the trial documents collection and excerpts of his deposition can be downloaded from the trial testimony collection. What Are Aerial Photographs and How Are They Used? Aerial photographs like the ones shown below routinely are taken by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Geological Survey to make topographic maps, record temporal changes in crop patterns, map geology and mineral resources, and evaluate floodplains. A specialized aircraft with sophisticated cameras is used to take photographs using black & white or color infrared film. The aircraft flies along flight lines that overlap slightly while the camera takes photographs at time intervals that allow the images to overlap. Because of the overlap is from two different positions in the sky, the overlapping portions of adjacent images can be viewed in 3-D. A stereoscope is needed to see the images in 3-D, which produces a static visual image that is similar to looking at a 3-D movie using red and blue glasses. Thus, tree tops and buildings appear to be higher than surrounding ground, whereas stream channels and wetlands appear to be lower. Aerial Photographs of the Woburn Wells G and H Area The collection below is a subset of those compiled by Maura Metheny for her dissertation research at Ohio State University. Four sets of photographs (May 1954, May 1969, April 1981, and March 1986) are suitable for 3-D viewing. To do this, print the images on high-quality paper or photographic paper and view them under a stereoscope. An inexpensive plastic 'pocket' stereoscope works well. The sequence of images below document changes in land use, construction of municipal wells G and H and other structures, changes in the wetland, and the appearance of drums and underground storage tanks along the access road between Salem Street and Olympia Avenue on the west side of the river. Detailed information about the dates, resolution, scales, and ordering numbers of the sets of aerial photographs shown below is available in this Excel file (Excel 19kB Jan22 07). - May 13, 1954 Photographs: 2414, 2415, 2416, 2417 northern image Full Resolution ( 28.5MB Mar14 07)north-central image Full Resolution ( 29.3MB Mar14 07)south-central image Full Resolution ( 28.3MB Mar14 07)southern image Full Resolution ( 28.5MB Mar14 07) - April 29, 1963 Photographs: 278, 279 western image Full Resolution ( 288kB Mar15 07)eastern image Full Resolution ( 208kB Mar15 07) - April 6, 1965 photograph: 233 Full Resolution ( 269kB Mar15 07) - May 1, 1969 photographs: 1684, 1685, 1686, 1687 south image Full Resolution ( 288kB Mar15 07)south-central image Full Resolution ( 284kB Mar15 07)north-central image Full Resolution ( 281kB Mar15 07)north image Full Resolution ( 273kB Mar15 07) - July 3, 1971 photograph: 126 Full Resolution ( 377kB Mar15 07) - April 23, 1978 photographs: 104 north and south north images Full Resolution ( 73kB Mar15 07)south image Full Resolution ( 77kB Mar15 07) - April 13, 1981 photographs: 19-5, 19-6, 19-7 south image Full Resolution ( 205kB Mar15 07)middle image Full Resolution ( 196kB Mar15 07)north image Full Resolution ( 196kB Mar15 07)

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Two teachers at Norview High School in Norfolk, VA were recently put on administrative leave by the school after a parent complained about a video that she saw in Government class. The video informed its audience on how to assert their constitutional rights during various encounters with police, such as during a car or house search. It was accompanied by a one page handout about a person’s rights when stopped and arrested by the police. When the girl came home after school that day, she told her mother “You won’t believe what we are learning in Government. They are teaching us how to hide our drugs.” The woman promptly called the school to complain about what was taught to her daughter, and the teachers were subsequently suspended. There are two things that are rather irksome about these series of events. First, why are parents are so ready to jump to conclusions and act on those assumptions? It’s a little hard to believe that teachers would be lecturing their students on the best way to hide drugs from the police. If the girl’s mother had just inquired as to what was actually taught that day, it would have been clear that this was Government class as usual, just an exercise in educating youth on the Constitution. Second, and more importantly, why are schools eager to appease parents at the drop of a hat? These are institutions filled with education professionals: teachers know what their students should learn and what the appropriate materials for teaching them are. A school’s administration should trust that the teacher is making reasonable choices as to how a child is taught and with what. In response to a parent’s complaint, they should first research the allegations. The administration at Norview High School, for instance, could have a gotten a copy of the leaflet given to students. They also could have watched the video to see if anything inappropriate was shown. Instead, the school acquiesced to the demands of one uninformed parent. Sometimes, Mother doesn’t know what’s best. That’s why we have schools and teachers. Unfortunately, this is not a new problem. Schools all over the country have bowed down to raging parents over something they don’t think is appropriate for their child. It’s a distressing thought that a parent’s misunderstanding about a certain book or a particular lesson in school can translate into a child’s incomplete education. Learning about an individual’s constitutional rights enhances one’s education and can even make for a better citizen. School administrators need to have more confidence in themselves and their teachers. They need to stick to what they believe is important for a child’s education.

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Schools and Students Private schools in 1999–2000 were located primarily in central cities (42 percent) and the urban fringe or large towns (40 percent) (table 2). About 18 percent of private schools were found in rural areas. In contrast, 24 percent of all public schools were in central city locations, 45 percent in the urban fringe or large towns, and 31 percent in rural areas. Most schools—61 percent of private and 71 percent of public—were elementary, but 10 percent of private schools and 25 percent of public schools were secondary. Finally, a much higher proportion of private schools (30 percent) were combined schools (usually grades K–12 or 1–12), compared with only 4 percent of public schools. Figures and Tables Table 2: Percentage distribution of schools according to community type and level, by sector and private school type: 1999-2000 Table S2: Standard errors for the percentage distribution of schools according to community type and level, by sector and private school type: 1999-2000

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Jim Lake and Maria Rivera, at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), report their finding in the Sept. 9 issue of the journal Nature. Scientists refer to both bacteria and Archaea as "prokaryotes"--a cell type that has no distinct nucleus to contain the genetic material, DNA, and few other specialized components. More-complex cells, known as "eukaryotes," contain a well-defined nucleus as well as compartmentalized "organelles" that carry out metabolism and transport molecules throughout the cell. Yeast cells are some of the most-primitive eukaryotes, whereas the highly specialized cells of human beings and other mammals are among the most complex. "A major unsolved question in biology has been where eukaryotes came from, where we came from," Lake said. "The answer is that we have two parents, and we now know who those parents were." Further, he added, the results provide a new picture of evolutionary pathways. "At least 2 billion years ago, ancestors of these two diverse prokaryotic groups fused their genomes to form the first eukaryote, and in the processes two different branches of the tree of life were fused to form the ring of life," Lake said. The work is part of an effort supported by the National Science Foundation--the federal agency that supports research and education across all disciplines of science and engineering--to re-examine historical schemes for classifying Earth's living creatures, a process that was once based on easily observable traits. Microbes, plants or animals wer Contact: Leslie Fink National Science Foundation

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Sudden death syndrome--an umbrella term for a range of heart conditions that can lead to cardiac arrest--is notorious for striking those who seem most fit. That is because the condition, thought to be largely hereditary, is often triggered by overexertion. Tragically for some, the first symptom can be cardiac arrest. It's possible, though costly, to screen for SDS. In fact, after soccer prodigy John Marshall died of a sudden heart attack at age 16 in 1994, the day before he was set to join Everton, testing became compulsory for professional athletes in several countries. Good thing, especially for those who don't have the means that professional athletes do, that a doctor at Tel Aviv University may have just made testing for the condition far simpler and more affordable. "There is such a significant overlap between what's normal and abnormal on an ECG [electrocardiogram] that we need additional screening parameters," Dr. Sami Viskin, a cardiologist at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, said yesterday in a university press release. "This test, when done on people with strong symptoms, can really give...doctors a yardstick to compare those at risk for sudden death syndrome to those who would otherwise go on to live a healthy life." Named after the doctor, the Viskin Test is easy on the patient, who simply undergoes a baseline ECG while resting in the supine position, and is then asked to stand quickly and remain still during continuous ECG recording.… Read more

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The test team views the use of a pulley as an intermediate step only, and has planned to shift to a reliance on windlasses like those that apparently were used to hoist sails on Egyptian ships. "The whole approach has been to downgrade the technology," Gharib said. "We first wanted to show that a kite could raise a huge weight at all. Now that we're raising larger and larger stones, we're also preparing to replace the steel scaffolding with wooden poles and the steel pulleys with wooden pulleys like the ones they may have used on Egyptian ships." For Gharib, the idea of accomplishing heavy tasks with limited manpower is appealing from an engineer's standpoint because it makes more logistical sense. "You can imagine how hard it is to coordinate the activities of hundreds if not thousands of laborers to accomplish an intricate task," said Gharib. "It's one thing to send thousands of soldiers to attack another army on a battlefield. But an engineering project requires everything to be put precisely into place. "I prefer to think of the technology as simple, with relatively few people involved," he explained. Gharib and Graff came up with a way of building a simple structure around the obelisk, with a pulley system mounted in front of the stone. That way, the base of the obelisk would drag on the ground for a few feet as the kite lifted the stone, and the stone would be quite stable once it was pulled upright into a vertical position. If the obelisk were raised with the base as a pivot, the stone would tend to swing past the vertical position and fall the other way. The top of the obelisk is tied with ropes threaded through the pulleys and attached to the kite. The operation is guided by a couple of workers using ropes attached to the pulleys. No one has found any evidence that the ancient Egyptians moved stones or any other objects with kites and pulleys. But Clemmons has found some tantalizing hints that the project is on the right track. On a building frieze in a Cairo museum, there is a wing pattern in bas-relief that does not resemble any living bird. Directly below are several men standing near vertical objects that could be ropes. Gharib's interest in the project is mainly to demonstrate that the technique may be viable. "We're not Egyptologists," he said. "We're mainly interested in determining whether there is a possibility that the Egyptians were aware of wind power, and whether they used it to make their lives better." Now that Gharib and his team have successfully raised the four-ton concrete obelisk, they plan to further test the approach using a ten-ton stone, and perhaps an even heavier one after that. Eventually they hope to obtain permission to try using their technique to raise one of the obelisks that still lie in an Egyptian quarry. "In fact, we may not even need a kite. It could be we can get along with just a drag chute," Gharib said. An important question is: Was there enough wind in Egypt for a kite or a drag chute to fly? Probably so, as steady winds of up to 30 miles per hour are not unusual in the areas where pyramids and obelisks were found. (c) 2001 Caltech SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES

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Facilitator's Guide for THE BELOVED COMMUNITY A film by Pamela Calvert/Plain Speech At the fenceline of Canada's "Chemical Valley," girls are being born at twice the rate of boys. How do you stay in the home you love when the price you pay may be your children's future? PLANNING A SCREENING Topics and Issues Relevant to THE BELOVED COMMUNITY As you plan your screening, you might consider speakers, panelists, or discussion leaders who have expertise in one or more of the following - Children's Health - Community Organizing - Corporate Social Responsibility - Endocrine Disruptors - Environmental Justice - Green Chemistry - Human Rights - Native Culture, History & Land Rights - Precautionary Principle - Reproductive Health - Toxic Exposure & Health Impacts - Workplace Health and Safety As You Plan Your Event A screening of THE BELOVED COMMUNITY can be used to spark interest in any of the topics listed above, as well as to inspire individual and community action. Using the checklist below will help ensure a high quality and high impact event. Set realistic goals. Will you host a single screening or use the film to spur ongoing efforts? Will you steer a panel or discussion toward a specific topic or let the participants pursue whatever issues they choose? Be sure to include your event partners in the decision making process. Being clear about your goals will make it much easier to structure the event, target publicity, and evaluate results. Structure your event to match your goals. Do you need an outside facilitator? If your goal is to share information beyond what is included in the film, are there local experts on the topic who should be present? How many participants do you want? (Large groups are appropriate for information exchange. Small groups allow for more intensive dialogue and action plans.) Arrange to involve all stakeholders. It is especially important that people be allowed to speak for themselves. We encourage you to seek out 'unlikely alliances' and push your own comfort zone, going out of your way to invite representatives of all the constituencies with a potential stake in building a healthy and sustainable community. Once the group is assembled, make sure that all participants have a chance to be heard and are treated with respect. Choose an accessible venue. If you are bringing together different constituencies, is your venue 'neutral territory'? Is it in a part of town that is reachable by various kinds of transportation? Does the physical configuration of the room allow for the kind of discussion you hope to have? Can everyone easily see the screen and hear the film? Is the room comfortable? Leave time for feelings. When the lights come up, people may have a strong emotional response to the film. This is where people make the empathetic connections that make all the following work possible, so it's important to encourage that personal response before moving on to questions of strategy. The conversation will naturally flow into "What do we do now?" Leave time to plan for action. If you want your screening to have lasting impact, it is important to leave time to plan action. People will be looking for something that is immediate, concrete, and local. Planning next steps can help people leave the room feeling energized and optimistic, even when the discussion has been difficult. It's also important to be prepared to facilitate networking. Provide a sign-in sheet at the door so people can share contact information like email addresses. Let participants know exactly how that information will (and won't) be shared. Let participants know whether or not press will be present. Facilitating a Discussion of THE BELOVED COMMUNITY People who feel safe, encouraged, respected and challenged are likely to share openly and thoughtfully. As a facilitator you can encourage that kind of participation. Here's how: View the film before your event. This will both give yourself time to reflect so you aren't dealing with raw emotions at the same time that you are trying to facilitate a discussion, as well as letting you check the DVD and equipment to make sure there are no technical glitches. You may want to refer to the Discussion Guide to get you started. You don't need to be an expert on globalization or environmental justice to lead an event, but knowing the basics can help you keep a discussion on track and gently correct misstatements of fact. Prior to your event, take time to check the Background Information and Suggested Resources in the film guide handout. Be clear about your role. Being a facilitator is not the same as being a teacher. A teacher's job is to convey specific information. In contrast, a facilitator remains neutral, helping move the discussion along without imposing her or his views on the dialogue. Know who might be present. It isn't always possible to know exactly who might attend a screening, but if you know what kinds of groups are present in your community, you might be able to predict who might be represented. You can also keep in mind that issues can play out very differently for different groups of people. Factors like geography, age, race, religion and class can all have an impact on comfort levels, speaking styles and prior knowledge. Take care not to assume that all members of a particular group share the same point of view. BELOVED COMMUNITY is a co-production of Plain Speech and Detroit Public Television, and is distributed by California Newsreel. All rights reserved. For more information: firstname.lastname@example.org www.newsreel.org guide was developed with the support and participation of many people. Special thanks to Elizabeth Crowe and Ron Plain.

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Refraction and Acceleration Name: Christopher S. Why is it that when light travels from a more dense to a less dense medium, its speed is higher? I've read answers to this question in your archives but, sadly, still don't get it. One answer (Jasjeet S Bagla) says that we must not ask the question because light is massless, hence questions of acceleration don't make sense. It does, however, seem to be OK to talk about different speeds of light. If you start at one speed and end at a higher one, why is one not allowed to talk about acceleration? Bagla goes on to say that it depends on how the em fields behave in a given medium. It begs the question: what is it about, say, Perspex and air that makes light accelerate, oops, travel at different speeds? If you're dealing with the same ray of light, one is forced to speak of acceleration, no? What other explanation is there for final velocity>initial velocity? Arthur Smith mentioned a very small "evanescent" component that travels ahead at c. Where can I learn more about this? Sorry for the long question. I understand that F=ma and if there is no m, you cannot talk about a, but, again, you have one velocity higher than another for the same thing. I need to know more than "that's just the way em fields are!" An explanation that satisfies me relates to travel through an interactive medium. When light interacts with an atom, the photon of light is absorbed and then emitted. For a moment, the energy of the light is within the atom. This causes a slight delay. Light travels at the standard speed of light until interacting with another atom. It is absorbed and emitted, causing another slight delay. The average effect is taking more time to travel a meter through glass than through air. This works like a slower speed. An individual photon does not actually slow down. It gets delayed repeatedly by the atoms of the medium. A more dense medium has more atoms per meter to Dr. Ken Mellendorf Illinois Central College Congratulations! on not being willing to accept "that is just the way em fields are!" The answer to your inquiry is not all that simple (my opinion), but I won't try to do so in the limited space allowed here, not to say my own limitations of knowledge. Like so many "simple" physics questions, I find the most lucid, but accurate, explanation in Richard Feynman's, "Lectures on Physics" which most libraries will have. Volume I, Chapter 31-1 through 31-6, which describes refraction, dispersion, diffraction. The "answer" has to do with how matter alters the electric field of incident radiation, but I won't pretend to be able to do a better job than Feynman. The answer is that you are not dealing with the same ray of light. In vacuum a photon just keeps going at the speed of light. In a medium, however, it interacts with the atoms, often being absorbed while bumping an atomic or molecular motion into a higher energy state. The excited atom/molecule then can jump to a lower energy state, emitting a photon while doing so. This can obviously make light appear to travel slower in a In detail, it is a very complicated question, requiring at least a graduate course in electromagnetism to begin to understand. Why, for example do the emitted photons tend to travel in the same direction? Best, Richard J. Plano Click here to return to the Physics Archives Update: June 2012

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Attempts to relay mail by issuing a predefined combination of SMTP commands. The goal of this script is to tell if a SMTP server is vulnerable to mail relaying. An SMTP server that works as an open relay, is a email server that does not verify if the user is authorised to send email from the specified email address. Therefore, users would be able to send email originating from any third-party email address that they want. The checks are done based in combinations of MAIL FROM and RCPT TO commands. The list is hardcoded in the source file. The script will output all the working combinations that the server allows if nmap is in verbose mode otherwise the script will print the number of successful tests. The script will not output if the server requires authentication. If debug is enabled and an error occurrs while testing the target host, the error will be printed with the list of any combinations that were found prior to the error. Use this to change the IP address to be used (default is the target IP address) Define the destination email address to be used (without the domain, default is relaytest) or smtp-open-relay.domain Define the domain to be used in the anti-spam tests and EHLO command (default is nmap.scanme.org) Define the source email address to be used (without the domain, default is antispam) smbdomain, smbhash, smbnoguest, smbpassword, smbtype, smbusernameSee the documentation for the smbauth library. nmap --script smtp-open-relay.nse [--script-args smtp-open-relay.domain=<domain>,smtp-open-relay.ip=<address>,...] -p 25,465,587 <host> Host script results: | smtp-open-relay: Server is an open relay (1/16 tests) |_MAIL FROM:<email@example.com> -> RCPT TO:<firstname.lastname@example.org> Author: Arturo 'Buanzo' Busleiman License: Same as Nmap--See http://nmap.org/book/man-legal.html

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How much fun is it to be a child in your home? Do you ever stop to think about how the house looks from their point of view? My task for this week is to conduct a Child’s Eye Audit of our living space, to try and make the rooms more child- and play-friendly. The audit need only take a few minutes and might suggest simple changes to make to improve the play space. To conduct a child’s eye audit, sit or kneel down so you’re at your child’s eye-level and consider the following things. 1. Safety first. Most importantly, the room needs to be safe and it’s useful t0 review this aspect of your home from time to time as children grow taller, become more mobile or more adventurous. Think about what your child can reach, what you don’t want them to reach and make any necessary adjustments. 2. Child’s eye view. Sit back for a minute on the floor and scan the room. What’s visible to your child at their height, and what’s not? You might display all their lovely paintings on the wall and fridge door – but are they too high for your child to actually see? Is their view just of empty walls? Hang some art work at a lower level or set up a low shelf or table with a display of things they can enjoy. 3. Within reach. Consider how accessible your toys are. Do you have an enabling environment where your child can independently help themselves to toys and resources to use in their play or is everything out of reach? Try to find a balance so you can keep the space tidy whilst still allowing free access. Open shelving and low baskets work well for us with some materials such as paint stored higher up. 4. Ring the changes. Do you always have they same toys out? Sometimes putting away familiar toys and bringing out some forgotten ones can spark new creativity and fun. Don’t have a complete change of resources though, as children do like to know where favourite toys are. With Christmas on the way now is a good time to have a toy audit, donating ones your child has grown out of to the charity shop and getting ideas for their Christmas list. 5. Invitation to play. Do you have any toys that never get played with, or activities that you child rarely takes part in? What can you change to make things more inviting? If you’d like to encourage some more reading, perhaps you could set up a cosy reading corner or story tent – with comfy cushions, a basket of tempting books and a favourite teddy to share with? If your toy kitchen has been ignored for a while, add some new resources to catch your child’s eye: a muffin tin and paper cake cases, some jars of real dried pasta, a recipe book from your shelf or lay the table for a birthday tea and surprise your child with a new play possibility. Do you sometimes review things from your child’s point of view? What changes have you made to make your space more child- and play- friendly? Leave a comment and share an idea with us. I’m writing this at one o’clock in the afternoon and the sky is grey and the rain is tumbling down. It’s making me think about how the weather affects our play, and particularly I’m thinking about how much time we spend outdoors in autumn and winter. I don’t think there’s any question that playing outside is wonderful for children: the fresh air, the feeling of space, the sensory benefits of being in nature. I certainly know with my own two girls, and all the children I’ve looked after, that if we’re having a grumpy sort of day, getting outside – in the garden, park or just for a walk – most often is all that’s needed to lighten everyone’s mood. But it’s getting colder now, and windy and rainy and dark. If you’re the type who is happy to be outside all the time in all weathers, I really do salute you. I however am naturally inclined to prefer a hot cup of coffee and a warm blanket inside! We do play outside everyday, whatever the weather, but there’s no denying we play outdoors less in winter – which I’m guessing is the same for lots of you? So, I’m resolving to put more thought into getting out there and planning on bringing you some posts over the next few months that inspire us to venture out. I’d also like to invite you to share your ideas too. The Play Academy carnival on Friday is open to any of your posts and I’d also love to hear from you if you’d like to write a guest post here. (On any play subject in fact, not just on playing outside. You can e-mail me cathy (at) nurturestore (dot) co (dot) uk if you have an idea you’d like to write about). To start us off, my top three tips for getting outside, whatever the weather are… - Keep yourself warm. If you’re wearing the right clothes, you’re much more likely to enjoy your time outside. Pretty much all the children I know don’t care if it’s cold, windy or raining – they are active kids and just love being outside. So, to help everyone enjoy themselves outside, and to stop you cutting short the children’s outdoor fun because you’ve had enough, my first tip is to make sure you are wearing the right clothes. Layer up, don’t forget your hat and gloves and make sure you are cosy. - Get active. We’re going to shift our outdoor play away from fairy gardens and dinosaur world’s and include lots more active games. Hopscotch, skipping, what’s the time Mr. Wolf are great fun and will keep everyone on the move. - Audit your outdoor space. Now is a good time to review your garden and get it ready for the colder months. Think about what you play outside and re-locate things or make changes to suit the weather. We’ll move the sandpit and den to under our covered area and make sure there are lots of props outside ready to spark active play (bikes, balls, kites, hula hoops). We’re not likely to do as much water play outside, so I’ll be thinking of ways to bring this inside. What about you – are you an all weather family? How do you promote lots of outdoor play, whatever the weather? Back in January I resolved to make 2010 our Year of Play. I’ve been thinking about this again this month as L has started at school. In last week’s Play Academy link-up I talked about wanting to make sure the girls still have lots of opportunity for playing, as well as schooling. So this weeks Twitter Tips are dedicated to having a playful return to school. The Twitter Tips get tweeted on a Friday at 8.30pm and in previous weeks they’ve started great twitter conversations, with people swapping ideas. The main thing I love about blogging is it being a forum to get inspiration and encouragement from others, so please feel free to add your own ideas in the comments or on our Facebook page. Join in, swap ideas, go play! How to have a playful Back to School #goplay Twitter Tip #1If you’re using after school clubs check how playful they are: do they offer free play after a structured school day #goplay Twitter Tip #2Make the school run fun: cycle, scoot or play i-spy. Leave a little earlier to let the kids play a bit before class #goplay Twitter Tip #3 Set up a play invitation in the morning to entice the kids to play before they switch on the TV #goplay Twitter Tip #4 Rediscover some old school favourites such as conkers or fortune tellers #goplay Twitter Tip #5 Consider how many clubs to join so after school play time isn’t lost in a busy schedule. #goplay Twitter Tip #6 Encourage playground fun by packing a skipping rope in the book bag. Ready for Ten has a great skipping tutuorial #goplay Twitter Tip #7 Plan family time for the weekend: it doesn’t have to be expensive or extravagant but do make sure it happens. #goplay Twitter Tip #8 Consider screen time. Could your kids live without TV for an hour, a day, a week? What could they play instead? #goplay Twitter Tip #9 Locate the park nearest your school and stop off any day day you can on the way home. Enjoy some #playoutdoors #goplay Twitter Tip#10 Instead of only setting up a homework area set up a play area too. Add untoys & let them #goplay How do you feel about the balance between school and play time? How do you manage homework at the weekend? Do your kids attend a playful school? Happily shared with Top Ten Tuesday. Use the linky below to add your post to the Play Academy Our summer holidays are drawing to a close and my Little is starting school on Monday (oh my!). I feel very strongly that our play should keep going. B is moving up to the Juniors and although her school offers are great curriculum including play, art, music, drama and experiments I think it’s inevitable that her lessons will become more and more about schooling. September always feels like the start of the year to me, so I’m keeping in mind my resolution to make 2010 our Year of Play, and we’ll certainly be limiting our after school clubs and weekend commitments to allow plenty of time for playing. How do you feel about finding a balance between schooling (or home educating) and play? I’m looking forward to getting even more inspiration from your Play Academy ideas this week – hope you’ll add a link. 1. Add your post to the Linky below. Remember to link to the individual post rather than your homepage. If you are not a blogger please visit the NurtureStore Facebook page and share your photo there. 2. Go and visit some of the other blogs on the Linky. Leave a comment and say hi. Get ideas. Tell them you’re visiting from the Play Academy. 3. Add a link back from your own post to this Play Academy – your readers can then come and get ideas too. You can use the Play Academy badge if you like.(Grab the code from the column on the left.) 4. Come back next Friday and swap some more play ideas. The next Play Academy linky will be Friday 10th September.

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Memoirs, other writings, deposition, and correspondence, relating to King Michael, Romanian participation in World War II, the transition of Romania from monarchy to communist regime, and Romanian emigre affairs. Includes a dissertation on Swiss Jacques M. Vergotti was born in 1915. A Major in the Romanian Army, he served as aide to Michael I, King of Romania, between 1941-1947. He witnessed the last year of the Romanian monarchy and the palace coup of December 30, 1947, when the King was overthrown and the Popular Republic of Romania was proclaimed. He was one of the few people allowed to leave the country together with the King, whose aide he was for one more year. He then emigrated to the US and has lived there since. 3 manuscript boxes 1.25 linear feet) For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Archives. Collection open for research.

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This collection consists of digital images of the correspondence of John Muir from 1856-1914. The vast majority of the letters were sent and received by Muir, although the collection also includes some correspondence of selected family members and colleagues. Muir’s correspondence offers a unique first-hand perspective on his thoughts and experiences, as well as those of his correspondents, which include many notable figures in scientific, literary, and political circles of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The correspondence forms part of the John Muir Papers microfilm set that filmed letters located at over 35 institutions. A Scottish-born journalist and naturalist, John Muir (1838-1914) studied botany and geology at the University of Wisconsin (1861-1863). He worked for awhile as a mill hand at the Trout Broom Factory in Meaford, Canada (1864-1866), then at an Indianapolis carriage factory (1866-1867), until an accident temporarily blinded him and directed his thoughts toward full-time nature study. Striking out on foot for South America, Muir walked to the Gulf of Mexico (September 1867-January 1868), but a long illness in Florida led him to change his plans and turn his interests westward. Muir arrived by ship at San Francisco (March 1868), walked to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and began a five year wilderness sojourn (1868-1873) during which he made his year-round home in the Yosemite Valley. Working as a sheepherder and lumberman when he needed money for supplies, Muir investigated the length and breadth of the Sierra range, focusing most of his attention on glaciation and its impact on mountain topography. He began to publish newspaper articles about what he saw in the California mountains and these articles brought him to the attention of such intellectuals as Asa Gray and Ralph Waldo Emerson, both of whom sought him out during their visits to California. Encouraged by Jeanne Carr, wife of his one-time botany professor, Ezra S. Carr, Muir took up nature writing as a profession (1872). He set up winter headquarters in Oakland and began a pattern of spring and summer mountaineering followed by winter writing based upon his travel journals that he held to until 1880. His treks took him to Mount Shasta (1874, 1875 & 1877), the Great Basin (1876, 1877, 1878), southern California and the Coast Range (1877), and southern Alaska (1879). Muir found that he could finance his modest bachelor lifestyle with revenue from contributions published in various San Francisco newspapers and magazines. During this period he launched the first lobbying effort to protect Sierra forests from wasteful lumbering Some of the materials in the John Muir Correspondence Collection may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.) and/or by the copyright or neighboring rights laws of other nations. Additionally, the reproduction of some materials may be restricted by privacy or publicity rights. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to reproduce or use the item.

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Giant Manta Ray Giant Manta Ray Manta birostris Divers often describe the experience of swimming beneath a manta ray as like being overtaken by a huge flying saucer. This ray is the biggest in the world, but like the biggest shark, the whale shark, it is a harmless consumer of plankton. When feeding, it swims along with its cavernous mouth wide open, beating its huge triangular wings slowly up and down. On either side of the mouth, which is at the front of the head, there are two long paddles, called cephalic lobes. These lobes help funnel plankton into the mouth. A stingerless whiplike tail trails behind. Giant manta rays tend to be found over high points like seamounts where currents bring plankton up to them. Small fish called remoras often travel attached to these giants, feeding on food scraps along the way. Giant mantas are ovoviviparous, so the eggs develop and hatch inside the mother. These rays can leap high out of the water, to escape predators, clean their skin of parasites or communicate.

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Topics covered: Ideal solutions Instructor/speaker: Moungi Bawendi, Keith Nelson The following content is provided under a Creative Commons license. Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. To make a donation or view additional materials from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare at ocw.mit.edu. PROFESSOR: So. In the meantime, you've started looking at two phase equilibrium. So now we're starting to look at mixtures. And so now we have more than one constituent. And we have more than one phase present. Right? So you've started to look at things that look like this, where you've got, let's say, two components. Both in the gas phase. And now to try to figure out what the phase equilibria look like. Of course it's now a little bit more complicated than what you went through before, where you can get pressure temperature phase diagrams with just a single component. Now we want to worry about what's the composition. Of each of the components. In each of the phases. And what's the temperature and the pressure. Total and partial pressures and all of that. So you can really figure out everything about both phases. And there are all sorts of important reasons to do that, obviously lots of chemistry happens in liquid mixtures. Some in gas mixtures. Some where they're in equilibrium. All sorts of chemical processes. Distillation, for example, takes advantage of the properties of liquid and gas mixtures. Where one of them might be richer, will be richer, and the more volatile of the components. That can be used as a basis for purification. You mix ethanol and water together so you've got a liquid with a certain composition of each. The gas is going to be richer and the more volatile of the two, the ethanol. So in a distillation, where you put things up in the gas, more of the ethanol comes up. You could then collect that gas, right? And re-condense it, and make a new liquid. Which is much richer in ethanol than the original liquid was. Then you could make, then you could put some of them up into the gas phase. Where it will be still richer in ethanol. And then you could collect that and repeat the process. So the point is that properties of liquid gas, two-component or multi-component mixtures like this can be exploited. Basically, the different volatilities of the different components can be exploited for things like purification. Also if you want to calculate chemical equilibria in the liquid and gas phase, of course, now you've seen chemical equilibrium, so the amount of reaction depends on the composition. So of course if you want reactions to go, then this also can be exploited by looking at which phase might be richer in one reactant or another. And thereby pushing the equilibrium toward one direction or the other. OK. So. we've got some total temperature and pressure. And we have compositions. So in the gas phase, we've got mole fractions yA and yB. In the liquid phase we've got mole fractions xA and xB. So that's our system. One of the things that you established last time is that, so there are the total number of variables including the temperature and the pressure. And let's say the mole fraction of A in each of the liquid and gas phases, right? But then there are constraints. Because the chemical potentials have to be equal, right? Chemical potential of A has to be equal in the liquid and gas. Same with B. Those two constraints reduce the number of independent variables. So there'll be two in this case rather than four independent variables. If you control those, then everything else will follow. What that means is if you've got a, if you control, if you fix the temperature and the total pressure, everything else should be determinable. No more free variables. And then, what you saw is that in simple or ideal liquid mixtures, a result called Raoult's law would hold. Which just says that the partial pressure of A is equal to the mole fraction of A in the liquid times the pressure of pure A over the liquid. And so what this gives you is a diagram that looks like this. If we plot this versus xB, this is mole fraction of B in the liquid going from zero to one. Then we could construct a diagram of this sort. So this is the total pressure of A and B. The partial pressures are given by these lines. So this is our pA star and pB star. The pressures over the pure liquid A and B at the limits of mole fraction of B being zero and one. So in this situation, for example, A is the more volatile of the components. So it's partial pressure over its pure liquid. At this temperature. Is higher than the partial pressure of B over its pure liquid. A would be the ethanol, for example and B the water in that mixture. OK. Then you started looking at both the gas and the liquid phase in the same diagram. So this is the mole fraction of the liquid. If you look and see, well, OK now we should be able to determine the mole fraction in the gas as well. Again, if we note total temperature and pressure, everything else must follow. And so, you saw this worked out. Relation between p and yA, for example. The result was p is pA star times pB star over pA star plus pB star minus pA star times yA. And the point here is that unlike this case, where you have a linear relationship, the relationship between the pressure and the liquid mole fraction isn't linear. We can still plot it, of course. So if we do that, then we end up with a diagram that looks like the following. Now I'm going to keep both mole fractions, xB and yB, I've got some total pressure. I still have my linear relationship. And then I have a non-linear relationship between the pressure and the mole fraction in the gas phase. So let's just fill this in. Here is pA star still. Here's pB star. Of course, at the limits they're still, both mole fractions they're zero and one. OK. I believe this is this is where you ended up at the end of the last lecture. But it's probably not so clear exactly how you read something like this. And use it. It's extremely useful. You just have to kind of learn how to follow what happens in a diagram like this. And that's what I want to spend some of today doing. Is just, walking through what's happening physically, with a container with a mixture of the two. And how does that correspond to what gets read off the diagram under different conditions. So. Let's just start somewhere on a phase diagram like this. Let's start up here at some point one, so we're in the pure - well, not pure, you're in the all liquid phase. It's still a mixture. It's not a pure substance. pA star, pB star. There's the gas phase. So, if we start at one, and now there's some total pressure. And now we're going to reduce it. What happens? We start with a pure - with an all-liquid mixture. No gas. And now we're going to bring down the pressure. Allowing some of the liquid to go up into the gas phase. So, we can do that. And once we reach point two, then we find a coexistence curve. Now the liquid and gas are going to coexist. So this is the liquid phase. And that means that this must be xB. And it's xB at one, but it's also xB at two, and I want to emphasize that. So let's put our pressure for two. And if we go over here, this is telling us about the mole fraction in the gas phase. That's what these curves are, remember. So this is the one that's showing us the mole fraction in the liquid phase. This nonlinear one in the gas phase. So that means just reading off it, this is xB, that's the liquid mole fraction. Here's yB. The gas mole fraction. They're not the same, right, because of course the components have different volatility. A's more volatile. So that means that the mole fraction of B in the liquid phase is higher than the mole fraction of B in the gas phase. Because A is the more volatile component. So more, relatively more, of A, the mole fraction of A is going to be higher up in the gas phase. Which means the mole fraction of B is lower in the gas phase. So, yB less than xB if A is more volatile. OK, so now what's happening physically? Well, we started at a point where we only had the liquid present. So at our initial pressure, we just have all liquid. There's some xB at one. That's all there is, there isn't any gas yet. Now, what happened here? Well, now we lowered the pressure. So you could imagine, well, we made the box bigger. Now, if the liquid was under pressure, being squeezed by the box, right then you could make the box a little bit bigger. And there's still no gas. That's moving down like this. But then you get to a point where there's just barely any pressure on top of the liquid. And then you keep expanding the box. Now some gas is going to form. So now we're going to go to our case two. We've got a bigger box. And now, right around where this was, this is going to be liquid. And there's gas up here. So up here is yB at pressure two. Here's xB at pressure two. Liquid and gas. So that's where we are at point two here. Now, what happens if we keep going? Let's lower the pressure some more. Well, we can lower it and do this. But really if we want to see what's happening in each of the phases, we have to stay on the coexistence curves. Those are what tell us what the pressures are. What the partial pressure are going to be in each of the phases. In each of the two, in the liquid and the gas phases. So let's say we lower the pressure a little more. What's going to happen is, then we'll end up somewhere over here. In the liquid, and that'll correspond to something over here in the gas. So here's three. So now we're going to have, that's going to be xB at pressure three. And over here is going to be yB at pressure three. And all we've done, of course, is we've just expanded this further. So now we've got a still taller box. And the liquid is going to be a little lower because some of it has evaporated, formed the gas phase. So here's xB at three. Here's yB at three, here's our gas phase. Now we could decrease even further. And this is the sort of thing that you maybe can't do in real life. But I can do on a blackboard. I'm going to give myself more room on this curve, to finish this illustration. There. Beautiful. So now we can lower a little bit further, and what I want to illustrate is, if we keep going down, eventually we get to a pressure where now if we look over in the gas phase, we're at the same pressure, mole fraction that we had originally in the liquid phase. So let's make four even lower pressure. What does that mean? What it means is, we're running out of liquid. So what's supposed to happen is A is the more volatile component. So as we start opening up some room for gas to form, you get more of A in the gas phase. But of course, and the liquid is richer in B. But of course, eventually you run out of liquid. You make the box pretty big, and you run out, or you have the very last drop of liquid. So what's the mole fraction of B in the gas phase? It has to be the same as what it started in in the liquid phase. Because after all the total number of moles of A and B hasn't changed any. So if you take them all from the liquid and put them all up into the gas phase, it must be the same. So yB of four. Once you just have the last drop. So then yB of four is basically equal to xB of one. Because everything's now up in the gas phase. So in principle, there's still a tiny, tiny bit of xB at pressure four. Well, we could keep lowering the pressure. We could make the box a little bigger. Then the very last of the liquid is going to be gone. And what'll happen then is, we're all here. There's no more liquid. We're not going down on the coexistence curve any more. We don't have a liquid gas coexistence any more. We just have a gas phase. Of course, we can continue to lower the pressure. And then what we're doing is just going down here. So there's five. And five is the same as this only bigger. And so forth. OK, any questions about how this works? It's really important to just gain facility in reading these things and seeing, OK, what is it that this is telling you. And you can see it's not complicated to do it, but it takes a little bit of practice. OK. Now, of course, we could do exactly the same thing starting from the gas phase. And raising the pressure. And although you may anticipate that it's kind of pedantic, I really do want to illustrate something by it. So let me just imagine that we're going to do that. Let's start all in the gas phase. Up here's the liquid. pA star, pB star. And now let's start somewhere here. So we're down somewhere in the gas phase with some composition. So it's the same story, except now we're starting here. It's all gas. And we're going to start squeezing. We're increasing the pressure. And eventually here's one, will reach two, so of course here's our yB. We started with all gas, no liquid. So this is yB of one. It's the same as yB of two, I'm just raising the pressure enough to just reach the coexistence curve. And of course, out here tells us xB of two, right? So what is it saying? We've squeezed and started to form some liquid. And the liquid is richer in component B. Maybe it's ethanol water again. And we squeeze, and now we've got more water in the liquid phase than in the gas phase. Because water's the less volatile component. It's what's going to condense first. So the liquid is rich in the less volatile of the components. Now, obviously, we can continue in doing exactly the reverse of what I showed you. But all I want to really illustrate is, this is a strategy for purification of the less volatile component. Once you've done this, well now you've got some liquid. Now you could collect that liquid in a separate vessel. So let's collect the liquid mixture with xB of two. So it's got some mole fraction of B. So we've purified that. But now we're going to start, we've got pure liquid. Now let's make the vessel big. So it all goes into the gas phase. Then lower p. All gas. So we start with yB of three, which equals xB of two. In other words, it's the same mole fraction. So let's reconstruct that. So here's p of two. And now we're going to go to some new pressure. And the point is, now we're going to start, since the mole fraction in the gas phase that we're starting from is the same number as this was. So it's around here somewhere. That's yB of three equals xB of two. And we're down here. In other words, all we've done is make the container big enough so the pressure's low and it's all in the gas phase. That's all we have, is the gas. But the composition is whatever the composition is that we extracted here from the liquid. So this xB, which is the liquid mole fraction, is now yB, the gas mole fraction. Of course, the pressure is different. Lower than it was before. Great. Now let's increase. So here's three. And now let's increase the pressure to four. And of course what happens, now we've got coexistence. So here's liquid. Here's gas. So, now we're over here again. There's xB at pressure four. Pure still in component B. We can repeat the same procedure. Collect it. All liquid, put it in a new vessel. Expand it, lower the pressure, all goes back into the gas phase. Do it all again. And the point is, what you're doing is walking along here. Here to here. Then you start down here, and go from here to here. From here to here. And you can purify. Now, of course, the optimal procedure, you have to think a little bit. Because if you really do precisely what I said, you're going to have a mighty little bit of material each time you do that. So yes it'll be the little bit you've gotten at the end is going to be really pure, but there's not a whole lot of it. Because, remember, what we said is let's raise the pressure until we just start being on the coexistence curve. So we've still got mostly gas. Little bit of liquid. Now, I could raise the pressure a bit higher. So that in the interest of having more of the liquid, when I do that, though, the liquid that I have at this higher pressure won't be as enriched as it was down here. Now, I could still do this procedure. I could just do more of them. So it takes a little bit of judiciousness to figure out how to optimize that. In the end, though, you can continue to walk your way down through these coexistence curves and purify repeatedly the component B, the less volatile of them, and end up with some amount of it. And there'll be some balance between the amount that you feel like you need to end up with and how pure you need it to be. Any questions about how this works? So purification of less volatile components. Now, how much of each of these quantities in each of these phases? So, pertinent to this discussion, of course we need to know that. If you want to try to optimize a procedure like that, of course it's going to be crucial to be able to understand and calculate for any pressure that you decide to raise to, just how many moles do you have in each of the phases? So at the end of the day, you can figure out, OK, now when I reach a certain degree of purification, here's how much of the stuff I end up with. Well, that turns out to be reasonably straightforward to do. And so what I'll go through is a simple mathematical derivation. And it turns out that it allows you to just read right off the diagram how much of each material you're going to end up with. So, here's what happens. This is something called the lever rule. How much of each component is there in each phase? So let's consider a case like this. Let me draw yet once again, just to get the numbering consistent. With how we'll treat this. So we're going to start here. And I want to draw it right in the middle, so I've got plenty of room. And we're going to go up to some pressure. And somewhere out there, now I can go to my coexistence curves. Liquid. And gas. And I can read off my values. So this is the liquid xB. So I'm going to go up to some point two, here's xB of two. Here's yB of two. Great. Now let's get these written in. So let's just define terms a little bit. nA, nB. Or just our total number of moles. ng and n liquid, of course, total number of moles. In the gas and liquid phases. So let's just do the calculation for each of these two cases. We'll start with one. That's the easier case. Because then we have only the gas. So at one, all gas. It says pure gas in the notes, but of course that isn't the pure gas. It's the mixture of the two components. So. How many moles of A? Well it's the mole fraction of A in the gas. Times the total number of moles in the gas. Let me put one in here. Just to be clear. And since we have all gas, the number of moles in the gas is just the total number of moles. So this is just yA at one times n total. Let's just write that in. And of course n total is equal to nA plus nB. So now let's look at condition two. Now we have to look a little more carefully. Because we have a liquid gas mixture. So nA is equal to yA at pressure two. Times the number of moles of gas at pressure two. Plus xA, at pressure two, times the number of moles of liquid at pressure two. Now, of course, these things have to be equal. The total number of moles of A didn't change, right? So those are equal. Then yA of two times ng of two. Plus xA of two times n liquid of two, that's equal to yA of one times n total. Which is of course equal to yA of one times n gas at two plus n liquid at two. I suppose I could be, add that equality. Of course, it's an obvious one. But let me do it anyway. The total number of moles is equal to nA plus nB. But it's also equal to n liquid plus n gas. And that's all I'm taking advantage of here. And now I'm just going to rearrange the terms. So I'm going to write yA at one minus yA at two, times ng at two, is equal to, and I'm going to take the other terms, the xA term. xA of two minus yA of one times n liquid at two. So I've just rearranged the terms. And I've done that because now, I think I omitted something here. yA of one times ng. No, I forgot a bracket, is what I did. yA of one there. And I did this because now I want to do is look at the ratio of liquid to gas at pressure two. So, ratio of I'll put it gas to liquid, that's ng of two over n liquid at two. And that's just equal to xA of two minus yA at one minus yA at one minus yA at two. So what does it mean? It's the ratio of these lever arms. That's what it's telling me. I can look, so I raise the pressure up to two. And so here's xB at two, here's yB at two. And I'm here somewhere. And this little amount and this little amount, that's that difference. And it's just telling me that ratio of those arms is the ratio of the total number of moles of gas to liquid. And that's great. Because now when I go back to the problem that we were just looking at, where I say, well I'm going to purify the less volatile component by raising the pressure until I'm at coexistence starting in the gas phase. Raise the pressure, I've got some liquid. But I also want some finite amount of liquid. But I don't want to just, when I get the very, very first drop of liquid now collected, of course it's enriched in the less volatile component. But there may be a minuscule amount, right? So I'll raise the pressure a bit more. I'll go up in pressure. And now, of course, when I do that the amount of enrichment of the liquid isn't as big as it was if I just raised it up enough to barely have any liquid. Then I'd be out here. But I've got more material in the liquid phase to collect. And that's what this allows me to calculate. Is how much do I get in the end. So it's very handy. You can also see, if I go all the way to the limit where the mole fraction in the liquid at the end is equal to what it was in the gas when I started, what that says is that there's no more gas left any more. In other words, these two things are equal. If I go all the way to the point where I've got all the, this is the amount I started with, in the pure gas phase, now I keep raising it all the way. Until I've got the same mole fraction in the liquid. Of course, we know what that really means. That means that I've gone all the way from pure gas to pure liquid. And the mole fraction in that case has to be the same. And what this is just telling us mathematically is, when that happens this is zero. That means I don't have any gas left. Yeah. PROFESSOR: No. Because, so it's the mole fraction in the gas phase. But you've started with some amount that it's only going to go down from there. PROFESSOR: Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? OK. Well, now what I want to do is just put up a slightly different kind of diagram, but different in an important way. Namely, instead of showing the mole fractions as a function of the pressure. And I haven't written it in, but all of these are at constant temperature, right? I've assumed the temperature is constant in all these things. Now let's consider the other possibility, the other simple possibility, which is, let's hold the pressure constant and vary the temperature. Of course, you know in the lab, that's usually what's easiest to do. Now, unfortunately, the arithmetic gets more complicated. It's not monumentally complicated, but here in this case, where you have one linear relationship, which is very convenient. From Raoult's law. And then you have one non-linear relationship there for the mole fraction of the gas. In the case of temperature, they're both, neither one is linear. Nevertheless, we can just sketch what the diagram looks like. And of course it's very useful to do that, and see how to read off it. And I should say the derivation of the curves isn't particularly complicated. It's not particularly more complicated than what I think you saw last time to derive this. There's no complicated math involved. But the point is, the derivation doesn't yield a linear relationship for either the gas or the liquid part of the coexistence curve. OK, so we're going to look at temperature and mole fraction phase diagrams. Again, a little more complicated mathematically but more practical in real use. And this is T. And here is the, sort of, form that these things take. So again, neither one is linear. Up here, now, of course if you raise the temperatures, that's where you end up with gas. If you lower the temperature, you condense and get the liquid. So, this is TA star. TB star. So now I want to stick with A as the more volatile component. At constant temperature, that meant that pA star is bigger than pB star. In other words, the vapor pressure over pure liquid A is higher than the vapor pressure over pure liquid B. Similarly, now I've got constant pressure and really what I'm looking at, let's say I'm at the limit where I've got the pure liquid. Or the pure A. And now I'm going to, let's say, raise the temperature until I'm at the liquid-gas equilibrium. That's just the boiling point. So if A is the more volatile component, it has the lower boiling point. And that's what this reflects. So higher pB star A corresponds to lower TA star A. Which is just the boiling point of pure A. So, this is called the bubble line. That's called the dew line. All that means is, let's say I'm at high temperature. I've got all gas. Right no coexistence, no liquid yet. And I start to cool things off. Just to where I just barely start to get liquid. What you see that as is, dew starts forming. A little bit of condensation. If you're outside, it means on the grass a little bit of dew is forming. Similarly, if I start at low temperature, all liquid now I start raising the temperature until I just start to boil. I just start to see the first bubbles forming. And so that's why these things have those names. So now let's just follow along what happens when I do the same sort of thing that I illustrated there. I want to start at one point in this phase diagram. And then start changing the conditions. So let's start here. So I'm going to start all in the liquid phase. That is, the temperature is low. Here's xB. And my original temperature. Now I'm going to raise it. So if I raise it a little bit, I reach a point at which I first start to boil. Start to find some gas above the liquid. And if I look right here, that'll be my composition. Let me raise it a little farther, now that we've already seen the lever rule and so forth. I'll raise it up to here. And that means that out here, I suppose I should do here. So, here is the liquid mole fraction at temperature two. xB at temperature two. This is yB at temperature two. The gas mole fraction. So as you should expect, what's going to happen here is that the gas, this is going to be lower in B. A, that means that the mole fraction of A must be higher in the gas phase. That's one minus yB. So xA is one minus -- yA, which is one minus yB higher in gas phase. Than xA, which is one minus xB. In other words, the less volatile component is enriched up in the gas phase. Now, what does that mean? That means I could follow the same sort of procedure that I indicated before when we looked at the pressure mole fraction phase diagram. Namely, I could do this and now I could take the gas phase. Which has less of B. It has more of A. And I can collect it. And then I can reduce the temperature. So it liquefies. So I can condense it, in other words. So now I'm going to start with, let's say I lower the temperature enough so I've got basically pure liquid. But its composition is the same as the gas here. Because of course that's what that liquid is formed from. I collected the gas and separated it. So now I could start all over again. Except instead of being here, I'll be down here. And then I can raise the temperature again. To some place where I choose. I could choose here, and go all the way to hear. A great amount of enrichment. But I know from the lever rule that if I do that, I'm going to have precious little material over here. So I might prefer to raise the temperature a little more. Still get a substantial amount of enrichment. And now I've got, in the gas phase, I'll further enriched in component A. And again I can collect the gas. Condense it. Now I'm out here somewhere, I've got all liquid and I'll raise the temperature again. And I can again keep walking my way over. And that's what happens during an ordinary distillation. Each step of the distillation walks along in the phase diagram at some selected point. And of course what you're doing is, you're always condensing the gas. And starting with fresh liquid that now is enriched in more volatile of the components. So of course if you're really purifying, say, ethanol from an ethanol water mixture, that's how you do it. Ethanol is the more volatile component. So a still is set up. It will boil the stuff and collect the gas and and condense it. And boil it again, and so forth. And the whole thing can be set up in a very efficient way. So you have essentially continuous distillation. Where you have a whole sequence of collection and condensation and reheating and so forth events. So then, in a practical way, it's possible to walk quite far along the distillation, the coexistence curve, and distill to really a high degree of purification. Any questions about how that works? OK. I'll leave till next time the discussion of the chemical potentials. But what we'll do, just to foreshadow a little bit, what I'll do at the beginning of the next lecture is what's at the end of your notes here. Which is just to say OK, now if we look at Raoult's law, it's straightforward to say what is the chemical potential for each of the substances in the liquid and the gas phase. Of course, it has to be equal. Given that, that's for an ideal solution. We can gain some insight from that. And then look at real solutions, non-ideal solutions, and understand a lot of their behavior as well. Just from starting from our understanding of what the chemical potential does even in a simple ideal mixture. So we'll look at the chemical potentials. And then we'll look at non-ideal solution mixtures next time. See you then.

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Topics covered: Encapsulation, inheritance, shadowing Instructor: Prof. Eric Grimson, Prof. John Guttag OPERATOR: The following content is provided under a Creative Commons license. Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. To make a donation or view additional materials from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare at ocw.mit.edu. PROFESSOR: Last lecture we were talking about classes, and object-oriented programming, and we're going to come back to it today. I'm going to remind you, we were talking about it because we suggested it is a really powerful way of structuring systems, and that's really why we want to use it, It's a very common way of structuring systems. So today I'm going to pick up on a bunch of more nuanced, or more complex if you like, ways of leveraging the power of classes. But we're going to see a bunch of examples that are going to give us a sense. I'm going to talk about inheritance, we're going to talk about shadowing, we're going to talk about iterators. But before get to it, I want to start by just highlighting, sort of, what was the point of classes? So I'll remind you. A class, I said, was basically a template for an abstract data type. And this was really to drive home this idea of modularity. I want the ability to say, I've got a set of things that naturally belong together, I'm going to cluster them together, I want to treat it like it's a primitive, I want to treat it like it's a float or an int or a string. Is this going to be a point or a segment or something different like that. So it's really a way, as I said, of just trying to cluster data together. And this is a notion of modularity slash abstraction where I'm treating them as primitives. But the second thing we talked about is that we also have a set of methods, using the special name method because we're talking classes. But basically functions that are designed to deal with this data structure. We're trying to group those together as well. So we cluster data and methods. Second key thing we said was, in the ideal case, which unfortunately Python isn't, but we'll come back to that, in the ideal case, we would have data hiding, and by data hiding, which is sort of a version of encapsulation, what we meant was that you could only get to the internal pieces of that data structure through a proscribed method. Proscribed meaning it's something I set up. So data hiding saying, you would only access the parts through a method. And as we said, unfortunately Python does not enforce this. Meaning that I could create one of these data structures, ideally I'd have a method, that I'm going to see some examples of that I used to get the parts out, unfortunately in Python you could take the name the instance dot some internal variable you'll get it back. It is exposed. And this is actually just not a good idea. So I suggested in my very bad humor, that you practice computational hygiene and you only use appropriate methods to get the parts out. OK didn't laugh the joke last time, you're not going to laugh at it this time, I don't blame you. All right, and then the last piece of this is that we said the class is a template. When we call that class, it makes an instance. So class is used to make instances, meaning particular versions, of that structure, and we said inside the instances we have a set of attributes. Internal variables, methods, that are going to belong to that structure. OK, so with that in mind, here's what I want to do. I'm going to show you a set of examples, and I want to warn you ahead of time, the code handout today is a little longer than normal because we want to build essentially an extended example of a sequence of examples of classes. We're going to see the idea, of which we're gonna talk about, of inheritance or hierarchy, in which we can have classes that are specializations of other classes. We're gonna see how we can inherit methods, how we can shadow methods, how we can use methods in a variety of ways. So this is a way of suggesting you may find it more convenient to put notes on the code handout rather than in your own notes. Do whatever you like, but I just wanted to alert you, we're going to go through a little more code than normal. So, the little environment I'm going to build is an environment of people. I'll build a simple little simulation of people. So I'm going to start off with the first class, which I've got up on the screen, and it's on your handout as well, which is I'm going to build an instance, or a class rather, of persons. I'm going to draw a diagram, which I'm gonna try and see if I can do well, over here, of the different objects we're going to have. So I've got, a class, and by the way a class is an object. Instances are also objects, but classes are objects. We're gonna see why we want that in a second. Because I'm gonna build an object, sorry a class, called a person. Now, let's walk through some of the pieces here. The first one is, there's something a little different. Remember last time we had that keyword class and then a name, that name, in this case, person says this is the name for the class, and then we would have just had the semicolon and a bunch of internal things. Here I've got something in parens, and I want to stress this is not a variable. All right, this is not a def, this is a class. I'm going to come back to it, but what this is basically saying is that the person class is going to inherit from another class, which in this case is just the built-in Python object class. Hold on to that thought, it's going to make more sense when we look at a little more interesting example, but I want to highlight that. All right now, if we do this, as I said before, we can create a version of a person, let me just call it per, person. OK? And what we said last time is, when we wanted to create an instance inside of this class definition, we've got one of those built-in things called init. I'm gonna again remind you, some of the methods we have, Underbar underbar init is going to be the thing that creates the instance. Actually slightly misspeaking, actually Python creates the instance, but it's one thing that fills it in. So in this case, I'm going to give it 2 arguments: Frank Foobar Now, you might have said, wait a minute, init here has 3 arguments: self, family name, and first name. So again, just to remind you, what we said happens here is that when I call this class, person, I'm creating an instance. We'll draw a little instance diagram down here. I'm going to give it the name per. And I should have said inside of person, we've got a set of things. We've got our underbar underbar init, we've got, what else do I have up there? Family name. And a bunch of other methods, down to say. What happens inside of Python is, when we called the class definition, person, it creates an instance, there it is. Think of it as a pointer to a spot in memory, and then what we do is, we call, or find, that init method, up here, and we apply it. And the first argument self, points to the instance. So this object here is what self looks at. Now you can see what init's going to do. It says, oh, inside of self, which is pointing to here, let me bind a variable, which was, can read that very carefully, it's family underbar name, to the value I passed in, which was 4. Same thing with first name. OK, so the reason I'm stressing this is, self we do not supply explicitly, it is supplied as pointing to the instance, it's giving us that piece of memory. And that is what then gets created. So here's, now, the instance for per. OK, and I put a little label on there, I'm going to call that an isALink, because it is an instance of that class. God bless you. All right, so once we got this, let's look at what we can do with person. That's why I built person here. And as I said, I've already bound basically, those two pieces. If I want to get a value out, I can give person, or per, rather, this instance, a messaging. In this case I want to get family, what did I say, family name out, now, again I want to stress, what is happening here? per is an instance, it's this thing here. When I say per dot family name, I'm sending it a message, in essence what that does is, it says, from here it's going to go up the chain to this class object and find the appropriate method, which was family name. It is then going to apply that to self, which points to this instance. And that allows it, therefore, is you can see on the code, to look up under self, what's the binding for family name, and print it back up. So self is always going to point to the instance I want and I can use it. OK what else do we have in here? We can get the first name, that's not particularly interesting. We've got 2 other special methods: that's cmp and str. All right, cmp is our comparison method. And since I, I was about to say I blew it last time, I misspoke last time, a wonderful phrase that politicians like to use, I misspoke last time. Let me clarify again what cmp will do. Underbar underbar cmp is going to be the method you're going to use to compare two instances of an object. Now, let's back up for second. If I wanted to test equality, in fact I could use underbar underbar eq, under under. It's natural to think about an equality tester as returning a Boolean, it's either gonna be true or false, because something's either equal to or not. In many languages, comparisons also return Booleans, which is why I went down this slippery slope. For many languages, either it's greater than or it's not. But Python is different. Python use cmp, in fact it has a built in cmp, which is what we're relying on here. Where am I, right there. And what cmp returns is 1 of 3 values. Given 2 objects, it says if the first one is less than the second one, it returns -1, if it's equal it returns 0, if it's greater than, it returns 1. So it allows you this broader range of comparisons. And if you think about it, cmp, you could apply on integers, you could apply it on floats, apply it on strings. So it's overloaded, it has the ability to do all of those. And in this case what we're saying is, given 2 objects, let's create a tuple of the first, sorry, family and first name of ourselves, and other is another object, family and first name of that, and then just use cmp to compare them. All right, so it's going to use the base pieces. OK, so it gives me a way of doing comparisons. And str we saw last time as well, this is cmp does comparison, and str is our printed representation. OK. So what we've got now, is a simple little class. We've also got two methods there. I want to look at them, we're gonna come back to them, but they start to highlight things we can do with our classes. So I've built one simple version of it here, which is per. And notice I've got another method, right up here, called say. And say takes two arguments, for the moment the second argument, or the first argument's, not going to make a lot of sense, but say takes two arguments besides itself. It's going to take another object to which it's saying something and the thing to say. Since I only have one object here, I'm going to have person talk to himself. You may have met a few other undergraduates who have this behavior. I'll have him talk to himself and say, just some random message the faculty members occasionally worry about. OK, what does this thing do? Now you're going to see some of the power of this. Again, remember, I'm down here, I'm sending this the message say, it's going to go up the chain to find the say message in person. And what does say do, it says given another object and some string, it's going to return, oh, and interesting things, part of which you can't see on the screen. First what it does, is it gets first name of self. Remember self is pointing to this instance, so it's simply looks up that binding, which is Frank. It's going to create a string in which it adds to that the family name of self, and then another thing that says to, and then ah, I'm now going to send a message to the other object, saying give me your first name. Going to add that to the second piece, and you can see in this case it happens to be the same first and family name. And then at the end of it, which you can't see here but you can see in your handout, I just append the whole string, so it spits it out. What's the point of this, other than I can get it to say things? Notice, I can now reference values of the instance. But I can also get values of other instances, by sending in a message. And that's why we have that form right there. And then it glued all together. If you think about this for a second, you might say, wait a minute, actually you might have said wait a minute a while ago, why am I just using the variable name there in the function over here? Well in fact, I could've used the function here, first name open close, right? It would have done the same thing. But because I know I'm inside the instance, it's perfectly reasonable to just look up the value. OK, I could have, although I don't want you to do it, have done the same thing there and used underbar, sorry, first name underbar, sorry, first underbar name, but that's really breaking this contract that I want to happen. I should send the message to get the method back out. So again the standard practices is if you know you're inside the object, you can just access the values. If you're doing it with any other objects, send it a message to get it out. OK, now, that gives you an ability to say, let's look at one more example here, and then we're going to start building our hierarchy, which is, that this person can also sing. And we've got a little sing method here. And notice what it does, it's going to sing to somebody, I guess you're part of the Chorallaries. You're going to sing something, and notice what it does, it's simply going to use its say method, but add at the end of whatever's being said, just tra la la at the end. So this is now an example of a method using another method. Why would you want that? It's nice modularly. I have one method that's doing saying, I have another method that's just building on it. So if I have is person sing to themselves, not a highly recommended activity, it would help if I had it sing to itself, not sing to sing, sorry about that. Notice what it does. Looks like exactly like a say method, except it's got tra la la at the end. Don't worry I'm not going to sing to you. I'll simply say the words. Power of this, other than the silly examples. You see how I can access variables of the instance, how I can access variables of other instances, going to come back to that, and how I can use versions of my own methods to implement other methods. In this case sing is using say as part of what it wants to get out. OK, so we got a simple little example. Now, let's start adding some other pieces to this. OK, and what do I want to add. Find my spot here. OK, we're going to add an MIT person. Sorry, machine is -- do this, let's go down. OK so I'm going to add an MIT person. Look at the code for second. Aha! Notice what this says. MIT person says it inherits from person. That is, that's the first thing in parens up there. It says, you know, class of MIT person is person. What that is saying is, that this is a specialization of the person class. Or another way of saying it is, we have a super class, in this case it's person. And we have a subclass, in this case its MIT person. And we're going to walk through some examples, but what it says is that that subclass of MIT person can inherit the attributes of the person class. Can inherit the methods, it can inherit variables. OK, what does MIT person do? Well, here's 1 of the new things it does. It has a local variable called next id num, which is initially set to 0. See that up there. And then it's got some methods, it's got an init method, a get id method, a few other things. OK, let's run this. In particular, I go back down to this one. Let me just uncomment this and do it here. Assuming my machine will do what I want it to do, which it really doesn't seem to want to do today. Try one more time. Thank you, yep. Still not doing it for me, John. OK, we type it. No idea what Python doesn't like me today, but it doesn't. So we're gonna define p 1, I've lost my keyboard, indeed I have. Try one more time. p 1 MIT person, see how fast I can type here -- OK, now, let's look at what the code does, because again it's going to highlight some things. I called MIT person, push this up slightly, it's going to create an instance down here, I called p 1. And when I would do that, I'm gonna initialize it. So I've got, right up here, an initializer, init for MIT person, takes in the family name and the first name. Notice what it does. Huh. It says, if I'm sitting here at MIT person, I'm going to go up and inherit from person its init function and call it. And what am I calling it on? I'm calling it on self, which is pointing to this object, so I've still got it, and then I'm then going to apply the base initialization. And that does exactly what you'd expect, which is just going to create a binding for family name down here. As well as some other things. So this is an example of inheritance. MIT person inherits the init method from person, can get access to by simply referring to it, and I refer to it right there. And it's take the person class, get its init and apply it to my instance plus those things. So I'm just using the same piece of code Notice the second thing it does. It says inside of self, I'm going to bind the local variable id name to the value of next id name in MIT person. Self is down here, id num, sorry, not id name. I'm going to bind that to the value that I find my going up to here, which is 0, and having done that, I simply increment that value. OK? So what has this done? It says I now have captured in the class, a local variable that I can keep track of. And when I use it, every time I generate an example, let me build another one. I make p 2 another MIT person. OK, I can do things like saying, what is the id number for each of these. First one is 0, second one is 1, which makes sense, right? I'm just incrementing a global variable. Now, things I want you to see about this. Now that I've got a beginning of a hierarchy, I have this notion of inheritance. I can ask a function inside one class to use a function from a class that it can reach by going up the chain. I just did it there. I can ask it to go get values of variables, right, so that looks good. What else do we have in person or MIT person? Well, we can get the id number, we just did. We have a thing to do with this string. Notice it's going to print out something a little different. In fact, there's a kind of funky form there. Which just says, if I want to print it out, I'm gonna create, what this says to do is, I'm gonna create an output template that has that structure to it, but where I see that percent s I'm going to substitute this value for the first one, that value for the second. So if I say, what is p 1? It says ok, MIT person Fred Smith. On the other hand, if I said, what is per, which is that thing I build earlier, it had a different string method, which is just print out person, those pieces. All right, one last piece to this and we're going to add to it. Suppose I want Fred to say something. Say something to Jane. OK, he said it. Where's the say method? OK, Fred is an instance of an MIT person. where's the say method? Well, there isn't one there, but again, that's where the hierarchy comes in. Fred is this object here, I'm sending it the message say. That turns into going up the chain to this object, which is the class object, and saying find a say method and apply it to that instance. Fudge-knuckle, it ain't here. Don't worry about it, because it says if I can't find one there, I'm going to go up the chain to this method, sorry to this class, and look for a method there. Which there was one, I have a say method. It's going to use that say method. Apply to it. Well, you might say, OK, what happens if it isn't there? Well, that's where, remember I defined person to be an instance of an object, it will go up the chain one last time to the base object in Python to see is there a method there or not. Probably isn't a say method for an object, so at that point it's going to raise an exception or throw an error. But now you again see this idea that the inheritance lets you capture methods. Now you might say, why not just put a say method inside of MIT person? Well, if you wanted it to do something different, that would be the right thing to do. But the whole notion here's that I'm capturing modularity, I've got base methods up in my base class. If I just want to use them I'm just going to inherit them by following that chain, if you like, basically up the track. OK, so we've got an MIT person, we can use that. Let's add a little bit more to our hierarchy here. I'm going to create, if I can do this right, a specialization of an MIT person, which is an undergraduate. A special kind of MIT person. All right, so if I go back up here, even though my thing is not going to let me do it, let's build an undergraduate. OK, there's the class definition for an undergrad. We're just starting to see some of the pieces, right, so in an undergraduate, where am I here, an undergraduate. OK, it's also got an initialization function. So if I call undergrad, I'm gonna make an undergrad here, again let me go back down here, line ug 2 it's making undergrad, Jane Doe. Now, what happens when I do the initialization here? Notice what goes on. It simply calls the person initialization method. All right, so I'm down here. I'm going to call the person initialization method, what did do? Sorry, the MIT person method, it calls the person method. Just walking up the chain, that's going to do exactly what I did with all the other ones, so I now have a family name and a first name. So I can, for example, say family name and get it back out. All right? And then, other things that I can do, well I can set what year the person's in, I can figure out what year they're in, there's this unfortunate overflow error if you've hung around too long, but that's not going to happen to you. And I've now got a say method here, so let's look what happens if I ask the undergraduate to say something. OK, it's not a realistic dialogue I know, but, what did this method do? I asked this object to do a say. And notice what it does. It simply passes it back up to MIT person. There's that inheritance again. It's saying, I'm going to have my base say method say something. I'm going to say it to a person, but all I'm going to do because undergraduates in my experience, at least, are always very polite, I'm going to put "Excuse me but" at the front of it. OK, what am I trying to show you here? I know the jokes are awful, but what am I trying to show you here? That I can simply pass up the chain to get it. In fact, what method does the final say here? What class does it come from? Person class, yes, thank you. It goes all the way up to person, right, because MIT person didn't have a say. So I can simply walk up the chain until I find the method I want to have. Now this is an example of shadowing. Not a great example, but it's a beginning example of shadowing, in that this same method for an undergraduate, shadows the base say method, it happens to call it, but it changes it. It puts "Excuse me but" at the front, before it goes on to do something. Now again, I could have decided here to actually copy what the original say method did, stitch all the other things together. But again, that loses my modularity. I'd really to only have to change it in one place. So by putting my say method up in person, I can add these nuances to it, and it lets me have something that has that variation. If I decide I want to change what say does, I only have to change it in one place. It is in the person class definition, and everything else will follow through for free. OK, so now I've got an undergrad, right? Let's look at a couple of variations of what happens here. So first of all, I can -- yes? PROFESSOR 2: Shadowing here is often sometimes called overriding. PROFESSOR: Yes, thank you, because I'm going to do a pure example of shadowing in a second, John right. Also called overriding. Part of the reason I like the phrase shadow is, if you think about it as looking at it from this direction, you see this version of init before you see the other ones, or you see that version of say, but it is overriding the base say example. OK, so I can say, what does p 1, sorry, yes, what does undergrad look like? And I said wait a minute, MIT person, not undergrad, is that right? Well, where's the str method? I didn't define one in undergrad, so it again tracks up the chain and finds the str method here, so it's OK undergrads are MIT people most the time, so it's perfectly fine. OK, now, I have built into this also these cmp methods. So I've got two examples. I've got undergrad, or ug. And then I've got poor old Frank Foobar back there, per person. So suppose I want to compare them? What do you think happens here? Compare sounds weird, right, I compare an undergraduate to a person. I don't know what that's doing, some kind of weird psychological thing, but what do you think happens in terms of the code here if I run this. I know it's a little hard because you got a lot of code to look at. Do I have a cmp method defined somewhere? Yeah. So, it's hard to know what it's going to do, but let's look at it. Hmm. Now sometimes I type things and I got errors I don't expect, this one I did expect. So what happened here? Well let's talk about what happens if I do that comparison I was doing, what was I doing? Ug greater than per? What unwinds into is, I'm going to send to ug, that instance, a cmp method. This is really going to become something like ug dot under under cmp under under applied to per. I think that's close. What does that do? It says starting in ug, I'm going to look for the first cmp method I could find, which is actually sitting here. I had a cmp method in MIT person. If you look at your code, what does it do? It looks up the id numbers to compare them. Well the, ug has an id number because it was created along this chamber. Remember per over here was just created as a person. It doesn't have an id number, so that's why it complaints. Ok, happens if I do that? Compare per to ug. How many people think I get an error? Wow. How many people think I'm going to get either true or false out of this? A few brave hands. Why? Can I ask you, please? Why do you think I'm going to get a, doesn't matter whether it's true or false, why am I going to have something work this time that didn't work last time? PROFESSOR: Yeah, exactly. And in case you didn't hear it, thank you, great answer, sorry, terrible throw. In this case I'm using per, that's the first part, so it's not symmetric. It's gonna use per to do the look up. And as it was said there, per over here goes up and finds a cmp method here which it can apply. In that case, it simply looked at, remember, it took the tuples of first and last name which are both defined here, and did some comparison on that. So this is a way of again pointing out to you that the things are not always symmetric, and I have to be careful about where do I find the methods as I want to use them. Ok? All right. Let's add, I'm gonna do two more classes here. Let's add one more class, some people debate whether these are really people or not, but we're going to add a class called a professor. OK. Now what am I doing? I'm creating another version of class down here. Which again is an instance, or a subclass, sorry, not an instance, a subclass of an MIT person. I see that because I built it to be there. Again I've got an initialization that's going to call the person initialization, which we know is going to go up -- I keep saying that -- going to call the MIT person initialization, which is going to go up and call this one. So again I'm going to be able to find names. And I do a couple of other different things here. I'm gonna pass in a rank, full professor, associate professor, assistant professor, which I'm just going to bind locally. But I'm gonna add one other piece here, which is I'm gonna add a little dictionary on teaching. So when I create a professor, I'm gonna associate with it a dictionary that says, what have you been teaching? And then notice the methods I create. I've got a method here called add teaching, takes, obviously a pointer to the instance. A term, which will just be a string, and a subject. And let's look at what it does right here. OK. In fact the call I'm going to make, I'm not certain I'm going to be able to get away with it, my machine is still wonderfully broken, all right, it is, let me just show you what the calls would look like. As you can see here I'm not going to be able to do them. But I'm going to add teaching, as a method call with this with a string for term, and a subject number. What is this going to do? Yeah, I know I'm just worried if I restart Python, I may not be able to pull the thing back in, so I'm going to try and wing it, John, and see if I can make it happen. Right, what does that teaching do? It's got one of those try except methods. So what does it say it's going to do? It's going to go into the dictionary associated with teaching, under the value of term, and get out a list. And it's going to append to the end of the list the new subject. So it's going to be stored in there, is then going to be term, and a list of what I taught, in case I teach more than one thing each term. It's going to do that, but notice it's a try. If in fact there is no term currently in the dictionary, started out empty, it's going to throw an error, sorry, not throw an error, it's going to raise an exception. Which is a key error, in which case notice what I'm going to do, I'm not going to treat it as an error. I'm simply going to say, in that case, just start off with an empty, with an initial list with just that subject in and put it in the dictionary. As I add more things in, I'll just keep adding things to this dictionary under that term. And if I want to find out what I'm doing, well I can use get teaching, which says given the term, find the thing in the dictionary under that term and return it. If I get an error, I'm going to raise it, which says there is nothing for that term, and in that case I guess I'm just going to return none. OK? And then the other two pieces we're going to have here, and we want to look at a little more carefully, I just wanted to show you that example, is a professor can lecture, and a professor can say something. Look at the say method, because this now add one more nuance to what we want to do here. And I think in interest of making this go, let me actually, since I'm not going to get my machine to do this right, let me create a couple of professors. If I look at what that is, it's an MIT person because I didn't have any separate string thing there, and we will create a more important professor. What rank do you want, John? Do you want to stay full? PROFESSOR 2: Undergraduate. PROFESSOR: Undergraduate, right, a lot more fun I agree. Sorry about that, and we can again just see what that looks like. And that of course, we'll print out, he's also an MIT person. But now here's what I want to do. I want to say something to my good colleague Professor Guttag. Actually I'm going to start a separate -- I'm going to say something to a smart undergraduate. So if I say, remember we have ug defined as an undergraduate, let me do something a little different here. Well let, me do it that way. It says, I don't understand why you say you were enjoying 6.00. Not a good thing to say, right, but if I say to my good colleague Professor Guttag. I have to spell say right, I know, I need help with this, what can I say? We flatter each other all the time. It's part of what makes us feel good about ourselves. Why is the sky blue? I enjoyed your paper, but why is the sky blue? OK, terrible examples, but what's going on here? One more piece that I want to add. Here's my say method for professor, and now I'm actually taking advantage of to whom I am saying something. Notice again, what does it do? There's the self argument, that's just pointing to the instance of me. I'm passing in another argument, going to call it to who, in one case it was ug, in one case it was Guttag. And then the thing I want to say, ah, look what it does, it says, check the type. And the type is going to take that instance, I had an instance, for example, of a professor down here, and it's going to pick up what type of object it is. So if the type of the person I'm speaking to is undergrad, let's pause for second. Remember I started away back saying we're building abstract data types. Well, here's a great example of how I'm using exactly that, right? I've got int, I've got float, I now have ug, it's a type. So it's says if the object to whom I'm speaking is an undergrad, then use the same method from person where I'm going to put this on the front. On the other hand, if the object to whom I'm speaking is a professor, then I'm going to tag this on the front and use the underlying say method. On the other hand, if I'm speaking to somebody else, I'm just going to go lecture. All right, and when a professor lectures, they just put it's obvious on the end of things, as you may have noticed. What's the point I want you to see here? I'm now using the instances to help me to find what the code should do. I'm looking at the type. If the type is this, do that. If the type is this, do something different, ok? And I can now sort of build those pieces up. OK, I said one more class. Notice what we're doing. I know they're silly examples, but, sorry, they are cleverly designed examples to highlight key points. What I'm trying to do is show you how we have methods inherit methods, how have message shadow methods, how we have methods override methods, how we can use instances as types to define what the method should do. Let me show you one last class, because I'm gonna have one more piece that we want to use. And the last class is, sort of, once you've got a set of professors, you can have an aggregate of them. And I don't know, if a group of geese are gaggle, I don't know what a set of professors are, John. Flamers? I, you know, we've got to figure out what the right collective noun here is. We're going to call them a faculty for lack of a better term, right? Now the reason I want to show you this example is, this class, notice, it only is going to inherit from object. It actually makes sense. This is going to be a collection of things, but it's not a subclass of a particular kind of person. And what I want the faculty to do, is to be able to gather together a set of faculty. So if I go down here, grab this for second, and pull it down so you can see it. It looks like I'm not going to be able to run this because my machine is broken, but basically I'm gonna define a set of professors, and then I'm gonna create a new class called faculty. There's the definition of it. It's got an init. You can kind of see what it does. It's going to set up an internal variable called names, which is initially an empty list, internal variable called ids, which is empty, an internal variable called members, which is empty, and another special variable called place, which we're going to come back to in a second, initially bound to none. OK, I've got a method called add which I'm going to use down here to add professors to the course 6 faculty. Here's what I want to add to do. First of all, notice I'm going to check the type. If this is not a professor, I'm gonna raise an error, a type error, it's the wrong type of object to pass in. The second thing I'm gonna do is say, if that's okay, then let me go off and get the id number. Now remember, that's right up here, so I'm asking the instance of the professor to go up and get the id number. And I want to make sure I only have one instance of each professor in my faculty, so if the id number is in the list of ids already, I'm going to raise an error, sorry, raise an exception as well, saying I've got a duplicate id. OK? And the reason that's going to come up is, notice what I do now. Inside of the instant self, I take the variable names and I add to it the family name of the person I just added. OK, notice the form. I'm using the method, there's the parens to get the family name of the person. I'm just adding it to the list. I've got the id number, I've added the ids, and I add the object itself into members. So as I do this, what am I doing? I'm creating a list, actually several lists: a list of ids, a list of the actual instances, and a list of the family names. And as a cost I want to add, that's why I can check and see, is this in here already or not? Now, the last reason I want to do this is, I want to be able to support things like that. This is now different, right, this instance is a collection. I want to be able to do things like, for all the things in that collection, do something, like print out the family names. And to do that, I need two special forms: iter and next. OK, now let me see if I can say this cleanly. Whenever I use a for, in structure, even if it was on just a normal list you built, what Python is doing is returning an, what is called an iterator. Which is something that we talked earlier. It's keeping track of where are you in the list, and how do I get to the next thing in the list? I'm going to do the same thing here, and I'm going to create it for this particular structure. So this little thing iter, when I call a for something in, one of these instances, it calls iter, and notice what it does. It initializes place to 0. That was that variable I had up there. That's basically saying I'm at the beginning of the list. It's a pointer to the beginning of the list, and it returns self. Just gives me back a pointer to the instance. That now allows me at each step in that loop to call next. And what does next do? Next says, check to see if that value is too long, if it's longer than, for example, the list of names, raise an exception called stop iteration, which the for loop will use to say OK, I'm done. I'm going to break out of the for loop. Otherwise, what am I going to do? I'll increment place by 1, that's going to move me to the next place in the list, and then in this case I'll just return the instance itself, right? Members is a list of instances, place I've incremented by 1, I take 1 off of it, I get to it. So iter and next work together. Iter creates this method, that's going to give you a pointer to the place in the structure, and then next literally walks along the structure giving you the next element and returning elements in turn so you can do something with it. Right, so now what that says is, I can have classes that just have local variables. I can have classes that get methods from other variables, and I can also have classes that are collections. And I've supported that by adding in this last piece. OK once you have all of that, in principle we could start doing some fun things. So let's see what happens if we try and make all of this go. And let me, since I'm not going to be able to run it, let me simply do it this way. If I have my undergraduate, ug. I can -- sorry, let's not do it that way -- I can have undergraduate say things like -- all right, what did I just do wrong here? Do I not have undergrad defined? I do. Oh, I didn't have Grimson, sorry, it's me, isn't it? Thank you. The undergraduate very politely asks why he didn't understand, you can have the professor respond. Again, it simply puts a different thing into there. On the other hand, if Professor Guttag asks me something about understanding, I say I really like this paper on, you do not understand, it's a deep paper on programming languages 5, I think, John, isn't it? What else can you do with this thing, right? You can have an undergraduate talk to an undergraduate, in which case they're still polite. Or you could have -- sorry, let me do that the other way -- you could also have an undergraduate simply talk to a normal person. All right, but the good news is you know eventually you get it done, and when you're really done you can have the undergraduate be really happy about this, and so she sings to herself. OK it's a little silly, but notice what we've just illustrated. And this is where I want to pull it together. With a simple set of classes, and the following abilities, an ability to inherit methods from subclasses, sorry from superclasses, that is having this hierarchy of things. I can create a fairly complex kind of interaction. I can take advantage of the types of the objects to help me decide what to do. And if you think about that, I know it sounds very straightforward, but you would do exactly that if you were writing earlier code to deal with some numerical problem. All right, if the thing is an integer, do this, if it's a float, do that, if it's a string, do something else. I'm now giving you exactly the same ability, but the types now can be things that you could create. And what I've also got is now the ability to inherit those methods as they go up the chain. So another way of saying it is, things that you want to come away from here, are, in terms of these classes. We now have this idea of encapsulation. I'm gathering together data that naturally belongs as a unit, and I'm gathering together with it methods that apply to that unit. Just like we would have done with float or int. Ideally, we data hide, we don't happen to do it here, which is too bad. Basically we've got the idea of encapsulation. The second thing we've got is this idea of inheritance. Inheritance both meaning I can inherit attributes or field values. I can inherit methods by moving up the chain. I can also the shadow or override methods, so that I can specialise. And I do all of that with this nice hierarchy of classes. So what hopefully you've seen, between these two lectures, and we're going to come back to it in some subsequent lectures, is that this is now a different way of just structuring a computational system. Now, you'll also get arguments, polite arguments from faculty members or other experts about which is a better way of doing it. So I'll give you my bias, Professor Guttag will give you his bias next time around. My view, object-oriented system are great when you're trying to model systems that consist of a large number of units that interact in very specific ways. So, modeling a system of people's a great idea. Modeling a system of molecules is probably a great idea. Modeling a system where it is natural to associate things together and where the number of interactions between them is very controlled. These systems work really well. And we'll see some examples of that next week. Thanks.

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Complete the following test so you can be sure you understand the material. Your answers are private, and test results are not scored. When you create a new table in Datasheet view, you must define a primary key field. You can't use the Lookup Wizard to alter an existing value list. When you use a template to create a table, you must set data types for the fields in the new table. Which of the following is the correct syntax for a value list? 'Option 1','Option 2','Option 3' "Option 1";"Option 2";"Option 3" "Option 1":"Option 2":"Option 3"

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Municipal bonds, often called munis, are debt obligations of U.S. states, cities, counties, or other political subdivisions of states. The two primary types of municipal bonds are general obligation and revenue. • A general obligation bond is used for general expenditures and is backed by the issuer’s full faith and credit (taxing and borrowing power). • A revenue bond is used to finance a specific public service project and is backed by the cash flow from that project. Examples are bonds to finance bridges, turnpikes, tunnels, water and sewer systems, schools, power plants, prisons, transportation systems, hospitals, sports complexes, and airports. This guide is not intended to provide investment advice, and you should not rely on statements in this guide when making investment decisions. Note: To return to the previous page, close this browser window.

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As I become more and more interested in American history and archeology, I found this latest news about the USS Monitor quite fascinating: The Monitor finally sank around 1 a.m. on December 31. Twelve sailors and four officers would lose their lives. Periodicals like Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper would later publish artists' renderings and poems about the tragedy, but for families of the victims there was little solace. The exact location of the Monitor's final resting place and the crewmen who perished would remain a mystery for more than a century . . . John Byrd, director of the laboratory, says that "sunken ships can be a very, very good environment for preserving remains" because of the protective coating of silt that forms over them. This was the case inside the Monitor, where tons of coal mixed with the silt, creating an anaerobic environment that prevented chemical reactions and animal activity from destroying the skeletons.

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On Monday the American Library Association will announce the winner of its highest award for a picture book, named for the great English illustrator Randolph Caldecott (1846–1886). Why was Caldecott so important? Here’s an answer from Maurice Sendak, who won the Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are: “Caldecott’s work heralds the beginning of the modern picture book. He devised an ingenious juxtaposition of picture and word, a counterpoint that had never happened before. Words are left out – but the picture says it. Pictures are left out – but the word says it. In short, it is the invention of the picture book.” * * * “My favorite example of Caldecott’s fearless honesty is the final page of Hey Diddle Diddle. After we read, ‘And the Dish ran away with the spoon,’ accompanied by a drawing of the happy couple, there is the shock of turning the page and finding a picture of the dish broken into ten pieces – obviously dead – and the spoon being hustled away by her angry parents. There are no words that suggest such an end to the adventure; it is purely a Caldecottian invention. Apparently, he could not resist enlarging the dimensions of this jaunty nursery rhyme by adding a last sorrowful touch.” Maurice Sendak in Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Books & Pictures (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988), a collection of Sendak’s reviews and other writing for adults. The first quote comes from his essay “Randolph Caldecott” and the second from his acceptance speech for the 1964 Caldecott Medal. Sendak is one of the few great picture-book artists who is also a great critic. Caldecott & Co. has only a dozen pages of pictures but doesn’t need more, because Sendak makes you see books without them. (c) 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

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A main character’s name often gives you the first clue to what a novel is “about,” especially when it’s also the title of the book. A good example turns up in Olive Kitteridge, the collection of linked short stories that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A just-picked olive is as bitter — and the color olive is as drab — as the title character of the book appears at first to be. The salt added during curing removes the bitterness just as love, the salt in this book, removes some of Olive’s. In Ireland a kitter is a left-handed person. And Olive is at least metaphorically left-handed: She’s out of sync with others in her coastal town in Maine. A surname database says of Kitter: “This is an Olde English or Anglo-Saxon pre 10th Century name which derives from the word ‘Cyta’ and is a nickname of the medieval period generally given to one of fairly violent attitudes.” Olive’s views of life are “fairly violent,” especially in the first story, when they are so angry they verge on caricature. May 29, 2009 What’s in a Character’s Name? ‘Olive Kitteridge’ Leave a Comment » No comments yet.

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Talk:20.109(F12) Pre-Proposal: Engineering Viral Magnetic Nanoparticles for Magnetic Hyperthermic Cancer Therapy - This is a brainstorming page. You are very welcome to write any crazy / non-crazy / inventive / conventional / knowledgeable ideas or information you may have about our project. Some key words: Magnetic Nanoparticles (MNP), Viruses, Magnetic Hyperthermia, Bioengineering What is Magnetic Hyperthermia? How it works? Under an alternating magnetic field, MNP releases heat due to relaxation of magnetic moments (hysteresis). This can cause an increase in temperature to the range of 41C to 47C. Since tumor cells are more heat sensitive than normal cells, they will be killed by this thermal dissipation. Here is an interesting tidbit from a paper I was reading: "In addition to the expected tumor cell death, hyperthermia treatment has also induced unexpected biological responses, such as tumor-specific immune responses as a result of heat-shock protein expression. These results suggest that hyperthermia is able to kill not only local tumors exposed to heat treatment, but also tumors at distant sites, including metastatic cancer cells." (Kobayashi) - Clinical trials in prostate cancer - Shows promising results when coupled with irradiation on breast cancer (mouse) Current Limitations (This information will help us shape and define the problem.) (1) To achieve the necessary rise in temperature with minimal dose of MNP. - In other words, this means: - High specific loss power / specific absorption rate (SLP) of the MNP. - why is higher applied dosage bad? > leads to unnecessary heat dissipation (2) Lack of knowledge about the metabolism, clearance, and toxicity of MNP. Biomedical potentials of MNP - Could be used as early detection for the following using MRI: - Drug Delivery - Cellular labeling and tissue targeting - Purifying and separating cells and DNAs - Transfection by magnetic nanoparticles - Tissue repair - Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) Types of Relevant Viruses 1. Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV) - 18nmx300nm, helical - Can withstand high temperatures up to 50C for 30mins (conventional hyperthermia involves heating up to 50C from an external source - Safe for human consumption - Mann group has active research on it - 2130 molecules of coat protein 2. M13 Bacteriophage - 6.6nmx880nm, helical (Length is too long - pose an issue in targeting cells) - Lots of research done by the Belcher group, including attaching MNPs to M13 for imaging purposes - We are familiar with the system 3. Cowpea chlorotic mottle virus (CCMV) - 26nm, icosahedral 4. Cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) - 27nm, icosahedral 5. Brome mosaic virus (BMV) - 28nm, icosahedral 6. Turnip yellow mosaic virus (TYMV) - 30nm, icosahedral Current Work in Viral MNP Attachment Attachment of MNPs to M13 phage for in vivo imaging of prostate cancer What we propose to do See flowchart sketch. - Identifying / Screening for appropriate virus vehicles and tumor-specific anchoring sequencse - Developing / Engineering viral MNPs - in vivo testing for efficacy of engineered vMNPs in mouse tumor cells. We will start with using ferritin (Fe3O4) as the MNP. Stage 1: Virus Hunt - We need to investigate how the selected virus (likely one of the following: TMV, M13, CCMV, CPMV, BMV or TPMV) interacts with mammalian cells in vivo. Stage 2: Screening for MNP binding site on virus - We will start by using Fe3O4 as our MNP of interest. With this, a protein coat screen of the selected virus for a protein coat that can bind with our MNP is necessary. Stage 3: Screening for tumor-specific sequence binding site on virus - We need to do a protein coat or RNA screen of the virus for a region that can bind with a tumor-specific peptide sequence. If necessary, we might need to screen tumors for unique short sequences on their cell surfaces. Stage 4: Virus engineering - We can now engineer wild-type viruses using specific protein coats or RNA regions isolated in Stage 2 and 3 to produce the viral MNP of interest. Stage 5: in vivo testing - Perform an in vivo experiment by injecting the engineered viral MNPs into the circulatory system of mice that have developed tumors. By subjecting these mice to an alternating magnetic field under standard hyperthermia conditions and measuring the change in tumor size, we will be able to quantify the efficacy of using viral MNPs in magnetic hyperthermia. - Experimenting with double layer MNP to increase response - Target other cancerous cells - Experiment with other types of viruses Quantitative Goals (We can quantify with IC50 value) - Currently, with the aid of 10Gy radiation, the hyperthermia treatment successfully accumulated less than 0.3mg Fe/g tissue. Dosage: 0.2mg Fe per gram of mouse. Say mouse is 25g, so 5mg total dosage injected. so 1% efficiency with the aid of radiation. (MNP sizes used: 70nm and 120nm; murine flank breast tumors were 150mm3) From http://manalis-lab.mit.edu/publications/grover%20PNAS%202011.pdf, we estimated that a typical cell has an average density of 1.1g/mL. Since the murine flank breast tumors were 150mm3, and 0.25mg Fe/g of tumor was detected in the tumors, we can calculate that only a total of 0.0495mg of Fe is accumulated in the tumors. This gives a % efficacy of 1%. - South Korean experiment: 75ug of MNPs were injected. - From Belcher lab's paper, what is the % efficacy of using M13? - "The actual rotations of the nanoparticles are disordered because the microviscosity of the local environment in cancer cells is not constant, and effective elasticity depends on the binding conditions between nanoparticles and membranes." - but this is actually present because when treatment is done with individual MNPs, one side of the MNP is always bound to the targeted cell, so direction is never constant! - Gupta AK, Naregalkar RR, Vaidya VD, and Gupta M. Recent advances on surface engineering of magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles and their biomedical applications. Future Medicine. 2007. 2(1), 23-39. - Bakoglidis KD, Simeonidis K, Sakellari D, G. Stefanou, and Angelakeris M. Size-Dependent Mechanisms in AC Magnetic Hyperthermia Response of Iron-Oxide Nanoparticles. IEEE Transactions on Magnetics. 2012. 48:1320-1323. - Great layman's way of explaining magnetic hyperthermia http://trialx.com/curetalk/2012/11/cancer-treatment-multifunctional-magnetic-nanoparticles-for-molecular-imaging-and-hyperthermia/ - A.J. Giustini, A.A. Petryk, S.M. Cassim, J.A. Tate, I. Baker, P.J. Hoopes. Magnetic nanoparticle hyperthermia in cancer treatment. Nano LIFE 2010; 01: 17. - D. Ghosh, Y. Lee, S. Thomas, A. G. Kohli, D. S. Yun, A. M. Belcher, K. A. Kelly. M13-templated magnetic nanoparticles for targeted in vivo imaging of prostate cancer. Nat. Nanotechnol. 2012; 7 (10): 677–82. - Add more references as deem appropriate 11/29 from Professor Angela Belcher: - Look at Nature Nano Belcher lab paper - Need to do very good characterization of materials using TEM, elemental analysis, etc.

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Sleep apnea is a condition in which breathing is repeatedly interrupted during sleep. The time period for which the breathing stops or decreases is usually between 10 and 30 seconds. When these episodes occur repeatedly, sleep apnea can seriously disrupt the quality of sleep. There are three types of respiratory events: - Obstructive apnea—caused by a temporary, partial, or complete blockage of the airway - Central apnea—caused by a temporary failure to make an effort to breathe - Mixed apnea—combination of the first two types These factors increase your chance of developing sleep apnea. Tell your doctor if you have any of these risk factors: - Sex: male - Large neck circumference - Age: middle to older age - Family history of apnea Structural abnormalities of the nose, throat, or other part of the respiratory tract. Examples include: - Severely enlarged tonsils - Deviated nasal septum - Medicines: sedatives and sleeping aids - Alcohol consumption - Fatigue and sleepiness during waking hours - Loud snoring - Breathing that stops during the night (noticed by the partner) - Repeated waking at night - Unrefreshing sleep - Morning headaches - Poor concentration or problems with memory - Irritability or short temper People with chronic untreated sleep apnea may be at risk for: An overnight sleep study is used to help diagnose sleep apnea. Overnight Sleep Study (Polysomnography) This test helps detect the presence and severity of sleep apnea. During sleep, it measures your: - Eye and muscle movements - Brain activity ( electroencephalogram ) - Heart rate - Breathing (pattern and depth) - Percent saturation of your red blood cells with oxygen There are a number of treatment options for sleep apnea, including: - Lose weight if you are overweight. - Avoid using sedatives, sleeping pills, alcohol, and nicotine, which tend to make the condition worse. - Try sleeping on your side instead of your back. - Place pillows strategically so you are as comfortable as possible. - For daytime sleepiness, practice safety measures, such as avoiding driving or operating potentially hazardous equipment. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) entails wearing a mask over your nose and/or mouth during sleep. An air blower forces enough constant and continuous air through your air passages to prevent the tissues from collapsing and blocking the airway. In some cases, dental appliances that help keep the tongue or jaw in a more forward position may help. In some cases, surgery may be recommended. It is most often beneficial in pediatric patients. Types of surgery that may be done to treat severe cases of sleep apnea include: - Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty—The doctor removes excess soft tissue from the nose and/or throat. - Maxillomandibular advancement—The jawbone is repositioned forward. - Tracheotomy —For life-threatening cases of sleep apnea, an opening is made in the windpipe to allow for normal breathing. Bariatric surgery may help with weight loss in some people who are obese . This surgery may reduce many of the complications that are related to obesity, including sleep apnea. Only used in central apnea, acetazolamide (Diamox) may help improve the ability to regulate breathing. Overall, there is not a lot of evidence to support the use of medicines to treat sleep apnea. Supplemental oxygen may be given if blood levels of oxygen fall too low during sleep, even after opening the airway. You may be able to prevent the onset of sleep apnea by maintaining a healthy weight . Avoid alcohol, nicotine, and sedatives, which may contribute to airway obstruction. - Reviewer: Rimas Lukas, MD - Review Date: 09/2012 - - Update Date: 00/93/2012 -

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[en] Numerous works are related to the use of unconventional feed resources, and particularly to Mucuna Spp., in poultry diet. This review aims at describing the context of their use, their nutritional values and the constraints related to their upgrading, before considering the effects of the various methods of treatment on the reduction of the toxic substances that they could contain and on their chemical compositions. The methods of treatment are very variable and their standardisation should allow using them in rural area. Those feed could thus constitute an alternative to costly conventional feed usually used in poultry production. Administration générale de la Coopération au Développement - AGCD

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Kristensen, Hanne L. and Thorup-Kristensen, Kristian (2006) Roots below one meters depth are important for nitrate uptake by annual crops. [Rødder under 1 meters dybde er vigtige for et-årige afgrøders optagelse af nitrat.] In: CD-rom "The American Society of Agronomy - Crop Science Society of America - Soil Science Society of America International Annual Meetings, November 12-16, 2006, Indianapolis, USA. No. 205-9., CD-rom "The American Society of Agronomy - Crop Science Society of America - Soil Science Society of America International Annual Meetings, November 12-16, 2006, Indianapolis, USA., no. Abstract No. 205-9.. The root depths of annual crops vary from 0.2 m to more than 2 m depending on root growth rate and length of growing season. However, studies of root growth and N uptake are often restricted to a depth of 1 m or less, as root biomass is assumed to be negligible below this depth. We have studied the importance of root growth and N uptake to a depth of 2.5 m in fully grown field vegetables and cover crops by use of minirhizotrons and deep point placement of 15N. Deep rooted crucifereous crops were found to have high root densities to a depth of 1.5-2 m and high 15N uptake to this depth. The work shows that knowledge of the interactions between root growth and soil N below a depth of 1 m are important to understand crop N uptake and nitrate leaching from agro-ecosystems. |EPrint Type:||Conference paper, poster, etc.| |Type of presentation:||Paper| |Subjects:|| Soil > Nutrient turnover| Crop husbandry > Crop combinations and interactions Crop husbandry > Production systems > Vegetables |Research affiliation:|| Denmark > DARCOF III (2005-2010) > VEGQURE - Organic cropping Systems for Vegetable production| Denmark > AU - Aarhus University > AU, DJF - Faculty of Agricultural Sciences |Deposited By:||Kristensen, Ph.D. Hanne L.| |Deposited On:||28 Nov 2007| |Last Modified:||12 Apr 2010 07:35| |Refereed:||Peer-reviewed and accepted| Repository Staff Only: item control page

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We had a running joke in science ed that kids get so overexposed to discrepant events involving density and air pressure that they tend to try to explain anything and everything they don't understand with respect to science in terms of those two concepts. Why do we have seasons? Ummm... air pressure? Why did Dr. Smith use that particular research design? Ummm... density? I think we need another catch-all explanation. I suggest index of refraction. To simplify greatly, index of refraction describes the amount of bending a light ray will undergo as it passes from one medium to another (it's also related to the velocity of light in both media, but I do want to keep this simple). If the two media have significantly different indices, light passing from one to the other at an angle (not perpendicularly, in which case there is no bending) will be bent more than if indices of the two are similar. The first four data points are from Hyperphysics, the final one from Wikipedia... glass has a wide range of compositions and thus indices of refraction. Water at 20 C: 1.33 Typical soda-lime glass: close to 1.5 Since glycerine and glass have similar IoR, light passing from one to the other isn't bent; as long as both are transparent and similarly colored, each will be effectively "invisible" against the other. So, why does it rain? Umm... index of refraction? A Bright Moon Impact 12 hours ago

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By Justin Moyer The Washington Post — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta signed an order Thursday allowing women the same opportunities as men to serve in combat, including formerly off-limits assignments on attack submarines and in the Navy SEALs. Just two weeks before the announcement, researchers from San Diego's Naval Health Research Center published a study suggesting that some recent mothers deployed on the battlefield may be more prone to depression after seeing action. "Women who deploy and report combat-associated exposures after childbirth are significantly more likely to screen positive for maternal depression than are women who did not deploy after childbirth," concluded the study, titled "Is Military Deployment a Risk Factor for Maternal Depression?" and appearing in the Journal of Women's Health. "It is also possible," the report noted, "that giving birth and leaving a young child, in addition to the experience of combat, contribute to postdeployment depression." The study included eight co-authors, five of them associated with the Naval Health Research Center, a research and development laboratory within the Department of Defense. It was based on surveys of more than 1,600 women who "gave birth during active duty service." Not all branches of the armed forces showed the same results. "Participants who served in the Army had an increased risk of maternal depression; Army service members tend to be deployed longer and more frequently than personnel serving in the Navy and Air Force," the study found. Of course, you don't have to be a mom to experience depression on the front line. The report points out that "the increased rate of depression is primarily attributed to experiencing combat while deployed," not just to whether a solider is also a parent.

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An Introduction To 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 is an IP address utilized for a looplock network connection. What does this mean? If a user tries to connect to this IP address, they will be sent back to their computer. The address is also known as a localhost. The localhost is the computer. How the Localhost Works If the command is relayed to the localhost, you would be hooked up to the system where the commands were sent out. For instance, suppose the computer is called "Joker". If you telnet from the Joker computer to the localhost, a message will appear. It will attempt to hook up to The localhost is employed in lieu of the computer hostname to be linked to. This IP address is the most wisely used localhost address. However, you can actually use any IP address provided it starts with 127. This means 127.*.*.* can be used as a localhost. Establishing a connection with the loopback address is similar to creating a connection with remote network computers. The only difference is you don't have to deal with network For this reason it is widely utilized by software developers. It is also used by system administrators. It is often used for testing programs and apps. If the connection is IPv4, the computer's loopback address will be the 127.*.*.*. The subnet mask is typically 255.0.0.0. This IP addresses 127.*.*.*. are defined in RFC 330 as Special-Use IPv4 Addresses. The 127.0.0.0/8 block is defined as the Net host loopback address. If a higher level protocol sends a datagram anywhere in the block, it will be looped in the host. This is typically implemented with the 127.0.0.1 / 32 for looplock. However, addresses in the block must not be visible anywhere else in the network. There is also a localhost IPv6 version. In RFC 3513, it is defined as Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Addressing Architecture::1/128. More Information about the Localhost In simple terms, the localhost means the computer. It is the hostname allocated loopback network interface address. The name is likewise a domain name. This will help prevent confusion with the hostname definition. In IPv6, the loopback IP address is ::1. The localhost is stated when one would usually use the computer hostname. For instance, a browser using an HTTP server to http://localhost will show the local website home page. This will be possible if the server is set up properly to work the loopback interface. The loopback address can also be used for linking up to a game server. It can also be used for the various inter-process communications. This facts about 127.0.0.1 indicate how fundamental and basic the localhost is to a system. That's why it is so crucial for network

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|Gallium metal is silver-white and melts at approximately body temperature (Wikipedia image).| |Atomic Number:||31||Atomic Radius:||187 pm (Van der Waals)| |Atomic Symbol:||Ga||Melting Point:||29.76 °C| |Atomic Weight:||69.72||Boiling Point:||2204 °C| |Electron Configuration:||[Ar]4s23d104p1||Oxidation States:||3| From the Latin word Gallia, France; also from Latin, gallus, a translation of "Lecoq," a cock. Predicted and described by Mendeleev as ekaaluminum, and discovered spectroscopically by Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1875, who in the same year obtained the free metal by electrolysis of a solution of the hydroxide in KOH. Gallium is often found as a trace element in diaspore, sphalerite, germanite, bauxite, and coal. Some flue dusts from burning coal have been shown to contain as much 1.5 percent gallium. It is one of four metals -- mercury, cesium, and rubidium -- which can be liquid near room temperature and, thus, can be used in high-temperature thermometers. It has one of the longest liquid ranges of any metal and has a low vapor pressure even at high temperatures. There is a strong tendency for gallium to supercool below its freezing point. Therefore, seeding may be necessary to initiate solidification. Ultra-pure gallium has a beautiful, silvery appearance, and the solid metal exhibits a conchoidal fracture similar to glass. The metal expands 3.1 percent on solidifying; therefore, it should not be stored in glass or metal containers, because they may break as the metal solidifies. High-purity gallium is attacked only slowly by mineral acids. Gallium wets glass or porcelain and forms a brilliant mirror when it is painted on glass. It is widely used in doping semiconductors and producing solid-state devices such as transistors. Magnesium gallate containing divalent impurities, such as Mn+2, is finding use in commercial ultraviolet-activated powder phosphors. Gallium arsenide is capable of converting electricity directly into coherent light. Gallium readily alloys with most metals, and has been used as a component in low-melting alloys. Its toxicity appears to be of a low order, but should be handled with care until more data is available.

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From Oxford University Press: There is a broad consensus among scholars that the idea of human rights was a product of the Enlightenment but that a self-conscious and broad-based human rights movement focused on international law only began after World War II. In this narrative, the nineteenth century's absence is conspicuous--few have considered that era seriously, much less written books on it. But as Jenny Martinez shows in this novel interpretation of the roots of human rights law, the foundation of the movement that we know today was a product of one of the nineteenth century's central moral causes: the movement to ban the international slave trade. Originating in England in the late eighteenth century, abolitionism achieved remarkable success over the course of the nineteenth century. Martinez focuses in particular on the international admiralty courts, which tried the crews of captured slave ships. The courts, which were based in the Caribbean, West Africa, Cape Town, and Brazil, helped free at least 80,000 Africans from captured slavers between 1807 and 1871. Here then, buried in the dusty archives of admiralty courts, ships' logs, and the British foreign office, are the foundations of contemporary human rights law: international courts targeting states and non-state transnational actors while working on behalf the world's most persecuted peoples--captured West Africans bound for the slave plantations of the Americas. Fueled by a powerful thesis and novel evidence, Martinez's work will reshape the fields of human rights history and international human rights law. - Forces us to fundamentally rethink the origins of human rights activism - Filled with fascinating stories of captured slave ship crews brought to trial across the Atlantic world in the nineteenth century - Shows how the prosecution of the international slave trade was crucial to the development of modern international law

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Phantom Phone Calls ospri.net- Alleged contact with the dead has occurred universally throughout history, taking various forms; as dreams, waking visions and auditory hallucinations, either spontaneous or induced through trance. In many cultures, the spirits of the dead have been sought for their wisdom, advice and knowledge of the future. The dead also seem to initiate their own communication, using whatever means seem to be most effective. With the advent of electromagnetic technology, mysterious messages have been communicated by telegraph, wireless, phonographs and radio. A curious phenomenon of modern times is the communication via the telephone. Phone calls from the dead seem to be random and occasional occurrences that happen without explanation. The great majority are exchanges between persons who shared a close emotional tie while both were living: spouses, parents and children, siblings, and occasionally friends and other relatives. Most communications are "intention" calls, initiated by the deceased to impart a message, such as farewell upon death, a warning of impending danger, or information the living needs to carry out a task. For example, actress Ida Lupino's father, Stanley, who died intestate in London during World War II, called Lupino six months after his death to relate information concerning his estate, the location of some unknown but important papers. Some calls appear to have no other purpose than to make contact with the living; many of these occur on emotionally charged "anniversary" days, such as Mothers day or Fathers day, a birthday or holiday. In a typical” anniversary” call, the dead may do nothing more than repeat a phrase over and over, such as "Hello, Mom, is that you?" Persons who have received phone calls from the dead report that the voices are exactly the same as when the deceased was living, furthermore, the voice often uses pet names and words. The telephone usually rings normally, although some recipients say that the ring sounded flat and abnormal. In many cases, the connection is bad, with a great deal of static and line noise, and occasionally the faint voices of the other persons are heard, as though lines have been crossed. In many cases, the voice of the dead one is difficult to hear and grows fainter as the call goes on. Sometimes, the voice just fades away but the line remains open, and the recipient hangs up after giving up on further communication. Sometimes the call is terminated by the dead and the recipient hers the click of disengagement, other times, the line simply goes dead. The phantom phone calls typically occur when the recipient is in a passive state of mind. If the recipient knows the caller is dead, the shock is great and the phone call very brief, invariably, the caller terminates the call after a few seconds or minutes, or the line goes dead. If the recipient does not know the caller is dead, a lengthy conversation of up to 30 minutes or so may take place, during which the recipient is not aware of anything amiss. In a minority of cases, the call is placed person-to-person, long-distance with the assistance of a mysterious operator. Checks with the telephone company later turn up no evidence of a call being places. Similar phone calls from the dead are "intention" phone calls occurring between two living persons. Such calls are much rarer than calls from the dead. In a typical "intention" call, the caller thinks about making the call but never does, the recipient nevertheless receives a call. In some cases, emergencies precipitate phantom calls, a surgeon is summoned by a nurse to the hospital to perform an emergency operation, a priest is called by a "relative" to give last rites to a dying man and so forth. Some persons who claim to have had UFO encounters report receiving harassing phantom phone calls. The calls are received soon after the witness returns home, or within a day or two of the encounter, in many cases, the calls come before the witness has shared the experience with anyone, stranger still, they are often placed to unlisted phone numbers. The unidentified caller warns the witness not to talk and to "forget" what he or she saw. Phone calls allegedly may be placed to the dead as well. The caller does not find out until sometime after the call that the person on the other end has been dead. In one such case, a woman dreamed of a female friend she had not seen for several years. In the disturbing dream, she witnessed the friend sliding down into a pool of blood. Upon awakening, she worried that the dream was a portent of trouble, and called the friend. She was relieved when the friend answered. The friend explained that she had been in the hospital, had been released and was due to be readmitted in a few days. She demurred when the woman offered to visit, saying she would call later. The return call never came. The woman called her friend again, to be told by a relative that the friend has been dead for six months at the time the conversation took place. In several cases studied by researchers, the deceased callers make reference to an anonymous” they” and caution that there is little time to talk. The remarks imply that communication between the living and the dead is not only difficult, but not necessarily desirable. Most phone calls from the dead occur within 24 hours of the death of the caller. Most short calls come from those who have been dead seven days or less: most lengthy calls come from those who have been dead several months. One of the longest death-intervals on record is two years. In a small number of cases, the callers are strangers who say they are calling on behalf of a third party, whom the recipient later discovered is dead. Several theories exist as to the origin of phantom phone calls. (1) They are indeed placed by the dead, who somehow manipulate the telephone mechanisms and circuitry: (2) they are deceptions of elemental-type spirits who enjoy playing tricks on the living: (3) they are psychokinetic acts caused subconsciously by the recipient, whose intense desire to communicate with the dead creates a type of hallucinatory experience: (4) they are entirely fantasy created by the recipient. For the most part, phantom phone calls are not seriously regarded by parapsychologists. In the early 20th century, numerous devices were built by investigators in hopes of capturing ghostly voices: many of them were modifications of the telegraph and wireless. Thomas Alva Edison, whose parents were Spiritualists, believed that a telephone could be invented that would connect the living to the dead. He verified that he was working on such a device, but apparently it never was completed before his death. "Psychic telephone" experiments were conducted in the 1940's in England and America. Interest in the phenomenon waned until the 1960’s, following the findings of Konstantin Raudive that ghostly voices could be captured on electromagnetic tape.

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If superparticles were to exist the decay would happen far more often. This test is one of the "golden" tests for supersymmetry and it is one that on the face of it this hugely popular theory among physicists has failed. Prof Val Gibson, leader of the Cambridge LHCb team, said that the new result was "putting our supersymmetry theory colleagues in a spin". The results are in fact completely in line with what one would expect from the Standard Model. There is already concern that the LHCb's sister detectors might have expected to have detected superparticles by now, yet none have been found so far.This certainly does not rule out SUSY, but it is getting to the same level as cold fusion if positive experimental result does not come soon.

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When the world was still young, some 3 500 million years ago, molten rock forced its way through the earth's crust and solidified to form the spectacular granite outcrops where Pretoriuskop Rest Camp is now nestled. The impressive granite dome known as "Shabeni Hill" is not far from the camp, which is found in the south-western corner of the Kruger National Park. It is immediately apparent to any visitor that Pretoriuskop is unique as brilliant red trees adorn the camp, pre-dating the decision to make exclusive use of indigenous plants in laying out rest camp gardens. Nostalgia prompted an exception to the rule for Pretoriuskop, the Kruger National Park's oldest rest camp, and exotic flowering plants were allowed to stay, enhancing the strong sense of the past that is so pervasive. Giving geographical context to places of interest in South Africa

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Major Section: BREAK-REWRITE Example: (brr@ :target) ; the term being rewritten (brr@ :unify-subst) ; the unifying substitutionwhere General Form: (brr@ :symbol) :symbolis one of the following keywords. Those marked with *probably require an implementor's knowledge of the system to use effectively. They are supported but not well documented. More is said on this topic following the table. :symbol (brr@ :symbol) ------- ---------------------In general :target the term to be rewritten. This term is an instantiation of the left-hand side of the conclusion of the rewrite-rule being broken. This term is in translated form! Thus, if you are expecting (equal x nil) -- and your expectation is almost right -- you will see (equal x 'nil); similarly, instead of (cadr a) you will see (car (cdr a)). In translated forms, all constants are quoted (even nil, t, strings and numbers) and all macros are expanded. :unify-subst the substitution that, when applied to :target, produces the left-hand side of the rule being broken. This substitution is an alist pairing variable symbols to translated (!) terms. :wonp t or nil indicating whether the rune was successfully applied. (brr@ :wonp) returns nil if evaluated before :EVALing the rule. :rewritten-rhs the result of successfully applying the rule or else nil if (brr@ :wonp) is nil. The result of successfully applying the rule is always a translated (!) term and is never nil. :failure-reason some non-nil lisp object indicating why the rule was not applied or else nil. Before the rule is :EVALed, (brr@ :failure-reason) is nil. After :EVALing the rule, (brr@ :failure-reason) is nil if (brr@ :wonp) is t. Rather than document the various non-nil objects returned as the failure reason, we encourage you simply to evaluate (brr@ :failure-reason) in the contexts of interest. Alternatively, study the ACL2 function tilde-@- failure-reason-phrase. :lemma * the rewrite rule being broken. For example, (access rewrite-rule (brr@ :lemma) :lhs) will return the left-hand side of the conclusion of the rule. :type-alist * a display of the type-alist governing :target. Elements on the displayed list are of the form (term type), where term is a term and type describes information about term assumed to hold in the current context. The type-alist may be used to determine the current assumptions, e.g., whether A is a CONSP. :ancestors * a stack of frames indicating the backchain history of the current context. The theorem prover is in the process of trying to establish each hypothesis in this stack. Thus, the negation of each hypothesis can be assumed false. Each frame also records the rules on behalf of which this backchaining is being done and the weight (function symbol count) of the hypothesis. All three items are involved in the heuristic for preventing infinite backchaining. Exception: Some frames are ``binding hypotheses'' (equal var term) or (equiv var (double-rewrite term)) that bind variable var to the result of rewriting term. :gstack * the current goal stack. The gstack is maintained by rewrite and is the data structure printed as the current ``path.'' Thus, any information derivable from the :path brr command is derivable from gstack. For example, from gstack one might determine that the current term is the second hypothesis of a certain rewrite rule. brr@-expressionsare used in break conditions, the expressions that determine whether interactive breaks occur when monitored runes are applied. See monitor. For example, you might want to break only those attempts in which one particular term is being rewritten or only those attempts in which the binding for the variable ais known to be a consp. Such conditions can be expressed using ACL2 system functions and the information provided by brr@. Unfortunately, digging some of this information out of the internal data structures may be awkward or may, at least, require intimate knowledge of the system functions. But since conditional expressions may employ arbitrary functions and macros, we anticipate that a set of convenient primitives will gradually evolve within the ACL2 community. It is to encourage this evolution that brr@provides access to the

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Outside of the academic environment, a harsh and seemingly ever-growing debate has appeared, concerning how mass media distorts the political agenda. Few would argue with the notion that the institutions of the mass media are important to contemporary politics. In the transition to liberal democratic politics in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe the media was a key battleground. In the West, elections increasingly focus around television, with the emphasis on spin and marketing. Democratic politics places emphasis on the mass media as a site for democratic demand and the formation of “public opinion”. The media are seen to empower citizens, and subject government to restraint and redress. Yet the media are not just neutral observers but are political actors themselves. The interaction of mass communication and political actors — politicians, interest groups, strategists, and others who play important roles — in the political process is apparent. Under this framework, the American political arena can be characterized as a dynamic environment in which communication, particularly journalism in all its forms, substantially influences and is influenced by it. According to the theory of democracy, people rule. The pluralism of different political parties provides the people with “alternatives,” and if and when one party loses their confidence, they can support another. The democratic principle of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” would be nice if it were all so simple. But in a medium-to-large modern state things are not quite like that. Today, several elements contribute to the shaping of the public’s political discourse, including the goals and success of public relations and advertising strategies used by politically engaged individuals and the rising influence of new media technologies such as the Internet. A naive assumption of liberal democracy is that citizens have adequate knowledge of political events. But how do citizens acquire the information and knowledge necessary for them to use their votes other than by blind guesswork? They cannot possibly witness everything that is happening on the national scene, still less at the level of world events. The vast majority are not students of politics. They don’t really know what is happening, and even if they did they would need guidance as to how to interpret what they knew. Since the early twentieth century this has been fulfilled through the mass media. Few today in United States can say that they do not have access to at least one form of the mass media, yet political knowledge is remarkably low. Although political information is available through the proliferation of mass media, different critics support that events are shaped and packaged, frames are constructed by politicians and news casters, and ownership influences between political actors and the media provide important short hand cues to how to interpret and understand the news. One must not forget another interesting fact about the media. Their political influence extends far beyond newspaper reports and articles of a direct political nature, or television programs connected with current affairs that bear upon politics. In a much more subtle way, they can influence people’s thought patterns by other means, like “goodwill” stories, pages dealing with entertainment and popular culture, movies, TV “soaps”, “educational” programs. All these types of information form human values, concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, sense and nonsense, what is “fashionable” and “unfashionable,” and what is “acceptable” and “unacceptable”. These human value systems, in turn, shape people’s attitude to political issues, influence how they vote and therefore determine who holds political power.

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For many years, UNESCO and China have collaborated closely in the field of world heritage. Among the 35 Chinese properties on the World Heritage List, there are 25 cultural, 6 natural and 4 mixed sites. China is working with the countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) on a Serial World Heritage Nomination of the Silk Roads. Like the country itself, China’s intangible cultural heritage is of extremely vast. The Kun Qu Opera was proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001, and the Guqin and its Music in 2003. The Uyghur Muqam of Xinjiang and the Urtiin Duu – Traditional Folk Long Song (the latter was submitted together with Mongolia) were awarded this distinction in 2005. A number of field projects have been devoted to endangered languages. With regard to cultural diversity, the cultural approach to the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS is being studied by officials. Crafts that make it possible to maintain traditional techniques - frequently the preserve of women - as well as community economic development are being promoted in some regions. China also collaborates with UNESCO in the area of dialogue through the programme on Intercultural Dialogue in Central Asia. In the framework of this programme, China is a member of the International Institute for Central Asian Studies, which was created to encourage intellectual cooperation among the Member States of the region.

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May 16, 2011 If you fuel your truck with biodiesel made from palm oil grown on a patch of cleared rainforest, you could be putting into the atmosphere 10 times more greenhouse gasses than if you’d used conventional fossil fuels. It’s a scenario so ugly that, in its worst case, it makes even diesel created from coal (the “coal to liquids” fuel dreaded by climate campaigners the world over) look “green.” The biggest factor determining whether or not a biofuel ultimately leads to more greenhouse-gas emissions than conventional fossil fuels is the type of land used to grow it, says a new study from researchers at MIT. The carbon released when you clear a patch of rainforest is the reason that palm oil grown on that patch of land leads to 55 times the greenhouse-gas emissions of palm oil grown on land that had already been cleared or was not located in a rainforest, said the study’s lead author. The solution to this biofuels dilemma is more research. Unlike solar and wind, it’s truly an area in which the world is desperate for scientific breakthroughs, such as biofuels from algae or salt-tolerant salicornia.

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The Bible gives us a clear picture of foolish behavior and its consequences. It’s important for us to recognize these traits in others—and in ourselves. Dealing appropriately with people who behave foolishly requires prayer and wisdom. But remember, that foolish person is not in your life by accident, and you can by God’s grace respond to him or her in a Christ-like manner. Characteristics of Foolish Behavior 1. Denying, disregarding, or rebelling against God. The fool says in his heart “There is no God” (Psalm 14:1). 2. Slandering, lying, deceiving The one who conceals hatred has lying lips, and whoever utters slander is a fool 3. Quick-Tempered A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult (Proverbs 12:16). 4. Acts Impetuously and Without Regard for Consequences In everything the prudent acts with knowledge, but a fool flaunts his folly. (Proverbs 13:16). One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless. 5. Talks endlessly, brags, spouts off frequently. A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion The wise lay up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool brings ruin near. (Proverbs 10:14). A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul. (Proverbs 18:7 ). 6. Refuses Advice, Accountability and/or Discipline A fool despises his father’s instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is prudent A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool 7. Handles Money Recklessly Of what use is money in the hand of a fool, since he has no desire to get wisdom? In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has (Proverbs 21:20). 8. Quarrels frequently, picks fights, is contentious Fools get into constant quarrels; they are asking for a beating (Proverbs 18:6 NLT). A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control 9. Lazy, Lacks Focus and Ambition Foolish people refuse to work and almost starve (Ecclesiastes 4:5). A wise person thinks much about death, while the fool thinks only about having a good time now (Ecclesiastes 7:4 ). Fools are so exhausted by a little work that they have no strength for even the simplest tasks (Ecclesiastes 10:15 ). 10. Never Learns from Past Experience As a do returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly (Proverbs 26:11). You cannot separate fools from their foolishness, even though you grind them like grain with mortar and pestle (Proverbs 27:22 ). How are we to respond to foolish behavior? 1. First and most importantly, we pray for them. 2. Second, watch your attitude and motivation toward these foolish people: Principle #1 – Don’t be surprised if they refuse good advice. Don’t waste your breath on fools, for they will despise the wisest advice (Proverbs 23:9 ). Principle #2 – Don’t give them honor or luxury. It is not fitting for a fool to live in luxury – how much worse for a slave to rule over princes! Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, honor is not fitting for a fool (Proverbs 26:1). Principle #3 – Don’t argue with foolish people. Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful (2 Tim. 2:23-24). Principle #4 – Protect yourself from the resentment and anger caused by foolish people. A stone is heavy and sand is weighty, but the resentment caused by a fool is heavier than both (Proverbs 27:3 ). Stay away from a foolish man, for you will not find knowledge on his lips (Proverbs 14:7). Are you encouraged here? I personally invite you to subscribe and get the latest posts sent to your inbox. Also, connect with us on Facebook and Twitter and get updates that are not posted here on the blog. Linking up with:The Modest Mom, We are now selling Lilla Rose! (30% discount on soon to be retired items) Vision Forum Sale: 20% off everything With discount code: EXTRA20

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- PASSENGER-STRAND (1) (remove) - A large-scale chemical modification screen identifies design rules to generate siRNAs with high activity, high stability and low toxicity (2009) - The use of chemically synthesized short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) is currently the method of choice to manipulate gene expression in mammalian cell culture, yet improvements of siRNA design is expectably required for successful application in vivo. Several studies have aimed at improving siRNA performance through the introduction of chemical modifications but a direct comparison of these results is difficult. We have directly compared the effect of 21 types of chemical modifications on siRNA activity and toxicity in a total of 2160 siRNA duplexes. We demonstrate that siRNA activity is primarily enhanced by favouring the incorporation of the intended antisense strand during RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) loading by modulation of siRNA thermodynamic asymmetry and engineering of siRNA 3-overhangs. Collectively, our results provide unique insights into the tolerance for chemical modifications and provide a simple guide to successful chemical modification of siRNAs with improved activity, stability and low toxicity.

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