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A congressional investigation has found levels of arsenic, lead and other toxic metals in many popular baby foods, including organic brands.
In a report released Thursday, a U.S. House Subcommittee said it requested internal data from seven companies, including Walmart and Gerber, in 2019.
The data showed levels of arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury, even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers those harmful to human health. The metals can remain in the environment for decades from past pesticide and herbicide use.
Baby food makers and the FDA say the metals are in many foods, and they are making progress in removing them.
The FDA released a statement to the Associated Press:
“We acknowledge that there is more work to be done, but the FDA reiterates its strong commitment to continue to reduce consumer exposure to toxic elements and other contaminants,” the FDA said.
The report follows a previous study by Healthy Babies, Healthy Futures, which found that 95% of commercially produced baby food contains toxic metals.
"These four harmful metals are found in all food – not just baby food. They occur naturally or from pollution in the environment. Crops absorb them from soil and water, and they are even found in organic food. Their presence in baby food raises unique concern, because babies are more sensitive to the toxic impacts," the group said. | <urn:uuid:01f35e94-13f7-441a-be4a-8b92768f0083> | {
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This Common Core resource includes 34 rigorous unit learning tasks for Avi’s, "Nothing But The Truth." The teacher-created learning tasks include standard(s) alignment using the language of Common Core State Standards. The unit activities represent a balance of analysis and evaluation activities focusing on a variety of literary elements, constructed responses, and extended informational/explanatory and argumentative writing. This resource also includes some embedded external documents, charts and informational texts that have thematic parallels with "Nothing But The Truth." The learning tasks will delve deeper into the complex character development, figurative and connotative meanings, and themes that have made it a literary classic.
Critical reading of literary texts is a critical component of the Common Core State Standards, and analyzing texts is a key skill that students will need for college and the jobs of the future. The critical foci of the learning tasks include:
1. Figurative and connotative meanings
2. Citing strong and thorough textual evidence (inferencing)
3. Analyzing themes and their development over the course of the text.
4. Analyzing complex character development
5. Responding to literature using constructed responses and extended writing.
6. Collegial discussions and presenting information.
7. Analyzing how the author intentionally structures the text to develop a unique point of view
8. Comparing a theme between the text and an artistic medium
Avi's "Nothing But The Truth" - 34 Rigorous Common Core Learning Tasks!!
by Dr. Joel Boyce
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License | <urn:uuid:98122266-2307-462c-803c-5daa98ce849a> | {
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Global food prices rose sharply in December, following an increasing trend that brings them close to levels that led to shortages and riots three years ago in developing countries.
February marked an eleven-month trend of new monthly highs for food prices. Prices for grain alone have increased dramatically with wheat elevating over 55 percent and corn nearly 90 percent in the past year. This trend may continue over subsequent months causing increased stress within developing countries. In recent months, rising food costs contributed to riots across North Africa and the Middle East that toppled leaders in Egypt andTunisia.
Some economists are claiming that many factors, like substantial stockpiles of grains, might prevent a serious problem, but prices are expected to remain high this year as bad weather has affected some commodity crops in exporting countries, causing prices to surge and triggering a domino effect. In one case, Russia banned grain exports after its worst drought in a half-century, causing importers in North America and the Middle East to cling to supplies. More recently, heavy rains in Australia and harsh, dry conditions in Argentina and the United States are expected to hurt the winter wheat crop.
Only rice, a primary food for more than half the world’s population, remained stable, a gift of hope to those dependent on this staple during a precarious global food situation. This hope was jeopardized when an earthquake, a tsunami, and a nuclear disaster befell the northeastern region of Japan, where most of its rice agriculture occurs. Now the stability of rice prices seems less certain.
Following the nuclear disaster, Japan’s exports have all but halted as reports of radioactive produce and goods have accumulated. Russia, Australia, Singapore, Canada and others have banned food imports from at least the four prefectures nearest the nuclear plant. A report from Hong Kong’s Vegetable Marketing Program shows that wholesale prices of Chinese produce have risen 20 percent as panic has forced Japanese consumers to buy outside the country. Tests on Japan’s water have found unsafe levels of radiation, forcing the government to distribute bottled water to its citizens. With Japan’s exports halted and its own citizens relying heavily on food imported from China and elsewhere, its agricultural economy, particularly in the northern rice-growing regions, will undoubtedly suffer while the global community can only wait to learn what this will mean for the global food situation.
United States food price inflation has remained relatively low and price increases are only predicted at 2 to 3 percent this year. But in poorer countries relying on imports, the prices swing in a broader arc. Large, unexpected swings in food prices endanger the nutrition of poor households in developing countries, who spend as much as 70 percent of their incomes on food. The crisis situation of 2007 and 2008, which included high petroleum prices, increasing global demand for food, and poor harvests, pushed food prices in poorer importing countries and ultimately led to shortages and deadly riots. But with December 2010’s index reaching higher than the previous peak in June 2008, the current situation is not so different.
“The concern is that the long duration of the high prices for the months to come may eventually result in these high prices reaching the domestic markets of these poorer countries,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. “In the event of that, there is the chance of the repeat of the events of 2007 and 2008.”
Still, a repeat can be prevented. Africa, for instance, produced good harvests from crops planted last year, reducing their reliance on imports. Their grain prices remain well below the highs they hit in 2007 and 2008, and export prices for rice (not accounting for Japan’s tragedy) have stayed 40 to 50 percent below those highs. This factor is significant because, according to Mr. Abbassian, grain prices have a much greater impact on the food budgets of people in poor countries than prices for commodities like sugar or meat. In addition, global supplies of wheat and rice are much larger today than during the past crisis. While it’s unclear how profound the effect of Japan’s crisis will be on the world food issue, it leaves us wondering how sustainable our food system is when tested by our planet. | <urn:uuid:204ce1d6-3762-40f1-ba6f-14206a0c72eb> | {
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By Ted Auch, Great Lakes Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance
While solar and wind energy gets much of the attention in renewable energy debates, various states are also leaning more and more on burning biomass and waste to reach renewable energy targets and mandates. As is the case with all sources of energy, these so-called “renewable energy” projects present a unique set of environmental and socioeconomic justice issues, as well as environmental costs and benefits. In an effort to document the geography of these active and proposed future projects, this article offers some analysis and a new map of waste and woody biomass-to-energy infrastructure across the U.S. with the maximum capacities of each facility.
To illustrate the problems of woody biomass-to-energy projects, one only needs to look at Michigan. Michigan’s growing practice of generating energy from the wood biomass relies on ten facilities that currently produce roughly 209 Megawatts (an average of 21 MW per facility) from 1.86 million tons of wood biomass (an average of 309,167 tons per facility). Based on our initial analysis this is equivalent to 71% of the wood and paper waste produced in Michigan.
Making matters worse, these ten facilities rely disproportionately on clearcutting 60-120 years old late successional northern Michigan hardwood and red pine forests. These parcels are often replanted with red pine and grown in highly managed, homogeneous 20-30 year rotations. Reliance on this type of feedstock stands in sharp contrast to many biomass-to-energy facilities nationally, which tend to utilize woody waste from urban centers. Although, to provide context to their needs, the area of forest required to service Michigan’s 1.86 million-ton demand is roughly 920 mi2. This is 1.65 times the area of Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Toronto combined.
Panorama of the Sunset Trail Road 30 Acre Biomass Clearcut, Kalkaska Conty, Michigan
Based on an analysis of 128 U.S. facilities, the typical woody biomass energy facility produces 0.01-0.58 kW, or an average of 0.13 kW per ton of woody biomass. A few examples of facilities in Michigan include Grayling Generating Station, Grayling County (36.2 MW Capacity and 400,000 TPY), Viking Energy of McBain, Missaukee County (17 MW Capacity and 225,000 TPY), and Cadillac Renewable Energy, Wexford County (34 MW Capacity and 400,000 TPY).
The relationship between wood processed and energy generated across all U.S. landfill waste-to-energy operations is represented in the figure below (note: data was log transformed to generate this relationship).
Dr. Jim Stewart at the University of the West in Rosemead, California, recently summarized the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) costs of waste landfill energy projects and a recent collaboration between the Sierra Club and International Brotherhood of Teamsters explored the dangers of privatizing waste-to-energy given that two companies, Waste Management and Republic Services/Allied Waste, are now a duopoly controlling all remaining U.S. landfill capacity (an additional Landfill Gas Fact Sheet from Energy Justice can be found here).
Their combined analysis tells us that, by harnessing and combusting landfill methane, the current inventory of ninety-three U.S. waste-to-energy facilities generate 5.3 MW of electricity per facility. Expanded exploitation of existing landfills could bring an additional 500 MW online and alleviate 21.12 million metric tons of CO2 pollution (based on reduction in fugitive methane, a potent greenhouse gas). Looking at this capacity from a different angle, approximately 0.027 MW of electricity is generated per ton of waste processed, or 1.64 MW per acre. If we assume the average American produces 4.4 pounds of waste per day, we have the potential to produce roughly 6.9 million MW of energy from our annual waste outputs, or the equivalent energy demand created by 10.28 million Americans.
The relationship between waste processed per day and energy generated across all U.S. landfill waste-to-energy operations is represented in the figure below.
Waste burning and woody biomass-to-energy “renewable energy”projects come with their own sets of problems and benefits. FracTracker saw this firsthand when visiting Kalkaska County, Michigan, this past summer. There, the forestry industry has rebounded in response to several wood biomass-to-energy projects. While these projects may provide local economic opportunity, the industry has relied disproportionately on clearcutting, such as is seen in the below photograph of a 30-acre clearcut along Sunset Trail Road:
As states diversify their energy sources away from fossil fuels and seek to increase energy efficiency per unit of economic productivity, we will likely see more and more reliance on the above practices as “bridge fuel” energy sources. However, the term “renewable” needs parameterization in order to understand the true costs and benefits of the varying energy sources it presently encompasses. The sustainability of clearcutting practices in rural areas—and the analogous waste-to-energy projects in largely urban areas—deserves further scrutiny by forest health and other environmental experts. This will require additional mapping similar to what is offered in this article, as well as land-use analysis and the quantification of how these energy generation industries enhance or degrade ecosystem services. Of equal importance will be providing a better picture of whether or not these practices actually produce sustainable and well-paid jobs, as well as their water, waste, and land-use footprints relative to fossil fuels unconventional or otherwise. | <urn:uuid:722d21e3-d93a-4ffb-8c86-3424d374d9ae> | {
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Having just finished Iain Banks’ The Player of Games, I’m thinking about the ‘orbitals’ he describes in his series of novels about the Culture, a vast, star-crossing civilization that can build space habitats in the form of massive rings. Orbitals are smaller than the kind of ‘ringworld’ Larry Niven envisioned, but huge nonetheless, bracelets of super-strong materials housing billions who live on their inner surfaces as they orbit a parent star. The visual effects Banks pulls off in describing these habitats are spectacular. And now a new paper by Duncan Forgan (University of Edinburgh) and Martin Elvis (Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) has me wondering about the kind of mining activities it would take to produce the raw materials for such constructs.
Forgan and Elvis are interested in what they describe as a multi-wavelength, multi-signal approach to SETI. We’re used to the idea of huge radio dishes listening for extraterrestrial signals, but SETI is evolving through the use of optical methods, and moving in another tangent into ways of searching for extraterrestrial artifacts on the grand scale, like Dyson spheres. Throw in our ongoing hunt for terrestrial-class exoplanets through missions like Kepler and you have a broadly based strategy open to the detection of another civilization. The authors’ new paper suggests adding one more place to look: In the debris disks around other stars, where we might find signs of asteroid mining for raw material.
Image: Iain Banks’ Consider Phlebas has appeared with a number of different covers, but this one gives you a sense of the scope of the ‘orbitals’ he writes about, vast technological ‘bracelets’ on which billions live. What would it take to produce the raw materials for an orbital? Would we be able to detect such work as it progressed?
Data Mining in a Debris Disk
Debris disks are what’s left over when the gaseous disks around young stars go through their normal evolution, leaving rocky and icy debris in various sizes, like the comets and asteroids found in our own Solar System. We’ve been learning a great deal about debris disks through spectroscopy and imaging ever since the first detection of such a disk around the star Vega, back in the 1980s. These days, we have finely tuned instruments like the Herschel Space Telescope and Spitzer that can provide a wealth of new data. How could we use that data to search for potential evidence of an extraterrestrial intelligence manipulating a debris disk?
It’s a fascinating notion (and thanks to Adam Crowl for calling my attention to this paper). The authors assume that the engineering limitations we have experienced in our own history will also hold for alien cultures. Like us, they will need large quantities of raw material to build the structures their civilization requires. And like us, if we are ever to build a spacefaring civilization, they will need to mine such materials as they move into nearby space, building space vehicles and large habitats as sections of the population move off-planet. Both biological and post-biological civilizations will, then, need the resources demanded by their own growth.
From our perspective, targeted asteroid mining (TAM) presents high initial costs but great potential for profits, lowering the costs of manufacturing future technologies. In fact, Forgan and Elvis argue that the expertise we would gain by creating the necessary infrastructure for asteroid mining could be brought to bear on other aspects of space exploration. Given its hazards, asteroid mining is likely to be turned over quickly to automated workers, putting an emphasis on developing advanced artificial intelligence as we evolve a post-biological culture.
From the paper:
ETIs which have similar economic concerns to ours will eventually find extraplanetary mining projects desirable as their own resources become depleted (provided of course they are sufficiently technologically advanced). We suggest the complexity of TAM missions are such that most species capable of it have the potential to become truly space-faring. If technological civilisations more advanced than ours exist in the Galaxy, a distinct possibility given the estimated median age of terrestrial planets being around 1 Gyr older than Earth (Lineweaver, 2001), and asteroid mining is a common activity which underpins their existence, then searching for signatures of TAM is an appropriate activity for SETI to undertake.
The Signature of Targeted Mining
All of which leads us to the kind of artificial observational signals we might hope to detect. The paper studies this question in relation to the Vega debris disk and finds three kinds of disequilibrium that might be created by asteroid mining at a large scale. The extraction of specific minerals and elements will create an imbalance in the disk, and the authors note the likelihood of iron and nickel mining, these being of practical use in large-scale space engineering projects, along with rarer elements such as platinum and palladium, useful in technological innovation. A sharp depletion in several of these species would be a potential marker.
So, too, would large-scale mining’s effects on the dynamics of a debris disk system, for we would expect these activities to result in the destruction of the larger asteroids in the system. Unusual temperature distributions are a third possible marker, created by the production of dust in the mining process. An anomalous dust source or an unusual temperature gradient in the disk would provide a potentially detectable signal. For that matter, variability in the disk as different locations are mined could also be detectable, although here we’re talking about future instrumentation, as what we have today probably isn’t sensitive enough to make such observations.
Potential for a Detection
Asteroid mining would be no easy catch. In fact, it’s best seen as part of a larger strategy, and may help us primarily in calling our attention to systems that demand further investigation. Having analyzed the signature from the various mining activities, the authors add:
The general trend is somewhat disappointing. For TAM to be detectable, it must be prolific and industrial-scale, producing a large amount of debris and disrupting the system significantly to be detected. However, instrumentation is continually improving, and sensitivity to such effects will only grow, reducing the constraints on detectability. What remains indefatigable with technological advance is the confusion of apparent TAM signals with natural phenomena. A detection of any one of these TAM signals can be explained with a simpler natural model, but detection of many (or all) of these signals in tandem will prove more difficult to model, and hence TAM more difficult to discount as a possibility.
So targeted asteroid mining appears unlikely to provide us with a conclusive detection of an extraterrestrial civilization, but tentative signals seen in unusual dust size distributions or deficits in chemical composition could be markers that tell us to look at a system more closely. Usefully, the markers of asteroid mining would, unlike biomarkers in an atmosphere, indicate not just life but an intelligent, technology-driven culture. For that reason, the authors argue that searching for asteroid mining signatures is a useful addition to the multi-wavelength, multi-signal SETI strategy that is now evolving as we extend our hunt far beyond conventional methods.
The paper is Forgan and Elvis, “Extrasolar Asteroid Mining as Forensic Evidence for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” accepted for publication in the International Journal of Astrobiology (preprint). And if you’re not familiar with Iain Banks, do look into his novels about the Culture. His plots are ingenious, but I continue to marvel at his visual sense, and always take away images of places that are both astounding and inspiring. Oh to see technology used like this! | <urn:uuid:e2ebd8cc-3ada-4d51-9a4b-9e342620c7f5> | {
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Elevated concentrations of ground-level ozone are still a hazard for both crops and people. Photo: Flickr.com / Pierre Metivier CC BY-NC
Stronger air quality measures needed
Air pollution remains the single largest environmental health hazard in Europe, resulting in a lower quality of life due to illnesses and nearly half a million premature deaths per year.
Air quality in Europe is slowly improving, according to a new report by the European Environment Agency (EEA). Using data from official monitoring stations across Europe, and including more than 400 cities, the report presents an updated overview and analysis of air quality from 2000 to 2014.
The good news is that annual average levels of PM10 have fallen in three-quarters of the monitored locations during the period 2000–2014, and average PM2.5 concentrations have also decreased between 2006 and 2014.
Despite these improvements, almost all city dwellers continue to be exposed to pollutants at levels deemed unsafe by the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2014, around nine out of ten urban citizens in the EU were exposed to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone levels above the WHO guideline values. See Table 1.
Table1. Percentage of the urban population in the EU28 exposed to air pollutant concentrations above EU and WHO reference levels (2012–2014).
Moreover, in the 41 countries considered, 467,000 premature deaths in 2013 were attributed to PM2.5 exposure and 71,000 and 17,000 premature deaths to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3) exposure, respectively. In the EU28, the numbers of premature deaths attributed to PM2.5, NO2 and O3 exposure were 436,000, 68,000 and 16,000, respectively.
Table 2 shows the best estimate figures for total mortality due to exposure to PM2.5, NO2 and O3 per country, for all the European countries included in the analysis.
Table 2. Estimates of premature deaths attributable to exposure to PM2.5, O3 and NO2 in 40 European countries.
The report also shows country-by-country data on the estimated number of years of life lost (YLL) and the YLL per 100,000 inhabitants due to exposure to the different pollutants. In the EU28, the YLL attributed to PM2.5, NO2 and O3 exposure are 4,668,000, 723,000 and 179,000, respectively.
When considering YLL per 100,000 inhabitants due to PM2.5, the largest impacts are observed in the central and eastern European countries, which is also where the highest concentrations are observed, i.e. Kosovo, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Poland, Serbia, Hungary, Romania, Greece, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The largest health impacts attributable to NO2 exposure and expressed as YLL per 100,000 inhabitants, are found in Italy, Belgium, the UK and Serbia. Regarding ozone, the countries with the highest rates of YLL per100,000 inhabitants are Greece, Italy, most of the countries in the western Balkans and Hungary.
It should be noted that the impacts estimated for each pollutant may not be added to determine the total impact attributable to exposure to the three pollutants. Because concentrations – especially those of PM2.5 and NO2 – are correlated, additions may result in double counting.
On top of the health impacts, air pollution continues to damage vegetation and ecosystems. Elevated concentrations of ground-level ozone damage agricultural crops, forests and plants by reducing photosynthesis. In 2013, the EU’s long-term objective for the protection of vegetation was exceeded in 81 per cent of the total EU agricultural area, and the critical level for the protection of forests was exceeded in 68 per cent of the total EU forest area.
Excess deposition of sulphur and nitrogen compounds (from emissions of SO2, NOx, and NH3) contribute to the acidification of soil, lakes and rivers, causing the loss of biodiversity. In 2010, seven per cent of the total EU ecosystem area and five per cent of the Natura 2000 area were exposed to acidifying depositions exceeding the limits of nature’s tolerance.
Emissions of NH3 and NOx also disrupt land and water ecosystems by introducing excessive amounts of nutrient nitrogen, causing eutrophication, an oversupply of nutrients, with resulting impacts on biodiversity. In 2010, nearly two-thirds of the total EU ecosystem area and three-quarters of the Natura 2000 area were exposed to nitrogen deposition exceeding the critical eutrophication limits.
Commenting on the report, EEA Executive Director Hans Bruyninckx said: “Emission reductions have led to improvements in air quality in Europe, but not enough to avoid unacceptable damage to human health and the environment. We need to tackle the root causes of air pollution, which calls for a fundamental and innovative transformation of our mobility, energy and food systems. This process of change requires action from us all, including public authorities, businesses, citizens and research community.”
Note: PM in ambient air originates both from primary particles emitted directly into the air and from secondary particles produced as a result of chemical reactions of PM precursor pollutants, namely sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), ammonia (NH3) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). New research shows that PM concentrations can be considerably reduced by additional cuts in agricultural NH3 emissions.
Air quality in Europe - 2016 report. EEA Report No 28/2016. Available at: http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/air-quality-in-europe-2016
EU environmental indicators
More action is needed to protect the natural environment and people’s health. This is the main conclusion of the EEA’s new report on environmental indicators, which gives a snapshot of progress made so far in meeting a selected number of EU policy objectives that are relevant to achieving the three key priority objectives of the EU’s 7th Environment Action Programme: natural capital; resource-efficient, low-carbon economy, and people’s health and well-being.
The report and briefings: http://www.eea.europa.eu/airs | <urn:uuid:2049f603-1d9a-4b85-9f04-6e1f1583392b> | {
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According to the World Bank USD 93 billion a year is needed for Sub-Saharan Africa’s infrastructure - two-thirds for investment in new physical infrastructure and a third for operations and maintenance of existing assets. However, only USD 45 billion is being mobilised.
The funding gap is assumed to be significant for North Africa as well. To fill the gap for the whole continent, substantial scaling up of resources is required, as well as institutional and policy reforms to strengthen the framework for infrastructure development.
However, resources from African governments, their citizens, and donors are not enough to respond to these needs. Private investment can therefore make an important contribution but, for this to happen, a sound policy environment and financing instruments that facilitate investment must be in place. Official development finance can play a catalytic role in this regard by helping African governments to improve the enabling environment and by mitigating the risks to investors.
Released in May 2012, Mapping Support for Africa's Infrastructure Investment (pdf) [ en français ], describes:
- official development finance to Africa’s hard and soft infrastructure
- the role of official agencies in supporting infrastructure through financial tools such as export credits, blending mechanisms, guarantees and investment funds
- the contribution of non-OECD financiers such as China
- how donors implement the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in their support for infrastructure
This report was prepared as part of the OECD’s Aid for Investment in Africa's Infrastructure project which aims to better understand how aid can leverage private investment in Africa’s infrastructure sectors. This project is a joint undertaking of the OECD's Investment and Development Assistance Committees, and implemented within the framework of the NEPAD-OECD Africa Investment Initiative.
Policy brief: Aid to Africa (pdf)
Policy brief: Infrastructure in Africa (pdf)
OECD work on private sector participation in the water and sanitation sector
NEPAD-OECD Africa Investment Initiative
OECD Development Co-operation Directorate
African Development Bank: www.afdb.org | <urn:uuid:f1ad258b-9e69-43c2-9b25-871b481a4ada> | {
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Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto: Natives must count in the 2020 Census
In 2010, the United States conducted its once-a-decade census, as required by the Constitution. That census missed nearly 5% of the Native American population of the country — one in twenty people in native communities simply did not count. We can’t let that happen again.
The Constitution says the census has to enumerate every person living in the United States, including children. This count serves many purposes. Most essentially, it determines the total number of representatives that each state will have in the U.S. House of Representatives. States also rely on census figures to determine the boundaries of voting districts for federal, state, and local elections.
Just as importantly, census data determines how the federal government distributes money from various federal programs. In 2015 alone, the federal government used 2010 Census data to direct $6 billion dollars to the state of Nevada. The government needs accurate figures to award Nevada its fair share of funds for healthcare, housing, nutrition assistance, education, child care, and much more. Studies suggest that every uncounted person could cost state, local, and tribal governments up to $3,000 in these lost funds.
But private groups also use census information. Businesses use it to locate new customers or improve services for old ones. And scientists rely on it to protect public health.
For these reasons, it’s vital that we accurately count Native Americans, who were by far the most underrepresented group in the last census. There are many reasons for the undercount of native and tribal populations. For some people, language barriers or literacy issues make it hard to fully answer census questions.
Another major problem is geography. Many tribal lands are in remote places, with poor or unpaved roads. Often, addresses don’t have the house number and street name format that suburban homes do — instead, they may be highway or route numbers paired with box numbers. Homelessness or frequently changing residence in the Native American community is also a factor.
And for urban Indian populations, apartment living can also present a problem — it’s easier to count people living in single-family homes than the multiple families living in apartment buildings, which is one of the reasons that affluent whites are actually overrepresented in census tallies.
Internet access and the digital divide are also a factor. Rural and tribal areas often lack high speed internet access, which means that one of the main methods the current census offers to reach individuals could be hard for Native Americans to use. (The 2020 Census, which begins in March of next year, will also use mailed forms, telephone, and in-person census-takers.)
Finally, the average age of Native American communities could play a part. The census traditionally undercounts children, possibly because families don’t always realize that children ought to be included. Communities with more children, therefore, are more likely to be undercounted.
That’s why, here in Nevada, we need to go the extra mile to make sure every single person in the state gets counted in the census. Governor Steve Sisolak has set aside $5 million dollars to fund Nevada’s Complete Count Committee, which is working with government and other groups to reach out to everyone in the Silver State and encourage them to be part of the 2020 Census. I know you’ll be hearing much more about these efforts in the coming months.
I also want to personally encourage everyone in Nevada to help us count the people in your household, your neighbors, and your friends. I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure that we follow the Constitution’s requirement, so that Nevadans get the voice in politics and the funds that our communities deserve.
U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) submitted this opinion column to First Nation’s Focus for publication. Go to cortezmasto.senate.gov to learn more and to contact the senator. | <urn:uuid:090988d6-77bd-49f5-b7b6-04135381383c> | {
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There has always been evidence that men, throughout life, are at higher risk of early death—from the beginning, a higher male incidence of Death by Mastodon Stomping, a higher incidence of Spiked Club to the Brainpan, a statistically significant disparity between how many men and how many women die of Accidentally Shooting Themselves in the Face or Getting Really Fat and Having a Heart Attack. The male of the species dies younger than the female—about five years on average. Divide a population into groups by birth year, and by the time each cohort reaches 85, there are two women left for every man alive. In fact, the male wins every age class: Baby boys die more often than baby girls; little boys die more often than little girls; teenage boys; young men; middle-aged men. Death champions across the board.
Now it seems that early death isn’t enough for us—we’re on track instead to void the species entirely. Last summer a group of researchers from Hebrew University and Mount Sinai medical school published a study showing that sperm counts in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand have fallen by more than 50 percent over the past four decades. (They judged data from the rest of the world to be insufficient to draw conclusions from, but there are studies suggesting that the trend could be worldwide.) That is to say: We are producing half the sperm our grandfathers did. We are half as fertile.
Between the caging of immigrants and human beings losing the ability to reproduce, it’s clear that Children of Men has become a documentary. | <urn:uuid:927ab2b3-c98a-450a-bc22-4c1f4a8ee699> | {
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It is often said that hopanoids are the ‘most abundant natural products on Earth.’ Most commonly, hopanoids are found in select groups of Bacteria, all of which are aerobic. Although they are known to be synthesized by a wide variety of cultured aerobic bacteria, there does not to be any obligate requirement for oxygen in their biosynthesis and cyclization of squalene to a pentacyclic triterpanoid with a hopane skeleton. Therefore, hopanoid synthesis might also be possible in anaerobes. The characteristic base structure of a hopane (the degraded and saturated version of a hopanoid), shown above, has four cyclohexane rings and one cyclopentane ring, and might have a side chain emerging from C30. Prokaryotic cells utilize certain types of hopanoids in their cell walls (as opposed to eukaryotes, who use certain types of sterols).
During diagenesis and catagenesis, the biological stereospecificity of hopanoids, particularly at C-17 and C-21 is usually lost, and isomers are generated (see above for numbering). The term alpha beta hopane is commonly used as short-hand to denote hopanes with the 17 alpha(H), 21 beta(H) configuration, while alpha alpha hopane would denote 17 alpha(H), 21 alpha(H) stereochemistry. The notation 17 alpha(H) indicates that the hydrogen is located below the plane of the paper, whereas in 17 beta(H) it is above the plane. The prefix ‘nor’, as for example in 30-norhopane, indicates that the molecule is formally derived for the parent structure by loss of the indicated carbon atom, i.e. C-30 is removed from the hopane skeleton. Similarly, bisnor-, dinor- or trinor- hopane indicate that the molecule is derived from the parent structure by loss of two or three carbon atoms at the specified positions. For example, 25, 28, 30 trinorhopane indicates that carbons at those positions were lost from the parent molecule.
The presence of alkyl substituents on the hopanoid skeleton, like 2-methyl hopane (above) and 3-methyl hopane (below) appears to be limited to specific physiological groups. 2 beta -methylhopanoids are produced by many cyanobacteria and have few other demonstrated sources. Thus, the corresponding sedimentary 2 alpha -methylhopane hydrocarbons are hypothesized to be biomarkers for cyanobacteria. These biomarkers may help to establish the time of the beginning of oxygenic photosynthesis on the primitive earth.
Summons R.E., Jahnke L.L., Logan G.A. & Hope J.M. (1999) 2-Methylhopanoids as biomarkers for cyanobacterial oxygenic photosynthesis. Nature 398:554-57.
Methanotrophic and acetic acid bacteria biosynthesize a range of 3 beta-hopanoids. The corresponding 3 beta-methylhopane hydrocarbons could be derived from either group of bacteria, but a large 13C depletion observed in their sedimentary sources points to methanotrophic sources being more important. Methanotrophic bacteria may have been among the most primitive forms of life in the early earth.
Bisnorhopane and trisnorhopanes
Bisnorhopanes are missing 2 carbon atoms in the positions denoted. Shown here is a 28,30 bisnorhopane, also known as BNH.
Trisnorhopanes are missing 3 carbon atoms in the positions denoted. Shown here is a 25,28,30 trisnorhopane, also known as TNH.
High concentrations of BNH and TNH are typical of anoxic or euxinic depositional environments. There is strong correlation between the presence of BNH and a sulfidic water column. Their occurence indicates that some bacteria specific to these environments are the ultimate source, but are currently unidentified.
Ts and Tm are specific types of trisnorhopanes (specifically 18 alpha (H) 22,29,30 trisnorhopane and 17 alpha (H) 22,29,30 , respectively). Ts is more stable than Tm, and degrades less during diagenesis and catagenesis. Thus the ratio of Ts to Tm is an indicator of the maturity of a rock. | <urn:uuid:e3e96cd6-3cb3-4731-90be-05a663c31016> | {
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GRIZZLED GIANT SQUIRREL
Why in News?
- For the first time, researchers have sighted nests of the grizzled giant squirrel
Grizzled Giant Squirrel:
- Grizzled giant squirrel is a large tree squirrel found in the highlands of the Central and Uva provinces of Sri Lanka, and in patches of riparian forest along the Kaveri River and in the hill forests of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala states of southern India
- It is an endangered species listed under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972
- The grizzled giant squirrel is usually known to nest in the Western Ghats in Southern India ranging from Chinnar Wildlife sanctuary in Kerala to Anamalai Tiger Reserve and Palani hills in Tamil Nadu. Habitat loss coupled with hunting for its fur and bushmeat by the locals are said to be the major threats to this species,
- Owing to habitat loss and poaching, the species has been categorised as near threatened by the Red List and listed under Schedule II of CITES
Pakkamalai Reserve Forest:
- Pakkamalai Reserve Forest is a sacred mountain located about 45 kms from Gingee in Villupuram district. Several diverse and endangered species including the Golden Gecko, Bamboo Pit Viper and Mouse Deer have also been spotted in the Pakkamalai Reserve Forests.
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The oldest humanoid skeleton ever found has been taken out of Ethiopia for a controversial tour of American museums.
The public has only seen the real Lucy remains twice in Ethiopia
Archaeologists say the 3.2m-year-old remains - known as Lucy - are far too fragile to be moved around.
But Ethiopia said it would use cash raised from the six-year tour to fund museums back home and build new ones.
The discovery of Lucy in north-eastern Ethiopia in 1974 led scientists to rethink existing theories about early human evolution.
The fossilised partial skeleton of what was once a 3.5ft (1m) tall adult was the earliest known hominid, Australopithecus afarensis.
The real Lucy remains have only been exhibited publicly in Ethiopia twice.
A replica is on display at the Natural History Museum in the capital Addis Ababa.
Zelalem Assefa, an Ethiopian who works at the Smithsonian Institution, a prestigious US research institute, said in Addis Ababa he disapproved of the tour.
He told the Associated Press news agency: "These are original, irreplaceable materials. These are things you don't gamble with."
The BBC's Elizabeth Blunt in Addis Ababa said Ethiopian exiles in the US have mounted a vociferous campaign against the exhibition.
The skeleton will go on display first at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
Ethiopian officials said New York, Denver and Chicago were among the other US tour stops. | <urn:uuid:21a5d3ba-08cd-4f5d-8b01-4897c2e584ea> | {
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Ultra-fast bomb detection unveiled
Researchers from the University of Surrey have developed a new ‘ultra-fast’ method to detect materials that could be used by terrorists to build explosives.
The new detection system is able to analyse a wider range of materials than current thermal-based detection systems used in airports, and other high-risk locations while reducing false positive reports.
Using swabbing material to collect samples of explosives, the new method is able to detect substances such as nitrotoluenes, trinitrotriazine, hexamethylene triperoxide diamine and nitroglycerine. Detection of peroxide-based explosives is key as high-profile terrorist attacks, such as the London bombings in 2007, used devices made from these materials.
The Surrey researchers say the swab spray technique is able to achieve “high sensitivity results” and has also been tested on ‘dirty’ surfaces such as new and used keyboards.
In a comprehensive two-part paper published by the journal Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics and Forensic Science International: Synergy, the Surrey team – Dr Melanie Bailey, Dr Catia Costa and Dr Patrick Sears – details how it has built on its previous groundbreaking work on super-fast fingerprint drug testing to develop a technique that is able to detect ‘key’ explosives in just 30 seconds.
Dr Bailey said: “It’s the unfortunate reality that security, especially in our airports, has to stay several steps ahead of those that wish to cause harm and destruction. The current thermal-based way of detecting explosive material is becoming outdated and has the propensity of producing false positives. What we demonstrate with our research is an extremely fast, accurate and sensitive detection system that is able to identify a wide range of explosive materials.”
Dr Costa added that the need for fast screening methods with enhanced selectivity and sensitivity to explosives “has reached a new boiling point with the recent terrorist activity”.
“The use of paper spray for applications such as these may help reduce false-negative events while also allowing simultaneous detection of other substances such as drugs, as previously reported by our group,” she said.
Dr Patrick Sears said the critical advantage of the system was “the ability to uniquely identify the explosive being detected, making it much less likely to create false alarms”.
“The selectivity of this system means that it could also be used to identify a range of other threat materials while the sensitivity would allow the detection of invisible traces of explosives,” he added. | <urn:uuid:f81e2d64-df0e-423e-82dc-2db6ea65679b> | {
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E-Learning Advances Across the Country
Online education has experienced incredibly rapid growth in postsecondary and continuing education. For adults, online courses offer flexible scheduling and affordable tuition, as well as extraordinary new opportunities for distance learning. While kids have long been at the forefront of online entertainment, online education has been much slower to take hold in K-12. But that's changing.
In 2004, the Evergreen Education Group released the first Keeping Pace report. This series of annual reports explores policy and practice in K-12 online education across the country. They recently released Keeping Pace 2009, which shows continuous growth in online learning opportunities for elementary and secondary students.
There are many forms of 'e-learning.' Keeping Pace primarily defines online learning as education that takes place on the Internet with the teacher and student geographically separated. A blend of online coursework and face-to-face instruction is another popular option, as is the use of Internet-based resources in lieu of full courses, both of which are included in Keeping Pace where significant policies related to those practices are in place. Finally, the report distinguishes between full-time programs where students are enrolled only in virtual schools, and supplemental programs where students in traditional schools take additional courses online. This distinction allows policymakers to measure the effectiveness of online-only education.
Figure 3 from Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning: A Review of State-Level Policy and Practice, 2009, page 8.
As of fall 2009, 27 states had state virtual schools. These are schools that are created and primarily funded at the state level, rather than the district level. They offer centralized online programs for students across the state. Six more states have 'state-led online learning initiatives' that offer online educational resources without the full suite of services provided by a virtual school. Together, these programs had about 320,000 for-credit course enrollments in the 2008-2009 school year. However, many of these virtual schools are supplementary. There are currently 24 states plus Washington D.C. offering full-time 'cyberschools,' and several states have full-time online programs available to some, but not all, students in their state. All told, Keeping Pace reports that 45 out of 50 states have either a state virtual school, an online initiative, a full-time cyberschool, or some combination of the three.
Online programs run at the district level are still relatively rare, but growing rapidly. They tend to rely more on a blending of online and face-to-face instruction, but some district-run full-time programs exist as well. The report's authors note that the emergence of online programs at the district level may signal a sea change in public education. They point out that school districts are where education trends truly take hold because districts have the closest relationships with students and their families. The authors predict that while state-led programs will continue to grow, district-level programs will start to outpace them as online education becomes more widely accepted.
Online Education Offers a 21st Century Solution
The Alliance for Excellent Education (AEE) agrees that American public education is at a major turning point. However, they see e-learning as more than just a new resource - according to a brief published this month by Alliance members Bob Wise and Robert Rothman, online education offers a solution to the three main crises facing K-12 education in the U.S. They identify these problems as:
- Growth in the demand for global skills is outpacing educational attainment. Few people deny that the 21st century workplace demands higher education. There is a large - and growing - salary gap between workers with a high school diploma and those with a college degree, and recent studies have even shown that life satisfaction is higher among people with a postsecondary education. While the U.S. has managed to increase the number of American students attending college in recent years, our college-completion rate is still dismal. Only half of all 4-year college students earn their degrees within six years, and the graduation rate at community colleges is 38 percent. In order to improve college completion rates, high schools need to focus not just on graduating students, but on preparing them for the college experience.
- Local, state and federal revenues for education are declining. The federal government has put a lot of money toward K-12 education in both the FY2011 budget and through stimulus programs like Race to the Top. However, the federal funds can only go so far, and schools are facing a 'funding cliff.' Even as the economy recovers, states will be under pressure to fund so many essential programs - education, unemployment, Medicaid - that a recent report by the National Governor's Association (NGA) suggests that states won't fully recover from the current recession until the end of the decade. This means that in order to meet the increasing demands for quality education, schools will be forced to do more with less.
- A teacher shortage is looming. Teacher effectiveness may be the single most important factor in student success, but the quality of teachers across geographic and socioeconomic lines is wildly uneven. Furthermore, almost one-third of current teachers in the U.S. are eligible to retire in the next five to seven years. This will lead to a dramatic loss in both the total number of teachers and the amount of collective experience in the field at a time when the demands on teachers are only increasing.
The AEE proposes that online education is a crucial part of solving these problems. Although it often requires a significant investment up-front, online learning has proven to be much more cost-effective in the long term. When implemented effectively, e-learning can allow schools to actually improve their offerings while operating under a lower budget. However, in Keeping Pace 2009, the Evergreen Education Group cautions that states and school districts must make very careful choices when choosing online providers. As the programs proliferate so do the vendors that offer them, and while most will meet minimum state guidelines, not all will actually offer students a better alternative to traditional education. It's not enough that online education cost less - it must be equally or more effective.
However, good online programs may also offer elegant solutions to the other crises listed above. Because online education is not tied to geographical location, it allows for more collaboration. This means that it will be easier to implement common standards across the country, offering students everywhere a chance at greater college readiness. It also means that fewer teachers can reach more students. Theoretically, an online student could access a teacher somewhere in the world at any time, 24/7. Furthermore, the quality of a student's teachers would no longer be dictated by the student's location, and great teachers could more easily share their knowledge and best practices with others.
The AEE's brief encourages policymakers to seize this opportunity to use online education to implement real reform in K-12 education: 'As technology has revolutionized the way Americans get news, communicate, listen to music, shop, and do business, now is the time for American students in thousands of underperforming classrooms to realize the same gains.' | <urn:uuid:92ea77be-34af-4d4e-9db3-d5472d2368b8> | {
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Frederick III of Germany, Potsdam, Princess Victoria the Princess Royal, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Throat Cancer, Wilhelm I of Prussia, Wilhelm II of Germany
Prince Friedrich-Wilhelm of Prussia was born in the New Palace at Potsdam in Prussia on October 18, 1831. He was a scion of the House of Hohenzollern, rulers of Prussia, then the most powerful of the German states. Friedrich’s father, Prince Wilhelm (future German Emperor and King of Prussia), was a younger brother of King Friedrich-Wilhelm IV and, having been raised in the military traditions of the Hohenzollerns, developed into a strict disciplinarian.
Prince Friedrich’s mother was Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, the second daughter of Charles-Friedrich, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia, a daughter of Paul I of Russia and Sophie-Dorothea of Württemberg.
In 1851, his mother sent Friedrich to England, ostensibly to visit the Great Exhibition but in truth, she hoped that the cradle of liberalism and home of the industrial revolution would have a positive influence on her son. Prince Albert took Friedrich under his wing during his stay but it was Albert’s daughter, Victoria, Princess Royal, only eleven at the time, who guided the German prince around the Exhibition.
Friedrich only knew a few words of English, while Victoria could converse fluently in German. He was impressed by her mix of innocence, intellectual curiosity and simplicity, and their meeting proved to be a success. A regular exchange of letters between Victoria and Friedrich followed.
Friedrich proposed to Victoria in 1855, when she was 14 years old and he was 23. The betrothal of the young couple was announced on May 19, 1857, at Buckingham Palace and the Prussian Court, and their marriage took place on January 25, 1858 in the Chapel Royal of St. James’s Palace, London. Victoria too had received a liberal education and shared her husband’s views. Of the two, Victoria was the dominant one in the relationship.
The couple often resided at the Crown Prince’s Palace and had eight children: Wilhelm in 1859, Charlotte in 1860, Heinrich in 1862, Sigismund in 1864, Victoria in 1866, Waldemar in 1868, Sophia in 1870 and Margaret in 1872. Sigismund died at the age of 2 and Waldemar at age 11, and their eldest son, Wilhelm, suffered from a withered arm—probably due to his difficult and dangerous breech birth, although it could have also resulted from a mild case of cerebral palsy.
When his father succeeded to the Prussian throne as King Wilhelm I of Prussia on January 2, 1861, Friedrich became the Crown Prince of Prussia.
Three days after Friedrich was confirmed to be suffering from cancer, his father Emperor Wilhelm I died aged 90 at 8:22 a.m. on March 9, 1888, upon which Friedrich became German Emperor and King of Prussia. His son, Wilhelm, now Crown Prince, telegraphed the news to his father in Italy. Later the same day, Friedrich wrote in his diary that he had received the telegram upon returning from a walk, “…and so I have ascended the throne of my forefathers and of the German Kaiser! God help me fulfill my duties conscientiously and for the weal of my Fatherland, in both the narrower and the wider sense.” Germany’s progressive elements hoped that Wilhelm’s death, and thus Friedrich’s succession, would usher the country into a new era governed along liberal lines.
Logically, Friedrich should have taken as his regnal name, Friedrich I (beccause the Bismarckian empire was considered a new entity). The new Emperor wanted to call himself Friedrich IV, (mistakenly thinking this new empire was a continuation of the old Holy Roman Empire, which had had three emperors named Friedrich). However, on the advice of Bismarck that this would create legal problems, he opted to simply keep the same regnal name he had as the king of Prussia, Friedrich III.
The new Emperor reached Berlin at 11 p.m. on the night of March 11; those who saw him were horrified by his “pitiful” appearance. The question now was how much longer the mortally ill emperor could be expected to live, and what, if anything, he could hope to achieve. In spite of his illness, Friedrich did his best to fulfill his obligations as Emperor.
Immediately after the announcement of his accession, he took the ribbon and star of his Order of the Black Eagle from his jacket and pinned it on the dress of his wife; he was determined to honor her position as Empress. Too ill to march in his father’s funeral procession, he was represented by Wilhelm, the new Crown Prince, while he watched, weeping, from his rooms in the Charlottenburg Palace.
As the German Emperor, he officially received Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (his mother-in-law) and King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway, and attended the wedding of his son Prince Heinrich to his niece Princess Irene. However, Friedrich III reigned for only 99 days, and was unable to bring about much lasting change. The majority of the German ruling elite viewed Friedrich III’s reign as merely a brief interim period before the accession of his son Wilhelm to the throne.
An edict he penned before he ascended to the throne that would limit the powers of the chancellor and monarch under the constitution was never put into effect,although he did force Robert von Puttkamer to resign as Prussian Minister of the Interior on June 8, when evidence indicated that Puttkamer had interfered in the Reichstag elections. Dr. Mackenzie wrote that the Emperor had “an almost overwhelming sense of the duties of his position.”
A letter to Lord Napier, Empress Victoria wrote “The Emperor is able to attend to his business, and do a great deal, but not being able to speak is, of course, most trying.” Friedrich III had the fervour but not the time to accomplish his desires, lamenting in May 1888, “I cannot die … What would happen to Germany?”
From April 1888, Friedrich III became so weak he was unable to walk, and was largely confined to his bed; his continual coughing brought up large quantities of pus. In early June, the cancer spread to and perforated his esophagus, preventing him from eating. He suffered from bouts of vomiting and ran high fevers, but remained alert enough to write a last diary entry on June 11: “What’s happening to me? I must get well again; I have so much to do!”
Friedrich III died in Potsdam at 11:30 a.m. on June 15, 1888, and was succeeded by his 29-year-old son as Wilhelm II, German Emperor and King of Prussia. Under Emperor Wilhelm II, his parents and maternal grandparents, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s hopes of a liberal Germany were not fulfilled. He believed in the autocracy and Conservative principles of his paternal grandfather, Emperor Wilhelm I.
Frederick is buried in a mausoleum attached to the Friedenskirche in Potsdam. After his death, William Ewart Gladstone described him as the “Barbarossa of German liberalism.” His wife, Empress Victoria, now calling herself the Empress Friedrich, went on to continue spreading her husband’s thoughts and ideals throughout Germany, but no longer had power within the government.
The early death of Emperor Friedrich III is a tragedy in German history. For if he lived and was able to enact his Liberal policies the history of Germany would have been much different. | <urn:uuid:a8648ce0-517e-4860-9309-2363ada33253> | {
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SQL Query Processing
Structured Query Language
SQL Data Definition Language
SQL Data Manipulation Language
SQL Data Control Language
SQL DRL / DSL
SQL Stored Procedure
SQL Query Processing
Database Transaction Control
Database Concurrency Control
Database Backup and Recovery
OLTP and OLAP
CRM and SCM
Introduction to Query Processing
Query Processing is a translation of high-level queries into low-level expression.
It is a step wise process that can be used at the physical level of the file system, query optimization and actual execution of the query to get the result.
It requires the basic concepts of relational algebra and file structure.
It refers to the range of activities that are involved in extracting data from the database.
It includes translation of queries in high-level database languages into expressions that can be implemented at the physical level of the file system.
In query processing, we will actually understand how these queries are processed and how they are optimized.
In the above diagram,
The first step is to transform the query into a standard form.
A query is translated into SQL and into a relational algebraic expression. During this process, Parser checks the syntax and verifies the relations and the attributes which are used in the query.
The second step is Query Optimizer. In this, it transforms the query into equivalent expressions that are more efficient to execute.
The third step is Query evaluation. It executes the above query execution plan and returns the result.
Translating SQL Queries into Relational Algebra
SELECT Ename FROM Employee
WHERE Salary > 5000;
Translated into Relational Algebra Expression
σ Salary > 5000 (π Ename (Employee))
π Ename (σ Salary > 5000 (Employee))
A sequence of primitive operations that can be used to evaluate a query is a Query Execution Plan or Query Evaluation Plan.
The above diagram indicates that the query execution engine takes a query execution plan and returns the answers to the query.
Query Execution Plan minimizes the cost of query evaluation.
SQL Query Optimization
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Gadgets & Games
Digital Voice Recorders Turn Students Into Interviewers
Students in Oklahoma are using digital voice recorders to capture family and local community history, elementary school students in Oregon are teaming up with the state park system to create educational podcasts with the audio devices, and foreign language students are recording and playing back lessons to practice pronunciation and vocabulary.
Because of their portable size, low cost, and ease of use, ed-tech experts say the new generation of digital voice recorders make ideal classroom tools.
“I think that a digital recorder is one of those things that I would put in every middle school [and high school] student’s backpack. There are so many ways they could use it,” says Larry S. Anderson, the founder and director of the Tupelo, Miss.-based National Center for Technology Planning, a clearinghouse of information about technology in the classroom.
For example, students can record themselves reading a story they’ve written in order to critique both their story and their oral presentation skills, says Anderson. And the device can give students who have trouble writing stories a voice, he adds.
“Not everybody learns the same way,” he says. “There are those who may not be able to write a story, but they can tell a story.”
Digital recorders can also be useful tools for English-language learners, says Anderson. They can use the devices to practice pronunciation or make recordings of certain phrases or words to increase their vocabulary.
Eva LaMar, a 3rd grade teacher at the 400-student Riverbend Elementary School in Springfield, Ore., teams her students up with local state park officials to record educational podcasts about the parks with digital voice recorders.
“[The state parks] don’t have the money to produce the documentation and support [materials] for the teachers, and we’ve got kids who would love to put together podcasts,” she says.
Last year, in addition to recording their own findings and research, the students gave state park rangers questions, which they answered using a resource called GCast. The service allowed the rangers to call in and answer the questions on their own time and made it easy for the students to pull the audio files and incorporate them into the podcats, says LaMar.
In the end, the park benefits from having the resource, and the students have the opportunity to apply their skills to the real world, she says.
Digital voice recorders are often a more practical option for schools than microphones attached to iPods, says LaMar, simply because they are affordable—a decent voice recorder can range in price from about $50 to $100—and they are durable.
In addition, many digital voice recorders use memory cards to store the files, so multiple students can use the same device by switching out the memory card, says LaMar.
And because digital voice recorders can fit in the palm of a student’s hand, they are easy to carry around and use. “When you need it, it’s there and available,” she says.
Because the device is so small and easy to use, the technology itself fades into the background, say Anderson and LaMar.
“The technology needs to be invisible, and the content needs to be in the forefront,” says LaMar.
Digital voice recorders are a good example of how technology can become a tool for creating content, says Wesley Fryer, a co-founder and the executive director of Story Chasers, a multi-state, nonprofit initiative that supports student and teacher citizen journalism.
“The technology is the easy part,” says Fryer. “It’s not hard to show folks how to use the recorder. What is most challenging is the interview process.”
Story Chaser’s principal project, Celebrate Oklahoma Voices, encourages students across Oklahoma to archive and share local oral histories.
“When you interview a grandparent, neighbor, or relative and ask them to tell you part of their life story, you have that chance to hear it and maybe write a paper about it,” says Fryer. “And if you can record it with audio, there’s so much value, from a family standpoint, but then also of course also from a historical standpoint.”
‘Emotion and Expression’
Don Wilson, the instructional-technology director for the 14,600-student Midwest City-Del City schools east of Oklahoma City, participated in the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices project.
“It’s really about the information skills that kids gain,” he says. “It’s exactly the opposite of your typical textbook assignment.”
The project also gave teachers a chance to teach students the ethical way to use the tools, says Wilson, such as not recording other people without their permission and how to respect copyright laws when putting together a multimedia presentation.
“One of our main concerns was educating students on the appropriate use of these tools,” he says.
The audio element of digital voice recorders in particular is motivating to students and captures an extra layer of creativity and expression to student work, says Fryer.
“There’s some magic to the human voice. There’s emotion and expression,” he says. “There’s a level of communication that you can convey with recorded audio that you don’t get when you just read someone’s text that they’ve written.”
But perhaps the greatest advantage of digital voice recorders is that they create learner-centered lessons, Fryer says.
“If we want kids to have meaningful experiences in schools, ... we need the students actively creating content, not just being passive and listening to the teacher,” he says. “Digital audio recorders empower individuals to be active in their learning.”
The variety of digital voice recorders available can make narrowing down the field daunting, but there are certain features to look for, says Arnie Abrams, a professor of multimedia at the Ashland, Ore.-based Southern Oregon University.
“At the heart of it, sound quality is the ultimate feature needed in a digital recorder. This is especially true if you are going to record musical performances,” says Abrams. Most classrooms will want at least 16-bit sound at 44.1kHz, or “CD-quality sound,” he says.
Teachers should also consider whether they want a device with a built-in microphone or an external one, says Abrams. External microphones capture better sound, but make the devices bulkier, he says.
In addition, schools should investigate whether the recorders use removable memory cards, so that the devices can be passed from student to student without having to exchange their files, says Abrams.
Some other factors to consider are how the device is powered, what file formats it can record in, whether it has sound effects or filters, if it has the capability to screw into a tripod, and how simple it is to use, says Abrams.
“Above all, I want to be able to give a student a recorder and tell them to take it home and record their narration. I don’t want them to come back and tell me they couldn’t figure out how to use it,” he says. “In some cases, a lower-end model will be easier to use than the high-end one with all of the bells and whistles.”
But once the students have the tool in their hands, the possibilities for what they can be used for are vast—ranging from recording narration for a video, to practicing a lecture or speech, to creating podcasts, says Abrams. “Having a digital recorder makes it easy and painless for students to record their voice and the world around them.”
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Expected School-wide Learning Results
The Armenian Sisters' Academy strives to prepare students who will achieve the following at grade appropriate level:
Know the Ten Commandments
Know and understand the basic teachings and religious celebrations of the Armenian Church.
Know the basic prayers and hymns of the Armenian Church liturgy.
Have a strong foundation in core subjects and achieve appropriate levels in English, Math, and Science.
Know and use information technology (IT).
Apply critical thinking skills and problem-solving abilities to everyday life.
Understand basic health, fitness, nutrition, and hygiene.
Demonstrate good sportsmanship.
Learn different types of music, art, theatre, and dance.
Demonstrate their artistic skills through displays and performances.
Be disciplined and responsible citizens.
Be active participants in their local communities through volunteer work and activism.
Develop an environmental consciousness.
Be able to speak, read, and write in Armenian.
Know Armenian History.
Practice and preserve the Armenian culture and heritage.
Respect different cultures and diversity. | <urn:uuid:c70877ea-b923-49f8-98e5-355a3c384288> | {
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Humanities › History & Culture The Tupamaros Uruguay's Marxist Revolutionaries Share Flipboard Email Print Walden69 / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.5 History & Culture The 20th Century The 80s People & Events Fads & Fashions Early 20th Century The 20s The 30s The 40s The 50s The 60s The 90s American History African American History African History Ancient History and Culture Asian History European History Genealogy Inventions Latin American History Medieval & Renaissance History Military History Women's History View More By Christopher Minster Professor of History and Literature Ph.D., Spanish, Ohio State University M.A., Spanish, University of Montana B.A., Spanish, Penn State University Christopher Minster, Ph.D., is a professor at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. He is a former head writer at VIVA Travel Guides. our editorial process Christopher Minster Updated May 30, 2019 The Tupamaros were a group of urban guerrillas who operated in Uruguay (primarily Montevideo) from the early 1960s to the 1980s. At one time, there may have been as many as 5,000 Tupamaros operating in Uruguay. Although initially, they saw bloodshed as a last resort to achieving their aim of improved social justice in Uruguay, their methods became increasingly violent as the military government cracked down on citizens. In the mid-1980s, democracy returned to Uruguay and the Tupamaro movement went legitimate, laying down their weapons in favor of joining the political process. They are also known as the MLN (Movimiento de Liberación Nacional, or National Liberation Movement) and their current political party is known as the MPP (Movimiento de Participación Popular, or Popular Participation Movement). Creation of the Tupamaros The Tupamaros were created in the early 1960s by Raúl Sendic, a Marxist lawyer and activist who had sought to bring about social change peacefully by unionizing sugarcane workers. When the workers were continually repressed, Sendic knew that he would never meet his goals peacefully. On May 5, 1962, Sendic, along with a handful of sugarcane workers, attacked and burned the Uruguayan Union Confederation building in Montevideo. The lone casualty was Dora Isabel López de Oricchio, a nursing student who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. According to many, this was the first action of the Tupamaros. The Tupamaros themselves, however, point to the 1963 attack on the Swiss Gun Club—which netted them several weapons—as their first act. In the early 1960s, the Tupamaros committed a series of low-level crimes such as robberies, often distributing part of the money to Uruguay's poor. The name Tupamaro is derived from Túpac Amaru, last of the ruling members of the royal Inca line, who was executed by the Spanish in 1572. It was first associated with the group in 1964. Going Underground Sendic, a known subversive, went underground in 1963 counting on his fellow Tupamaros to keep him safe in hiding. On December 22, 1966, there was a confrontation between Tupamaros and the police. Carlos Flores, 23, was killed in a shootout when police investigated a stolen truck driven by Tupamaros. This was a huge break for the police, who immediately began rounding up known associates of Flores. Most of the Tupamaro leaders, fearful of being captured, were forced to go underground. Hidden from the police, the Tupamaros were able to regroup and prepare new actions. At this time, some Tupamaros went to Cuba where they were trained in military techniques. The Late 1960s in Uruguay In 1967 President and former General Oscar Gestido died and the Vice President, Jorge Pacheco Areco, took over. Pacheco soon took strong actions to stop what he saw as a deteriorating situation in the country. The economy had been struggling for some time and inflation was rampant which had resulted in a rise in crime and sympathy for rebel groups such as the Tupamaros, who promised change. Pacheco decreed a wage and price freeze in 1968 while cracking down on unions and student groups. A state of emergency and martial law were declared in June of 1968. A student, Líber Arce, was killed by police breaking up a student protest, further straining the relations between the government and the populace. Dan Mitrione On July 31, 1970, the Tupamaros kidnapped Dan Mitrione, an American FBI agent on loan to the Uruguayan police. He had previously been stationed in Brazil. Mitrione's specialty was interrogation, and he was in Montevideo to teach the police how to torture information out of suspects. Ironically, according to a later interview with Sendic, the Tupamaros did not know that Mitrione was a torturer. They thought he was there as a riot control specialist and targeted him in retaliation for student deaths. When the Uruguayan government refused the Tupamaros' offer of a prisoner exchange, Mitrione was executed. His death was a big deal in the US, and several high-ranking officials from the Nixon administration attended his funeral. The Early 1970s 1970 and 1971 saw the most activity on the part of the Tupamaros. Besides the Mitrione kidnapping, the Tupamaros committed several other kidnappings for ransom, including that of British Ambassador Sir Geoffrey Jackson in January of 1971. Jackson's release and ransom were negotiated by Chilean President Salvador Allende. The Tupamaros also murdered magistrates and policemen. In September of 1971, the Tupamaros got a huge boost when 111 political prisoners, most of them Tupamaros, escaped from Punta Carretas prison. One of the prisoners who escaped was Sendic himself, who had been in prison since August of 1970. One of the Tupamaro's leaders, Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro, wrote about the escape in his book La Fuga de Punta Carretas. Tupamaros Weakened After the increased Tupamaro activity in 1970-1971, the Uruguayan government decided to crack down even further. Hundreds were arrested, and due to widespread torture and interrogation, most of the Tupamaros' top leaders were captured by late 1972, including Sendic and Fernández Huidobro. In November 1971, the Tupamaros called a cease-fire to promote safe elections. They joined the Frente Amplio, or "Wide Front," political union of leftist groups determined to defeat Pacheco's handpicked candidate, Juan María Bordaberry Arocena. Although Bordaberry won (in an extremely questionable election), the Frente Amplio did win enough votes to give its supporters hope. Between the loss of their top leadership and the defections of those who thought that political pressure was the path to change, by the end of 1972 the Tupamaro movement was severely weakened. In 1972, the Tupamaros joined the JCR (Junta Coordinadora Revolucionaria), a union of leftist rebels including groups working in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. The idea is that the rebels would share information and resources. By that time, however, the Tupamaros were in decline and had little to offer their fellow rebels. In any event, Operation Condor would smash the JCR within the next few years. The Years of Military Rule Although the Tupamaros had been relatively quiet for a time, Bordaberry dissolved the government in June of 1973, serving as a dictator supported by the military. This allowed further crackdowns and arrests. The military forced Bordaberry to step down in 1976 and Uruguay remained a military-run state until 1985. During this time, the government of Uruguay joined with Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia as members of Operation Condor, a union of right-wing military governments who shared intelligence and operatives to hunt down, capture, and/or kill suspected subversives in each others' countries. In 1976, two prominent Uruguayan exiles living in Buenos Aires were assassinated as part of Condor: Senator Zelmar Michelini and House Leader Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz. In 2006, Bordaberry would be brought up on charges related to their deaths. Former Tupamaro Efraín Martínez Platero, also living in Buenos Aires, narrowly missed being killed around the same time. He had been inactive in Tupamaro activities for some time. During this time, the imprisoned Tupamaro leaders were moved from prison to prison and subjected to horrendous tortures and conditions. Freedom for the Tupamaros By 1984, the Uruguayan people had seen enough of the military government. They took to the streets, demanding democracy. Dictator/General/President Gregorio Alvarez organized a transition to democracy, and in 1985 free elections were held. Julio María Sanguinetti of the Colorado Party won and immediately set about rebuilding the nation. As far as the political unrest of the previous years, Sanguinetti settled on a peaceful solution—an amnesty that would cover both the military leaders that had inflicted atrocities on the people in the name of counterinsurgency and the Tupamaros who had fought them. The military leaders were allowed to live out their lives with no fear of prosecution and the Tupamaros were set free. This solution worked at the time, but in recent years there have been calls to remove the immunity for military leaders during the years of dictatorship. Into Politics The freed Tupamaros decided to lay down their weapons once and for all and join the political process. They formed the Movimiento de Participación Popular, or the Popular Participation Movement, currently one of the most important parties in Uruguay. Several former Tupamaros have been elected to public office in Uruguay, most notably José Mujica who was elected to the presidency of Uruguay in November of 2009. Source Dinges, John. "The Condor Years: How Pinochet And His Allies Brought Terrorism To Three Continents." Paperback, Reprint edition, The New Press, June 1, 2005. | <urn:uuid:85cd2c63-1466-4c6d-bcbc-3686b2a18cf9> | {
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Top 8 Cloud-Related Skills Employers Are Demanding
In today’s tech job market, some scoff at the concept of job security. While there may be some truth to that, there are things you can do to stay ahead of the curve and keep your IT skills relevant. And perhaps the best way to stay in demand is to master the tech skills most directly related to the cloud.
Hadoop has become a big player in the enterprise and is virtually synonymous with big data. Inspired by Google’s MapReduce framework, Hadoop was created to deal with the enormous amounts of data the Google team was creating.
In a recent survey, Dice asked more than 1,000 technology-focused hiring managers and recruiters about their biggest expected demand for data analytics professionals for the upcoming year and Hadoop skills topped the list at 25 percent. Companies are using this open source Java framework to handle and sift through thousands of data points from disparate sources and systems.
By providing a basic messaging framework that can be built upon by more abstract layers, SOAP, which is essentially a protocol for exchanging XML-based messages over a network, serves as the foundation layer of the Web services stack.
As the successor of XML-RPC, it specifies how to encode an HTTP header and an XML file so that an application in one computer can pass information to an application in another computer while specifying how the called program should return a response. RESTful approaches, often used instead of SOAP lately, remove SOAP faults, instead relying upon HTTP error codes that may not be helpful to either the application or the developer.
Python–a general-purpose, high-level programming language that emphasizes code readability–enables programmers to express concepts using less code than would be possible in other common programming languages. It provides them with constructs that are effective on both small and large scale applications.
In April of 2008, Python was the first and only programming language supported by Google’s App Engine cloud development platform, and its simple and effective constructs are still being used by cloud developers for the same reasons.
Ruby–a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language–was created by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto in the mid-1990s. It was influenced by Eiffel and Lisp, and combines syntax similar to that of Perl with features much like Smalltalk.
Ruby on Rails, usually shortened to just Rails, is an open source full-stack Web application framework for the Ruby programming language. Rails, which uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture pattern to organize application programming, works well for cloud computing because of that architecture.
Perl, which was originally developed in 1987 by Larry Wall, was intended to be a general-purpose Unix scripting language. It combines features from other programming languages such as C, with features from shell scripting, AWK and sed to provide programmers with powerful text-processing facilities that then enable the easy manipulation of data from text files.
Its parsing functionality made it popular in the 1990s as a CGI scripting language, and it is commonly referred to today as the glue that binds the Internet together, the “Swiss Army chainsaw of scripting languages.” For cloud developers, Perl Catalyst and projects such as Cloud Perl are indicative of the fact that Perl will continue to be used to help build the Web of the future.
PHP–which originally was an acronym for Personal Home Page and now stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor–was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995 and is still the most often used server-side scripting language on the Web, used by more 75 percent of all Websites in existence.
Cloud hosting has opened up even more opportunities for PHP developers, as the ease of app migration that came with cloud programming environments vastly improved the upgrade process, leaving developers to focus on programming, rather than setting up test environments on local machines. New classes provided by the Zend Framework make using cloud-based storage services even easier for PHP developers who wish to use cloud storage services from Amazon and other providers.
Microsoft’s cloud platform, known as the Azure Services Platform, has simplified the app migration process for .NET and Java developers, who are now able to use in a cloud-based runtime environment the same tools and APIs they are used to working with in their local run-time environment. This type of mixing and matching, along with the capability to scale elastically, is what the whole concept of “deploying in the cloud” is about. Microsoft’s .NET Services puts the Microsoft .NET Framework in the cloud, and provides many common building blocks for .NET developers that make it much easier to create cloud-based applications.
Storage engineers are typically responsible for installing and configuring the storage system for their employer. Until recently, their responsibilities have included designing installations and configurations for Network Attached Storage (NAS), Storage Area Networks (SAN), backup/recovery servers, tape library management software, and archive and retrieval systems management software.
Other data storage systems, such as disk arrays, virtual storage devices, storage resource management software, file systems and volume managers, also fell under the storage engineering umbrella. The concept of cloud storage has opened up new opportunities and with them, new responsibilities for the Storage Engineer. | <urn:uuid:11aa85fc-2024-403f-b5a9-59628b65c25e> | {
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The only underground nuclear waste repository in the United States doesn't have enough space for radioactive tools, clothing and other debris left over from decades of bomb-making and research, much less tons of weapons-grade plutonium that the nation has agreed to eliminate as part of a pact with Russia, federal auditors said.
In addition, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the U.S. Energy Department has no plans for securing regulatory approvals and expanding the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico before it reaches capacity in less than a decade.
"DOE modeling that is needed to begin the regulatory approval process is not expected to be ready until 2024," the auditors said in their report released Tuesday.
Energy Department officials contend there's enough time to design and build additional storage before existing operations are significantly affected.
A Senate committee requested the review from auditors amid concerns about ballooning costs and delays in the U.S. effort to dispose of 34 metric tons of its plutonium.
Citing the delays and other reasons, Russia last fall suspended its commitment to get rid of its own excess plutonium.
The U.S. has not made a final decision about how to proceed. However, the Energy Department agrees with auditors about the need to expand disposal space at the repository and devise guidance for defense sites and federal laboratories to better estimate how much radioactive waste must be shipped to New Mexico as the U.S. cleans up Cold War-era contamination.
Don Hancock, director of the nuclear waste safety program at the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, said he was pleased the auditors acknowledged the space limitations and hoped the report would spur a public discussion about how to handle the surplus plutonium and waste from bomb-making and nuclear research.
"The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, it was never supposed to be the one and only," Hancock said. "So it's past time to start the discussion of what other disposal sites we're going to have."
The New Mexico repository was carved out of an ancient salt formation about a half-mile below the desert, with the idea that shifting salt would eventually entomb the radioactive tools, clothing, gloves and other debris.
The facility resumed operations earlier this year following a shutdown that followed a 2014 radiation release caused by inappropriate packaging of waste by workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The release contaminated part of the underground disposal area and caused other problems that further limited space.
Federal auditors say another two disposal vaults would have to be carved out to accommodate the waste already in the government's inventory. More space would be needed for the weapons-grade plutonium.
The initial plan called for conversion of the excess plutonium into a mixed oxide fuel that would render it useless for making weapons and could be used in nuclear reactors.
However, the estimated cost of building a conversion facility at the Energy Department's Savannah River site in South Carolina has grown from $1.4 billion in 2004 to more than $17 billion. About $5 billion already has been spent on the facility.
Estimates also show it would take until 2048 to complete the facility.
Faced with the skyrocketing cost, the government began considering whether it would be cheaper to dilute the plutonium and entomb it at the plant in New Mexico. No final decisions have been made.
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In the fall of 2005, the Dalai Lama gave the inaugural Dialogues between Neuroscience and Society lecture at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, DC. There were over 30,000 neuroscientists registered for the meeting, and it seemed as if most of them attended the talk. The Dalai Lama’s address was designed to highlight the areas of convergence between neuroscience and Buddhist thought about the mind, and to many in the audience he clearly achieved his objective. There was some controversy over his being invited to deliver this lecture insofar as he is both a head of state and a religious leader, and for that reason he largely stuck to his prepared text. But he strayed from the text at least once, reminding the audience that not only was he a Buddhist monk but also an enthusiastic proponent of modern technology.
Elaborating, he shared a confidence with the audience, telling the audience of scientists that meditating was hard work for him (even though he meditates for 4 hours every morning), and that if neuroscientists were able to find a way to put electrodes in his brain and provide him with the same outcome as he gets from meditating, he would be an enthusiastic volunteer. It turns out that a recent set of experiments, from researchers at MIT and Stanford, moves us a step closer to making his wish a reality.
The Dalai Lama’s interest in neuroscience has been reciprocated by at least some members of the neuroscience community. Reasoning that studying the brains of people who meditate might lead to novel insights about the human brain, investigations of long-term meditators has been fertile ground for scientific investigation, with some of the more rigorous work emerging from Richard Davidson’s laboratory at the University of Wisconsin. From the perspective of neuroscience, meditation can be characterized as a series of mental exercises by which one strengthens one’s control over the workings of their own brain. The simplest of these meditation practices is ‘focused attention’ where one concentrates on a single object, for example one’s breath. When expert meditators practiced focused attention meditation, demonstrable changes were seen using fMRI in the networks of the brain that are known to modulate attention.
A second set of experiments studied long-term meditators practicing ‘open monitoring meditation’, a more advanced meditation practice which in many ways is a form of metacognition: the objective is not to focus one’s attention but rather to use one’s brain to monitor the universe of mental experience without directing attention to any one task. The unexpected result of this experiment was that the EEG of long-term meditators exhibited much more gamma-synchrony than that of naive meditators. Moreover, normally human brains produce only short bursts of gamma-synchrony. What was most remarkable about this study was that long-term meditators were able to produce sustained gamma-activity in a manner that had never previously been observed in any other human. As such, sustained gamma activity has emerged as a proxy for at least some aspects of the meditative state.
But what causes gamma rhythm? And are there any potential benefits of sustained gamma-activity? The strongest hypothesis for the cellular mechanisms underlying generation of the gamma rhythm is that it is due to the activation of fast-spiking interneurons in the cerebral cortex. ...
via Meditation on Demand: Scientific American. | <urn:uuid:5131db78-6110-48e6-9594-d5747d924c58> | {
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Did you know that certain foods and drinks can get in the way of your recovery from an illness as they may hamper the action of antibiotics? No one wants to prolong the agony of being homebound or less productive because of a health issue, and that is why you should take your meds — and mind what you eat and drink as well!
There are all sorts of reasons why the wrong diet can actually reduce the efficacy of the antibiotics you are taking. First, it can interfere with the way your body breaks down the drug. Second, it can slow down the emptying of the stomach, resulting in the decelerated absorption rate of the drug. In some instances, it can actually prevent the absorption of the drug, rendering it ineffective against the problem it was prescribed for.
So the next time your doctor hands you that prescription of antibiotics, remember to ask about which foods and drinks you may take it with — and shouldn’t. The following are some of the things you should momentarily refrain from consuming while popping antibiotics in your mouth:
Cheese, sour cream, milk, butter, ice cream — these and other dairy products should not be served on the table while you’re on antibiotics. Calcium present in abundant amounts in these treats can hinder the proper absorption of antibiotics. However, there’s one dairy product that you may still take: yogurt. That’s because it is packed with probiotics that help keep the gut healthy and prevent diarrhea, a common side effect of antibiotics.
Just like calcium, iron is known to block the absorption of antibiotics. Chicken liver, red meat, oysters, squash, nuts, dark leafy greens, dark chocolate — try to limit your consumption of these until your course of antibiotics is completed. Are you taking iron supplements or multivitamins containing iron? If so, take them at least 3 hours after you have swallowed your antibiotics to ensure proper absorption.
The truth is alcohol does not have any effect on the breakdown or absorption of antibiotics by your body. So what’s the reason why it is a good idea to steer clear of alcohol while you’re taking antibiotics? Alcohol is said to augment the common side effects of antibiotics, which include dizziness and gastrointestinal issues like diarrhea. So while you are on antibiotics, it’s a great idea to refrain from guzzling down alcoholic drinks.
We all know that eating citrus fruits is a great way to bounce back much faster from a variety of health problems as they are loaded with immune-system boosting vitamin C. However, reaching for them is a no-no if your doctor has instructed you to take antibiotics. That’s because the likes of oranges, tangerines, lemons and most especially grapefruit can have a negative effect on the way your body absorbs antibiotics.
Acidic Foods and Drinks
It’s not just citrus fruits that you should avoid before you’re through with your course of antibiotics, but also anything else that’s acidic. Again, consuming them can keep antibiotics from being properly absorbed, keeping their intake from being fully beneficial. While on antibiotics, stay away from chocolates and anything with tomatoes in them. Certainly, you should refrain from drinking wine, coffee, sodas and even most sports drinks.
The inclusion of high-fiber foods in your everyday diet is unquestionably good for your body. However, it’s something that you should momentarily sidestep while you are taking antibiotics. That’s because the likes of brown rice, oats, whole-wheat bread, cereals, beans, nuts, corn and leafy greens slow down the rate of your stomach’s emptying, and this causes the absorption rate of antibiotics or any other medication that your doctor has prescribed to decelerate. | <urn:uuid:93c1f6b5-8a54-4bf4-95ec-7890049f0a24> | {
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One year ago, the United States Supreme Court issued their 5-4 decision in Windsor v United States in which the court invalidated a part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that defined marriage under federal law as the union of one man and one woman. The court’s majority opinion contained two main themes – the obligation of the federal government to respect the rights of states in their historic role of regulating marriage, and the failure of the federal government to respect the dignity of gays and lesbians.
The spate of poorly reasoned decisions in the lower federal courts since the Windsor decision has led many gay activists to conclude they are on a path to certain victory before the U.S. Supreme Court when one of these cases are heard. Since Justice Anthony Kennedy – the key swing vote on the divided court — authored the majority opinion in Windsor, and several other “pro-gay” opinions, it is taken as an article of faith that he will side with gay marriage advocates when the court ultimately rules.
We believe they are wrong.
States have the right to define marriage in ways that reflect their considered judgment about what constitutes a marriage. While it may be true that a majority of the court is sympathetic to gays and lesbians being subject to societal disapproval and “stigma,” it doesn’t mean they are going to “constitutionalize” gay marriage, invalidating the decisions of state legislatures and over 50 million American voters in 31 states to preserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
It is not irrational for states to want to preserve marriage. Federal judges routinely declare that defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman serves “no rational purpose.” This is nothing more than judicial arrogance and hubris. Only unions between men and women have the capacity to produce children; it is in the best interest of children to have institutions encouraging men and women to be mothers and fathers to their children. Moreover, it is clearly rational for a state to wait and see how this experiment of same-sex marriage plays itself out elsewhere before considering redefining marriage in their own state. Plenty of negative implications have already risen to the surface, such as the impact on religious liberty, to give states pause.
The court will be inclined to allow the democratic system to work, trusting elected officials and voters to make informed decisions over time. When the court took the issue of abortion away from the states in 1973, they launched a forty-plus year culture war. Many justices have bemoaned that outcome, observing that it would have been better to allow the issue to be resolved through the democratic process. The same should be true of same-sex marriage. Invalidating marriage laws across the country will usher in an immense societal reaction and millions of Americans will consider such a ruling to be illegitimate.
If the court had wanted to impose same-sex marriage, they could have already begun the process. For example in Utah, the court issued, unanimously, an emergency stay of the lower courts’ decisions to overturn traditional marriage, believing that the state has a likelihood of prevailing on the merits. Had the court wanted to begin to condition the country to a same-sex marriage regime, they could have refused to act. | <urn:uuid:daa6dbec-7cf2-489b-88ce-8dd1d0f8d874> | {
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Kota: The 'Head and Neck cancer' is among the top most cancers affecting Indian men and the third most common ailment among women, a study by Indian Council of Medical Research has found.
The 'Head and Neck' cancers or Head Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma (HNSC) usually begin in the squamous cells that line the moist, mucosal surfaces inside the head and neck (for example, inside the mouth, nose and throat).
The study further mentions that oral cancer is the commonest among all HNSC cancers.
Around 50 per cent of the affected people die within 12 months of its diagnosis. Throat Cancer (Pharynx and Larynx) is next to oral cancer in terms of prevalence, it said.
The HNSC cancer has been linked with increased consumption of tobacco including gutka and pan masala.
As per a 2014 study conducted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and World Health Organization on the impact of banning of tobacco in India, 90 per cent of respondents (gutka users) desired that the government should ban the manufacturing, sale and distribution of all forms of smokeless tobacco.
The study was conducted with 1,001 current and former gutka users and 458 tobacco product retailers in eight states - Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Delhi.
The survey also found that of the respondents who continue to use pre-packaged gutka (available illegally), 50 per cent reported they consume less since the ban and 80 per cent believed that ban will motivate them to quit.
According to the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) data, output of tobacco, including cigarettes, bidis and chewable tobacco products, declined by 12.1 per cent in March 2015 since the last year.
But experts complain that the ban imposed on chewable tobacco by various states is ineffective in bringing a larger change as both pan masala and tobacco are freely available in markets.
The government should increase taxes over tobacco products and impose a total ban over them to check the consumption of the same, Dr R C Sahani, chairman of Samvedna Foundation of Kota, an NGO working in this sector said.
Dr Pawan Singhal, Associate Professor, SMS Hospital noted that since 90 per cent of HNSCC cancers are related to tobacco, alcohol and areca nut usage, they are highly preventable.
They can be prevented and cured if detected early, he said.
The experts added that, however, millions of people suffer from delayed diagnosis, inadequate treatment, inappropriate rehabilitation and palliation. | <urn:uuid:f95cbd6d-e906-453d-9eb2-d31780466bee> | {
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Photo: graibeard (flickr)
Out With Spuds
The USDA is asking the question: Will cutting out white potatoes make school children healthier?
Starch-heavy corn and peas are also in danger of being cut in favor of leafy greens and orange vegetables, like the other spud: sweet potato.
The National Potato Council is fighting back… hard.
According to John Keeling, the council’s CEO, there may be unhealthy ways to prepare potatoes, but there are no inherently bad fruits or vegetables. He also expresses concern about the effect this decision could have on the potato industry’s bottom line. “When you force a limit on potatoes… you drive the cost up, you reduce the flexibility of the schools, you take away a vegetable that kids like, and you run the risk of… delivering less nutrition.”
The council is even going so far as to say that potatoes are “gateway vegetables” that could eventually lead kids to other foods like carrots or spinach.
Researchers have found that the potato has sixty different beneficial compounds in varying amounts in both the flesh and skin of different strains of potatoes.
The USDA’s new school lunch guidelines say that saturated fat, sugar and sodium have to be lowered while whole grains, fruits and vegetables need to be increased.
There are also set maximum calories per lunch:
- Grade K-5 – 650 calories
- Grade 6-8 – 700 calories
- Grade 9-12 – 850 calories
The new guidelines must be implemented in schools by 2012. | <urn:uuid:48f236f1-91a2-457f-a6dc-e6606d36b046> | {
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Derrick Ong, accredited dietitian in Australia and Singapore, and director of Eat Right Nutrition Consultancy (www.eatright.sg), shares some sweet facts.
Q: How can we identify the various types of sugars and tell the good from the bad?
A: The chemical name for table sugar is sucrose. Generally, ingredients in food labels ending writh “ose” are sugar compounds. These include glucose, fructose, maltose, and dextrose. Other common ingredients containing sugar are molasses, maple syrup or golden syrup. We can’t classify any sugar as “good” or “bad”, but we can distinguish between sugars found in whole foods and those added during food preparation. Whole fruit contains naturally occurring sugars and other important nutrients such as dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals. Sugars added during food or drink preparation are usually devoid of nutrients, and merely give a sweet taste.
Q: Can you suggest a daily meal plan with the recommended sugar intake?
A: Limit your sugar intake to eight to 10 teaspoons a day. For breakfast, have a tuna sandwich with a cup of coffee or tea (three teaspoons of sugar). Order a bowl of fishball noodle soup and a cup of chrysanthemum tea for lunch (four teaspoons of sugar). Have a plate of economical rice with meat and vegetables, and a beverage for dinner (three teaspoons of sugar). You can replace each teaspoon of sugar with one sachet of Equal Stevia to avoid the unwanted calories and effects of sugar. | <urn:uuid:e3823c6c-e6c7-4a8e-9ea0-56f1e12c8e4c> | {
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Transparency of the Regulatory System
The full text of draft regulations is made available for public review, and regulatory agencies give notice of proposed regulations in public meetings where consultations can take place. All proposed regulations are published on a unified website: http://consultoria.gob.do/ .
On the Global Innovations Index, the Dominican Republic ranks 103 out of 128 for regulatory environment and 73 out of 128 for regulatory quality. The World Economic Forum’s 2016 Global Competitiveness report ranked the Dominican Republic 127th out of 138 countries in efficiency of the legal framework in challenging regulations, and 110th in burden of government regulations.
The Dominican Institute of Certified Public Accountants (ICPARD) is the country’s legally-recognized professional accounting organization and has authority to establish accounting standards in accordance with article 31 of Law 479-08, which also declares that financial statements should be prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting standards nationally and internationally (as amended by Law 31-11). The ICPARD and the country’s stock market regulator (Superintendencia de Valores) require the use of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), including IFRS for small and medium-sized entities (SMEs).
In recent years, the Dominican government carried out a major reform effort aimed at improving the transparency and effectiveness of laws affecting competition. Law 42-08 from 2008 on the defense of competition set up an agency to improve and enforce competition laws. Nonetheless, efforts to establish the rule of law in many sectors of the economy have been impeded, or in some cases, soundly defeated by special interests. For example, in 2008, the government refused to enforce a court ruling to halt an illegal blockade of a U.S. business by disgruntled ex-contractors. As another example, in 2013, the Dominican government rescinded permits for a U.S.-owned tourism and real estate development and declared large swaths of the land as a national park. In 2015, several U.S. investors cited the Dominican government’s repeated failure to pay compensation for or return expropriated land, even though valid court orders had been obtained. Many investors, both Dominican and foreign, consider that influence through political contacts trumps formal systems of regulation.
International Regulatory Considerations
The Dominican Republic is member of the WTO and a signatory to several multilateral FTAs including CAFTA-DR, CARICOM-DR, and EPA. In addition, the Dominican Republic is a member of a number of other regional and international organizations, including the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Central American Integration System, the International Center for Settlement of Investor Disputes, and the Multilateral Investment Guaranty Agency.
As a member of the WTO, the government has committed to, but does not always, notify all draft technical regulations to the WTO Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT).
Legal System and Judicial Independence
The legal system of the Dominican Republic is civil law and is based on the Napoleonic code. On October 23, 2007, Decree No. 610-07 placed the Directorate of Foreign Commerce of the then-Secretariat of State for Industry and Commerce (DICOEX) in charge of commercial dispute settlement, including disputes related to the Investment Chapter of CAFTA-DR. The main laws governing commercial disputes are the Commercial Code; Law No. 479-08, the Commercial Societies Law; Law No. 3-02, concerning Business Registration; and Law No. 126-02, concerning e-Commerce and Digital Documents and Signatures.
The country is divided into 12 Judicial Departments, each one headed by a Court of Appeals with jurisdiction over civil and criminal matters. Each Judicial District has a court of first instance. Justices of the Peace handle small claims, certain traffic accidents, landlord-tenant disputes, and other matters. There are also specialized courts with jurisdiction over labor cases, disputes involving registered land, cases involving minors, and administrative matters. The Supreme Court is the highest court, with jurisdiction to handle most appeals from the courts of appeal, and first instance jurisdiction in criminal matters involving certain high-level government officials. The Constitutional Tribunal, created in 2010, rules on the constitutionality of laws and treaties and decides cases involving constitutional questions.
According to the Constitution, the Judicial Branch is independent of the other branches of the State. The right of access to justice is a constitutional right granted by Article 69 of the Constitution. It provides that every person, including foreigners, has the right to appear in court.
The judicial process in the Dominican Republic is procedurally competent, although investors complain of long wait times for a decision. The resolution of a civil case normally takes 2-4 years, although some take significantly longer. Some investors complain that the local court system is unreliable, biased against them, and that special interests and powerful individuals are able to use the legal system in their favor. Regardless of whether they are located in a free-trade zone, companies have problems with dispute resolution, both with the Dominican government and with private-sector entities. U.S. firms indicate that corruption on all levels – business, government, and judicial – impedes their access to justice to defend their interests. Moreover, several large U.S. firms have been subject of injunctions issued by lower courts on behalf of distributors with whom they are engaged in a contract dispute. These disputes are often the result of the firm seeking to end the relationship in accordance with the contract, and the distributor using the injunction as a way of obtaining a more beneficial settlement. These injunctions often disrupt the U.S. companies’ distribution activities, resulting in severe negative impact on sales. In order to effectively engage in the Dominican market, many U.S. companies seek local partners that are well-connected and understand the local business environment.
The World Economic Forum’s 2016 Global Competitiveness report ranked the Dominican Republic 127th out of 138 countries in judicial independence and 112th in efficiency of the legal framework in settling disputes. On the Global Innovations Index, the Dominican Republic ranked 85 out of 128 countries for rule of law.
Laws and Regulations on Foreign Direct Investment
CEI-RD, which aims to be a one-stop-shop for investment information, registration, and investor after-care services, maintains a user-friendly website for guidance on the government’s priority sectors for inward investment and on the range of investment incentives (http://cei-rd.gob.do/ ).
Competition and Anti-Trust Laws
There is no government agency that reviews transactions for competition-related concerns (whether domestic or international in nature); however, the government’s National Commission for the Defense of Competition (ProCompetencia) is responsible for promoting and defending competition by fostering best practices.
Expropriation and Compensation
There are dozens of outstanding disputes between U.S. investors and the Dominican government concerning unpaid government contracts or expropriated property and businesses. Property claims make up the majority of expropriation cases. Most, but not all, expropriations have been used for infrastructure or commercial development. In some cases, claims have remained unresolved for many years. Typically, investors and lenders have not received prompt payment of fair market value for their losses, and subsequent enforcement has been difficult even in cases in which the Dominican courts, including the Supreme Court, have ordered compensation or the government has recognized a claim. In other cases, lengthy delays in compensation payments are blamed on errors committed by government-contracted property assessors, slow processes to correct land title errors, a lack of budgeted funds, and other technical problems. The procedures to resolve expropriations lack transparency and, to a foreigner, may appear to be antiquated. Few examples exist where government officials are held responsible for not paying a recognized claim or not paying the claim in a timely manner.
Discussions at the U.S.-Dominican Trade and Investment Council meetings in October 2002 prompted the Dominican government to establish procedures under a 1999 law to issue bonds to settle claims against the Dominican government dating from before August 16, 1996, including claims for expropriated property.
In 2005, with assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Dominican government identified and analyzed 248 expropriation cases; most (65.5 percent) were resolved by paying claimants with bonds or by dismissing the claim. However, a number of U.S. claims against the Dominican Republic remain.
Recent administrations have expropriated fewer properties than their predecessors, and for the most part have paid compensation. Nonetheless, there are current disputes alleging expropriation, particularly in areas where the government changed or enforced national protected areas regulations.
ICSID Convention and New York Convention
In 2000, the Dominican Republic signed the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID, also known as the “Washington Convention”), but has not ratified it. In 2002, the Dominican Republic became signatory to the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Convention).
Investor-State Dispute Settlement
The Dominican Republic has entered into several bilateral investment treaties, most of which contain dispute resolution provisions that submit the parties to arbitration. The Dominican Republic is a signatory to CAFTA-DR and is thus bound by the investment chapter of CAFTA-DR. There are currently three pending investor-state cases filed against the Dominican Republic under CAFTA-DR.
The Embassy is aware of at least 25 U.S. investors who are involved in ongoing legal disputes with the Dominican government and parastatal firms involving payments, expropriations, contractual obligations, or regulatory obligations. The investors range from large firms to private individuals and the disputes are at various levels of legal review.
International Commercial Arbitration and Foreign Courts
Law 489-09 on commercial arbitration governs the enforcement of arbitration awards, arbitral agreements, and arbitration proceedings in the Dominican Republic. Per law 489-09, arbitration may be ad-hoc or institutional, meaning the parties may either agree on the rules of procedure applicable to their claim, or they may adopt the rules of a particular institution. Certain aspects of the UNICTRAL model law are incorporated into Law 489-09.
Foreign arbitral awards are enforceable in the Dominican Republic in accordance with Law 489-09 and applicable treaties, including the New York Convention, to which the Dominican Republic is a party. There are complaints that the court process is slow and that domestic claimants with political connections have an advantage.
The Restructuring and Liquidation of Business Entities and Merchants Law (Law 141-15) was signed by President Medina on August 18, 2015, which took effect 18 months after signing. The law will allow a debtor company to continue to operate for up to five years during reorganization proceedings by staying legal proceedings. The law orders the creation of new courts with exclusive jurisdiction to hear all matters regarding the insolvency process, contemplates the appointment of conciliators, verifiers, experts, and employee representatives, allows the debtor to contract for new debt which will have priority status in relation to other secured and unsecured claims, stipulates civil and criminal sanctions for non-compliance, and permits the possibility of coordinating cross-border proceedings based on recommendations of the United Nations Commission on International Trade (UNCITRAL) Model Law of 1997.
Eighteen months after the law’s signing, no specialized bankruptcy courts have yet been set up. Certain judges have been assigned to hear bankruptcy matters but there are no specialized bankruptcy judges yet. | <urn:uuid:951b2af6-63e9-4c46-be73-7f9bea705d2e> | {
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Ghosting through the forests of Laos and Vietnam, the saola—a large ox that looks like an antelope—eluded researchers and their cameras for nearly 14 years.
But camera traps set out by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Vietnamese government in the central Annamite Mountains in Vietnam captured grainy black and white photographs of the extremely rare mammal in September of this year, the group announced this week.
The last sighting of a saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) in the wild was in 1999 in Laos.
“When our team first looked at the photos we couldn’t believe our eyes,” said Van Ngoc Thinh, Vietnam’s country director for the WWF, in a statement. “Saola are the holy grail for south-east Asian conservationists so there was a lot of excitement.”
First discovered in 1992 near the border between Laos and Vietnam, the saola was the first large mammal new to science in more than 50 years, according to a WWF statement.
The mammal is often referred to as the “Asian unicorn” because of its rarity, although it sports two pointed horns on its head rather than one.
Although its elusive nature makes for a fun nickname, it has stymied researchers’ efforts to get a handle on the animal’s basic biology and population numbers.
Some estimates place global populations at 250 to 300 animals. But these are based on interviews with villagers who have seen the animal, and on hunting trophies, according to a report in Smithsonian magazine.
It’s incredibly difficult to measure the size of the saola population because conservationists do not have a full grasp on where they live, said Barney Long, the WWF director of species protection and Asian species conservation, in an interview this week.
One of the projects they’re working on to help detect this rare mammal in the field is by using leeches. “Southeast Asian land leeches drink blood from passing animals, and the blood stays in leeches for a few months,” he said. So researchers can test the blood to find out which animals the leech has been feeding on.
If saola blood turns up in a leech, the scientists will know the mammals are in the vicinity.
Listed as critically endangered in the IUCN Red List, saola often end up as incidental victims to snares set by hunters looking to catch Asiatic black bears or Malayan sun bears. The bears are hunted for their bile, which is used in traditional Chinese medicine. (See “Endangered Moon Bears Harvested for Bile in Vietnam.”)
Habitat fragmentation due mainly to road construction has also hammered saola populations.
The Vietnamese government has created nature preserves in the saola’s range, and banned all hunting in the mammal’s habitat in an effort to protect the animal.
“Since 2011, forest guard patrols in CarBi area have removed more than 30,000 snares from this critical saola habitat and destroyed more than 600 illegal hunters’ camps,” Van Ngoc in the statement. “Confirmation of the presence of the saola in this area is a testament to the dedicated and tireless efforts of these forest guards.”
Danielle Elliot assisted with reporting on this story.
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By Amy Youngs The Worm Share project encourages symbiotic relationships between humans and worms. Through experimental artworks, participatory designs, workshops and networking technologies, I facilitate the travel and propagation of composting worms into domestic spaces and encourage others to do the same. In exchange, the worm colonies provide valuable ecosystem services.
Eisenia Foetida is a species of worm suited to living in a wide variety of situations, including domestic spaces. These hearty creatures are able to efficiently turn our food and paper waste into plant fertilizer. Vermicomposting (worm composting) can happen in a very local way—in a kitchen, a basement, an office or in a bin embedded in furniture—and it can empower individuals to participate in the reduction of greenhouse gases. Landfills and organic wastes thrown in traditional composting bins decompose and emit methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide. On the contrary, the process of vermicomposting emits no harmful gas or unpleasant odors. The byproduct of worms is a nutrient-rich material that looks and smells like soil.
The project began with artworks that integrated live worms into sculptures and furniture within domestic spaces. In my sculpture Digestive Table, for instance, a flow-through worm bag was built into a functional table so humans could literally share a meal with worms. People observed the composting activity of the worms on an LCD screen built into the table surface and connected to an infrared camera that monitored the worms’ activity below. I posted the building plans for this sculpture online to help popularize vermicomposting by inspiring others, who might also have desired a useful and aesthetically pleasing worm home, to reproduce the table. I soon discovered that there was far more demand for a simpler, utilitarian version of the flow-through worm bag—one without the table or the camera technology. Once I posted my simplified worm bag designs online, a community of builders developed. People I’d never met began to construct their own bags, ask me questions, post suggestions and upload photos of their finished projects—many of which, based upon a builder’s needs or the materials available, diverged widely from the original. I was impressed with the improvements and evolution of the design that spontaneously occurred just within the comments section of the instructions webpage: http://www.instructables.com/id/Worm-bin-bag-for-indoor-vermicomposting-and-easy-s/. With more than 59,000 viewers and 160 public comments, this project has had more exposure than most of my gallery exhibitions.
Recently, Worm Share has taken on the form of workshops that encourage people to design their own creative worm bins to fit their lifestyles and the needs of the worms. Everything from custom kitchen cabinets to bike trailer bins have been imagined and some of the new designs are being field tested now. All of the workshop participants who are ready to build their bins, are encouraged to take home a pound of free starter worms, which come from my own worm colony. Worms are a never-ending, regenerative source, multiplying based on the amount of food and space available. Workshop participants also learn how they can double their efforts to reduce greenhouse gases by freely sharing their worms with friends and strangers. Worldwide worm sharing is possible through the online network, Vermicomposters.com, which encourages people to identify their general location on a map and willingness to share worms with others. Free and anonymous worm sharing regularly takes place in my town via porch drop-offs. In exchange, I encourage the people receiving starter worms to "pay it forward" and become a future worm-sharing node within this community of creative design and open-source sharing.
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[/aslideshow] World map of vermicomposters (red markers identify a person willing to share): http://vermicomposters.com/
Photos of Worm Share Workshop at Spaces Gallery in Cleveland, OH: http://hypernatural.com/wormshare.html
Digestive Table sculpture and worm bag construction plans: http://hypernatural.com/digestive.html
Contributor’s biography Amy M. Youngs creates biological art, interactive sculptures and digital media works that explore the complex relationship between technology and our changing concept of nature and self. Obsessions include creating artificial nature experiences, spying on worms and constructing indoor, edible ecosystems. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she is an Associate Professor of Art and Technology at The Ohio State University. To learn more about her, please visit her website at http://hypernatural.com.
Photo Credits: Photo 05 is a compilation of photos that were posted to the comments page of Young's "Instructable" for building a worm bin. Photo 08 from Spaces Gallery Staff. | <urn:uuid:45c29c64-4bf0-415d-9bd2-da3d7f8e9736> | {
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and endocrinologists focusing on hemoglobin A1C and microvascular complications. The new evidence.
at the impact of these drugs on patients that have heart failure, whether they have diabetes or no.
Mar 31, 2015.
Macrovascular and microvascular complications that accompany Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) add to the burden among patients.
Jun 7, 2016.
Cardiovascular complications. Jun 30.2010 – Umesh Masharani, MB, BS, MRCP( UK). 1. Heart disease – Microangiopathy occurs in the heart.
Independent of diabetes,
development of diverse cardiovascular outcomes [.
Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is linked to diabetes, and each condition can make the other worse. Both can lead to severe, life-altering, and even fatal consequences. This MNT Knowledge.
Hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, often affects people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The American Diabetes Association reports that from 2000 to 2012, 71 percent of adults with.
Hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, often affects people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The American Diabetes Association reports that from 2000 to.
Recommendations for CVD management, including lipids and BP, in patients with type 2 diabetes from the 2016 ADA diabetes guidelines
The Solution to the Global Epidemic – Angiogenesis through CVBT’s Drug Candidates – Cardiovascular diseases are a result of restricted or lack of blood flow to tissues or organs. Angiogenesis is the growth of new blood vessels to tissue or organs.
Diabetes is a group of chronic diseases characterized by hyperglycemia. Modern medical care uses a vast array of lifestyle and pharmaceutical interventions aimed at preventing and controlling hyperglycemia. In addition to ensuring the adequate delivery of glucose to the tissues of the body.
If you have the following diabetes symptoms, you can’t afford to ignore them. The good news is there are ways to treat diabetes symptoms naturally.
Diabetes is known to many as a lifestyle disease.
which can cost them their lives in a few hours or long term complication.
Of the many complex complications of diabetes, adverse cardiovascular (CV) events have the greatest capacity to cause sudden or premature death and.
Aggressive treatment of risk factors to prevent cardiovascular complications of Diabetes. Ms. Kristin L. Eckland, RN, MSN, ACNP-BC. Duke University Health.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels.
. If a female has diabetes, she is more likely to develop heart disease than a male with.
. In fact, cardiovascular disease is the most life- threatening of the diabetic complications and diabetics are two- to four-fold more likely to die of.
The diagnosis was surprising: Type 1 diabetes. Alec’s blood sugar.
a nurse practitioner discussed the potential complications of the chronic disease, including blindness, nerve damage, and kidney a.
Preventing diabetes complications is like fighting a war with many fronts. Testing your blood sugar every day and making sure you have low hemoglobin A1C readings can help prevent many problems.
Nov 10, 2017.
For patients with Type 2 diabetes and pre-existing heart disease, the.
whether these medications help reduce heart complications in those.
The Ghana Heart Initiative (GHI) project has been launched in Accra.
smoking cessation and physical activity as well as re.
Prevention Of Type 1 Diabetes In Children New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes [EASD]) shows that children with type. of islet autoimmunity in the “Type 1 Diabetes Predic. Our Mission. The mission of the Children with Diabetes Research Foundation is to fund human clinical trials leading to cure and prevention of Type
WHO-EM/DIN6/E/G MANAGEMENT OF DIABETES MELLITUS STANDARDS OF CARE AND CLINICAL PRACTICE GUIDELINES Edited by Dr A.A.S. Alwan Regional Adviser, Noncommunicable Diseases
Diabetes without Drugs: The 5-Step Program to Control Blood Sugar Naturally and Prevent Diabetes Complications [Suzy Cohen] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Based on breakthrough studies, Cohen’s program reveals how people with diabetes can reduce their need for prescription medication and minimize the disease’s effect on the body.
Approximately 29 million Americans are diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes annually. Of that.
Cardiovascular and Related Complications and Evidence- Based.
Diabetes is a disease that occurs when your blood glucose, also called blood sugar, is too high. Over time, having too much glucose in your blood can cause health problems, such as heart disease, nerve damage, eye problems, and kidney disease.
This trial is conducted in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America. The aim of this trial is to determine the long term effect of liraglutide on cardiovascular events in subjects with type 2 diabetes.
Cardiopulmonary and vascular complications associated with diabetes are major contributors to mortality of patients with diabetes. Dr. Ayako Makino's.
The report released in December says that certain pregnancy complications may mean chronic or even life-threatening health issues like heart disease –– later. And fetal growth restriction.
Know the Warning Signs. If you’ve noticed any signs and symptoms of diabetes, visit your doctor and get checked now. Learn more
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- Eating Healthy Diabetes Jewel Osco: Food City is an American supermarket chain with stores located in Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. It is owned by K-VA-T Food Stores, Inc., Join us for a FREE Eating Healthy with Diabetes™ grocery store tour. In just 90 minutes, receive an...
- Nova Diabetes Nova Biomedical Corp: Sheet3 Sheet2 Sheet1 Aronowitz v. Home Diagnostics, Inc., 419 Fed. Appx. 988 (Fed. Cir. April 20, 2011) R. 36 Accuride Int'l Inc. v. SSW Holding Co., Inc., 417 Fed. EDP Member Application Join the Employer Discount Program now and start commuting to ...
- Alimentacion De Una Embarazada Con Diabetes: Esto puede causarles problemas a ambos durante el embarazo, el parto y en los años venideros. Seguir un plan de alimentación es una de las formas más. Cuando una mujer que no es diabética pero, durante el embarazo, presenta unos niveles elevados de g...
- Picture Of Diabetes Type 1: Blood glucose (blood sugar) monitoring is the main tool you have to check your diabetes control. This check tells you your blood glucose level at any one time. Keeping a log of your results is vital. When you bring this record to your health care pro...
- Traveling With Diabetes 2: I was reading a blog post today from Diabetics Daily and while this issue doesn’t pop up on our blog too often, it's apparently a concern on other diabetes related blogs and message boards. From Diabetics Daily, Sara Knicks writes: I just got back fr...
- Diabetes The Glycaemic Index And Older People: What is Glycemic Index? Carbohydrate is an essential part of our diets, but not all carbohydrate foods are equal. The glycemic index (GI) was first developed by Jenkins and colleagues 2) and the Glycemic Index (GI) is a relative ranking of carbohydra... | <urn:uuid:5242f720-11ea-4e49-9900-854c8a842d2c> | {
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The Great Flood of 1850
We now know that Hopkin Thomas and his partner, John Ollis began erection of a machine shop and foundry in Tamaqua in 1848. The location was in the industrial district just below the tracks of the Little Schuylkill R. R. and to the right of Vine St. in the contemporary map shown below.
Tamaqua’s industrial area – as noted below, the river originally ran where the tracks are now located.
Current (2010) satellite photo of industrial area north of Broad Street. Click for enlargement.
By 1850, the business should have been stable. As was noted earlier, a possibility exists that the business was surveyed in the special census of manufacturers in 1850 which recorded with the number of people employed in each business, the type of power (water, steam, etc.) used in the manufacturing process, and other items – including the name of the business. Thus far a copy of that census has not been reviewed.
In any event, it was reported in the testimonial to Hopkin published in the Catasauqua Dispatch that the business failed and that Hopkin lost a large sum of money. The failure would seem to have occurred in about 1850. Based on the accounts of the Great Flood of 1850, it is most likely that Hopkin and his partner lost their investment when the flood wiped out the Tamaqua industrial area.
The flood has been described to a limited extent in several regional histories. Serfass’s Iron Steps contains the most best description and is reproduced here:
To realize what happened in Tamaqua in 1850, one must first understand that the town had just completed a major project that altered nature -- changing the course of the Little Schuylkill River from its natural path through downtown to a new location about 2 blocks east. The natural riverbed was in the heart of the downtown, about where the railroad tracks divide the town today. The reason for this undertaking is unclear, perhaps the river's natural course interfered with the laying of the railroad tracks. Or maybe the river occupied prime real estate in the burgeoning downtown business area. Whatever the reason, the river's path was intercepted north of town and diverted eastward in a large crescent shape to the southern tip of town, where it was allowed to return to its natural path. (Today, the river still follows this man-made path through town.)
It began as a gentle rain in Tamaqua on Sunday evening, September 1, 1850, and gradually turned into a nonstop downpour, By daylight, the trestles leading into the mines at Newkirk, just beyond the west end of town, became clogged with dirt and debris that built up so high that a massive natural dam formed on the Wabash Creek. After several hours, the dam gave way and water rushed into the valley toward Tamaqua, combining with yet another flood racing down from the north mountains as the swollen Little Schuylkill River, over its banks, roared toward town determined to return to its natural course, its path of least resistance. Two floods converged on Tamaqua in one horrific crash, destroying much of what had been built on the flatlands. For a brief time, the Little Schuylkill River had indeed returned to its natural path, and in doing so, bitterly destroyed almost everything man had erected along the way. The water's depth was beyond imagination.
One of the historical sketches indicates, "The generally accepted theory is that the flood was caused by a great water spout which burst over the valleys. In the gorge on Burning Mountain a tree 60 feet up the side marks the height of the sudden flood-everything on the flats was swept away. Dwellings, foundations and workshops were taken away by the waters. A double frame house in which 22 persons had taken shelter, was torn asunder and all were drowned The Rev. Oberfeld was caught by the water while in the act of rescuing a child and was drowned."
Accounts reveal that 62 people lost their lives during the disaster. The tracks of the Little Schuylkill Railroad were completely obliterated and the town was isolated from the outside world for six days. On September 2 and 3, everybody turned out to retrieve the dead. One procession brought in 11 bodies at one time. Mourners simply wandered the streets in disbelief, as it seemed that death had claimed a life in every home.
Many businesses never reopened and approximately 40 homes were completely swept away by the flood waters. Bridges and roads ceased to exist. People were rescued from trees. One story even tells of a gallant man galloping his horse by the water's edge trying to save struggling victims, only to be swept away himself by the erratic current.
As for the minister who died rescuing a child, there remains a stark, solemn monument in St. John's Lutheran Cemetery on Patterson Street in Tamaqua. The tallest white, thin grave marker in the cemetery's old section at one time provided an account of the rescue in English on the markers east side and in the German language on the west. Today, the inscription on the English side has surrendered to nature, but on the German side, you still can discern the words of the heroic attempt of "Rev. Peter Z. Oberfelter" (the German spelling), who gave his life to save a drowning child. The tombstone, six feet high, rests high and dry on Dutch Hill, overlooking the valley.
Sadly, the Great Flood of 1850 remains Tamaqua’s most historic single event and most noted tragedy.
One would think that a disaster of this magnitude would have been thoroughly documented by someone living in the area, but no news article has been uncovered. What were the “many businesses that never reopened”? There is no record.
The only contemporary news article that covered the tragedy that has been uncovered was that published in The Miner’s Journal And Pottsville General Advertiser on September 7. The text of section dealing with Tamaqua is as follows:
TAMAQUA. The flood reached this place about 4 o’clock A.M. Part of the town is situated on a flats in the valley of the Little Schuylkill; this was swept clean of every building, and from the suddenness of the waters rise and the hour of the occurrence, the loss of life is very great. The damage to individual property is also greater than at any other place we had heard from; about 50 lives it is supposed were lost. Up to Wednesday evening 36 bodies had been recovered. The following is a list of names of those drowned so far as we have ascertained: Wife of Thomas Foster, two girls and boy; Mrs. Edmunds, one boy, one girl, and two grand-daughters; Mrs. David Jones and child; Mrs. Gresing and child; Mr. Geo. Welsh, one boy and two girls; Mrs. Ytringham, two girls and two boys; Mrs. Heron, and four children; Catherine Williams; Mary. McCartney a young girl from Beaver Meadows; a young girl fourteen years of age, daughter of Daniel Oxrider; Rev. P. Z. Oberfelt, pastor of the German Lutheran congregation; Mary Williams.
Without further information on the specifics of this disastrous event we speculate that it was the Great Flood of 1850 that led to Hopkin’s business failure in Tamaqua.
Rev. November 2010 | <urn:uuid:121de743-ffe4-43a8-9694-2d18f6ca7b62> | {
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At Feldmanis Family Dentistry, Dr. Rita Feldmanis always strives to inform patients about the important role that diet plays in helping to maintain and improve their oral health. But what if you never drank a soda or ever ate anything overly acidic, would you still suffer from tooth decay? How much does genetics play in determining our long-term oral health, and does it matter whether you’re a girl or a boy?
For decades, researchers have found it difficult to determine why some patients suffer from tooth decay while others who share similar diets and eating habits do not. Many different studies have found that severe tooth decay occurs more frequently in men than women. Studies on dental erosion have been conducted on groups as diverse as wine lovers to patients suffering from eating disorders. Both of these groups include individuals who frequently expose their teeth to acid, and therefore have a higher risk of suffering from tooth decay. Surprisingly, research has found that not all of the people in these types of groups share the same risk for tooth decay. A new study from researchers at the University of Oslo’s Faculty of Dentistry are now attempting to explain this discrepancy.
More Than Just Acid Erosion
What explains why some individuals suffer from tooth decay while others do not? Why do some people, when exposed to oral acids, have such a different reaction than others who consume a similar diet and receive the same level of exposure? These are the types of questions the research team hopes to answer.
“As dentists and researchers, we are often facing cases of dental erosion that we have difficulties explaining, and we meet patients who don’t have dental erosion although their lifestyle indicates that they should. It is also a general assumption that boys tend to have more erosion and more severe erosive lesion than girls. We believe that this disparity is due to something more than just the acidic effect,” explains researchers in a written statement.
Finding an Answer
To begin finding some answers, researchers conducted a study on 66 patients with vomiting and eating disorders. The study included a clinical examination and a questionnaire where patients were asked to detail their illness. Questions about the frequency of vomiting and duration of the eating disorder were asked of all the participants, along with questions regarding their general health, eating and drinking habits, and oral hygiene habits.
The study found that 70 percent of the participants suffered from tooth decay and that those who had suffered with their illnesses the longest had more evidence of decay and more lesions when compared to those who had dealt with their disease for a shorter period of time. The findings of this study helped to confirm researchers’ assumptions that tooth decay is a common problem in patients dealing with an eating disorder. However, researchers were surprised to find that a full third of participants showed no signs of enamel erosion, despite also frequently vomiting due to their eating disorder.
Researchers then conducted laboratory testing in an attempt to isolate why certain study participants were immune to tooth decay. The results showed that the susceptibility to tooth decay seemed to be influenced by both an individual’s oral biome and the quality of dental enamel.
Researchers believe that the key to explaining this discrepancy may simply come down to genetics. Some people may possess a genetic makeup that makes their teeth naturally more resilient to tooth decay. While this certainly seems unfair to all of us you had to endure a filling despite brushing and flossing daily, it does give researchers hope that by identifying the genetic markers for stronger tooth enamel they may be able to find ways of duplicating that effect for others.
Until that time, it’s important that patients keep brushing and flossing daily, and continue to schedule regular exams and cleanings at Feldmanis Family Dentistry. | <urn:uuid:5f623dae-3485-4639-a2b1-a81e4860ff38> | {
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The study from the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, published on Wednesday in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, compared spinach leaves kept under continuous lighting against spinach kept in the dark, each for three to nine days.
It found the spinach kept under lighting had significantly higher levels of vitamins C, K and E and folate, and the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin, reported Reuters.
Comparatively, the spinach stored in the dark lost nutrients. The research should extend to other vegetables.
The idea for the study came to researcher Gene Lester while shopping, he said. Seeing spinach kept in supermarkets at 4°C under fluorescent lighting, he wondered if it was good or bad for the vegetables.
“It is about time we asked some of these questions and do some of the science,” he told Reuters, adding the findings should ultimately not be surprising.
“These vitamins are basically in the plant for photosynthesis and we humans, being the biggest predator of plants, have evolved over time to utilise them as opposed to we having to manufacture them,” he explained.
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Brussels is the home and heart of the European Union, including the European Research Council, and the project ERC=Science², run by the Brussels-based media and communications company, Science|Business has been promoting ERC grantees around Europe for more than three years. If you’re interested in the latest European research into Smart Cities, Food/Nutrition, Longevity, the Senses, Music and AI, take a look at the project’s interactive articles on-line. The project was designed to reach a wide public of specialists and non-specialists in Europe and afar, using traditional web and social media, as well as videos, cartoons, augmented reality, and ‘popup’ displays for museums and shopping centres.
Science like you’ve never tasted it before – Brussels-style
One such ERC funded project featured by ERC=Science² is ShareCity. Irish researcher Anna Davies and her ERC-funded project is in its fourth year now, studying ways to share food within cities. The group built a database of food-sharing initiatives in 100 cities around the world, including Brussels.
What is science? Better question: what isn’t it?
Since 2015, we have been chronicling the amazing diversity of work funded by the European Research Council – finding science in traffic jams, urban gardens, Turkish music, even the lifespans of monks. Science, it appears, is everywhere. Indeed, the specialised term, “scientist,” is only a few hundred years old; before then, there were “natural philosophers” or, as technical experts, crafts people – and their work of course affected every aspect of life.
In painting, for instance, Marieke Hendriksen, a Dutch historian studying the technology of the arts from 1500 to 1950, says: “we have come across examples where the reader is advised to taste a fluid for cleaning old paintings to establish its acidity,” Another example: “a pressing iron that should be cooled before use to the point where it no longer hisses when a wet sponge is pressed against it.” Her goal, as part of an ERC-funded team: to create a database of recipes and techniques, an online historical semantic map of (in Dutch) “techné”.
With this broad definition in mind, here are highlights and updates from some of the researchers we have written about and connected with through social media and events across the European Union.
Is food-sharing the future?
Irish researcher Anna Davies and her ERC-funded project is in its fourth year now, studying ways to share food within cities. The group built a database of food-sharing initiatives in 100 cities around the world, including New York, Santiago, Brussels, Mumbai, Nairobi and Christchurch. She has a book coming out, Urban Food Sharing, and is launching online tools to help these eco-friendly initiatives grow. They include a match-making service to help the initiatives inter-connect, and a set of indicators to consider and communicate the impacts of the food sharing efforts they support.
In September 2019, her project is running an international workshop in Dublin to reflect on the findings of their research examining the governance of food sharing. The aim: a governance manifesto for sustainable food sharing.
“I’m hopeful that the impacts of urban food sharing will become more visible in decision making,” Davies says. “The long-term goal is of course the attainment of the (UN) 2030 Agenda and a food system that not only provides safe, healthy, and sustainable food for everyone, but which also provides opportunities for people to grow, cook and eat together.”
Now smell this
Another ERC-funded researcher, Marianna Obrist, helped bring the smell of the forest to the World Economic Forum, a famous international gathering of the rich and powerful every January in Davos, Switzerland. There, New York-based designer New Reality built a virtual reality show that lets you feel what it’s like to be a growing rainforest tree, with your body as trunk and your arms as branches. Based partly on Obrist’s sensory research, the team developed a software and hardware system called OWidgets to delivers burst of compressed air – in this case, whatever it is a tree might smell if a tree could smell – to the user’s nose.
She has gone on, in a series of scientific publications, to explore smell in greater depth. One, which she entitled “Smell-O-Message”, had volunteers test “the effectiveness of visual, olfactory and combined visual-olfactory notifications in a messaging application.” The conclusion: adding smell to a message gets your attention fast – or, in the more formal scientific language: “We demonstrated that olfactory notifications improve users’ confidence and performance in identifying the urgency level of a message, with the same reaction time and disruption levels as for visual notifications.”
Power to the people
Jennifer Gabrys has been running a citizen science project to help people better understand the amount of pollution in their local environment. The group developed devices that city dwellers can use to measure particulate matter in the air around them, and demonstrated that urban vegetation can have a mitigating effect on air pollution levels. Or, as they put it: “While reducing emissions at the source is the best way to address air pollution, vegetation can play an important role in mitigating air pollution. Trees and plants can capture particulate matter, absorb gaseous pollutants, and phyto-remediate soils. In addition, vegetation can enhance biodiversity, capture stormwater and reduce flooding, and lessen the urban heat island effect.”
They then developed what they call an air quality garden with the Museum of London and the City of London. Through further workshops and walks hosted during Open Fest, the team developed a “phyto-sensor toolkit” for people to set up their own gardens to improve air quality.
Another citizen-scientist advocate is Manuel Franco, who organised people in an impoverished neighbourhood of Madrid to photograph their local food environment – the good, the bad and the ugly. The focus: habits or circumstances in the city that can endanger people’s cardiovascular health. Result? These citizen scientists were emboldened to develop their own food policy recommendations, which they gave to local authorities (for instance, get healthier workplace vending machines.)
Since then, the group has been helping similar citizen-science efforts in the US and Spain, and published 29 scientific articles. And it developed a method to identify “risky areas” in cities for cardiovascular health in cities.
What happens when a research project fails?
Of course, not every experiment is a success; if it were, it wouldn’t be real science.
For a brief time in early 2018, we had a wonderful Twitter connection with the ERC-funded project PICSAT (@PicSat), a nano-satellite the size of a shoebox aimed at observing the transit of a young planet outside our solar system, Beta Pictoris b, as it moves in front of its bright and equally young star Beta Pictoris.
PicSat, on Twitter, was an anthropomorphised, chatty, poetry-writing, “talking” satellite. Its purpose was scientific, but while en route it – or rather its human handlers – engaged with schoolchildren, astronomers and ham radio operators from around the world. We chatted with PicSat about astronomy in general, and PicSat’s mission in particular. We marveled at the close connection PicSat had with ham radio operators from around the world who regularly sent the PicSat team information they gathered from its “beams” back to earth.
As a reward, the team would regularly direct PicSat to beam down space-themed quotes and the like for the ham radio operators to decode. A sample: On 1 March 2018, one ham radio operator @EA4SG tweeted: “@IamPicSat is telling us: ‘Enjoy your weekend with lots of apple pie! If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe (CS)’”- a reference to the late astronomer Carl Sagan.
And then, after 10 weeks in operation, on the afternoon (in Paris) of Tuesday, 20 March 2018, PicSat suddenly fell silent. Attempts to re-establish contact failed. No sign of life. Did something in space hit it? Did its power fail? No explanation. Just the silence of space.
Of course, that isn’t the end of the story. The researchers learned a lot about managing this new breed of tiny, (relatively) inexpensive satellites, and are planning further research. The @SciSq tweet on 5 April 2018: “We’re deeply saddened @IamPicSat ‘disappeared from our radar’ most likely, forever. We’ll never forget the loyal & outstanding #citizensciencecollaboration it had w/ #hamradio amateurs around the globe, & the way in which it delighted all who followed it. Farewell, stargazer!”
Author: Diane Fresquez
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The Power of Mirror Neurons and Why Parents’ Energy Matters
Because we’re frequently the first responders to our kids’ challenging moments, our own energy and emotions have a major effect on them. Learn how mirror neurons impact behavior, and how you can help calm extreme ADHD emotions with your reactions.
There is a clear connection between a parent’s energy and a child’s emotional regulation. One trait that almost all differently-wired kids share is emotional intensity or hypersensitivity to the world around them — physical, mental, emotional. In other words, they respond to energy.
Ask anyone raising a child with sensory processing issues, and they’ll tell you their kid can read a room better than a seasoned politician. They lose it over things like a pebble in their shoe or a tag in their shirt. Likewise, when kids with ADHD notice energy shifts, they often respond as if a switch has been flipped. They are emotional barometers, not to mention mirrors of us as parents.
Our Energy Affects Our Teens
If we don’t regulate our own energy, we can make a bad situation worse. We have a type of brain cell called “mirror neurons” — cells that mimic behavior and feelings they see in others. If we see a friend bump her head, our mirror neurons fire up, and we wince in sympathy.
So when we get angry or yell during difficult moments with our kids, our child’s mirror neurons rise up to meet ours. More anger ensues, the situation intensifies, and it takes us longer to get to a place of calm and resolution. And we blame ourselves for not being “perfect.”
Use Energy for Good
Mirror neurons can work in our favor and contribute to creating an environment of calmness and acceptance, even in tough moments. By learning how to manage our own energy — which comes with commitment — we can stop muddying the waters, and defuse a conflict without saying a word. Even better, using our energy for good bonds us to our kids, since we will be their rock no matter what feelings they are working through.
Don’t Transfer Your Own Anxiety to Your Child
I recently reviewed an email from a mother whose daughter has executive functioning challenges and dysgraphia, and, possibly, ADHD. For the last few years, the mother has struggled with anxiety over her daughter’s challenges. Then the mom worked hard to focus on the present and recognize that her daughter would be fine in the long run, likely even stronger for her struggles. Once she did this, it changed the way her daughter experienced her life as well.
Many of us harbor anxiety over present and future unknowns relating to our child. We might notice that our anxiety peaks during certain times of the year, such as high school graduation season, a time when our Facebook newsfeeds are filled with photos of happy students transitioning to bright futures. We see those images and we act a little differently toward our child — less patient, more intense, less trusting. And our kids will feel it.
We want to know our emotional triggers so we can know when they’re being pulled. I know my own — feeling like I’m not being taken seriously, or having someone be angry with me when I feel they have no right to be. Being aware of these triggers keeps me honest about my reactions when my son sparks a strong response in me.
One way to get to the heart of our feelings about our teen is to ask: What am I making this mean? I have a friend with a twice-exceptional child with autism. He has no friends. My friend has racked her brain looking for ways to help him build a social circle. I asked her what she was making it mean that her son didn’t have a social circle. I know that her son is happy doing his own thing and spending time alone.
After my friend gave it some thought, she realized she had a lot invested in the idea that her son needed a small, tight-knit circle of friends to be happy, in part because she herself wouldn’t have survived high school without her two best friends. Making this connection didn’t end the worries for my friend, but it did prompt her to consider that her son’s needs were different from hers, and that he might spend a lot of time alone. And that’s OK. Knowing that helps her stay more relaxed when another social situation triggers the same response.
Reframe the Situation for a Better Perspective
Another powerful reframing question is What’s perfect about this? Meaning, how might what’s happening in this moment be exactly what needs to happen for my child, for me, or both of us? Often my response was, “I can’t think of a single thing.” But then I discovered there is always a way to flip a situation around and consider the gifts that might be hidden within it.
Excerpted from Differently Wired: Raising an Exceptional Child in a Conventional World, by DEBORAH REBER. Copyright 2018, Workman Publishing.
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Lesson 8: refer to evidence in a text to draw a character
In this lesson you will:
Find the description of Auggie in the text
Draw Auggie, using the written description as a set of instructions
Use colour to depict emotion and character
Read from A Tour of the Galaxy to August through the Peephole. You can listen here
I wonder why we have not had a proper description of Auggie thus far in the novel.
I wonder why it has taken the reader so long to be given a description of him when his physical features are so key to the story.
What are your thoughts about this? Write them down.
Draw a picture of Auggie. You will need to use the description given in the book, in particular, Via's perspective. I wonder if this differs from Auggie's descriptions of himself.
Show some of Auggie's personality in your drawing: explore how you might do this using colour (think about the first art lesson for the term based on Emotions and Feelings).
Email your picture to me so that I can post them here: it would be interesting to see how your images differ and how they are the same.
Are you continuing to make a note of interesting phrases and sayings that occur in each chapter? | <urn:uuid:2759798a-e044-4d83-a155-6f3bd0c324b5> | {
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- 1 Should You Use Timelines In Your Presentations?
- 2 How To Use SmartArt To Make A Timeline In PowerPoint
- 3 How To Create Timelines Manually In PowerPoint
- 4 Final Words On How To Make A Timeline In PowerPoint
In this article, I’m going to teach you how to make a timeline in PowerPoint. When presenting a list of events in a sequential or chronological order, it’s best to do so using a graphical representation, also known as a timeline.
You can also use text, of course, but when presenting a timeline in PowerPoint, it’s more preferable to use a visual representation as it makes it easier to follow a chain of events from the starting point until the endpoint.
Should You Use Timelines In Your Presentations?
Many PowerPoint presentations can benefit from the use of timelines. Here are some examples:
- If you’re a history teacher, you can present a timeline of whatever historical event you’re discussing in class.
- If you’re a project manager, you can present a timeline of milestones, deadlines, and deliverables for your project.
- For startups looking for investor funding, you may want to include your product or project’s timeline so potential investors can see if it’s worthwhile getting involved with your company.
There are plenty of uses for a timeline, and it’s ultimately up to you if you’re going to use one in your presentation.
Now, there are a couple of different ways you can make a timeline in PowerPoint. Let’s start with the first, and easiest, method.
How To Use SmartArt To Make A Timeline In PowerPoint
SmartArt is great for making timelines in PowerPoint because whenever you add a new point in the timeline, the diagram is going to automatically adjust and resize. This means you don’t have to manually drag and resize your timeline. In all honesty, this can be a very time-consuming process especially if you’re working through a lot of dates or milestones.
So here’s how to use SmartArt for timelines:
- Go to Insert > Illustrations > SmartArt.
- The Choose a SmartArt Graphic dialog box will then pop-up. Usually, the SmartArt graphics used for timelines are in the Process You can play around and go through the different graphics to see which one best suits your needs.
You can see below that I’ve clicked on the Basic Timeline graphic. You can see a description on the lower right section of the screenshot that PowerPoint gives you a description of what each SmartArt graphic is best used for.
- Once you’ve selected a suitable SmartArt timeline, click the OK For my example, I chose to go with the Basic Timeline graphic. This is what it looks like on my slide.
- You can simply click on the [Text] box and start typing your text. For this example, I chose to write Milestones 1 to 3 on the timeline.
- If you want to add more milestones or dates, you can do so by going to SmartArt Tools > Design, and then clicking on Add Shape. But before you do that make sure you’ve selected or clicked on one of the shapes so you can choose if you want to add the additional shape before or after the shape you’ve clicked on.
- This is what happens when I add more shapes to my timeline. To edit the text easily, I type in the Text Pane instead of on the timeline graphic itself.
- If you want to add a bullet point under each milestone, you can click on the milestone and then go to SmartArt Tools > Design > Add Bullet. Note that if you don’t click on the milestone first, the Add Bullet button is not going to be clickable.
- If you’d like to customize your timeline’s look, you can go through the different settings in the SmartArt Tools tabs Design and Format. For instance, if you’d like to change the direction of the arrow, you can click on the Right To Left button. Here’s what it looks like:
If you’d like to change the layout, you can go to the Layouts section in the Design tab. Here’s what I changed my arrow SmartArt graphic timeline to:
If you’d like to change colors, go to SmartArt Styles, then click on Change Colors.
You can easily change the way your timeline graphic looks. But, at the end of the day, it’s still going to look familiar to many people who’ve been exposed to PowerPoint timelines.
Don’t get me wrong, SmartArt is a great tool for making timelines quickly. However, like I mentioned above, the downside is that your presentation is going to look a lot like millions of other PowerPoint timelines.
How To Create Timelines Manually In PowerPoint
If you care about good design and standing out from the crowd, then you should consider creating timelines manually. This is going to take you a bit longer, but if you’re aiming to impress your audience, this is the way to do it.
Here are a few tips to get you started:
1. Get Inspiration
There are plenty of places on the Internet where you can get ideas on how to create a great looking timeline. Timeline infographics are particularly useful because these are often designed by creative designers.
You can go on Pinterest and browse through millions of graphics submitted and shared by members. Here’s what my search for ‘timeline infographic design’ on Pinterest gave me.
2. Use PowerPoint Templates
Templates are awesome because they give you a head start on creating great looking timelines. Now, there are two kinds of templates: free and premium.
Most premium templates include a couple of slides dedicated to timelines. Here’s an example premium template on GraphicRiver. The bestselling template there is called Motagua, and you can see from the screenshot below that their timeline template looks vastly different from PowerPoint’s SmartArt graphics:
3. Use Vector Graphics
For visually enticing timelines, you should use vector graphics as these are fully scalable and can be resized without pixelating. Here are a few sites where you can download free vectors: Freepik, VectorStock, and Vector4Free.
4. Use Animations And Slide Transitions
Don’t show your timeline all at once. Instead, you should show only the first point, talk about it a bit, before proceeding to the next point. Using animations will help get your point across and will keep your audience’s interest as well.
Final Words On How To Make A Timeline In PowerPoint
Timelines are a powerful way of conveying sequential information such as important historical dates or future project milestones or deadlines. If you don’t have a lot of time and you need to come up with a timeline fast, PowerPoint’s SmartArt graphics is a tool you can use to quickly come up with a nice-looking timeline.
However, if you have a bit of time or maybe a budget for premium PowerPoint templates, then you’re not limited to using SmartArt. With imagination and some inspiration, you can create stunning timelines that will impress everyone in the room. | <urn:uuid:555108f6-fbe5-4e41-a1df-e766840b11bc> | {
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Obesity is less common in more equal societies.
Obesity is increasing rapidly throughout the developed world. In some countries rates have doubled in just a few years. In the USA, three-quarters of the population are overweight, and close to a third are obese. In the UK, two-thirds of adults are overweight and more than a fifth are obese. Obesity increases the risk of hypertension, late onset diabetes, cardiovascular disease, gallbladder disease, and some cancers. The trends in children's obesity are likely to lead to shorter life expectancies for today's children - this would be the first reversal in life expectancy since the nineteenth century.
We found that obesity among men and women (see graph), as well as calorie intake and deaths from diabetes, are related to income inequality in rich countries. In addition, obesity in adults is also related to inequality in the 50 US states; and the percentage of children who are overweight is related to inequality both internationally and in the USA.
Pickett KE, Kelly S, Brunner E, Lobstein T, Wilkinson RG. Wider income gaps, wider waistbands? An ecological study of obesity and income inequality. Journal of Epidemioogy and Community Health 2005;59(8):670-4
The International Obesity TaskForce http://www.iotf.org/
World Health Organization http://www.who.int/topics/obesity/en/
Wilkinson RG, Pickett KE. The Spirit Level. Penguin. 2009. Buy the book from Amazon. | <urn:uuid:c4d88856-8186-46d7-bcd5-04a2d79b91ba> | {
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Of our 43 presidents, only one -- Calvin Coolidge -- was born on the anniversary of Independence Day. It was in 1872 on a small farm in Vermont where the emphasis was on simplicity, learning, respect for hard work, thrift, the principles of representative democracy and a deep belief in God. Independence Day was not only his birthday, it also symbolized for him the genius of the American experiment.
When we think of Coolidge today -- if we think of him at all -- it is as "Silent Cal," a man of few words. In fact, he had a lot to say, but he used words economically, without adornment. His Yankee upbringing and a classical education at Amherst College combined to give him a way of expressing himself that was, at once, both simple and eloquent.
In July 1926, President Coolidge was in Philadelphia to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He was the last president to write all of his own speeches. A latter-day presidential speechwriter would have a hard time improving on what the 30th president said at Philadelphia:
"If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth and their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary." It would be hard to improve on that.
Coolidge's era, the Twenties, had some parallels to our own: unprecedented prosperity, great technological innovation, emphasis on material gain, but also a widespread thirst for deeper values, for moral grounding. He was the antithesis of the stereotype that comes down to us from the Twenties -- flappers, bathtub gin, fast cars and dancing. He constantly appealed to the higher instincts of the people. For example, he once said, "Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped." In a newspaper article after he left the White House, he wrote, "...wealth is not an end, but a means. We need it only for the use we can make of it. The real standard of life is not one of quantity but of quality; not of money, but of character."
Too bad the corner-cutters and rule-benders at Enron, Arthur Anderson, Worldcom, Tyco and a handful of other "go-go" companies were never treated to a lecture from Silent Cal. Then again, they all seemed to be following the ruling passion of the Nineties. That is, that the end justifies the means. For Bill Clinton, it meant doing whatever was necessary to get to the White House and to stay there, including letting his allies loose to destroy the reputations of anyone who dared criticize him. For the go-go corporate chieftains, it was bookkeeping trickery and endless acquisitions that carried them to greater and greater heights. That is, until their respective bubbles burst.
Coolidge would have had a low opinion of the whole bunch. He had an almost mystical reverence for public service. Today, talk of public service often produces yawns from those who hear it, but for Coolidge, rectitude and a sense of duty were genuine.
As president, he believed in minimalist government, one that should stand aside in areas where it was not needed. His growth-oriented tax policies led to great expansion of prosperity. He produced balanced budgets annually and reduced the national debt by approximately $1 billion each year he was in office. And, shortly after taking office upon the sudden death of President Warren Harding, he cleaned up the scandals that erupted from that administration.
Coolidge would be dismayed by the incessant attacks nowadays upon references to God in our national symbols and institutions. He considered the "inalienable rights" referred to in the Declaration of Independence as being God-given. So did the nation's founders. Coolidge put it this way: "The foundation of our independence and our government rests upon our basic religious convictions." Those convictions guided this son of the Fourth of July all of his life.
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Museum of Science, Boston
The Computing Revolution
To shrink an entire museum into one exhibition
User Experience/Interface Design Enigma Game Programming Programming
When the Museum of Science took over Boston’s Computer Museum, their challenge was to shrink an entire museum into one exhibition. We created seven computer stations and a companion web site that highlight key moments, concepts and breakthroughs from the history of computing, and provide a high level of interactivity.
Working with materials and direction from the Museum, we visualized the history of The Computing Revolution by creating unique user interfaces for each of the seven kiosks: Enigma, Whirlwind, UNIVAC, Personal Computers, When Computers Go Bad, Hacking, and 21st Century.
To give visitors some experience with a well known antecedent of modern computers, we recreated a working World War II Enigma Machine where they can try their hands at creating and decoding messages, and under- stand the tremendous achievement of breaking the German code.
We developed a video capture tool for two of the stations; visitors can tell their own horror stories at When Computers Go Bad, and they can predict the future of computing at the 21st Century station.
It was essential for Museum staff to be able to review and edit these visitor videos, so we developed an admin tool that allows Museum staff to review the recorded videos and then update the selection to be featured on the kiosks, from their own desktops. We also created four short, 3D-animated films detailing the inner workings of computers, teaching visitors about Binary Counting, Vacuum Tubes, Magnetic Core Memory and Integrated Circuit Chips.
Robin White Owen, Producer Phil Wilhelm, Designer Rob Womack, Programmer Cameron Hickey, 3D animations | <urn:uuid:f5ca6e0b-9cb8-4dfe-8aac-5e80563de876> | {
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Los Tres Ojos
Los Tres Ojos (The Three Eyes in English) is the name given to a 50-yard open-air limestone cave located in the Mirador del Este park, in the Santo Domingo Este municipality of the Dominican Republic. A series of three lakes, or ojos, the site is currently one of the most visited tourist attractions in the country. The caves are open from 9 am to 5 pm, and are illuminated at night by many colored lights.
The site was created centuries ago as a result of tectonic fractures when underground caves collapsed, forming a bowl-shaped depression which subsequently filled with water. Initially, the cave was inhabited by the indigenous Taíno Indians who were the first inhabitants of the Hispaniola island. The three lakes are called "Lago de Azufre" (discovered in 1916), "La Nevera" and "El Lago de las Damas". Some of the lakes also have openings on the outside. A staircase cut into the rock gives access to the first cave. A boat pulls visitors across the second lake to give access to a fourth lake called "Los Zaramagullones," not considered one of the three "eyes" or main lakes since it has an opening to the outside.
The caves are fed by water from an underground river and surrounded by stalactites and stalagmites. The composition of the water varies. The two ponds are respectively made of sulphurous water and salt water, while the large lake is composed of freshwater. Their temperature varies between 20 °C to 29 °C, depending on the site, and their various depths give rise to different colored reflections, blue, green, and sometimes yellow. The fauna is also very varied and includes fish, bats and turtles. Surrounding vegetation is lush and abundant. The depth of the lake remains unknown.
- Los Tres Ojos, Destination 360 Destination360.com Retrieved 21 June 2009
- (in French) République Dominicaine, Visites Karavel.com Retrieved 21 June 2009
- Dominican Republic and Haiti, Paul Clammer, Michael Grosberg, Jens Porup, 2008, p. 87
- Cueva de los Tres Ojos/Three Eyes Cave, Viva Travel Guides, Christopher Minster Vivatravelguides.com Retrieved 21 June 2009
- (in Spanish) Parque Nacional Los Tres Ojos Hoteles.com Retrieved 21 June 2009
- (in French) Visite de la grotte los tres ojos Entre2voyages.com Retrieved 21 June 2009
- (in French) République Dominicaine ABC-latina.com Retrieved 21 June 2009
- (in French) "La République Dominicaine", Échappées belles, France 5, broadcast on 3 February 2007 France5.tr Retrieved 21 June 2009
- (in French) Description Los Tres Ojos Cityzeum.com Retrieved 21 June 2009
- Explore the Dominican Republic, Harry S. Pariser, 1998, p.137-38
- Culture and customs of the Dominican Republic, Isabel Zakrzewski Brown, 1999, p. 10
- Los Tres Ojos travel guide | <urn:uuid:ed886699-f875-4da7-9c67-3ee2e4c9651f> | {
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Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies
Jim Pivarnik, Ph.D., President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition Science Board member
Having studied physical activity during pregnancy for over 25 years, I am amazed at how far we have progressed. When I began to research this area in the late 1980's, information was scarce, and recommendations were very conservative. This only makes sense, as "first do no harm" is even more important than normal when you are talking about protecting the maternal-fetal unit. As more research was performed, it became obvious that there were few, if any reasons that a woman having a normal healthy pregnancy could not continue to perform vigorous activities (such as running and swimming) if she did so prior to becoming pregnant. The 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines specify the details. Indeed, there have been a number of media stories describing pregnant women who perform significant exercise during pregnancy, all with the blessing of their health care providers.
While the unusual usually garners the most media attention (such as completing a marathon the same day as giving birth, or being on an Olympic team while pregnant), from a public health perspective, it is the inactive woman who is of most concern. For example, recent research has shown that women who are sedentary during pregnancy have an increased risk of gestational diabetes mellitus, as well as pregnancy hypertensive disorders, compared to women who participate in physical activity on a regular basis. Perhaps even more importantly for long term health, a woman's body mass index (BMI) going into pregnancy, and postpartum, is related to a number of chronic conditions, including heart disease and diabetes, to name just two.
Recent studies have shown the postpartum period to be an excellent time for a woman to begin a regular physical activity program that she can maintain for the long haul. Combined with a healthy diet, women can lose most, if not all of the weight they gained during pregnancy, as well as increase their fat free body mass. Longitudinal studies have shown that this significantly reduces a woman’s risk of chronic disease later in life. While there is no doubt that the postpartum period is filled with challenges, women need to try their best to find time for physical activity, for themselves, as well as their families.
Given what is now known about the importance of exercising during pregnancy and the postpartum period, we need to develop more effective strategies to inform women of the benefits of performing physical activity during these two critical times in their lives. One logical approach would be to work with obstetric health care providers and enhance their ability to take a more active role in encouraging their healthy patients to become, or remain physically active during these times. If it takes a village to raise a child, the same should be true for the woman who brings this new life into the world.
**Jim Pivarnik, Ph.D., PCFSN Science Board member, is a professor of Kinesiology and Epidemiology at Michigan State University, where he also directs the Center for Physical Activity and Health. | <urn:uuid:3c364728-d1ab-44a9-b449-f56ea2cc8595> | {
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48 Star flag for sale – Own a part of American history
The American flag has gone through a number of different versions, with different number of stars in the flag.
The stars in the flag represent the number of states in the US, which has grown over the years from a mere 13 to the present 50 states.
The present US flag therefore has 50 stars, whereas previous flags had lesser number of stars.
One of the most famous flags apart from the present one is the 48 star flag. It is so popular that you can still find the 48 star flag for sale.
On July 4,1912, the number of states in the US grew to 48, with the addition of Arizona and New Mexico to the country. The exact round figure facilitated the arrangement of stars in 6 horizontal rows each having eight stars in them. Each is a 5 point star, with one of the points pointing upward.
The 48 star flag had the longest history when compared to any other US flag. The flag also went through both the World Wars and remained in office until US emerged as the leading nation on the face of the earth.
A total of eight American presidents held office during the 48 star flag’s tenure. William H. Taft served from 1909 to 1913, Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1921, Warren Harding from 1921 to 1923, Calvin Coolidge from 1923 to 1929, Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1945, Harry S.Truman from 1945 to 1953, and finally, Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961.
As the flag that had the longest history, the 48 star flag is still very popular. You can find the 48 star flag in many places.
So if you are a fan of American history, or simply a patriot, you can get the 48 star flag and own a part of the country’s history. You can find the 48 star flag for sale at Amazon. | <urn:uuid:453fea0e-67f2-452b-98af-623539c4a7fc> | {
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'Shot heard round the world' has many meanings
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"The shot heard round the world."
I wonder how many people know what that phrase means, how it came into being and who coined the phrase?
It relates to the American Revolutionary War and in particular to the battle of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts which began on April 19, 1775. It was on that day that the British Army marched into the New England villages of Lexington and Concord, marking the outbreak of open armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and its 13 colonies in what was then the 13 colonies in the mainland of British North America.
When the invading British reached Lexington, the first of the two towns to be attacked that day, someone fired a shot. History does not clearly indicate which side, the invading British or the defending colonists, fired that now famous shot. But one thing was sure. The war was on.
As for the phrase citing the shot, credit does go to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who included the words in his "Concord Hymn" which described the shot fired by Patriots at the North Bridge when he wrote "The Shot Heard Round The World."
The expression was subsequently used through the history of world events including reference to the shot which killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand thus becoming one of the main causes which plunged Europe into World War I. It was also used in various sport and culture events from time to time, but historically Americans most frequently associate it with the American Revolution.
In sports, the phrase was commonly referred to Bobby Thompson's walk-off home run that clinched the National League pennant for the New York Giants. It was also used in reference to Mark McGuire's record breaking 62nd home run in 1998.
Golfers like to associate it with Gene Sarazen's albatross on the 15th hole in the Masters Tournament, which helped propel him into a 36-hole playoff which he won by five strokes.
College basketball lays claim to the phrase because of Ernie Calverley's last second shot which tied the 1946 National Invitation Tournament for his team, the University of Rhode Island against Bowling Green State University in a quarter final game which sent it into overtime. Rhode Island went on to win the game 82-79.
In popular culture, the phrase has been used on several occasions. Schoolhouse Rock used it in a song for their morning program in a song entitled "Song Heard 'Round the World" in a reference to the American Revolution. The pop/rock band Boys Like Girls in the 2009 album "Love Drunk" titled one of its tracks "Shot Heard 'Round the World."
In 2006, the phrase was used by some news outlets in describing Dick Cheney's accidental shooting of Harry Whittington while they were quail hunting
The Revolutionary War had its actual beginning several years before Lexington and Concord. In 1774, the First Continental Congress met to coordinate relations with Great Britain. This failed and was followed by the Second Continental Congress in 1775 which authorized a Continental Army. The British Parliament responded by declaring the Congress to be traitors and the states to be in rebellion. The Americans then responded in 1776 by formally declaring their independence as one new nation, the United States of America, thus claiming their own sovereignty and rejecting allegiance to Britain.
While the British prevailed at sea with their naval superiority, the Americans greatly outnumbered the British on land where they were more successful. The French naval victory at Yorktown, Va., in 1781 was a decisive victory for the American cause followed by the surrender of Cornwallis and his entire British army of 7,000 men on Oct. 19, 1781. There were no further major British military activities in North America.
The formal end of the war occurred with the Treaties of Versailles which were signed on Sept. 3, 1783. The last British troops left New York City on Nov. 25, 1783. The U.S. Congress of the Confederation ratified the Paris Treaty on Jan. 14, 1784.
The American Revolution resulted in 4,435 battle deaths with 6,185 non-mortal wounded. The conflict involved 217,000 American service members. America has suffered a total of 651,030 battle deaths over the years with the largest occurring in World War II with 291,557 lost in battle.
"Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind." George Washington (1732-1799).
Richard Cosgrove writes 'As I Was Saying' on Tuesdays. He can be reached at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:c071543a-a534-4239-bcc4-de59248b7750> | {
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[SOURCE: 'Impact of acute exercise intensity on pulsatile growth hormone release in men', 2000, Pritzlaff)].
As children, growth hormone (HGH) makes us grow taller, but when we reach our full height, this hormone actually changes roles. When we're adults, increasing HGH will reduce body fat and trim inches.
Growth hormone actually becomes the 'fitness hormone' for middle-age, and older adults."
Anaerobic exercise (as contrasted with aerobic exercise) is sprint training, not endurance training.
Anaerobic sprint workouts can be done in many different ways - running, swimming, cycling, XC skiing - and all of these are Senior Games events.
Don't jump in, ease in to anaerobic exercise. Anaerobic fitness training is clearly the most productive. But it's also the most dangerous. Hamstring pulls are a primary target and this makes flexibility training an essential part of every fitness plan.
Everyone, especially those with heart conditions or medical problems should get physician clearance before performing anaerobic exercise. Even young athletes should progressively ease into high intensity anaerobic workouts.
By Intense Anaerobic Exercise 3-4 times a Week!
NewtonStein Anti-Aging, Exercise and Training for Youth and Health!
Intensity Relative to Age
The American Heart Association study also proves another important point concerning fitness training during aging - exercise intensity is relative to one's age and fitness level.
In other words, an older individual can reach high-intensity levels with an effort level that might be considered low-intensity for a young athlete.
This new study confirms the need for higher intensities, but it also shows that beginners and older adults can reach the more productive levels of exercise intensity with less effort than a triathlete, for example.
Newcomers to high-intensity exercise may get great results initially by performing the anaerobic training with power walking, but a fine-tuned triathlete however, may need more work for the same results.
When you see an 80 year old participant running a 10-K or working out in the gym, don't think that it's unfortunate that she can't run as fast, or lift as much as her 60 year old counterparts. This just means that it's easier for her to reach higher intensities.
If you're over 50, get physician clearance first, and get started with a gradual buildup training program.
"This book is brilliant!" - Mike Gotfredson, President - Road Runner Sports
"I've read a lot of books in my life, but your fitness book is one of only 10 or so that has had a very influential impact on my life. I'm lucky I found it." - Mike Rabe
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"Phil, Guess my training regimen of weight training, Sprint 8's, etc. paid off. Got six firsts and set five records in the swimming events for men 65-69 at the National Senior Games and I'm pushing the top of my age group at 68." - Bill Lauer, Knoxville
The New 2nd Edition, 7th Printing is now Available here
"I've read your book twice now and I need to congratulate you on one of the best books available for understanding what really happens when you train." - NASA Consultant, Jim Warren, President, Team America Health & Fitness, Inc.& Exer-Genie Training Systems
"My son (a competitive cross country skier) told me about your book and I started the workouts following your basic approach. I am a 62 year old Orthopaedic Surgeon, and run for cardiovascular fitness, weight control and enjoyment. The Ready Set Go Fitness program has worked for me.
I am running faster, have lost 5 pounds, have less muscle soreness than I had with just doing longer but slower paced runs - and enjoy my workouts much more.I have shared the book with my brother, a superb 70 year old athlete with a bad knee and it works for him on the bicycle and running up hills. I will keep recommending this approach as an integral part of an overall fitness program." - Rolf Lulloff, MD
Web search: Senior & Masters Sports
National Senior Games - State contact information
Millennium Senior Games - In 2005, you'll want to be in this
Senior Games competition when you see this Web site. You may even want to move there when you see their slide show!
Senior Olympics - contact information
State Games contact info
Tennessee Senior Games - Lead by Christine Dewbre and Teresa Prinzo. Excellent Web site
Brian Mackenzie UK Track Coach - Informative Web site
California Senior Games
40 speed.com - Speed training.
Austin, TX Senior Games - Lead by John Berlet
Masters Track & Field - Excellent Web site for masters athletes
Masters Track News - A must have subscription for masters track & field.
United States Masters Swimming
www.coachr.org - Top track & field newsletter offered on this Web site.
American Cross Country Skiers (AXCS)
USA Track & Field
Fitness by Gordon - Senior exercise Web site - Maturity can be a banquet when fed by exercise!
World Masters weightlifting
More Senior & Master's links
Huntsman World Senior Games
USATF National Masters XC & 5K Championships
US Tennis Association
Masters Ski Jumping
Bama Cyclist - Preparing for senior games in cycling
Warning for Seniors
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- As many as 500,000 otherwise healthy seniors are getting daily injections of synthetic human growth hormone each year. Some seniors swear the hormone reduces fat, makes them more active and increases libido, but some researchers say
this practice, for which the users pay between $5,000 and $10,000 a year, can have serious and potentially deadly side effects, USA Today reported.
There's a better way than injections to get the benefits of increasing growth hormone, high-intensity exercise! See article that follows.
While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of synthetic growth hormone for boys likely to become adults shorter than 5-foot-3 and girls likely to be shorter than 4-foot-11.
When growth hormone is prescribed for adults, it's considered "on-label," and a doctor can prescribe the hormone if it will benefit the patient for a FDA-specified condition such as patients who have lost their pituitary gland because of a tumor or for patients suffering from AIDS.
However, some seniors can get the synthetic grown hormone, "off-label," for no specific condition except that a doctor feels a patient will benefit.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in the NewtonStein, Cambridge Theological Seminary is archived here under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in reviewing the included information for personal use, non-profit research, and educational purposes only.
Contributions from the best scholars in numerous fields are added to Ministers-Best-Friend.com website daily. Such research papers and articles: | <urn:uuid:9a684f98-dce9-4722-a25e-6479907cc070> | {
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The radius and the ulna bones of the forearm were separated at the joint, cleaned, and chewed. But that was only the start of a cannibalistic ritual taking place in England some 15,000 years ago, scientists say after analyzing a bone with unusual markings found in a cave in Somerset, per the BBC. The 15,000-year-old human radial bone has "unusual zig-zagging incisions" that don't match 300 other filleting marks on remains in Gough's Cave, researchers from London's Natural History Museum write in PLOS ONE. Rather, the marks appear to be an "intentional engraving"—a form of art—made as "a purposeful component of the cannibalistic practice, implying a complex ritualistic funerary behavior that has never before been recognized for the Paleolithic period."
Evidence of cannibalism in Gough's Cave is plentiful. In 2011, scientists made the case that three skull cases were actually used as drinking vessels. But the radial bone presents the "strongest evidence" yet that "cannibalism at Gough's Cave was practiced as a symbolic ritual," study author Silvia Bello tells the BBC. The engraving—similar to engravings on other materials at sites of the same age in France—"may have been a sort of memory more directly related to the deceased," she adds, per Seeker. Why honor someone you've just eaten? Bello explains the individual, showing no obvious signs of trauma, likely died of natural causes and was afterward eaten by members of the same hunter-gatherer group, in what is known as endocannibalism. (Humans aren't all that nutritious.) | <urn:uuid:9cf84247-8b12-4ce2-9646-bb4e5744e180> | {
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Sri Lankan Civil War
|Sri Lankan Civil War|
ශ්රී ලාංකික සිවිල් යුද්ධය
இலங்கை உள்நாட்டுப் போர்
The area of Sri Lanka claimed by the LTTE as Tamil Eelam, where the vast majority of the fighting took place
|Indian Peace Keeping Force (1987–1990)||Tamil Tigers|
|Commanders and leaders|
R. Venkataraman (1987–1989)|
Rajiv Gandhi (1987–1989) †
V. Prabhakaran † (1983–2009)|
Karuna Amman (1983–2004)
Indian Peace Keeping Force:|
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam|
(excluding Auxiliary forces):
(including Auxiliary forces):
|Casualties and losses|
28,708 killed 40,107 wounded 1,200 killed
(Indian Peace Keeping Force)
100,000+ killed overall (estimate)|
800,000 displaced at peak in 2001
16 May 2009: Sri Lankan Government declared a military defeat of LTTE.|
17 May 2009: LTTE admit defeat by Sri Lankan Government.
19 May 2009: President Mahinda Rajapaksa officially declares end of civil war in parliament.
The Sri Lankan Civil War (Sinhala: ශ්රී ලංකාවේ ත්රස්තවාදය; Tamil: ஈழப் போர்); was a civil war fought on the island of Sri Lanka. Beginning on 23 July 1983, there was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers), which fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north and the east of the island. After a 26-year military campaign, the Sri Lankan military defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009, bringing the civil war to an end.
For over 25 years, the war caused significant hardships for the population, environment and the economy of the country, with an initial estimated 80,000–100,000 people killed during its course. In 2013, the UN panel estimated additional deaths during the last phase of the war: "Around 40,000 died while other independent reports estimated the number of civilians dead to exceed 100,000." During the early part of the conflict, the Sri Lankan forces attempted to retake the areas captured by the LTTE. The tactics employed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam against the actions of Government forces resulted in their listing as a terrorist organisation in 32 countries, including the United States, India, Canada and the member nations of the European Union. The Sri Lankan government forces have also been accused of human rights abuses, systematic impunity for serious human rights violations, lack of respect for habeas corpus in arbitrary detentions, and forced disappearances.
After two decades of fighting and four failed tries at peace talks, including the unsuccessful deployment of the Indian Army, the Indian Peace Keeping Force from 1987 to 1990, a lasting negotiated settlement to the conflict appeared possible when a cease-fire was declared in December 2001, and a ceasefire agreement signed with international mediation in 2002. However, limited hostilities renewed in late 2005 and the conflict began to escalate until the government launched a number of major military offensives against the LTTE beginning in July 2006, driving the LTTE out of the entire Eastern province of the island. The LTTE then declared they would "resume their freedom struggle to achieve statehood".
In 2007, the government shifted its offensive to the north of the country, and formally announced its withdrawal from the ceasefire agreement on 2 January 2008, alleging that the LTTE violated the agreement over 10,000 times. Since then, aided by the destruction of a number of large arms smuggling vessels that belonged to the LTTE, and an international crackdown on the funding for the Tamil Tigers, the government took control of the entire area previously controlled by the Tamil Tigers, including their de facto capital Kilinochchi, main military base Mullaitivu and the entire A9 highway, leading the LTTE to finally admit defeat on 17 May 2009. Following the LTTE's defeat, pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance dropped its demand for a separate state, in favour of a federal solution. In May 2010, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the then president of Sri Lanka, appointed the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) to assess the conflict between the time of the ceasefire agreement in 2002 and the defeat of the LTTE in 2009.
- 1 Origin and evolution
- 2 Outbreak of war
- 2.1 Eelam War I (1983–1987)
- 2.2 Indian intervention (1987–1990)
- 2.3 Eelam War II (1990–1995)
- 2.4 Eelam War III (1995–2002)
- 2.5 2002 Peace Process (2002–2006)
- 2.6 Eelam War IV (2006–2009)
- 2.6.1 Talks and further violence
- 2.6.2 Mavil Aru water dispute
- 2.6.3 LTTE offensives in Muttur and Jaffna
- 2.6.4 Fall of Sampur
- 2.6.5 LTTE retaliation and further peace talks
- 2.6.6 Government offensive in the East
- 2.6.7 Government offensive in the North
- 3 End of the war
- 4 Impact
- 5 Aftermath
- 5.1 Political solution
- 5.2 Humanitarian Impact
- 5.3 War crimes investigations
- 6 See also
- 7 References
- 8 Bibliography
- 9 External links
Origin and evolution
The origins of the Sri Lankan Civil War lie in the continuous political rancor between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. The roots of the modern conflict lie in the British colonial rule when the country was known as Ceylon. There was initially little tension among Sri Lanka's two largest ethnic groups, the Sinhalese and the Tamils, when Ponnambalam Arunachalam, a Tamil, was appointed representative of the Sinhalese as well the Tamils in the national legislative council. In 1919 major Sinhalese and Tamil political organizations united to form the Ceylon National Congress, under the leadership of Arunachalam, to press the colonial government for more constitutional reforms. However, British Gov. William Manning actively encouraged the concept of "communal representation" and created the Colombo town seat in 1920, which alternated between the Tamils and the Sinhalese.
After their election to the State Council in 1936, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) members N.M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena demanded the replacement of English as the official language by Sinhala and Tamil. In November 1936 a motion that "in the Municipal and Police Courts of the Island the proceedings should be in the vernacular" and that "entries in police stations should be recorded in the language in which they are originally stated" were passed by the State Council and referred to the Legal Secretary. However, in 1944 J.R. Jayawardene moved in the State Council that Sinhala should replace English as the official language.
In 1948, immediately after independence, a controversial law was passed by the Ceylon Parliament called the Ceylon Citizenship Act, which deliberately discriminated against the Indian Tamil ethnic minority by making it virtually impossible for them to obtain citizenship in the country. Approximately over 700,000 Indian Tamils were made stateless. Over the next three decades more than 300,000 Indian Tamils were deported back to India. It wasn't until 2003–55 years after independence—that all Indian Tamils living in Sri Lanka were granted citizenship, but by this time they only made up 5% of the island's population.
In 1956 Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike passed the "Sinhala Only Act", which replaced English with Sinhala as the only official language of the country. This was seen as a deliberate attempt to discourage the Sri Lankan Tamils from working in the Ceylon Civil Service and other public services. The Tamil-speaking minorities of Ceylon (Sri Lankan Tamils, Indian Tamils and Sri Lankan Moors) viewed the Act as linguistic, cultural and economic discrimination against them. Many Tamil-speaking civil servants/public servants were forced to resign because they weren't fluent in Sinhala. This was a prelude to the 1956 Gal Oya riots and the 1958 widespread riots in which thousands of Tamil civilians perished. The civil war was a direct result of the escalation of the confrontational politics that followed.
In the late 1960s documents relating to a separate Tamil state of "Tamil Eelam" began to circulate. At this time Anton Balasingham, an employee of the British High Commission in Colombo, began to participate in separatist activities. He later migrated to Britain, where he became the chief theoretician of the LTTE. In the late 1960s several Tamil youth, among them Velupillai Prabhakaran, also became involved in these activities. They carried out several hit-and-run operations against pro-government Tamil politicians, Sri Lanka police and the civil administration.
During the 1970s the Policy of standardization was initiated. Under the policy, students were admitted to university in proportion to the number of applicants who sat for the examination in their language. Officially the policy was designed to increase the representation of students from rural areas. In practice the policy reduced the numbers of Sri Lankan Tamil students who had previously, based on their examination scores alone, gained admission in a higher proportion than their participation in the examination. They were now required to gain higher marks than Sinhalese students to gain admission to universities. For instance, the qualifying mark for admission to the medical faculties was 250 out of 400 for Tamil students, but only 229 for Sinhalese. The number of Sri Lankan Tamil students entering universities fell dramatically. The policy was abandoned in 1977.
Other forms of official discrimination against the Sri Lankan Tamils included the state-sponsored colonization of traditional Tamil areas by Sinhalese peasants, the banning of the import of Tamil-language media and the preference given by the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka to Buddhism, the main religion followed by the Sinhalese.
Prabhakaran—together with Chetti Thanabalasingam, a well known criminal from Kalviyankadu, Jaffna—formed the Tamil New Tigers (TNT) in 1972. This was formed around an ideology that looked back to the 1st Millennium Chola Empire—the Tiger was the emblem of that empire.
A further movement, the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), formed in Manchester and London; it became the backbone of the Eelamist movement in the diaspora, arranging passports and employment for immigrants and levying a heavy tax on them. It became the basis of the Eelamist logistical organization, later taken over entirely by the LTTE. The formation of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) with the Vaddukkodei (Vattukottai) resolution of 1976 led to a hardening of attitudes. The resolution called for the creation of a secular, socialist state of Tamil Eelam, based on the right of self-determination.
The TULF clandestinely supported the armed actions of the young militants who were dubbed "our boys". TULF leader Appapillai Amirthalingam even provided letters of reference to the LTTE and to other Tamil insurgent groups to raise funds. Amirthalingam introduced Prabhakaran to N.S. Krishnan, who later became the first international representative of LTTE. It was Krishnan who introduced Prabhakaran to Anton Balasingham, who later became the chief political strategist and chief negotiator of LTTE. The "boys" were the product of the post-war population explosion. Many partially educated, unemployed Tamil youth fell for revolutionary solutions to their problems. The leftist parties had remained "non-communal" for a long time, but the Federal Party (as well as its offshoot, the TULF), deeply conservative and dominated by Vellalar casteism, did not attempt to form a national alliance with the leftists in their fight for language rights.
Following the sweeping electoral victory of the United National Party (UNP) in July 1977, the TULF became the leading opposition party, with around one-sixth of the total electoral vote winning on a party platform of secession from Sri Lanka. After the 1977 riots the J.R. Jayewardene government made one concession to the Tamil population; it lifted the policy of standardization for university admission that had driven many Tamil youths into militancy. The concession was regarded by the militants as too little too late, and violent attacks continued. By this time TULF started losing its grip over the militant groups. LTTE ordered civilians to boycott the local government elections of 1983 in which even TULF contested. Voter turnout was as low as 10%. Thereafter, Tamil political parties were unable to represent the interests of the Tamil community.
Outbreak of war
Eelam War I (1983–1987)
Supported by the ongoing politics of conflict in Sri Lanka, politicised Tamil youth in the north and east started to form militant groups. These groups developed independently of the Colombo Tamil leadership, and in the end rejected and annihilated them. The most prominent of these groups was the TNT, which changed its name to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or the LTTE, in 1976. The LTTE initially carried out a campaign of violence against the state, particularly targeting policemen and also moderate Tamil politicians who attempted a dialogue with the government. Their first major operation was the assassination of the mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappah, in 1975 by Prabhakaran.
The LTTE's modus operandi of the early war was based on assassinations, whereas the mode of operation for the UNP was through a series of checkpoints set up around the city. The attempted assassination in 1978 of a Tamil Member of Parliament, M. Canagaratnam, was carried out personally by Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE.
In May 1981 the burning of the Jaffna library by politicians from the ruling party using police and paramilitary forces resulted in the destruction of more than 90,000 books, including "palm leaf scrolls" of immense historical value. This violent example of ethnic biblioclasm was a major turning point in convincing the Tamil people that the government could not protect them or their cultural heritage and persuaded many of them to back a separate state.
In July 1983 the LTTE launched a deadly ambush on Sri Lanka army patrol Four Four Bravo outside the town of Thirunelveli, killing an officer and 12 soldiers. Using nationalistic sentiments to their advantage, the Jayawardena organized massacres and pogroms in Colombo, the capital, and elsewhere (see Black July). Between 400–3,000 Tamils were estimated to have been killed, and many more fled Sinhalese-majority areas. This is considered the beginning of the civil war.
Apart from the LTTE, there initially was a plethora of militant groups (see list). The LTTE's position, adopted from that of the PLO, was that there should be only one. Initially, the LTTE gained prominence due to devastating attacks such as the Kent and Dollar Farm massacres of 1984, where hundreds of men, women and children were attacked during the night as they slept and were hacked to death with fatal blows to the head from axes; and the Anuradhapura massacre of 1985, where the LTTE indiscriminately opened fire, killing and wounding 146 civilians within Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi Buddhist shrine. The Anuradhapura massacre was apparently answered by government forces with the Kumudini boat massacre in which over 23 Tamil civilians died. Over time the LTTE merged with or largely exterminated almost all the other militant Tamil groups. As a result, many Tamil splinter groups ended up working with the Sri Lankan government as paramilitaries or denounced violence and joined mainstream politics; some legitimate Tamil-oriented political parties remained, all opposed to LTTE's vision of an independent state.
Peace talks between the LTTE and the government began in Thimphu in 1985, but they soon failed and the war continued. In 1986 many civilians were massacred as part of this conflict. In 1987 government troops pushed LTTE fighters to the northern city of Jaffna. In April 1987 the conflict exploded with ferocity, as both government forces and LTTE fighters engaged in a series of bloody operations.
The Sri Lankan military launched an offensive, called "Operation Liberation" or Vadamarachchi Operation, during May–June 1987 to regain control of the territory in the Jaffna peninsula from the LTTE. This marked the Sri Lankan military's first conventional warfare on Sri Lankan soil since independence. The offensive was successful, and LTTE leader Prabhakaran and Sea Tiger leader Thillaiyampalam Sivanesan alias Soosai narrowly escaped from advancing troops at Valvettithurai. Key military personnel involved in the operation were Lt Col. Vipul Boteju, Lt. Col. Sarath Jayawardane, Col. Vijaya Wimalaratne and Brig. Gen. Denzil Kobbekaduwa.
In July 1987 the LTTE carried out their first suicide attack. Captain Miller of the Black Tigers drove a small truck carrying explosives through the wall of a fortified Sri Lankan army camp, reportedly killing 40 soldiers. The LTTE carried out over 378 suicide attacks, one of the largest suicide campaigns in the world, and the suicide attack became a trademark of the LTTE and a characteristic of the civil war.
Indian intervention (1987–1990)
|This article is part of a series on the|
politics and government of
|Sri Lanka portal|
Involvement was particularly strong in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where ethnic kinship led to strong support for the independence of Sri Lankan Tamils. Throughout the conflict the Indian central and state governments supported both sides in different ways. From August 1983 until May 1987 the Indian government, through its intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), provided arms, training and monetary support to six Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups including LTTE, Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS) Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) and Tamil Eelam Liberation Army (TELA). LTTE's rise is widely attributed to the initial backing it received from RAW. It is believed that by supporting different militant groups, the Indian government hoped to keep the Tamil independence movement divided and be able to exert overt control over it.
India became more actively involved in the late 1980s, and on 5 June 1987 the Indian Air Force airdropped food parcels to Jaffna while it was under siege by Sri Lankan forces. At a time when the Sri Lankan government stated it was close to defeating the LTTE, India dropped 25 tons of food and medicine by parachute into areas held by the LTTE in a direct move of support to the rebels. Negotiations were held, and the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord was signed on 29 July 1987 by Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President Jayewardene. Under this accord the Sri Lankan government made a number of concessions to Tamil demands, including devolution of power to the provinces, a merger—subject to later referendum—of the northern and eastern provinces into a single province, and official status for the Tamil language (this was enacted as the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka). India agreed to establish order in the north and east through the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) and to cease assisting Tamil insurgents. Militant groups including the LTTE, although initially reluctant, agreed to surrender their arms to the IPKF, which initially oversaw a cease-fire and a modest disarmament of the militant groups.
The signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord, so soon after J.R. Jayawardene's declaration that he would fight the Indians to the last bullet, led to unrest in the south. The arrival of the IPKF to take control of most areas in the north of the country enabled the Sri Lanka government to shift its forces to the south (in Indian aircraft) to quell the protests. This led to an uprising by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna in the south, which was put down bloodily over the next two years.
While most Tamil militant groups laid down their weapons and agreed to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict, the LTTE refused to disarm its fighters. Keen to ensure the success of the accord, the IPKF then tried to demobilize the LTTE by force and ended up in full-scale conflict with them. The three-year-long conflict was also marked by the IPKF being accused of committing various abuses by many human rights groups as well as some within the Indian media. The IPKF also soon met stiff opposition from the Tamils. Simultaneously, nationalist sentiment led many Sinhalese to oppose the continued Indian presence in Sri Lanka. These led to the Sri Lankan government's call for India to quit the island, and the government allegedly entered into a secret deal with the LTTE that culminated in a cease-fire. However, the LTTE and IPKF continued to have frequent clashes. In April 1989 the Ranasinghe Premadasa government ordered the Sri Lanka army to clandestinely hand over arms consignments to the LTTE to fight the IPKF and its proxy Tamil National Army (TNA). Although casualties among the IPKF mounted, and calls for the withdrawal of the IPKF from both sides of the Sri Lankan conflict grew, Gandhi refused to remove the IPKF from Sri Lanka. However, following his defeat in Indian parliamentary elections in December 1989, new Prime Minister V.P. Singh ordered the withdrawal of the IPKF, and their last ship left Sri Lanka on 24 March 1990. The 32-month presence of the IPKF in Sri Lanka resulted in the deaths of 1200 Indian soldiers and over 5000 Sri Lankans. The cost for the Indian government was estimated at over ₹10.3 billion.
Rajiv Gandhi's assassination
Support for the LTTE in India dropped considerably in 1991, after the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a female suicide bomber, Thenmozhi Rajaratnam. The Indian press subsequently reported that Prabhakaran decided to eliminate Gandhi, as he considered the ex-Prime Minister to be against the Tamil liberation struggle and feared that he might re-induct the IPKF, which Prabhakaran termed the "satanic force", if he won the 1991 Indian general election. In 1998 a court in India presided over by Special Judge V. Navaneetham found the LTTE and its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran responsible for the assassination. In a 2006 interview, LTTE ideologue Anton Balasingham expressed regret over the assassination, although he stopped short of outright acceptance of responsibility. India remained an outside observer of the conflict after the assassination.
Eelam War II (1990–1995)
The violence continued unabated despite the steps taken to appease Tamil sentiments, such as the 13th Amendment (enacted in November 1987). Meanwhile, the Chief Minister of the then North and East Provincial Council, Vartharaja Perumal, put forward a 19-point demand to resolve the ethnic crisis. He threatened if these demands were not met that the Provincial Council would go ahead with a unilateral declaration of independence of the northern and eastern provinces, as in the case of Rhodesia. President Premadasa moved to quickly dissolve the Council (March 1990). At the same time LTTE used terror tactics to scare Sinhalese and Muslim farmers away from the north and east of the island, and swiftly took control of a significant portion of the territory. When the Indian Peace-Keeping Force withdrew in 1989–90, the LTTE established many government-like functions in the areas under its control. A tentative cease-fire held in 1990 as the LTTE occupied itself with destroying rival Tamil groups while the government cracked down on the JVP uprising. When both major combatants had established their power bases, they turned on each other and the cease-fire broke down.The government launched an offensive to try to retake Jaffna.
This phase of the war soon acquired the name Eelam War II, and featured unprecedented brutality. On 11 June 1990 the LTTE massacred 600 policemen in the Eastern Province after they had surrendered on promises of safe-conduct. The government placed an embargo on food and medicine entering the Jaffna peninsula and the air force relentlessly bombed LTTE targets in the area. The LTTE responded by attacking Sinhalese and Muslim villages and massacring civilians. One of the largest civilian massacres of the war occurred when the LTTE massacred 166 Muslim civilians at Palliyagodella. The government trained and armed Home Guard Muslim units, then took revenge on Tamil villages. There was also a significant massacre of Tamil civilians attributed[by whom?] to government forces, especially in the Eastern Province.
Notable international jurist Neelan Thiruchelvam, in a speech at the ICES-Colombo, indicated that the appropriate investigations into massacres and disappearances of civilians including many children in the Sathurukondan, Eastern University, Mylanthanai and the mass murder and burial of school children at Sooriyakanda were hampered by the adoption of emergency regulations which contributed to a climate of impunity. Along roadsides in the north and east, burning bodies became a common sight. Throughout the country, government death squads hunted down, kidnapped or killed Sinhalese or Tamil youth suspected of sympathizing with the JVP or the LTTE, respectively. In October 1990 the LTTE expelled all the Muslims residing in Northern province. A total of 72,000 Muslims were forced to leave their homes, taking nothing but the clothes on their backs.
The largest battle of the war took place in July 1991, when 5,000 LTTE fighters surrounded the army's Elephant Pass base, which controlled access to the Jaffna Peninsula. More than 2,000 died on both sides in the month-long siege, before 10,000 government troops arrived to relieve the base. In February 1992 another series of government offensives failed to capture Jaffna. Lt. Gen. Denzil Kobbekaduwa together with Maj. Gen. Vijaya Wimalaratne and Rear Adm. Mohan Jayamaha, died on 8 August 1992 at Araly (Aeraella) point Jaffna due to a land mine blast. Their deaths badly affected military morale. The LTTE, for its part, scored a major victory when one of its suicide bombers killed Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in May 1993. In November 1993 the LTTE defeated the army in the Battle of Pooneryn. This attack left 532 Sri Lankan soldiers and 135 sailors either dead or missing in action.
Eelam War III (1995–2002)
In the 1994 parliamentary elections the UNP was defeated and, amidst great hope, the People's Alliance, headed by Chandrika Kumaratunga, came to power on a peace platform. During the Presidential election campaign an LTTE bomb attack was carried out during a rally held at Thotalanga, Grandpass, eliminated the entire top brass of UNP leadership, including its presidential candidate, Gamini Dissanayake. Kumaratunga became the president with a 62% majority. A cease-fire was agreed to in January 1995, but the ensuing negotiations proved fruitless. The LTTE broke the cease-fire and blew up two gunboats, SLNS Sooraya and SLNS Ranasuru of the Sri Lanka Navy on 19 April, thereby beginning the next phase of the war, dubbed Eelam War III.
The new government then pursued a policy of "war for peace". Determined to retake the key rebel stronghold of Jaffna, which was occupied by 2,000 rebels, it poured troops into the peninsula in the successful Operation Riviresa. In one particular incident in August 1995, Air Force jets bombed St. Peter's church at Navali (Naavaella), killing at least 65 refugees and wounding 150 others. In another instance in the same year, over 40 people were massacred in Nagerkovil and more civilian massacres followed in subsequent years, such as the Kumarapuram massacre, Tampalakamam massacre, Puthukkudiyiruppu massacre, etc., all of them carried out by government forces. Government troops initially cut off the peninsula from the rest of the island, and then, after seven weeks of heavy fighting, succeeded in bringing Jaffna under government control for the first time in nearly a decade. In a high-profile ceremony, Sri Lankan Defense Minister Col. Anuruddha Ratwatte raised the national flag inside the Jaffna Fort on 5 December 1995. The government estimated that approximately 2500 soldiers and rebels were killed in the offensive, and an estimated 7,000 wounded. Many civilians were killed in this conflict, such as the Navaly church bombing in which over 125 civilians died. The LTTE and more than 350,000 civilians, compelled by LTTE pressure to leave Jaffna, fled to the Vanni region in the interior. Most of the refugees returned later the next year.
The LTTE responded by launching Operation Unceasing Waves and decisively won the Battle of Mullaitivu on 18 July 1996, leaving 1,173 army troops dead which included 207 officers and men executed after surrendering to the LTTE. The government launched another offensive in August 1996. Another 200,000 civilians fled the violence. The town of Kilinochchi was taken on 29 September. On 13 May 1997, 20,000 government troops tried to open a supply line through the LTTE-controlled Vanni, but failed.
As violence continued in the North, LTTE suicide and time bombs were exploded numerous times in populated city areas and public transport in the south of the country, killing hundreds of civilians. In January 1996 the LTTE carried out one of its deadliest suicide bomb attacks at the Central Bank in Colombo, killing 90 and injuring 1,400. In October 1997 it bombed the Sri Lankan World Trade Centre and, in January 1998, detonated a truck bomb in Kandy, damaging the Temple of the Tooth, one of the holiest Buddhist shrines in the world. In response to this bombing, the Sri Lankan government outlawed the LTTE and with some success pressed other governments around the world to do the same, significantly interfering with the group's fund-raising activities.
In January 1997 heavy fighting around Paranthan and the Elephant Pass complex took the lives of 223 Army troops. On 27 September 1998 the LTTE launched Operation Unceasing Waves II and, after heavy fighting, captured Kilinochchi, winning the Battle of Kilinochchi. Clashes around the Kilinochchi forward defense line claimed the lives of 1206 soldiers that year. In March 1999, in Operation Rana Gosa, the government tried invading the Vanni from the south.The army made some gains, taking control of Oddusuddan (Oththan-thuduva) and Madhu, but could not dislodge the LTTE from the region. In September 1999 the LTTE massacred 50 Sinhalese civilians at Gonagala.
The LTTE returned to the offensive with Operation Unceasing Waves III on 2 November 1999. Nearly all the Vanni rapidly fell back into LTTE hands. The group launched 17 successful attacks in the region, culminating in the overrunning of the Paranthan (Puranthaenna) Chemicals Factory base and the Kurrakkan Kaddukulam (kurakkan-kaela vaeva) base. The death toll amounted to 516 soldiers dead and over 4,000 injured. The rebels also advanced north towards Elephant Pass and Jaffna. The LTTE was successful in cutting all land and sea supply lines of the Sri Lankan armed forces to the south, west and north of the town of Kilinochchi. In December 1999 the LTTE attempted to assassinate President Chandrika Kumaratunga in a suicide attack at a pre-election rally. She lost her right-eye, among other injuries, but was able to defeat opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe in the Presidential election and was re-elected to her second term in office.
On 22 April 2000 the Elephant Pass military complex, which had separated the Jaffna peninsula from the Vanni mainland for 17 years, fell into the hands of the LTTE, leaving 1,008 soldiers dead. The army then launched Operation Agni Kheela to take back the southern Jaffna Peninsula, but sustained losses.
Early peace efforts
Exhaustion with the war was building as casualties mounted and there appeared to be no end in sight. By mid-2000 human rights groups estimated that more than one million people in Sri Lanka were internally displaced persons, living in camps, homeless and struggling for survival. As a result, a significant peace movement developed in the late 1990s, with many organizations holding peace camps, conferences, trainings and peace meditations, and many other efforts to bridge the two sides at all levels. As early as February 2000 Norway was asked to mediate by both sides, and initial international diplomatic moves began to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
Hopes for peace gained ground as the LTTE declared a unilateral cease-fire in December 2000, but they cancelled it on 24 April 2001 and launched another offensive against the government. After securing a vast area formerly controlled by the military, the LTTE further advanced northwards. This advancement posed a serious threat to the Elephant Pass military complex that housed 17,000 Sri Lankan troops.
In July 2001 the LTTE carried out a devastating suicide attack on Bandaranaike International Airport, destroying eight of the air force's planes (two IAI Kfirs, one Mil-17, one Mil-24, three K-8 trainers, one MiG-27) and four Sri Lankan Airlines planes (two Airbus A330s, one A340 and one A320), dampening the economy and causing tourism—a vital foreign exchange earner for the government—to plummet. The impact of the attack was such that that year the Sri Lankan economy recorded a negative growth for the first and only time since its independence.
2002 Peace Process (2002–2006)
Beginning of the cease-fire
Towards the end of 2001 however, the LTTE began to declare their willingness to explore measures for a peaceful settlement to the conflict. One reason for this action may have been the fear of international pressure and the direct US support of the Sri Lankan government as part of the "war on Terror". On the other hand, the covert operations of the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) of Sri Lanka army had a profound impact on the Tiger command structure. During this period, Vaithilingam Sornalingam alias Shankar, who had been considered the right-hand man of LTTE leader Prabhakaran, and several other high-profile leaders were hunted down and killed by LRRP units.
In the south the government was facing increasing criticism over its "war for peace" strategy, with peace nowhere in sight and the economy in tatters. After losing a no-confidence motion, President Kumaratunga was forced to dissolve parliament and call for fresh elections. The elections, held on 5 December 2001, saw a sweeping victory for the United National Front, led by Ranil Wickremasinghe, who campaigned on a pro-peace platform and pledged to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
On 19 December, amidst efforts by Norway to bring the government and the Tamil Tigers to the negotiating table, the LTTE announced a 30-day cease-fire with the Sri Lankan government and pledged to halt all attacks against government forces. The new government welcomed the move, and reciprocated it two days later, announcing a month-long cease-fire and agreeing to lift a long-standing economic embargo on rebel-held territory.
The cease-fire was by no means acceptable to everyone. Buddhist monks started burning Norwegian flags and agitated against the cease-fire and eventually went to form a political party, Jathika Hela Urumaya, with extremist views.
Signing of Memorandum of Understanding
|1||16–18 September 2002||Sattahip Naval Base, Phuket, Thailand|
|2||31 October 2002 – 3 November 2002||Rose Garden hotel, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand|
|3||2–5 December 2002||Radisson SAS Plaza Hotel, Oslo, Norway|
|4||6–9 January 2003||Rose Garden hotel, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand|
|5||7–8 February 2003||Norwegian Embassy, Berlin, Germany|
|6||18–21 March 2003||Hakorn Prince Hotel, Kanagawa, Japan|
The two sides formalized a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on 22 February 2002, and signed a permanent cease-fire agreement (CFA). Norway was named mediator, and it was decided that they, together with the other Nordic countries, monitor the cease-fire through a committee of experts named the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission. In August the government agreed to lift the ban on the LTTE and paved the way for the resumption of direct negotiations with them.
Following the signing of the ceasefire agreement, commercial air flights to Jaffna began and the LTTE opened the key A9 highway, which linked the government-controlled area in the south with Jaffna and ran through LTTE territory, allowing civilian traffic through the Vanni region for the first time in many years (but only after paying a tax to the LTTE). Many foreign countries also offered substantial financial support if peace was achieved and optimism grew that an end to the decades-long conflict was in sight.
The much-anticipated peace talks began in Phuket, Thailand, and further rounds followed in Thailand, Norway, Germany and Japan. During the talks both sides agreed to the principle of a federal solution and the Tigers dropped their long-standing demand for a separate state. This was a major compromise on the part of the LTTE, which had always insisted on an independent Tamil state. This also represented a compromise on the part of the government, which had seldom agreed to more than minimal devolution. Both sides also exchanged prisoners of war for the first time.
Political changes in the South
Following the elections of 2001, for the first time in Sri Lanka's history the President and Prime Minister were of two different parties. This co-habitation was uneasy, especially since Prime Minister Wickremasinghe and the UNP favored a federal solution to the conflict, while hard-line elements within President Kumaratunga's party and other Sinhala nationalist groups allied to her opposed one, as they did not trust the LTTE, which continued to levy taxes, strengthen itself by smuggling in arms and ammunition, recruit child soldiers and engage in killings of members of rival Tamil groups and government intelligence agents following the Millennium City incident. During this time the LTTE also succeeded in setting up a series of vital bases around the Trincomalee Harbour (i.e., Manirasakulam camp) and the Eastern Province.
The talks broke down on 21 April 2003 when the Tamil Tigers announced they were suspending any further talks due to their "displeasure" at the handling of some "critical issues". Among the reasons the Tigers gave were their exclusion from reconstruction talks in Washington, DC, on 14 April and a more general insinuation that they were not receiving the full economic rewards of peace. They cited the failure, as they saw it, of peace dividends to transfer to security withdrawals on the ground and the disparity, as they saw it, between the relative calm of the government-held northeast and continuing violence in Tiger-held areas. However, the LTTE maintained it was committed to a settlement to the two-decade conflict, but stated that progress had to be made on the ground before the settlement proceeded.
On 31 October the LTTE issued its own peace proposal, calling for an Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA). The ISGA would be fully controlled by the LTTE and would have broad powers in the north and east (see the full text of the proposals) This provoked a strong backlash among the hard-line elements in the south, who accused Prime Minister Wickremasinghe of handing the north and east to the LTTE. Under pressure from within her own party to take action, Kumaratunga declared a state of emergency and took three key government ministries, the Ministry of Mass Media, the Interior Ministry and the crucial Defense Ministry. She then formed an alliance with the JVP, called the United People's Freedom Alliance, opposed to the ISGA and advocating a harder line on the LTTE, and called for fresh elections. The elections, held on 8 April 2004, resulted in victory for the UPFA with Mahinda Rajapakse appointed as Prime Minister.
Split of the LTTE
Meanwhile, in March 2004 there had been a major split between the northern and eastern wings of the LTTE. Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Col. Karuna, the Eastern commander of the LTTE and one of Prabhakaran's trusted lieutenants, pulled 5,000 eastern cadres out of the LTTE, claiming insufficient resources and power were being given to Tamils of the eastern part of the island. It was the biggest expression of dissension in the history of the LTTE and a clash within the LTTE seemed imminent. After the parliamentary elections, brief fighting south of Trincomalee led to a rapid retreat and capitulation of Karuna's group, their leaders eventually going into hiding including Karuna himself, who was helped to escape by Seyed Ali Zahir Moulana, a politician from the ruling party. However, the "Karuna faction" maintained a significant presence in the east and continued to launch attacks against the LTTE. The LTTE accused the army of covertly backing the breakaway group, which subsequently formed a political party named the TamilEela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) and hope to contest in future elections.
The cease-fire largely held through all this turmoil, with over 3000 infractions by the LTTE and some 300 by the SLA recorded by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) by 2005. The situation was further complicated by allegations that both sides were carrying out covert operations against each other. The government claimed that the LTTE was killing political opponents, recruiting children, importing arms and killing government security and intelligence officers. The rebels accused the government of supporting paramilitary groups against them, especially the Karuna group.
Tsunami and aftermath
On 26 December 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami struck Sri Lanka, killing more than 35,000 people and leaving many more homeless. A great deal of aid arrived from around the world, but there was immediate disagreement over how it should be distributed to the Tamil regions under LTTE control. By 24 June the government and LTTE agreed on the Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure (P-TOMS), but it received sharp criticism from the JVP, who left the government in protest. The legality of P-TOMS was also challenged in the courts. President Kumaratunga eventually had to scrap P-TOMS, which led to widespread criticism that sufficient aid was not reaching the north and east of the country. However, immediately following the tsunami there was a marked decrease in violence in the north.
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, a Tamil who was highly respected by foreign diplomats and who had been sharply critical of the LTTE, was assassinated at his home on 12 August 2005, allegedly by an LTTE sniper. His assassination led to the marginalization of the LTTE from the international community, and is generally considered to be the moment when the LTTE lost much of its sympathy in the eyes of foreign nations. Hence the silence of the international community when the Sri Lankan government took military action against the LTTE in 2006, when the latter closed the Mavil aru sluice.[further explanation needed]
Further political change occurred when the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka declared President Kumaratunga's second and final term over and ordered her to hold fresh presidential elections. The main candidates for the election, which was held in November, were UNF candidate former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe, who advocated the reopening of talks with the LTTE, and the UPFA candidate Prime Minister Rajapaksa, who called for a tougher line against the LTTE and a renegotiation of the cease-fire. The LTTE openly called for a boycott of the election by Tamils. Many of them were expected to vote for Wickremasinghe, and the loss of their votes proved fatal to his chances, as Rajapakse achieved a narrow victory. Following the election, LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran stated in his annual address that the Tigers would "renew their struggle" in 2006 if the government did not take serious moves toward peace.
Eelam War IV (2006–2009)
Beginning in December 2005, there was increased guerrilla activity to the northeast, including Claymore mine attacks which killed 150 government troops, clashes between the Sea Tigers and the Sri Lanka navy and the killings of sympathizers on both sides including Taraki Sivaram, a pro-LTTE journalist, and Joseph Pararajasingham, a pro-LTTE MP, both killed allegedly by the government of Sri Lanka.
At the beginning of 2006 the focus of the civil war turned to civilian targets, with commuter bus and train bombings carried out in most parts of the country, including a series of attacks against commuters in and around Colombo.
Talks and further violence
In light of this violence, the co-chairs of the Tokyo Donor conference called on both parties to return to the negotiating table. US State Department officials gave warnings to the Tigers, stating that a return to hostilities would mean that the Tigers would face a "more capable and more determined" Sri Lankan military. While the talks were going on there was violence directed towards civilians, such as the killings of five Tamil students on 2 January 2006.
In a last-minute effort to salvage an agreement between the parties, Norwegian special envoy Erik Solheim and LTTE theoretician Anton Balasingham arrived on the island. The parties strongly disagreed on the location of the talks; however, continued efforts produced a breakthrough when both parties agreed on 7 February 2006 that new talks could be held in Geneva, Switzerland, on 22 and 23 February. During the weeks after the talks there was a significant decrease in violence. However, the LTTE resumed attacks against the military in April.
In light of this violence, the LTTE called for a postponement of the Geneva talks until 24–25 April, and the government initially agreed to this. Following negotiations, both the government and the rebels agreed to have a civilian vessel transport regional LTTE leaders with international truce monitors on 16 April, which involved crossing government-controlled territory. However, the climate shifted drastically when the Tigers cancelled the meeting, claiming not to have agreed to a naval escort. According to the SLMM, the Tamil rebels had previously agreed to the escort.
On 20 April 2006 the LTTE officially pulled out of peace talks indefinitely. While they stated that transportation issues had prevented them from meeting their regional leaders, some analysts and the international community were strongly skeptical, seeing the transportation issue as a delaying tactic by the LTTE to avoid attending peace talks in Geneva. Violence continued to spiral and on 23 April 2006, six Sinhalese rice farmers were massacred in their paddy fields by suspected LTTE cadres, and on 13 May 2006 13 Tamil civilians were killed in the islet of Kayts. International condemnation against the LTTE skyrocketed following the attempted assassination of the commander of the Sri Lanka Army, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, by a female LTTE Black Tiger suicide bomber named Anoja Kugenthirasah, who concealed the explosives by appearing to be pregnant and blew herself up at army headquarters in Colombo. For the first time since the 2001 cease-fire, the Sri Lanka Air Force carried out aerial assaults on rebel positions in the northeastern part of the island in retaliation for the attack.
This attack, along with the assassination of Lakshman Kadiragamar a year earlier and an unsuccessful attack against a naval vessel carrying 710 unarmed security force personnel on holiday, marked a turning point, as the European Union decided to proscribe the LTTE as a terrorist organisation on 19 May 2006. It resulted in the freezing of LTTE assets in its 27 member nations. In a statement, the European Parliament said that the LTTE did not represent all the Tamils and called on it to "allow for political pluralism and alternate democratic voices in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka". As the north and east of the country continued to be rocked by attacks, new talks were scheduled in Oslo, Norway, between 8–9 June. Delegations from both sides arrived in Oslo, but the talks were cancelled when the LTTE refused to meet directly with the government delegation, claiming its fighters were not allowed safe passage to travel to the talks. Norwegian mediator Erik Solheim told journalists that the LTTE should take direct responsibility for the collapse of the talks.
Further violence followed, including the Vankalai massacre. The Sri Lankan army and Tamil Tiger rebels blamed each other for the killings. There was also the Kebithigollewa massacre in which the LTTE attacked a bus, killing at least 64 Sinhalese civilians and prompting more air strikes by the Air Force, and the assassination of Sri Lanka's third highest-ranking army officer and Deputy Chief of Staff General Parami Kulatunga on 26 June by an LTTE suicide bomber. These events led the SLMM to question whether a cease-fire could still be said to exist.
Mavil Aru water dispute
A new crisis leading to the first large-scale fighting since signing of the cease-fire occurred when the LTTE closed the sluice gates of the Mavil Aru reservoir on 21 July. Mavil Aru was the waterway that provided water to some regions of eastern Sri Lanka, like Trincomalee. After the cease-fire in 2002, the conflict over Mavil Aru was one of the biggest military confrontations between the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and the LTTE. Its relevance is for geo-strategic reasons: within the Mavil Aru area, Sinhala, Muslim and Tamil populations live side by side. It is also the entrance to Koddiyar Bay, the inlet for Trincomalee port and naval base, so the LTTE presence in the area seriously threatened the Sri Lankan security forces' presence and domination.
Closure of Mavil Aru affected the water supply to 15,000 families in government-controlled areas. After the initial negotiations and efforts by the SLMM to open the gates failed, the Sri Lanka military initiated an operation to achieve the re-opening of the sluice gates.
President Rajapaksa said that the supply of water was a non-negotiable fundamental human right. Additionally, a government spokesman said that "utilities could not be used as bargaining tools" by the rebels. The government deployed its army and air force for the offensive, attacking not only the region of Mavil Aru but also the LTTE positions in Batticaloa, and Vavuniya. Air Force planes attacked LTTE positions on 26 July, and ground troops began an operation to open the gate. The sluice gates were eventually reopened on 8 August, with conflicting reports as to who actually opened them. Initially, the SLMM claimed that they managed to persuade the LTTE to lift the waterway blockade conditionally. The LTTE claimed that it opened the sluice gates "on humanitarian grounds", although this was disputed by military correspondents, who stated the water began flowing immediately after security forces carried out a precise bombing of the Mavil Aru anicut. Eventually, following heavy fighting, government troops gained full control of the Mavil Aru reservoir on 15 August. The consequences of the "Operation Watershed" were about 150 civilians killed and more than 50,000 refugees from Mutur and the villages nearby. It was the precedent of the Eelam War IV.
LTTE offensives in Muttur and Jaffna
As fierce fighting was ongoing in the vicinity of Mavil Aru, violence spread to Trincomalee, where the LTTE launched an attack on a crucial Sri Lanka Navy base, and to the strategic government-controlled coastal town of Muttur in early August, resulting in the deaths of at least 30 civilians and displacing 25,000 residents of the area. The clashes erupted on 2 August 2006 when the LTTE launched a heavy artillery attack on Muttur and then moved in, gaining control of some parts of the town. The military retaliated, and re-established full control over the town by 5 August, killing over 150 LTTE fighters in heavy clashes.
Soon afterwards, 17 persons working for the International French charity Action Against Hunger (ACF) in Muthur, were massacred. They were found lying face down on the floor of their office, shot to death, still wearing their clearly marked T-shirts indicating they were international humanitarian workers. The murders prompted widespread international condemnation. The SLMM claimed that the government was behind the attack, but the government denied the allegation calling it "pathetic and biased", and stated that the SLMM had "no right to make such a statement because they are not professionals in autopsy or post-mortem."
Meanwhile, in the north of the country, some of the bloodiest fighting since 2001 took place after the LTTE launched massive attacks on Sri Lanka Army defense lines on the Jaffna peninsula on 11 August. The LTTE used a force of 400–500 fighters in the attacks, which consisted of land and amphibious assaults, and also fired a barrage of artillery at government positions, including the key military airbase at Palaly. The LTTE is estimated to have lost over 200 fighters in the operation, while 90 Sri Lankan soldiers and sailors were also killed.
As ground battles were ongoing in the north and the east of the country, the Sri Lanka Air Force carried out an air strike against a facility in the rebel-held Mullaitivu area, killing a number of Tamil girls. Although the LTTE claimed 61 girls were killed, the SLMM stated they were able to count just 19 bodies. The government stated that it was an LTTE training facility and that the children were LTTE child soldiers, although the LTTE claimed the victims were schoolgirls attending a course on first aid at an orphanage.
On the same day a convoy carrying the Pakistani High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Bashir Wali Mohamed, was attacked when a claymore antipersonnel mine concealed within an auto rickshaw blew up as it passed by. The High Commissioner escaped unhurt, but seven people were killed and 17 injured in the blast. The High Commissioner claimed that India was believed to have carried it out, in order to intimidate Pakistan, which is one of the main suppliers of military equipment to the Sri Lankan government. Pakistan had promised one shipload of equipment every 10 days in coming months.
Fall of Sampur
Since the resumption of violence, concerns were mounting among the military establishment that the strategically crucial Sri Lanka Navy base in Trincomalee was under severe threat from LTTE gun positions located in and around Sampur, which lies across the Koddiyar Bay from Trincomalee. Artillery fired from LTTE bases in the area could potentially cripple the naval base, bringing it to a complete standstill and cutting the only military supply chain to Jaffna. All movements of naval vessels were also under the constant surveillance of the LTTE. These fears were backed up by a US military advisory team which visited the island in 2005.
Following clashes in Mavil Aru and Muttur, the LTTE had intensified attacks targeting the naval base in Trincomalee, and in a speech on 21 August Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse made clear the government intentions were to neutralize the LTTE threat from Sampur. On 28 August the military launched an assault to retake the LTTE camps in Sampur and the adjoining Kaddaiparichchan and Thoppur areas. This led the LTTE to declare that if the offensive continued, the cease-fire would be officially over.
After steady progress, security forces led by Brigade Commander Sarath Wijesinghe recaptured Sampur from the LTTE on 4 September and began to establish military bases there, as the LTTE admitted defeat and stated their fighters "withdrew" from the strategically important town. It marked the first significant territorial change of hands since the signing of the cease-fire agreement in 2002. The Sri Lankan military estimated that 33 of its personnel were killed in the offensive, along with over 200 LTTE fighters.
LTTE retaliation and further peace talks
The LTTE struck back in October. First, they killed nearly 130 soldiers in a fierce battle at Muhamalai, the crossing-point between government- and LTTE-controlled area in the north of the country. Just days later, a suspected LTTE suicide bomber struck a naval convoy in Habarana, in the center of the country, killing about 100 sailors who were returning home on leave. It was the deadliest suicide attack in the history of the conflict.
Two days later LTTE Sea Tiger forces launched an attack against the Dakshina naval base in the southern port city of Galle. It was the farthest south any major LTTE attack had taken place, and involved 15 LTTE fighters who arrived in five suicide boats. The attack was repulsed by the government, and the damage to the naval base was minimal. All 15 LTTE fighters were believed to have died in the attack, along with one Navy sailor.
Despite these incidents, both parties agreed to unconditionally attend peace talks in Geneva on 28–29 October. However, the peace talks broke down due to disagreements over the reopening of the key A9 highway, which is the link between Jaffna and government-controlled areas in the south. While the LTTE wanted the highway, which was closed following fierce battles in August, to be reopened, the government refused, stating the LTTE would use it to collect taxes from people passing through and would use it to launch further offensives against government troops.
Following the dawn of the new year, suspected LTTE fighters carried out two bus bombings in the south of the country, killing 21 civilians. News reports stated that the attacks bore all the hallmarks of an LTTE attack. The Sri Lankan government condemned the attacks and blamed the LTTE for carrying them out, although the LTTE denied any involvement.
Government offensive in the East
In December 2006 Sri Lankan government officials announced their plans to drive the LTTE out of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka, and then use the full strength of the military to defeat the LTTE in the north of the country. The government stated that LTTE was firing artillery towards civilian settlements in the east and were using 35,000 people as human shields. These claims were later backed up by civilians in the area, who told reporters that they were held by force by the Tamil Tigers. On 7 November 2006, amidst conflicting claims, over 45 Tamil civilians were killed in what is known as the Vaharai bombing.
Subsequently, the army began an offensive against the LTTE on 8 December 2006, in the Batticoloa district with the objective of taking Vakarai, the principal stronghold of the LTTE in the east; the operation was temporarily aborted after a week of fighting due to the large number of civilians in the area and the difficulty in conducting combat operations due to the ongoing monsoon rain. Over the next few weeks an estimated 20,000 civilians fled from Vakarai to government-controlled areas, fearing the imminent assault. The army launched a new offensive in mid-January, and Vakarai fell to the advancing troops on 19 January. While the offensive in the East was ongoing, the LTTE and others accused the government of murdering 15 civilians in the Padahuthurai bombing on 2 January, when the air force bombed what they claimed to be an LTTE naval base in Illuppaikadavai in northern Sri Lanka. The loss of Vakarai had been predicted to cut off supply routes of the northern Tigers to their cadres in the east, thus weakening the Tigers' already diminishing grip on the east.
As the military offensive was ongoing, the LTTE continued to carry out attacks against civilians in government-held territory. On 1 April 2007 the military accused the LTTE of killing six Sinhalese tsunami aid workers in the eastern district of Batticaloa. The next day suspected LTTE fighters set off a bomb aboard a civilian bus in Ampara, which killed 17 people, including three children.
Troops mostly operating in small groups of Special Forces and Commando units began a new operation in February to clear the last remaining LTTE fighters from the Eastern Province. As part of the operation, troops captured the key LTTE base in Kokkadicholai on 28 March, and the strategic A5 highway on 12 April, bringing the entire highway under government control for the first time in 15 years. This meant the LTTE's presence in the east was reduced to a 140-square-kilometer pocket of jungle in the Thoppigala area northwest of Batticaloa. After the three-month-long Battle of Thoppigala, the army captured the Thoppigala peak on 11 July 2007, ending the LTTE's military capability in the Eastern Province and concluding Eelam War IV in the Eastern theatre.
Government offensive in the North
Sporadic fighting in the North had been going on for months, but the intensity of the clashes increased after September 2007. During clashes in the Forward Defence Lines, separating their forces, both sides exchanged heavy artillery fire, after which military incursions followed. By December 2007, the LTTE defences at Uyilankulama, Parappakandal and Thampanai were lost to advancing troops of the Sri Lanka Army.
In an interview with the Sunday Observer the Army Commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka said that the Army had occupied the LTTE's Forward Defence Lines and surrounded the Wanni LTTE bases from all directions. He also said that there were around 3,000 Tigers remaining and that the military intended to annihilate them within the first six months of the next year. A day later there were less optimistic statements by Army, Air Force and Navy Commanders. The Army was to face an estimated 5,000 Tiger cadres in the Wanni. The Commander of the Army intended to shift the current battles in the Forward Defence Lines to a decisive phase in August 2008. In the Commanders' view, it was quite possible to defeat the LTTE in 2008.
The military of Sri Lanka claimed that the leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was seriously injured during air strikes carried out by the Sri Lanka Air Force on a bunker complex in Jayanthinagar on 26 November 2007. Earlier, on 2 November 2007, S. P. Thamilselvan, the head of the LTTE political wing, was killed during another government air raid. The Sri Lanka Air Force openly vowed to destroy the entire leadership of the LTTE. On 5 January 2008, Colonel Charles, Head of LTTE Military Intelligence, was killed in a claymore mine ambush by a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (Sri Lanka) (LRRP).
Abrogation of ceasefire agreement
Defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa urged the government to abandon the ceasefire agreement in December 2007, and on 2 January 2008, the Sri Lankan government officially did so. Between February 2002 to May 2007, Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission had documented 3,830 ceasefire violations by the LTTE versus 351 by the security forces. From May 2007, the SLMM ceased making determinations on ceasefire violations. Thus the government stated there was no need for a ceasefire any more. Several donor countries expressed their disappointment at the Sri Lankan government's withdrawal. The LTTE formally responded that since the government had unilaterally withdrawn from the ceasefire agreement without any justification and that they were prepared to continue to honour the agreement, the international community ought to immediately remove the bans it had placed on the LTTE.
The government then attempted to open a third front along the Muhamalai Forward Defence Line. After an initial setback on 23 April, the Sri Lankan Army advanced rapidly, capturing the town of Adampan on 9 May, Mannar "Rice Bowl" which consists of the island's most fertile paddy fields on 30 June, Vidattaltivu on 16 July, and Iluppaikkadavai on 20 July.
On 21 July 2008, the LTTE announced that it would be declaring a unilateral ceasefire from 28 July to 4 August, to coincide with the 15th summit of the heads of state of SAARC to be held in Colombo. However, the government of Sri Lanka dismissed the LTTE's offer as needless and treacherous.
Significant military gains by the government
On 2 August 2008, Vellankulam town, the LTTE's last stronghold in Mannar District, fell to the advancing SLA troops, completing the eight-month effort to recapture the district. The Army followed this up by taking control of Mallavi on 2 September, following weeks of heavy military confrontation. The LTTE countered with a surprise attack on the Vavuniya air base on 9 September, in which both sides claimed victory.
From Mannar, the Army had entered Kilinochchi District, the last stronghold of the LTTE, at the end of July, with the intention of taking Kilinochchi before the end of the year. On 3 October 2008, a UN aid convoy managed to unload all its cargo in Kilinochchi District and described Kilinochchi town as having been nearly abandoned, but the LTTE were able to kill retired Major General Janaka Perera along with 26 other victims in a suicide blast on 6 October.
On 17 October 2008, SLA troops cut off the Mannar-Poonaryn A32 highway north of Nachchikuda, the main remaining Sea Tiger stronghold on the northwestern coast of the island, thus effectively encircling it. They began their assault on 28 October and captured it the next day. After that the Army Task Force 1 continued their advance towards Pooneryn and captured Kiranchchi, Palavi, Veravil, Valaipadu and Devil's Point. On 15 November 2008, troops of the Army Task Force 1 entered the strategically important Tiger stronghold of Pooneryn. Simultaneously, the newly created Army Task Force 3 was introduced into the area of Mankulam with the objective of engaging the LTTE cadres in a new battlefront towards the east of the Jaffna–Kandy A9 highway. SLA troops captured Mankulam and the surrounding area on 17 November 2008.
Meanwhile, the situation of more than 200,000 civilians who had been displaced in the latest round of fighting was turning into a humanitarian disaster; however, due to a number of reasons including doubts regarding the sincerity of the LTTE's negotiations, neither Western governments nor India intervened to broker a new ceasefire.
Fall of Kilinochchi and subsequent events
The Sri Lankan Army began the attack on Kilinochchi on 23 November 2008. Troops were attacking rebels' defences from three directions. However, the LTTE offered a stiff resistance, and the prolonged attack resulted in heavy casualties on both sides.
Not until 1 January 2009 were SLA troops able to capture Paranthan, located to the north of Kilinochchi along the A-9 route. This isolated the southern periphery of the Elephant Pass LTTE foothold and also exposed the LTTE's main fortification at Kilinochchi. This made the capture of Kilinochchi, which the rebels had used for over a decade as their de facto administrative capital, far simpler, and they were able to accomplish this on 2 January. The loss of Killinochchi caused a substantial dent in the LTTE's image as a capable, ruthless terrorist group, and observers forecast the LTTE was likely to collapse before long under unbearable military pressure on multiple fronts.
The Tigers quickly abandoned their positions on the Jaffna peninsula to make a last stand in the jungles of Mullaitivu, their last main base. The entire Jaffna peninsula was captured by the Sri Lanka Army by 14 January 2009. However, they were unable to hold out for long, and on 25 January, SLA troops captured Mullaitivu. The last Sea Tiger base in Chalai was next to fall on 5 February, reducing the territory under rebel control to less than some 200 km2.
This stage of the war was marked by increased brutality against civilians and rapidly mounting civilian casualties. On 19 February 2009, Human Rights Watch issued a report accusing the Sri Lankan army of "slaughtering" the civilians during indiscriminate artillery attacks (including repeated shelling of hospitals) and calling on the Sri Lankan government to end its policy of "detaining displaced persons" in military-controlled internment camps. Human Rights Watch also urged the Tamil Tigers to permit trapped civilians to leave the war zone and to "stop shooting at those who try to flee". The UN was also concerned over the condition of internally displaced persons and estimated that some 200,000 people were being squeezed into a narrow 14 square kilometre patch of land on the coast in Vanni, which the government had declared the 'no-fire zone'.
On 20 February 2009, two LTTE planes on a suicide mission carried out a kamikaze style air attack on the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, killing 2 and wounding 45, but both planes were shot down by the Sri Lankan Air Force before they could damage the intended targets which were the Army Headquarters and the main Air Force base. By late March, the Tamil Tigers controlled only one square kilometre outside the no-fire zone, down from about 15,000 km2 a mere three years ago. Political pressure was placed on President Rajapaksa to find a political solution to the conflict and he called for a meeting with Tamil National Alliance, but they refused until the government resolved the humanitarian crisis faced by civilians trapped in the fighting.
The Battle of Aanandapuram, which was described by military analyst/journalist D. B. S. Jeyaraj as the "defining moment" of the 3 decade war, was fought on 5 April. This battle saw the demise of most of the battle-hardened ground commanders of the LTTE, including Velayuthapillai Baheerathakumar alias Theepan, the overall commander of the LTTE northern front fighting formations. SLA soldiers numbering more than 50,000 from 5 divisions participated in the battle encircling the LTTE cadres inside a small littoral strip of territory located between the Paranthan-Mullaitivu A35 highway, Nanthikadal and Chalai Lagoons on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other. Rebel casualties amounted to 625.
Fighting in the 'No-Fire Zone'
SLA troops were able to push the Tamil Tigers into the no-fire zone set up for civilians. The LTTE then built a 3-kilometre (2 mi) long bund in the no-fire zone, trapping over 30,000 civilians, but the SLA was able to destroy this.
On 21 April, Sri Lankan troops launched an assault, targeting LTTE leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran. At the same time, a mass Tamil exodus from the 'no-fire zone' was underway. The next day, two senior LTTE members (LTTE media co-ordinator Velayuthan Thayanithi, alias Daya Master, and a top interpreter Kumar Pancharathnam, alias George) surrendered to the advancing Sri Lankan army. This came as "a rude shock" and a major setback for the rebel leadership. When asked why they had surrendered, both men stressed that rebels were shooting at the civilians and preventing them from escaping from the 'no-fire zone' to safety in government-controlled areas. They also alleged that the LTTE were still abducting and conscripting children as young as 14 years old, and would fire at anyone who tried to resist.
By 25 April, the area under the LTTE was reduced to 10 km2. While the Tamil exodus from the 'no-fire zone' continued, the UN estimated that around 6,500 civilians may have been killed and another 14,000 wounded between January 2009 and April 2009. The BBC reported that the land recaptured by the army from the rebels was totally depopulated and utterly devastated.
As fighting continued, a group of independent United Nations experts called on the Human Rights Council to urgently set up an international inquiry to address the "critical" situation in Sri Lanka amid fighting between the Army and Tamil rebels. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), over 196,000 people fled the conflict zone, a shrinking pocket of land on the north-east coastline, where clashes continued between government troops and the LTTE, while at least 50,000 people were still trapped there. A UN spokesman in Colombo, Gordon Weiss, said more than 100 children died during the "large-scale killing of civilians" and described the situation in northern Sri Lanka as a "bloodbath". UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was appalled at the killing of hundreds of Sri Lankan civilians caught in the middle of hostilities between the army and separatist Tamil rebels over the weekend. He voiced deep concern over the continued use of heavy weapons in the conflict zone, but also stressed that the "reckless disrespect shown by the LTTE for the safety of civilians has led to thousands of people remaining trapped in the area".
On 16 May 2009, Sri Lankan troops broke through LTTE defences and captured the last section of coastline held by Tamil Tiger rebels. The army reported it was set to "clear" remaining rebel-held land within days. Later the military claimed, allegedly citing intercepted LTTE communication, that rebels were preparing for a mass suicide after being effectively cut off from escape routes. Some rebels were reported to have blown themselves up.
End of the war
16 May: Sri Lanka declares victory
Addressing the G11 summit in Jordan, President Mahinda Rajapaksa stated "my government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has in an unprecedented humanitarian operation finally defeated the LTTE militarily". Sri Lankan Commander of the Army Sarath Fonseka also declared victory over LTTE. Sri Lankan troops raced to clear the last LTTE pockets of resistance. As the last LTTE strongpoints crumbled, Sri Lankan troops killed 70 rebels attempting to escape by boat. The whereabouts of LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran and other major rebel leaders were not certain.
17 May: Tigers admit defeat
The LTTE finally admitted defeat on 17 May 2009, with the rebels' chief of international relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, stating on the website that "This battle has reached its bitter end ... We have decided to silence our guns. Our only regrets are for the lives lost and that we could not hold out for longer".
18 May: First claim of Prabhakaran's death
The Sri Lankan armed forces claimed that the leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was killed in the morning of 18 May 2009 while he was trying to flee the conflict zone in an ambulance. The announcement on state television came shortly after the military said it had surrounded Prabhakaran in a tiny patch of jungle in the north-east. The Daily Telegraph wrote that, according to Sri Lankan TV, Prabhakaran was "... killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack as he tried to escape the war zone in an Ambulance with his closest aides. Colonel Soosai, the leader of his "Sea Tigers" navy, and Pottu Amman, his intelligence chief were also killed in the attack."
The head of the Sri Lankan army, General Sarath Fonseka, said the military had defeated the rebels and "liberated the entire country". Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara stated 250 Tamil Tigers, who were hiding and fighting from within the no fire zone, were killed overnight.
19 May: President addresses the Parliament and Prabhakaran is dead
At 9:00 am on 19 May 2009 President Mahinda Rajapaksa delivered a victory address to the Parliament and declared that Sri Lanka is liberated from terrorism. Around 9:30 am troops attached to Task Force VIII of Sri Lanka Army, reported to its commander, Colonel G.V. Ravipriya that a body similar to Velupillai Prabhakaran has been found among the mangroves in Nandikadal lagoon. It was identified by the officer. At 12:15 pm Army Commander Sarath Fonseka officially announced Prabhakaran's death, through the State television ITN. At around 1:00 pm his body was shown in Swarnavahini for the first time. Prabakaran's identity was confirmed by Karuna Amman, his former confidant, and through DNA testing against his son's genetic material who had been killed earlier by the Sri Lanka Military. However, LTTE Chief of international relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan on the same day claimed that "Our beloved leader is alive and safe." On 24 May 2009, he admitted the death of Prabhakaran, retracting the previous statement.
Combat after 18 May 2009
- 19 May 2009 – 3 LTTE cadre killed by the Sri Lankan Army at Kachikudichchiaru, Ampara.
- 20 May 2009 – 5 LTTE cadre killed by the Sri Lankan Army near Periyapillumalai area.
- 21 May 2009 – 10 LTTE cadre killed by the Sri Lankan Army in the Kadawana jungle area.
- 27 May 2009 – 11 LTTE cadre killed by the Sri Lankan Army at Kalavanchchikudi in the Batticaloa area. Five T-56 assault rifles, twenty claymore mines (15 kg each), two hand grenades, three anti-personnel mines and medical items were reported recovered by military sources.
- 5 June 2009 – Special Task Force (STF) personnel while conducting search and clear operation in Darampalawa area in Ampara confronted a group of LTTE cadre and recovered two bodies along with numerous military items.
- 5 August 2009 – Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the new leader of LTTE was arrested by a Sri Lankan military intelligence unit, with the collaboration of local authorities, in the Tune Hotel, Downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and brought back to Sri Lanka.
The general public of Sri Lanka took to streets to celebrate the end of the decades long war. Streets were filled with joyous scenes of jubilation. Opposition leader Ranil Wickremasinghe, through a telephone call, congratulated President Rajapaksa and the state security forces for their victory over the LTTE. Religious leaders too hailed the end of the bloodshed. International response to the end of the fighting was also positive and welcoming, while some countries expressed concern over the civilian casualties and the humanitarian impact. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, "I am relieved by the conclusion of the military operation, but I am deeply troubled by the loss of so many civilian lives. The task now facing the people of Sri Lanka is immense and requires all hands. It is most important that every effort be undertaken to begin a process of healing and national reconciliation". Time magazine named the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War as one of the top 10 news stories of 2009.
Tamil diaspora communities around the world protested the civilian casualties in Northern Province, Sri Lanka and the war in general. Active protests occurred in the major and/or capital cities of India, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and the United States. The collective objective of the protests was to persuade world national leaders to stop the civil war and bring a permanent ceasefire with an internationally coordinated diplomatic strategy.
The Sri Lankan Civil War was very costly, killing more than 100,000 civilians and over 50,000 fighters from both sides of the conflict. Around 27,000+ LTTE cadres, 23,790+ Sri Lankan Army personnel, 1000+ Sri Lankan police, 1500 Indian soldiers were said to have died in the conflict. In 2008, the LTTE revealed that 22,390 fighters have lost their lives in the armed struggle since 27 November 1982, although it stopped keeping records in 2009. Minister of Defence Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said in an interview with state television that 23,790 Sri Lankan military personnel were killed since 1981 (it was not specified if police or other non armed forces personnel were included in this particular figure). The Uppsala Conflict Data Program, a university-based data collection program considered to be "one of the most accurate and well-used data-sources on global armed conflicts", provides free data to the public and has divided Sri Lanka's conflicts into groups based on the actors involved. It reported that, between 1990 and 2009, between 59,193–75,601 people were killed in Sri Lanka during various three types of organized armed conflict: "State-based" conflicts, those that involved the Government of Sri Lanka against rebel groups(LTTE and the JVP), "Non-state" conflicts, those conflicts that did not involve the government of Sri Lanka (e.g. LTTE vs. LTTE-Karuna Faction, and LTTE vs. PLOTE), as well as "One-sided" violence, that involved deliberate attacks against civilians perpetrated by either LTTE or the Government of Sri Lanka.
The "Tamil Centre for Human Rights" recorded that from 1983 to 2004, 47,556 Tamil civilians were murdered by both the Sri Lankan government and IPKF forces. Another organization called NESOHR published that from the beginning of the war to the 2002 ceasefire, 4000 to 5000 Tamil civilians were killed in large scale massacres, with a total civilian death of around 40,000. Civilian casualties that occurred on 2009 is of major controversy, as there were no organizations to record the events during the final months of the war. The Sri Lankan government revealed that 9,000 people were killed in the final months of the war, but it did not differentiate between LTTE cadres and civilians. The UN, based on credible witness evidence from aid agencies and civilians evacuated from the Safe Zone by sea, estimated that 6,500 civilians were killed and another 14,000 injured between mid-January 2009, when the Safe Zone was first declared, and mid-April 2009. There are no official casualty figures after this period but estimates of the death toll for the final four months of the civil war (mid-January to mid-May) range from 15,000 to 20,000. A US State Department report has suggested that the actual casualty figures were probably much higher than the UN's estimates and that significant numbers of casualties weren't recorded. A former UN official has claimed that up to 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the final stages of the civil war. Most of the details pertaining to the civilian casualties were reported by four doctors who worked in the no-fire zone. In a joint press conference after the war in July 2009 while still in CID custody, they recanted their initial reports, stating that the casualty figures were exaggerated and were handed to them by the LTTE. However, a leaked US diplomatic cable contains dispatches stating that the doctors upon their release in August 2009 are to have stated to US embassy personnel that they were heavily coached for the press conference and that they had not lied when giving their original statements. A US State Department report has suggested that the actual casualty figures were probably much higher than the UN estimates and that significant numbers of casualties were not recorded. Gordon Weiss, a former UN official has claimed that up to 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the final stages of the war. U.N Secretary General's experts panel report had said that as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians could have been killed in the final phases of the Sri Lankan civil war.
On the contrary, Rajiva Wijesinha the permanent secretary to the Sri Lanka's Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, in June 2009 said that altogether 3,000 to 5,000 civilians may have been killed during the period. In November 2011, a Sri Lankan international terrorism expert, Rohan Gunaratna, estimated the number of civilian casualties to be 1,400 (1200 killed by army cross-fire and 200 by LTTE). His estimate is in part based on information obtained from captured LTTE cadres to which he had been granted access and from coroners working in and around the no-fire zone. In February 2012, the Sri Lankan government released an official estimate of civilian deaths in Northern Province, concluding that 8,649 people have died due to extraordinary circumstances (reasons other than ageing, diseases, natural disasters etc.), in 2009. It also listed 2,635 people as untraceable. However the report did not differentiate civilians from the slain LTTE cadres. Several human rights groups have even claimed that the death toll in the last months of the war could be 70,000. The Sri Lankan government has denied all claims of causing mass casualties against Tamils, arguing that it was "taking care not to harm civilians". Instead, it has blamed the LTTE for the high casualty numbers, stating that they used the civilians as human shields. Both the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE have been accused by the U.N for war crimes during the last phase of the war.
While the majority of civilian deaths were that of the Tamil minority, both Sinhalese and Moor civilians died in the war. The LTTE were estimated to be responsible for 3,700 to 4,100 civilian deaths in over 200 separate attacks. In response to these civilian deaths, LTTE leader Prabhakaran denied allegations of killing civilians, claiming to condemn such acts of violence; and claimed that LTTE had instead attacked armed home guards who were "death-squads let loose on Tamil civilians" and Sinhalese settlers who were "brought to the Tamil areas to forcibly occupy the land.
The total economic cost of the 25-year war is estimated at US$200 billion. This is approximately 5 times the GDP of Sri Lanka in 2009. Sri Lanka had spent US$5.5 billion only on Eelam War IV, which saw the end of LTTE. The government had spent US$2.25 billion to develop the Northern Province under the "Uthuru Wasanthaya" program after the end of war. Measuring the opportunity cost of war, a report by Strategic Foresight Group states that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) remained stagnant during periods of civil war and that net FDI increased during periods of ceasefire.
After the complete military defeat of the LTTE, President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced that the government is committed to a political solution, and for this purpose action would be taken based on the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Pro-LTTE political party Tamil National Alliance (TNA), also the largest political group representing Sri Lankan Tamil community, dropped its demand for a separate state, in favour of a federal solution. There are ongoing bilateral talks between President Rajapaksa's UPFA government and the TNA, on a viable political solution and devolution of power.
However, in an interview to Headlines Today, television channel from India, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Defence Secretary of Sri Lanka and brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa binned "the political solution talk", asserting, among other things, that it was "simply irrelevant" because "we have ended this terrorism" in Sri Lanka.
Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission
Following the end of the war in May 2009, amid mounting international pressure for an inquiry into the final stages of the war, President Rajapaksa appointed the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) to look back at the Sri Lankan Civil War, and to provide recommendations for an era of healing and peace building. The commission concluded that the Sri Lankan military didn't deliberately target civilians in the No Fire Zones. The commission acknowledged that hospitals had been shelled, resulting in "considerable civilian casualties", but it did not say who was responsible for the shelling. The commission blamed Sinhalese and Tamil politicians for causing the civil war: the Sinhalese politicians failed to offer a solution acceptable to the Tamil people and the Tamil politicians fanned militant separatism. However the commission has been heavily criticised by human rights groups and UN Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability due its limited mandate, alleged lack of independence and its failure to meet minimum international standards or offer protection to witnesses.
Transitional Justice and steps for non-recurrence
In 2015 the Sri Lankan government decided to create a truth commission based on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa to probe allegations during the war. According to Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera a new constitution is expected solve issues related to the war and ensure non-recurrence. However the government criticized both Sinhala and Tamil extremists for obstructing transitional justice.
Internally displaced people
Towards the end of the war, as Sri Lankan government forces advanced deeper into Tamil Tiger controlled areas, international concern grew for the fate of the 350,000 civilians trapped. On 21 January 2009, the Sri Lankan military declared a 32 square kilometres (12.4 mi) Safe Zone located northwest of Puthukkudiviruppu, between the A35 Highway and the Chalai Lagoon. Sri Lankan Air Force aircraft dropped leaflets urging civilians to relocate to the safe zone and wait until the army could move them into safer locations. The Sri Lankan military promised not to fire into the area. However, only small numbers of civilians actually crossed into the Safe Zone, and the Sri Lankan government, the United Nations, and human rights organisations accused the LTTE of preventing civilians from leaving. The fighting eventually caused civilians to flee the safe zone to a narrow strip of land between Nanthi Kadal and the Indian Ocean. The Sri Lankan military declared a new 10-square-kilometre (3.9 sq mi) Safe Zone northwest of Mullaitivu on 12 February. Over the next three months, the Sri Lankan military repeatedly attacked the Safe Zone with aircraft and artillery to destroy the last remnants of the Tamil Tigers trapped there. The Sri Lankan government claimed that it was trying to hit Tamil Tiger positions, and claimed that these raids started on 15 February and ended on 19 April, the day before the Army breached Tamil Tiger defences, and civilians started to pour out. However, these attacks caused heavy damage. Thousands of civilians were killed or injured, and the Tamil Tigers reportedly held many as human shields.
The final stages of the war created 300,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who were transferred to camps in Vavuniya District and detained there against their will. The camps were surrounded by barbed wire. This, together with the conditions inside the camps, attracted much criticism from inside and outside Sri Lanka. After the end of the civil war President Rajapaksa gave assurances to foreign diplomats that the bulk of the IDPs would be resettled in accordance with the 180-day plan. By January 2012, almost all the IDPs had been resettled, except 6,554 from the Divisional Secretariats of Mullaitivu district, where the de-mining work was yet to be finished.
Since 1983, the civil war caused mass outflow of Tamil civilians from Sri Lanka to South India. After the end of the war, nearly 5,000 of them returned to the country. As of July 2012, 68,152 Sri Lankans were living in South India as refugees.
The continuous defeats of the LTTE had made its cadres abandon the outfit in large numbers. With the end of the hostilities, 11,664 LTTE members, including over 500 child soldiers surrendered to the Sri Lankan military. Among them were 1,601 females. Government took action to rehabilitate these cadres under a "National Action Plan for the Re-integration of Ex-combatants". They were divided into 3 categories; hardcore, non-combatants, and those who were forcefully recruited (including child soldiers). 24 rehabilitation centres were set up in Jaffna, Batticaloa and Vavuniya. Among the apprehended cadres, there had been about 700 hardcore members. Some of these cadres were integrated into State Intelligence Services to tackle the internal and external networks of LTTE. By January 2012, government had released more than 11,000 cadres, and only 4 rehabilitation centres and 550 detainees remained.
The end of the war left past conflict zones of 2,061sq.km heavily contaminated with approximately 1.6 million land mines. By January 2012, deminers employed by the Sri Lankan army and 8 foreign funded agencies had cleared 1,934sq.km leaving about 127sq.km yet to be cleared.
Since the end of the war, more than 5,000 Tamil youths have been gathering at selected police stations in Eastern Province to join the police force as the government has called for interviews. The Sri Lankan government had planned to recruit 2,000 new police officers to the department, especially for the services in the northern region of the country.
War crimes investigations
In March 2014, the United Nations Human Rights Commission drafted a resolution on "Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka" and requested its High Commissioner Ms. Navi Pillay to undertake a comprehensive investigation into alleged serious violations and human rights abuses that have taken place during the war. Subsequently, the Human Rights Commissioner directed the setting up of OHCHR Investigation in Sri Lanka (OISL).
The Sri Lankan state which is accused of perpetuating war crimes, has reportedly refused to cooperate with the inquiry. In August 2014, the state rejected entry visas for investigating U.N. officials. Two months later, in October, Sri Lankan government banned all foreigners from visiting the former war zone altogether.
Allegations of war crimes
Allegations of war crimes have been made against the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers) and the Sri Lankan military with much attention given to the final months of the Civil War in 2009. The alleged war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by both sides; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; acute shortages of food, medicine, and clean water for civilians trapped in the war zone; and child recruitment and attacks on targeting civilian including suicide bombings and attacks on civilian aircraft by the Tamil Tigers.
Video footage showing uniformed men speaking Sinhalese and summarily executing eight bound and blindfolded men was broadcast in August 2009 by UK's Channel 4 in a program called "Sri Lanka's Killing Fields". This video was subsequently authenticated by the UN. Reports commissioned by the Sri Lankan government claim the UN authentication was biased and the video was fabricated.
A panel of experts appointed by UN Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the conflict in Sri Lanka found "credible allegations" which according to them, if proven, indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers. The panel has called on the UNSG to conduct an independent international inquiry into the alleged violations of international law. The Sri Lankan government has denied that its forces committed any war crimes and has strongly opposed any international investigation. It has condemned the UN report as "fundamentally flawed in many respects" and "based on patently biased material which is presented without any verification". The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, a formal commission of inquiry was appointed by the Sri Lankan President, to review the conflict from 1983 to 2009 and its report was tabled in the parliament.
On 27 July 2012, Sri Lanka brought out a road map fixing time lines for investigating alleged war crimes by its army during the final stages of the war with the LTTE in 2009. The cabinet has approved the action plan for the implementation of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in September 2013 that there had been no comprehensive Sri Lankan effort to properly and independently investigate allegations of war crimes. The High Commissioner said she would recommend the Human Rights Council to set up its own probe if Sri Lanka does not show more "credible" progress by March 2014.
On 27 March 2014 the United Nations Human Rights Council voted for a resolution paving the way for an inquiry into rights abuses at the end of Sri Lanka's civil war. The United States and the United Kingdom were among the countries which sponsored the resolution, which for the first time called for an international probe.
The new government of President Maithripala Sirisena has requested the international community for support on a domestic probe into war crimes. As of March 2015, the UN have expressed their support for this. The Tamil National Alliance has asked for an international investigation into the alleged human rights abuses during the Sri Lankan civil war and has refused a domestic probe. A group of the TNA led by Wigneshwaran has asked for an investigation into the alleged genocide claims but the TNA as a whole was divided on the issue and MP Senathirajah said that the action was unauthorized by the party.
The Tamil National Alliance has welcomed a domestic investigation with a hybrid court and R. Sampanthan praised several new initiatives from the new government and said "The government is adopting the correct position," and asked the government to honor to their commitments but some members such as Ananthi Sasitharan had a less optimistic view.
Allegations of genocide
The first international voice to support the charge of genocide against the Government of Sri Lanka under international law was raised by Human Rights Watch and it has advocated and published the details in December 2009. Leading American expert in international law, Professor Francis A. Boyle hold an emergency meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to urge to stop Tamil genocide by providing the evidence of crimes against humanity, genocide against Tamils and the international community's failure to stop the slaughter of Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka.
In January 2010, the Permanent People's Tribunal on Sri Lankan held its sessions in Dublin, Ireland. There were four findings:
- That the Sri Lankan Government and its military are guilty of War Crimes;
- That the Sri Lankan Government and its military are guilty of crimes against humanity;
- That the charge of genocide requires further investigation;
- That the international community, particularly the UK and USA, share responsibility for the breakdown of the peace process.(2)
It also found that member states of the United Nations had not "complied with their moral obligation to seek justice for the violations of human rights committed during the last period of the war".
In 22 September 2010, the UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic, has advocated and litigated on behalf of victims of the armed conflict in Sri Lanka. UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic released a report calling for the establishment of a new international tribunal to prosecute those most responsible for the crimes committed during the conflict. UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic also submitted evidence of human rights violations committed during the armed conflict to the United Nations Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka, which U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon appointed in 2010.
In 3 November 2012, panel of 11 member International Experts, consisting of experts in genocide studies, former UN officials, experts in international law and renowned peace and human rights activists to be convened as Judges appointed by Permanent People's Tribunal to investigate and examine reports submitted by many specialised working groups on the accusation of the crime of Genocide against the Government of Sri Lanka.
In 27 March 2013, Tamil Nadu State Assembly has passed resolution to called on the Indian Government to stop considering Sri Lanka as a 'friendly country' and impose economic sanctions, as well as calling for an international inquiry in "genocide and war crimes" against Sri Lankan Tamils.
In 10 December 2013, Permanent People's Tribunal unanimously ruled Sri Lanka guilty of the crime of genocide against the Tamil people, while the US and UK were found to be guilty of complicity to this crime.
In January, 2015, UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic filed a paper on "The Legal Case of the Tamil Genocide" based on the evidence, nature and extent of the violence committed by Government Forces against Tamils.
In 12 April 2015, the Northern Provincial Council of Sri Lanka passed a resolution calling the UN to investigate the genocide and direct appropriate measures at the International Court of Justice stating that the Tamils had no faith in the domestic commission.
In September 2017 current president Maithripala Sirisena refused to let several human rights groups take Jagath Jayasuriya to court for war crimes. He reportedly said "I stated very clearly that I will not allow anyone in the world to touch Jagath Jayasuriya or any other military chief or any war hero in this country," in reference to the lawsuit. His comments are seen as an attempt to pander to the majority ethnic Sinhalese, most of whom oppose legal action against military personnel accused of crimes during the civil war.
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Cambridge University and the Early Intervention Foundation are seeking input from practitioners to create a new library of resources for early childhood professionals.
The Early Years Library, created by the Center for Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL) at the University of Cambridge alongside the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, aims to bring the pieces together individual success in early childhood. interventions in a guide for practitioners.
The guide will consist of an organized collection of small practices designed to support planning and problem-solving that will enable practitioners to consider the needs of their children, their environment and their community when choosing which practices to use and when to incorporate them into their routines.
It will be available free of charge and will include activities to help practitioners support children’s socio-emotional learning, math, and reading and writing skills.
The following are examples of practices to support socio-emotional learning in the area of ââemotional knowledge that will be included in the guide:
- PRACTICE 1: Practitioners use mirrors with children to imitate different facial expressions based on emotions – cCould you encourage this during the role play, eg “Do pirates make angry faces?” Can you see your angry face in the mirror? ‘
- PRACTICE 2: Practitioners talk with children about the emotions of the characters in the stories – uat story time, for example “How is Billy feeling?” How would you feel if that happened? ‘
- PRACTICE 3: Practitioners show facial expressions based on emotions and tone and then label them for children – Use in a variety of situations, eg “How am I feeling right now?” What does it mean when I look like this? ‘
PEDAL and EIF are seeking practitioners at all levels of LDAPs and maintained facilities, including childminders, who work or have worked with children aged two to five to join a panel or focus groups to to share their experiences and help inform the development of the guide.
“The contribution of practitioners will be essential to the design of an effective guide”
Sara Baker, Project Manager and Reader in Developmental Psychology and Education at PEDAL, said: âWe are very excited to develop the early childhood library from the strong evidence base of early interventions. successful. The contribution of early childhood practitioners will be essential in designing an accessible and effective practice guide. ‘
Sarah Hardy, early childhood teacher at Honey Pot Nursery in Garston and a member of the project’s first focus groups, added: âBeing a member of the group was really beneficial as I was able to connect with other practitioners in different areas of the early childhood sector to discuss similarities and differences in practice. I think the early childhood library will have a significant impact, especially in helping apprentices in my community develop their practice to meet the individual needs of a child or a group of children. ‘
- Those interested in bringing their experiences and knowledge to the project should contact Anna Jackson, Research Assistant at the University of Cambridge, by email at [email protected] | <urn:uuid:b4800777-2809-4d18-890b-db1e645975b7> | {
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While we’re all probably familiar with wallpaper, wall murals is a decor item that you might not be familiar with. In this guide, we go through the difference between wallpaper and wall murals!
|Wallpapers||vs. Wall Murals|
|-Embossed or surface prints||– Digital prints from high quality photography|
|-Non-Customizable||-Customization available and can use any high quality image or revise an existing style to fit the needs of your space|
|-Used either as a feature wall, all over a space, or both together with complementary papers||-Less repetitive or larger repeats|
|-Depth created through 2-dimensional prints and textures||-Depth created through 3-dimensional photography|
|-Mass produced patterns made in large quantities||-Individually produced and printed like a piece of artwork|
|-Sold by the double roll (at Walls Republic) or the single roll (other manufacturers)||-Sold by panels|
Production Methods & Manufacturing
Wallpapers are typically surface prints or embossed papers with texture, pattern, and colour and are a traditional type of wallcovering. A wall mural on the other hand is a new type of wallcovering developed with the advances in technology. Wall murals are digital prints created using high quality photography and imagery that can be blown up, scaled down, and customized to the individualized requirements of a space.
Wallpapers are more standardized and cannot be modified in their patterns, scale, or colour but one pattern will come in multiple colourways to suit a variety of different design schemes. There is a really highly detailed and unique texture and depth with wall murals as a result of digital printing that is highly captivating and engaging, drawing in the viewer. Many residential patterns of wallpaper are stocked products as they are made in large quantities and can therefore have a faster turn over time. Wallpapers are sold by the double roll (bolt) at Walls Republic or by the single roll at other suppliers. Wall murals come in panels and are sold by a set multiple of panels to create the complete image.
Application & Use
Just as different wallpapers are appropriate in different settings, the same goes for deciding between using wallpaper or a wall mural. Create a scheme and decide what the space needs to project the aesthetic you desire. Smaller wallpaper prints or murals with small scale imagery such as tiles will be easier to work with in a small space where a large scale wall mural could be overwhelming and overbearing in the space. Wall murals are great in larger or long corridor spaces when accessories and furnishings are kept minimal and simple as to not create clutter and distraction.
A wall mural is a piece of art in and of itself and if there are too many elements competing for attention the space will just end up looking chaotic and confused. Tile wall murals can also be the perfect transition between traditional and contemporary. They can complement a traditional space with their classic historic tiled patterns, while being very contemporary as a result of their materiality and digital quality.
Wall murals are also great in both commercial and residential settings and can have a really big impact in a commercial setting in comparison to the more simplistic commercial wallcovering options. Wall murals create a huge impact and could instantly captivate and catch the attention of anyone in a commercial setting such as an office reception or hotel lobby. They bring more depth, tonality, and visual engagement than some of the more typical and traditional commercial patterns. Typical commercial wallcoverings will make a great compliment to the bold mural patterns working harmoniously together to create a durable, impactful, eye-catching scheme.
Most wall murals are typically used just as a feature wall as most would be too overpowering if used throughout an entire space. Murals can be complimented with a variety of other more textural or smaller patterned residential and commercial wallpapers. Wallpaper is easier to use throughout an entire space but can also be used as a feature wall with complimentary wallpapers. Choosing wallpaper over a mural may also give you the ability to play more with smaller details and accessories that may be too overwhelming when paired with a large scale wall mural.
Pattern, Depth, Realism, and Detail
Wallpaper offers a more overall symmetrical look whereas a mural is more unique and varied across its surface. Wallpaper features patterns which repeat every so often, and murals are digital photographic images with less symmetry and much larger repeats. There are also many murals that are similar to wallpaper in that they have more repetitive schemes but are printed digitally to give you the high quality detail and customization offered by a mural. Wallpaper and murals give off entirely different looks. While wallpaper helps create dimension and depth in a space, murals go a step beyond adding much more depth and illusion that can trick one’s perception. Murals also give that extra bit of non-repetitive detail whereas wallpaper gives a more overall and repetitive impression for a more uniform appearance.
Wall Murals Produced Similarly to Wallpaper:
Perception of Depth & Texture: Wall Mural vs. Residential Wallpaper
Both wallpaper and wall murals are a great option for creating visual interest, depth, texture, and colour within an interior. Coming to a decision about what style works best for you will depend on the scheme and overall ambiance you are looking to create. Both have their own benefits and no matter what you end up choosing the statement you create will be matchless and incredibly impactful! | <urn:uuid:40e7c54d-3f04-4c6e-a00c-3f0c4afe12b7> | {
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For years, the slogan “Stay in School” has communicated an anti-poverty message to young people. Now it’s time for an even more important poverty-fighting theme: “Get Married.” Every student knows that dropping out of high school will hurt her chances of succeeding in life. Major media, public education campaigns and government programs have told her so.
But does she know that having a baby outside marriage will put her and her child at serious risk of living in poverty? Last year, poverty in America grew more than ever before in the 51 years that the U.S. government has tracked the poor, the Census Bureau reported Sept. 16. The total climbed by 3 million to 44 million — or one in seven Americans.
The search is on for solutions. Regrettably, too little of the conversation is turning to the principal cause of child poverty: the collapse of marriage.
Waiting until marriage to have children is the second of three “golden rules” for avoiding poverty that researchers identified over the years: (1) graduate from high school; (2) marry before having children; and (3) get a job.
Actually, being married is even more significant than graduating from high school for avoiding poverty. Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, shows this in a new paper, “Marriage: America’s No. 1 Weapon Against Child Poverty.” By contrast, typical responses to poverty call for more spending on government programs. Far from helping poor Americans escape dependency, however, massive increases in welfare spending over the past four decades have entrenched poverty across generations.
Proponents of a government solution also cite lack of quality education and decent-paying jobs. True, inner-city schools often are appallingly sub-par, but ever-increasing spending hasn’t significantly improved educational quality and opportunity for those who need it most.
And although the bad news on poverty in part reflects increased joblessness during the recession, the economy doesn’t explain the undercurrents trapping millions in persistent poverty. Three of every four Americans defined as poor — 35 million of the 44 million total — are poor during economic booms, Rector notes.
Government anti-poverty programs fail because such persistent poverty is not primarily material. It’s about relationships and behavior. Even in good times, fatherlessness and lack of work trap the underclass.
Unwed childbearing has risen from 6.3 percent of all births in 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, to more than 40 percent today. As Rector shows, these single-parent families with children are six times more likely to be poor than are married couples with kids. Put differently, marriage lowers the probability of child poverty by 82 percent.
So why have we ignored the obvious? After all, marriage has been the standard in every human society.
“Marriage is the way societies provide a map of life and norms about behavior,” researcher Kay Hymowitz says.
Role models and explicit messages create norms in society. That’s why it’s troubling to see the emergence of a “pattern of family non-formation,” as scholar Heather MacDonald describes it.
Hymowitz and MacDonald, both affiliated with the Manhattan Institute, were among leaders invited by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to participate in a conference recently in Washington, by addressing the topic of “The Role of Family Structure in Perpetuating Racial and Ethnic Disparities.” In minority communities, the collapse of marriage has become especially acute. More than half of Hispanic children are born to single mothers, as are seven out of 10 black children.
Among Hispanics, families headed by unmarried parents are three times more likely to be poor. For blacks, these families are five times more likely to be poor.
Meanwhile, the growing trend is “multi-partner fertility”—an antiseptic term to describe the relational mess of women having children by more than one man.
The Commission on Civil Rights deserves credit for tackling a subject too long considered off-limits. With lives at stake, America cannot afford to ignore these plain facts any longer.
How can we restore a cultural consensus on marriage and reduce child poverty? Rector suggests seven ideas. Among them: Policymakers should reduce anti-marriage penalties in welfare programs. Welfare offices and federally funded birth control clinics should provide facts about the value of marriage in fighting poverty.
And, in low-income neighborhoods and schools with a high proportion of at-risk youth, public education campaigns should teach the benefits of marriage.
If we’re asking fathers not to walk away from their children, Americans must not walk away from the difficult task of restoring a culture of marriage.
Jennifer A. Marshall is director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.
First appeared in the Union Leader | <urn:uuid:7ee4ed82-0e63-470b-b614-c653697b36d8> | {
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Space shuttle Atlantis landed safely at Kennedy Space Center this morning, capping a successful 13-day mission in which it delivered Europe's first permanent lab to the International Space Station after months of delay, reports Space.com. The shuttle's return clears the way for the US Navy to shoot down a dying satellite headed toward Earth, possibly as soon as tonight.
Atlantis touched down just days after NASA rolled its sister ship Endeavor onto the launch pad for a scheduled March 11 launch that will deliver the first piece of a Japanese lab. Atlantis returned astronaut Daniel Tani to Earth after a 120-day stay at the station, during which his mother died. French astronaut Leopold Eyharts stayed behind. | <urn:uuid:86a97ced-a174-41b1-ad37-61f9e2ac8bf1> | {
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I’ve just finished G.W. Bernard’s The Late Medieval English Church, which is an excellent and well informed survey, in case you are wondering. One of the things that made it a particularly enjoyable read were the analogies that peppered the text, which were thought-provoking and on occasions mischievous. For example:
The attitude of medieval townsmen to their local cathedral was, it has been suggested, rather like that of their successors to modern universities: an ambiguous mixture of slight suspicion and considerable incomprehension was alleviated by a natural pleasure that this corporate giant might contribute to their own prestige and economic welfare.
Should pilgrim badges… be seen as sacred objects, almost ‘secondary relics’, for those who acquired them, or more like the souvenirs that day trippers buy today? … Medieval pilgrimage has been compared to modern museums, full of half-comprehending tourists, of young people having a day out, yet with serious and scholarly purposes at their core. Are the experiences of those who go church-crawling, or visit the blockbuster exhibitions in art galleries, or go to concerts at all comparable? Does the ritual of pilgrimage meet a perennial human need?… How many pilgrims took part in pilgrimages in much the same part-materialistic, part-sentimental way that many nowadays treat Christmas?
Along with Brodie Waddell’s recent post on jargon and Mark Hailwood’s comparison of early modern alehouse ballad singing with modern football chants, it got me thinking about language, and more specifically about the way that we use analogy in writing and teaching. For historians, the carefully picked parallel is a potent weapon, it provides an inference or argument from one (familiar) particular to another, in the process attaching meaning to the unfamiliar particular. Analogy enables us to grasp the new and to process the different. For the early modernist, this is especially useful, because a parallel can help us to negotiate the strangeness of our subject and to close the gap between the mysterious and murky past and the bright shiny present. This is exceptionally useful when it comes to teaching: when I challenge my students to try to understand the early modern mentality I often begin by inviting them to self-reflect on their own experience, before exploring the early modern equivalent. So you might ask students to list what they think are the main elements of ‘identity’ in the present day, before discussing how early modern people thought about the same, the comparison drawing attention to those areas of similarity and difference which then invite explanation.
Similarity as well as difference is of course key here. Historical analogies are neat, effective and pleasing, but also fraught with peril because it is unlikely that the two particulars in the analogy are exactly the same. Bernard acknowledges as much:
Another scholar has offered the metaphor of ‘faultlines in the landscape’ but, while that is suggestive, it nonetheless rests upon the underlying inevitability of the coming earthquake.
In similar vein, Versailles might have ‘sowed the seeds of the second world war’, but this suggests a dangerous teleology that might distort our understanding of the interwar years. Thus a facile or lazy comparison can obscure rather than illuminate. Politicians and journalists in particular play a dangerous game when they use analogy in association with events that are still unfolding, or to justify actions or simplify complexity. Recently, the labeling of the wave of demonstrations and regime changes in North Africa and the Middle East as the ‘Arab Spring’ (an allusion to the Revolutions of 1848 and the Prague Spring) has fitted rather awkwardly with subsequent developments that bear no relation to the promise of rebirth, liberation and growth usually associated with the pre-summer season and the historical precedents. One commentator notes that:
It appears that the right analogy is a different central European event — the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century — an awful mix of religious and political conflict, which eventually produced a new state order.
Analogies surely work best only when the dissimilarities of the two things are considered alongside the parallels – the analogy can in fact help you to identify both. Ruling out unsuitable analogies is also a useful strategy, as Peter Marshall does when describing the processes of the English Reformation:
The modern analogy is less with the overthrow of ancien regimes in 1789 and 1917 than with the ‘cultural revolution’ of 1960s China, in which central government worked in alliance with cadres of true believers to undermine reliable elements in positions of authority, and radically reconstruct the outlook of people as a whole.
It is always a delight when students come up with their own analogies, because it reveals their learning: their coming to terms with information and expressing their own understanding of it. When discussing oral culture, and the astonishing feats of memorisation that early moderns were capable of, one student declared that it wasn’t that surprising that people knew the Bible off-by-heart, as she felt sure that if someone named a chapter from any Harry Potter novel she would be able to recall the important events from memory. Other memorable comparisons were Henry VIII’s visitation officers as ‘Ofsted Inspectors’, Elizabeth I’s beauty ‘trending’ at court, and Charles I’s relationship with the Duke of Buckingham as a classic ‘bromance’. These are not simply throwaway comments, they reveal students grasping and reframing the past in a way that resonates with their own existing knowledge.
**I followed this up with another post with examples of different types of analogies, incorporating those suggested to me by readers.** | <urn:uuid:774416e3-8b62-4b9d-bc1c-55e142c11303> | {
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Written by: Vivette Glover, Professor of Perinatal Psychobiology
In the UK, 1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss during pregnancy or birth, with 684 babies miscarried and 9 babies stillborn each day in 2016. These statistics are shocking, and the effects of these losses are not merely physical. Depression and anxiety may follow a pregnancy loss, and can be a particular problem during a subsequent pregnancy.
My colleagues and I have investigated the effects of previous pregnancy loss on maternal depression and anxiety using data from over 13,000 pregnant women who took part in a study called ‘Children of the 90s’.1 In this study, around 20% of women had experienced at least one previous miscarriage or stillbirth, with 6% of women suffering four or more losses. The likelihood of a woman experiencing depression and anxiety was highest among the women who had experienced the greatest number of previous losses, even when other factors that are associated with mental health problems were taken into account. In fact, 35% of women who had experienced four or more losses had depression during the later stages of their next pregnancy, while this figure was only 15% among women who had not suffered a loss. We also showed that depression and anxiety following pregnancy loss often persisted beyond the birth of a healthy baby.
We believe that more attention needs to be given to the psychological state of women with a history of repeated miscarriage or stillbirth. Depression and anxiety can be very distressing for women and their families, and in a minority of cases can even cause children to have behavioural problems, learning difficulties or physical disorders such as asthma. Sadly, mental health problems frequently go undetected by the professionals who care for pregnant women. The good news is that both anxiety and depression can be treated – talking therapies can be effective in milder cases, while more severe cases might benefit from medications that are known to be safe in pregnancy. It is therefore important that those caring for pregnant women give mental health the same priority as physical health, and ask women who have experienced previous pregnancy losses appropriate questions so that they can get all the help that they require. | <urn:uuid:4f7f0146-51ac-4f52-98a5-9f56e2932470> | {
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In 2010, a group of psychologists pointed out that behavioral researchers overwhelmingly rely on participants from Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic societies — what they termed a ‘WEIRD’ sample — to draw conclusions about human characteristics1. They demonstrated that theories drawn from this subpopulation may not apply to the rest of the world. In fact, they contend that results from these samples often represent outliers.
In autism research, much of our knowledge is similarly drawn from a WEIRD population. But there is further ‘weirdness’: For far too long, autism researchers have assumed that what they’ve learned from males applies to people of other sexes and genders.
This is perhaps understandable given the history of the field. Initial reports of autism were primarily in boys, and researchers have long considered autism a male-dominant condition. In the past two decades, the consensus has been that the ratio is four or five boys for every girl diagnosed.
But work over the past 20 years points to a lower ratio for the condition. For example, a meta-analysis published in 2017 showed that in prevalence studies that rely on direct assessment in the general population instead of on clinical or educational databases, the ratio falls to 3.25-to-1 or so2. Studies of younger siblings of children with autism have similarly revealed that in this group, there is a 3.18-to-1 ratio3.
These studies suggest that the male-to-female ratio is higher when clinicians do not recognize autism in girls. With increased awareness of the unique experiences of autistic females, this problem may be abating. But most studies in autism still do not include enough autistic girls and women. People with autism also show greater diversity in gender and sexual identity than is seen in the general population, but researchers rarely knowingly include sex- and gender-diverse individuals in their studies.
This blind spot impedes successful development of treatments and support strategies for people with autism across the spectrum of sex and gender.
Because of this, I’d like to call for sex and gender diversity in the design of autism studies as a rule rather than as an exception.
The idea that autism disproportionately affects boys, along with the under-recognition of girls with the condition, has combined to create a male lens in the field. This contributes to results that create a self-fulfilling prophecy and an even more biased literature.
For example, the male-to-female ratio in a 2012 meta-analysis of brain-scan studies of cognition in autism was about 15-to-1 across all participants4. In 2016, a meta-analysis of studies of autistic people’s brain organization reported a participant sex ratio of nine boys or men to every girl or woman5. Earlier this year, a ‘mega-analysis’ of brain anatomy data from 49 centers revealed that in the overall sample, the sex ratio was six boys or men to every girl or woman6. A study published in July on autism features across 18 European regions had a 4.8-to-1 male-to-female split in its combined data7.
All of these ratios are larger than 3-to-1, indicating that far fewer girls and women are being included in autism research than exist in the general population.
Researchers cite practical reasons for this bias in the literature. These may include difficulty recruiting females because there are ‘so few’ and the introduction of confounding factors that accompany inclusion of autistic girls and women, because they may be more likely than autistic boys and men to have epilepsy or a low intelligence quotient. These are real concerns, but they must not stop us from designing studies with autistic girls and women in mind.
Even when researchers include a substantial number of women, they sometimes do not analyze their results by sex or gender, missing an opportunity to fill key gaps in our knowledge. We need to know how findings hold up across different sexes and genders.
Let us take a look at the principles of research sampling in three types of studies. The first, and most common, includes observational studies that describe the overarching features of autism, or clinical trials designed to test an intervention designed for people with autism in general. To generalize findings to everyone who has autism, a study sample needs to be randomly selected and representative of the population at large. With regard to sex and gender, a representative sample should have a male-to-female ratio of 3-to-1.
Here’s the challenge: Without proper planning, studies are likely to lack the statistical power to further examine whether the results differ by sex or gender. Statistical power to detect a sex or gender dependency will be low when the sample has small numbers of girls and women relative to boys and men — even at a representative 3-to-1 ratio. Failure to include sufficient numbers of girls means that sex-dependent effects are likely to be overlooked or presumed absent. This scenario propagates a male-based understanding of autism, which further entrenches the status quo.
To investigate sex differences in autism, studies must be even more rigorous. This second type of study should include equal numbers of biological boys and girls — a 1-to-1, not a 3-to-1, ratio. The same applies to gender. This maximizes the statistical power to uncover any qualitative sex and gender differences within autism.
A third class of inquiry is aimed at uncovering developmental factors in autism that could explain sex and gender ratios. Biological or behavioral shielding mechanisms may protect girls from autism more so than they do boys with comparable risk factors.
For instance, some studies suggest that at-risk girls pay greater attention to social cues than do at-risk boys, which may be related to both their sex and gender. Other research indicates that genes associated with the brain’s immune cells or the hormonal environment in the womb play a role.
These studies obviously must include a broad spectrum of individuals — including various sexes and genders and people with and without autism to come to meaningful conclusions.
We should no longer ignore the elephant in the room. As researchers, we need to work hard to shun WEIRD science, whether sex-, gender- or culture-based. And we need to take a hard look at how biases surrounding sex and gender may influence science and clinical practice.
Meng-Chuan Lai is assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. | <urn:uuid:246f67df-398f-4f9b-acdd-45f159e86daa> | {
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Key Critical Path Method Steps
The Critical Path Method (CPM) is a project scheduling method that breaks the project into tasks and depicts them in sequence. It lets you estimate the duration of each project activity and calculate the total duration of the project.
Crucially, it enables you to identify the critical activities–those activities that cannot be delayed if the project is to be completed on time. CPM helps you and your team know exactly what the critical tasks are, plan ahead timelines and contingencies, and, once the project is underway, compare planned progress with actual progress.
In this brief guide, we’ll take a closer look at the key steps in the Critical Path Method. Let’s get started.
Critical Path Method Steps
1. Identify Each Activity
Determine each higher-level task (the main deliverables) using a work breakdown structure. For this step, you can use outlines, tables, or lists.
Once you have listed the high-level tasks, break them down into subtasks.
Be specific but not overly detailed. Detailed activities can bog down your analysis of the critical path later on.
2. Define the Activity Sequence
During this step, you establish which activities depend on other activities to determine the order in which you need to complete them. This is the activity sequence and it’s an important step.
List the predecessors of each activity. A simple way to figure this out is to look at your list of higher-level tasks and ask yourself, “What task do I need to complete before this task can be completed?”
Some tasks can be finished at the same time as other tasks, while others can only be done after predecessor tasks are completed.
3. Create the Critical Path Analysis Chart
The critical path diagram is a network diagram or visual representation of the order of activities according to their dependencies.
Place each task in a square or rectangular box and draw an arrow from tasks that need to be completed before connected tasks can be completed in their turn.
While you can draw a critical path diagram by hand, it’s quicker and easier to use software to generate and edit it.
4. Estimate Completion Time for Activities
Depending on the scale of the project, you can estimate completion time in days or weeks. During this step, you’ll have to draw on your experience.
For safer estimates, you can use the three-point estimation method.
Come up with three estimates for every task including best-case estimate (a), most likely estimate (m), and worst-case estimate (b).
You can then use the Triangular Distribution formula in which E represents Estimate and 3 the standard method:
E = (a + m + b) / 3
Note: Alternatively, you can give more weight to the most likely value using the Weighted Average formula. In this formula, E stands for Estimate, and 4 and 6 the standard method to give the most likely value more weight. The formula is:
E = (a + 4m + b) / 6
5. Define the Critical Path
The simplest way to find the critical path is to look at your diagram and identify the longest sequence of activities on it—that is the critical path.
A more elaborate approach to defining the critical path is by using the Forward Pass and Backward Pass technique.
With this technique, you identify the earliest start and finish times and the latest start and finish times for each activity. CPM software simplifies this part of the process.
6. Update the Critical Path
You want to continue updating your critical analysis diagram as your project progresses. This way, you will be working with real completion times rather than estimates. And you will be able to tell whether you’re on track. More than that, you’ll be able to recalculate the critical path if necessary.
In the end, using the Critical Path Method becomes simpler if you use project management software that supports this method. After inputting your data, CPM software can identify the critical path with just one click.
Key Critical Path Method Steps – Summary
Here is a quick summary of the key critical path method steps in your project management plan:
- Identify Each Activity
- Define the Activity Sequence
- Create the Critical Path Analysis Chart
- Estimate Completion Time for Activities
- Define the Critical Path
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I have written a blog about identifying and categorizing Spanish apps. As I’ve been thinking about the present state of modern language /foreign language apps, I’ve realized that the inadequacies of these language apps present great learning opportunities for our students.
Students can look at and do a vocabulary or phrase modern language app /foreign language app such as Learn Spanish ((Droid) or Hola (Droid)
– Students can analyze what important vocabulary is missing from the topic and make a supplementary list. For example, the housing category may have tableware but not bed or chair.
– If the app only presents individual words, the students can create a meaningful target language sentence or question for each word. For example, for the word “lake”, the students may ask “What is your favorite lake?”
– Students can analyze what important phrases or questions are missing and can create those lists. They may see look at a “time”category but they find that the question “When?” is missing. They make up a question using that question word.
– They can analyze what important topics are missing from the app. Perhaps the app has housing and animals but does not have occupations and city places.
– They can see how many meaningful sentences they can create from the present vocabulary list.
– They can answer any questions given in the app. For example, they can answer “How much does this cost?” with the price of a shirt.
– They can rearrange the questions or statements to create a logical conversation about the topic.
– They can think of a typical language task for a topic such as having a dirty spoon on the restaurant table and use the existing sentences and add others to be able to get a clean spoon.
In this way, students go from consumers to producers. They analyze what they are doing to see what is missing. They think about critical vocabulary, phrases, and topics instead of simply doing a drill program. They do not just repeat but they answer or comment on. They build on. The students become language users!
How do your students deal with modern language apps that do not do everything well?
I originally published this blog at my eduwithtechn site
I have developed many Spanish activities that allow students to begin to express themselves and to begin to move toward spontaneous speaking as in a natural conversation. My Spanish spontaneous speaking activities (20+) includes Modified Speed Dating (Students ask a question from a card-whole class), Structured Speaking (Students substitute in or select words to communicate in pairs), Role Playing (Students talk as people in pictures or drawing from 2-4 people) and Speaking Mats (Can talk using a wide variety of nouns, verbs and adjectives to express their ideas- pairs or small group), Spontaneous Speaking (based on visuals or topics in pairs), and Grammar speaking games (pairs or small group). Available for a nominal fee at Teacherspayteachers: http://bit.ly/tpthtuttle
My three formative assessment books: http://is.gd/tbook | <urn:uuid:f21cafaa-42b1-446c-a908-bcb3d99ceae6> | {
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Financial Statements refer to those statements which provide a view of the financial accounts of the business i.e. the profit earned or losses incurred in the financial year. These statements also show the financial position of the business i.e. the status of the assets and liabilities of the business.
The financial statements are of a great use in the following ways:
There are 4 kinds of Financial Statements available to the users each of them having different uses. These are:
1. Profit and Loss Statement: The Profit and Loss statement deals with the incomes, expenses, profits and losses of the business. It shows the revenue earned by the business matching with the expenses incurred to attain that revenue. Profit and Loss Statement is a comprehensive statement of all the operations carried out in the business.
2. Balance Sheet: The Balance Sheet states the Financial Position of a business i.e. the status of the Assets, Liabilities and the owner’s Equity in the business. It gives an idea whether the business is capable enough to pay out its debts and if its assets are lying idol in the business.
3. Statement of Changes in Equity: The statement of changes in equity shows the relevant changes in the equity along with the retained earnings over a period of time. This helps in determining the control of the business and checking the under capitalization and over capitalization situations of the business.
4. Cash flow Statement: The Cash Flow Statement shows the movement of cash within the business. This flow is measured under 3 main heads i.e. Operating, Investing and Financing. This ensures that the cash is utilized properly and keeps a track of the funds in the business.
In case of Companies the following vertical format of statement is adopted. It focuses on summing up all the incomes and sales and deducting from them the expenses incurred for earning such incomes and creating such sales.
For deep analysis on the subject of the Company’s Financial Statement please visit assignmenthelp.net where you can get your assignment done and can get online tutors for the clarification on the subject matter.
In case of Firms, the following format is followed for the calculation of the profit and loss. This format is based on the Debit and Credit rule i.e. crediting all the incomes and debiting all the expenses. The final remainder obtained is the Net Profit.
An income statement must include the following aspects for the proper ascertainment of the profit and loss of the business:
All the above stated items must be stated in an Income Statement or it would render the information to be incomplete and inappropriate for usage.
1. Revenue: The Cash Inflows or enhancement in the Trade Receivables (Debtors) due to the selling of the products or the rendering of services is referred to as Revenue. It forms the major part of the income of any business and the business sustains on the volume of its revenue.
2. Expenses: The expenses are the costs incurred to earn the income. These can be categorized as :
(i) Cost of Goods Sold: It is the cost of the products that is being sold. This cost includes the collective expenses born to bring the product to its saleable state like Material, labor etc.
(ii) Selling and general Administrative Expenses: These include the indirect expenses incurred to sell the product or maintain the office administration. For e.g. Electricity, Advertising, Stationery etc.
3. Depreciation/Amortization: Depreciation means the wear and tear of Tangible assets. It is the reduce in the value of the asset.
Amortization refers to the decline in the value of the Intangible Assets.
Thus Income Statement provides a lot of useful information but still it lacks back in some field as:
Thus a business’s functioning is highly reliable on the analysis of the income statement. The calculation and analysis of the income statement can be a tricky task. But we are here to help you at assignmenthelp.net where you can contact us at anytime and we will help you with your queries and helping you out with your assignments. We respect that you can’t lose on marks and that is why we are here to provide you with the best facilities and qualitative results. You can also take online classes from the best tutors. We believe in providing the best services for your satisfaction. We serve our clients with good and satisfying work and with complete dedication.
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Yoga enhances the mental and physical wellbeing of seniors, and it helps them prevent a number of age-related conditions such as joint stress and osteoarthritis. Here are a few ways yoga can help seniors stay healthy.
Enhances Bone Strength
As people age, they often lose bone density or develop osteoporosis. Yoga is a weight-bearing activity that can help reduce bone thinning, and it is especially important for postmenopausal women who are more prone to osteoporosis.
Maintaining a high quality of life can be challenging for some seniors, but professional caregivers can help them obtain this goal. Families can trust in Grand Rapids, MI, non-medical senior care experts to help their elderly loved ones focus on lifestyle choices that increase the chances of living a longer and healthier life.
Boosts Mental Wellbeing
Yoga is good for the body and mind. The exercise involves breathing, mindfulness, and self-reflection, and it boosts mental wellbeing, uplifts mood, relieves stress, and increases energy. This is especially beneficial for seniors who feel lonely or depressed in their golden years.
Causes Minimal Strain
For some people, cardio exercises put too much strain on their bodies. Older adults who want to benefit from exercise without straining their muscles should try yoga. This exercise can help seniors maintain a healthy weight and get their daily dose of movement without lifting heavy weights or performing a high-intensity aerobic workout.
Some seniors require assistance with their daily activities and exercises. If you are the primary family caregiver for a senior loved one living in Grand Rapids, 24-hour home care is available if your loved one’s health has become too difficult to manage without professional expertise. At Home Care Assistance, we take measures to help seniors prevent illness and injury by assisting with exercise and mobility, preparing nutritious meals, helping with bathing and other personal hygiene tasks, and much more.
Reduces the Risk of Hypertension
Many seniors face difficulty managing their blood pressure. Studies show the meditative elements of yoga may also have a positive impact on blood pressure. This is because elements such as controlled breathing decrease nervous system activity, which can reduce hypertension and lower acute mental stress.
As people age, their flexibility and range of motion can decrease, which often manifests in many ways. Daily activities that used to be simple become more difficult, whether it’s reaching down to tie a shoe or playing a game of catch in the backyard. Limited range of motion impacts physical health and wellbeing and makes seniors susceptible to injuries and falls.
Yoga gives seniors the chance to stretch parts of the body that are ignored during other exercise regimens. It emphasizes spinal flexibility, which keeps the body pliant and resistant to injury. The exercise also stretches tired, stiff muscles and tones the supporting muscles, which boosts physiological strength and wellbeing.
Meditation and yoga are two of the many exercises that engage different parts of the brain and help seniors stave off dementia. For some seniors in Grand Rapids, dementia home care is essential. Regular mental stimulation helps slow the progression of the disease, supervision reduces the risk of dangerous behaviors, and compassionate companionship is a wonderful solution for alleviating the symptoms of dementia. To create a high-quality care plan for your aging loved one, call Home Care Assistance at 616-243-0835 today. | <urn:uuid:e7481fae-0444-4c8b-9f3f-102907b97831> | {
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The massive effects of the universal geometry we have been studying show the impact of changes at the galactic level. But what about the effects here at home? Certainly we have seen that these massive changes can effect DNA and mass extinctions. But, the work of John Searl makes use of this geometry and could change our future. His discoveries, making use of the Searl Effect, are paving the way for inverse gravity vehicles and free energy technology. How all of this is possible becomes clear with an understanding of the electromagnetic nature of our universe, at the macroscopic and microscopic levels. This presentation by David Wilcock was originally webcast on April 17, 2017. | <urn:uuid:341e7a9a-ca16-43e5-b925-7740b2a022ff> | {
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Americans are taking more prescription medicines than ever before. What's more, an increasing number of Americans are taking more than one drug, mostly to treat diseases related to obesity. These were the findings of a study led by Elizabeth Kantor at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
Kantor, now at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, found that the increase was particularly notable among adults 65 and up. This is the population most likely to need prescriptions to control heart disease and high blood pressure, but Kantor said age wasn't the only factor behind the increase. The researchers looked at patient data for close to 40,000 people, some as young as 20.
"When we look at drugs taken to control high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, depression, we see increases in all of those drug classes," Kantor said.
Kantor offered no opinion about why prescriptions to control depression have increased, but noted that other studies have shown a link between diabetes, heart disease and depression. The researchers found that one of the most common drugs prescribed is simvastatin, a statin that lowers the risk of stroke and heart attack in people with diabetes and heart disease.
Kantor's team looked at the data from two years of medical records, a decade apart: 1999-2000 and 2011-2012.
Overall, the number of Americans taking prescription drugs increased 9 percent over that decade. Fifty-nine percent of Americans — about three out of every five people — are taking prescription medications for some reason. Those taking more than one medication almost doubled in 10 years. Taking multiple drugs raises the risk of negative drug interaction, such as unexpected side effects.
"When we look at the 10 most commonly used drugs in 2011-2012," Kantor said, "most of these drugs are taken for conditions associated with cardiovascular disease, as well as the factors contributing to cardiovascular disease, such as obesity."
The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It did not address whether prescription drug use is increasing around the world, or whether the need for these medications is growing, but the World Health Organization says obesity has more than doubled globally in the past 35 years, and diabetes is considered epidemic in many countries.
WHO says obesity is particularly problematic in urban areas and that diabetes will be the seventh-leading cause of death by 2030. | <urn:uuid:44c6f5a1-c5c0-4e58-821e-ac44545dea19> | {
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There is big news in the world of physics.
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has been mapping the secrets of the universe. ATLAS is a “particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.”
The ATLAS detector is searching for new discoveries in the head-on collisions of protons of extraordinarily high energy. ATLAS will learn about the basic forces that have shaped our Universe since the beginning of time and that will determine its fate. Among the possible unknowns are the origin of mass, extra dimensions of space, unification of fundamental forces, and evidence for dark matter candidates in the Universe.
According to the CERN website, “The ATLAS and Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments at CERN presented their latest results in the search for the long-sought Higgs boson. Both experiments see strong indications for the presence of a new particle, which could be the Higgs boson…”
The experiments found “hints of the new particle by analysing trillions of proton-proton collisions from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2011 and 2012.”
If you want to know more, the BBC’s Jonathan Amos “attempted to explain Higgs boson using ping-pong balls, a bag of sugar and a tea tray.” | <urn:uuid:b7332d8a-a316-47f8-aadb-e32f2edc8567> | {
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Worker Radiation Levels Under Investigation After Leak
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — More analysis is needed to determine exactly how much radiation workers were exposed to during a recent leak at the nation's underground nuclear waste dump in southeastern New Mexico, officials said at a news conference Thursday.
Preliminary tests have found that 13 workers who were working above ground the night of the leak inhaled radioactive particles . Those results were announced Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Energy and the contractor that runs the Waste Isolation Pilot Project near Carlsbad.
At Thursday's news conference, officials emphasized that all radiation readings at the site have been at low levels, and it would be too soon to speculate about any potential health effects.
Officials haven't said exactly what the levels were in the area where the employees were working the night of Feb. 14, when an alert went off indicating a leak in the repository a half mile below. More tests are being ordered on the workers as well as some employees who were at the site the next day.
The accident is the first-known release of radiation since the dump near Carlsbad began taking plutonium-contaminated waste from the nation's nuclear bomb building sites 15 years ago. It came just nine days after a truck hauling salt in the plant's deep mines caught fire, but officials say they are confident the incidents are unrelated.
Officials said they can tell from their analyses of air samples in and around the plant that a container of waste leaked, but they haven't been able to get underground to find out what caused it.
The Energy Department has released detailed information from air monitors around the site, which back their assertions that releases off site were below those deemed unsafe.
And they have said that all indications are that a filtration system designed to immediately kick in when radiation is detected and keep 99.7 percent of contamination from being released above ground worked.
But the fact that the workers were exposed raises questions about those claims, according to Don Hancock, director of the Nuclear Waste Safety program at the Southwest Research and Information Center.
The dump's systems "are in the guinea pig stage," he said. "We know in theory what they were designed to do, but we don't know how well they worked because they have never been tried."
Farok Sharif, president of the Nuclear Waste Partnership, said during Thursday's news conference that he hopes to be able to send probes within a matter of days into the mines soon to get readings to determine when investigators can re-enter the repository.
The dump is the nation's first deep underground nuclear repository and the only facility in the country that can store plutonium-contaminated clothing and tools from Los Alamos National Laboratory and other federal nuclear sites. | <urn:uuid:5820729b-bb56-4262-9d3d-916f025b8799> | {
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In the sixties, Roger Zelazny wrote ‘Damnation Alley’, in which Hell Tanner drives from Los Angeles to Boston in a land ravaged by near constant hurricanes and tornadoes in an attempt to deliver a life-saving plague vaccine. While we’re nowhere near that doomsday scenario, this year’s hurricane season is certainly hotting up.
Hurricane Gustav is crossing Cuba into the centre of the Gulf of Mexico today, with many of the simulations projecting it to land as a strength three hurricane somewhere in Louisiana on Tuesday night. Meanwhile, a few days further out in the Atlantic tropical storm Hanna (the eighth named storm of the year) is growing steadily and is also projected to land as a hurricane next weekend anywhere from Florida to Mexico. It may or may not enter the Gulf.
Further out than that a number of other weather systems are beginning to form in the infamous ‘hurricane alley’, creating a conveyor belt of large storms. High ocean temperatures of 28-32 degrees in the Gulf of Mexico in particular are increasing the size of intensity of these systems. When the sea temperatures are above 26 degrees, a tropical storm or hurricane above it will intensify. Below that level the cyclone begins to unravel. With Ocean temperatures high and a number of storms forming, the Southeast coast of the US and the caribbean are in for a pounding over the next few weeks. Oil experts are already beginning to predict problems for oil production, with large percentages of US oil production and refining taking place in the Gulf of Mexico. While it would be inaccurate to link a single hurricane to climate change, if tropical ocean temperatures remain high, the residents at the end of hurricane rally will have to expect more storms. | <urn:uuid:197879b8-ebe6-46c4-8353-8aa889aca384> | {
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The Harris County Flood Control District is conducting a drainage analysis for the Little White Oak Bayou sub-watershed within the White Oak Bayou watershed. The Flood Control District will analyze the current flooding conditions to identify and propose efficient and cost-effective projects to reduce the risk of flooding.
Little White Oak Bayou is a twelve-mile-long major tributary of White Oak Bayou located on the eastern edge of the White Oak Bayou watershed. Flowing north to south from its headwaters near Houston’s Acres Homes neighborhood to its confluence with White Oak Bayou just north of downtown Houston, Little White Oak Bayou drains an area of approximately 22 square miles. Neighborhoods within the Little White Oak Bayou sub-watershed include portions of Acres Homes, Northline, Near Northside, Independence Heights, and Woodland Heights, among others.
From the mouth of Little White Oak Bayou north to Interstate 610 (the North Loop), the channel is relatively deep, and aside from small projects to address erosion, it has remained in its natural state. This section of the bayou is less prone to coming out of its banks during heavy rain events.
When looking north from the North Loop, much of this section of Little White Oak Bayou is concrete-lined and significantly narrower than downstream of the North Loop. Due to the narrow width of this section of the bayou, some storm events challenge its ability to carry stormwater efficiently and cause the bayou to come out of its banks more frequently.
The Flood Control District’s previous understanding of flooding in the Little White Oak Bayou sub-watershed was based upon older computer models and floodplain maps and was limited to the historical floodplain of the main channel itself. For this analysis, the project team extended the models to include other areas within the sub-watershed that also have a history of extreme inundation, particularly during major storm events over the last few years. This updated analysis, including storm drains and roadside ditches that are owned and maintained by other agencies, produced a flood-risk map that closely correlates to the inundation that has been observed throughout the watershed.
A large portion of Little White Oak Bayou runs parallel and adjacent to Interstate 45 (the North Freeway) and, at three different points, crosses underneath the freeway. Additionally, the bayou flows through a large culvert located under the North Loop/I-45 interchange. Due to the bayou’s proximity to both of these highways, the Flood Control District is working closely with the Texas Department of Transportation’s North Houston Highway Improvement Project team (NHHIP) to ensure any future projects they may undertake do not increase the area’s flood risk.
As part of the Harris County Flood Control District’s 2018 Bond Program, $30 million has been identified for the Little White Oak Bayou watershed; however, it is highly likely that the total cost of proposed projects identified by this analysis will far exceed this amount. Accordingly, the study team is developing a master plan component to assist in the orderly implementation of projects as funding becomes available.
This drainage analysis was initiated in June 2019 and will conclude in early 2021. | <urn:uuid:b457ef06-76ac-4171-a5f8-191b7866d2de> | {
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New Orleans. Understanding better how women are affected by disasters, economic shocks and other crises is key to helping their communities ride out pressures including climate change, a top resilience expert says.
But putting them in the driver's seat to deal with the problems is equally crucial, she said.
Sundaa Bridgett-Jones, senior associate director with The Rockefeller Foundation, said women are often resourceful in finding ways for their families to bounce back from disasters.
After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, for instance, she said, many women started projects to earn a living after losing their men to the disaster.
More women should be given leadership roles in efforts to reduce future risks, she said from New York in an interview.
"There is a lot more that can be done," said Bridgett-Jones who leads on international development and gender equality for the New York-based foundation.
She said more efforts to understand shocks and stresses from a woman's point of view are "greatly needed."
Women's vulnerabilities can be different from those of men. For example, women may be less mobile or constrained by family duties.
But they also have different perspectives and different ways of dealing with problems that can improve how communities react, researchers say.
Bridgett-Jones cited the example of India's Mahila Housing SEWA Trust, which is helping women from slum communities in South Asian cities cope with climate risks, including heat waves, flooding, water shortages and diseases.
Its members have collected their own data to better understand risks, and used that to devise solutions such as installing green roofs and walls to lower temperatures, harvesting urban rainwater and using solar energy.
In her experience with networks the Rockefeller Foundation has built to boost resilience around the world, Bridgett-Jones has seen how women working on the issue are "energized by the notion of "How do we do change differently?"
"Whether you're talking about how many women are on the board of an institution or how many women are engaged in issues at the community level, you certainly have a different lens on that problem and what the solutions might be when women are involved," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation
Bridgett-Jones said she hoped a Rockefeller Foundation-backed program to get at least 100 women heading Fortune 500 companies by 2025 - up from around a quarter of that now - would also foster new "thinking about resilience," including ideas about how to protect supply chains from disasters.
For the past decade or so, the Rockefeller Foundation has funded a push in both developed and developing countries, through new and existing organisations, to promote the notion of resilient cities and communities.
The foundation defines resilience as the capacity of individuals, communities and systems to survive, adapt and grow in the face of stress and shocks - and even transform themselves.
Bridgett-Jones said the concept was now well-understood and the debate had moved on to "some of the big questions," such as how to effectively include women, young people and other marginalized groups, as well as how to assess resilience.
A review of recent research, carried out by the London-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI), found growing evidence that promoting gender equality can enhance resilience. The ODI study said fewer organisations now point to women as "victims" of climate change and disasters, and instead highlight the structural inequalities impeding women’s efforts to make themselves, their families and their communities more resilient.
Bridgett-Jones said special attention should be paid to situations where community efforts to build resilience are hindered "because they have standards and norms and practices that limit women."
Progress, however, is being made in thinking about the social aspects of more common resilience work, such as building roads that can better withstand climate change, she said.
The Asian Development Bank, for example, is now asking questions when it makes multi-million-dollar investments about whether new infrastructure will benefit women's incomes as well as men's.
Ensuring women's access to resources - from finance to information, and even channels to come together and talk - is an important consideration for future work on resilience, she said.
"All of those things matter," she added. | <urn:uuid:e1206d6c-3634-41b0-89a0-11bac92c879d> | {
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Joseph Stalin had three children: Yakov, Vasily and Svetlana.
Yakov was arrested by the Hitlerite in early July 1941 and executed on April 14, 1943 following the refusal of Joseph Stalin to the exchange with a German general.
As stated by cde Yannis Karastathis in his book “Against antistalinist – anticommunist hysteria” (Athens 1993) Stalin’s answer was explicit, concise and unusual for Germans and not only: “I won’t exchange a soldier for a Marshal. All the people (of the Soviet Union) are my children.”
Vasily was arrested by the Khrushchevits on April 28, 1953, was imprisoned for 8 years and exiled in Kazan where he eventually died on March 19, 1962.
As the historian V. Kadet (“Anasintaxi” issue 330, 15-30/9/2010) when Vasily Stalin was interrogated by the Khrushchevits, Vorosilof brought as an example Svetlana who was “living well and behave well” and asked Vasily:
“You will never meet her?”.
And he replied: “I do not know, we don’t meet each other see.”
“Why? She loves you.”
“A daughter who recanted her father can not be my sister. I never renounced my own father and will not do. I’m not willing to have any relation with her.” | <urn:uuid:a56a5b33-b56d-46fa-b2cf-992b8b98fd53> | {
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By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News
A device which may pave the way for robotic hands that can replicate the human sense of touch has been unveiled.
Particles in the device emit light to show changes in texture
US scientists have created a sensor that can "feel" the texture of objects to the same degree of sensitivity as a human fingertip.
The team says the tactile sensor could, in the future, aid minimally invasive surgical techniques by giving surgeons a "touch-sensation".
The research is reported in the journal Science.
"If you look at the current status of these tactile sensors, the frustration has been that the resolution of all these devices is in the range of millimetres," explained Professor Ravi Saraf, an engineer from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, US, and a co-author of the paper.
"Whereas the resolution of a human fingertip is about 40 microns, about half the diameter of a human hair, and this has affected the performance of these devices."
But Professor Saraf and colleague Dr Vivek Maheshwari, also from the University of Nebraska, were able to attain this high level of sensitivity by creating a very thin film made up of layers of metal and semiconducting nanoparticles flanked at the top and bottom by electrodes.
When the film touches a surface any pressure or stress squeezes the layers of particles together. This causes the current in the film to change and light is emitted from the particles, an effect known as "electroluminescence". The visible light is then detected by a camera.
The device image (right) clearly shows the number 5 on this coin
"The beautiful thing is that we have managed to make the device in such a way that the amount of current change, or light, that you get out is exactly proportional to the stress that you apply," added Professor Saraf.
To demonstrate the high sensitivity of the device, the scientists pressed a US one cent coin against it. The sensor revealed the wrinkles in President Lincoln's clothing and the letters TY in liberty.
Professor Saraf said the film, as well as matching the sensitivity of a human fingertip, was also flexible and robust enough to be used repeatedly.
He also said the device could have medical applications.
"The hope is that if you have the resolution close to a human finger in applications like minimal invasive surgery, where the surgeon could actually "touch" while he or she doing the procedure and tell if the tissue is cancerous or abnormal etc, that would increase the success of these surgeries."
Dr Richard Crowder, a robotics expert from Southampton University, commented in an accompanying article in the journal: "The development of tactile sensors is one of the key technical challenges in advanced robotics and minimal access surgery.
"The unique sensor developed by Maheshwari and Saraf could prove to be a key advance in technology, for reasons including relatively simple construction, apparent robustness, and high resolution."
Professor Saraf added that now he would like to see if he could create a device that can detect temperature changes as well as texture, enabling it to closer mimic the sensations humans can feel. | <urn:uuid:0907b1e4-fe5c-4601-9565-34b495dd4219> | {
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Ethiopia: Youth, HIV/AIDS Experts Hold Panel Discussion
June 24, 2003
More than 40 youth and HIV experts from eastern and southern Africa attended a Red Cross training institute on the epidemic Monday in Ethiopia. The UNICEF-organized workshop provides opportunities for countries in the region to share experiences and develop better ways to involve young people in the fight against AIDS. "This workshop will help tap into various expertise and come up with ways to help the youth [ages 15-24] prevent HIV/AIDS," said Richard Mabalah, UNICEF's regional advisor on HIV/AIDS prevention and youth development.Adapted from:
06.22.03; Daily Monitor (Addis Ababa)
Ethiopia: International Organization for Migration Holds Teacher Training Seminar on HIV/AIDS, Human Trafficking
This article was provided by CDC National Prevention Information Network. It is a part of the publication CDC HIV/Hepatitis/STD/TB Prevention News Update. | <urn:uuid:448065e0-9fdc-4d35-9c20-f034cebb82ba> | {
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I must say I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when I read that the re-introduced European beaver population was to be added to the list of protected species in Scotland
David Miller is the Special Advisor to the Scottish Government on the Environment so I guess it must be true!
Photo courtesy of Per Harald Olsen via Wikimedia Commons
As a result of persecution, the European beaver went extinct in Britain around 300 years ago. As a result of their persecution and extinction I call such species ‘ghosts in the landscape‘. In 2009 a small trial re-introduction programme was undertaken in Argyll. The population has expanded from the original 3 family groups. There have been calls from some landowners to eradicate the beavers as there were concerns of the damage they might cause. Today however the Scottish Government has announced that the European Beaver will become a protected species and therefore will be allowed to spread and will not be eradicated. The full story can be read here.
The John Muir Trust were obviously delighted with the news.
European beavers are often described as a ‘keystone’ species i.e. one that manipulates the habitat it lives in and as a result creates new and varied habitats for other species as well as providing important ‘ecosystem services’ for people as a by product.
This is an area where European beavers have been active in Latvia in Eastern Europe (I took this photo in the early 2000s when I visited the area) – it is clear that lots of interesting wetland habitats have been created and that the area also acts a flood storage reservoir in times of high water levels.
European beavers have also been re-introduced in Devon in a fenced enclosure, and this population has been the subject of considerable conservation work by the Devon Wildlife Trust and has been intensively studied by a team of scientists from Exeter University.
That research team led by Professor Richard Brazier has just published a paper entitled ‘Eurasian beaver activity increases water storage, attenuates flow and mitigates diffuse pollution from intensively-managed grasslands‘ You can download and read the full paper here.
The paper’s summary states
- Beaver activity has resulted in major changes to ecosystem structure at the site.
- Beaver activity increased water storage within site and attenuated flow.
- Reduced sediment, Nitrogen and Phosphate
- Dissolved organic carbon levels rose (but it is not known if this is problematic as flow rates are significantly lower – my italics).
- Important implications for nature based solutions to catchment management issues.
In light of all the current discussions around ‘natural flood management’ solutions (such as those at Holnicote – see here) it is thought that beavers in certain locations may play a useful role in reducing flooding by ‘slowing the flow’.
In addition there is another unofficially re-introduced population of European beaver in Devon on the River Otter which the Government has allowed to stay for the next 5 years to determine their impact on the environment and local people. The Devon Wildlife Trust are campaigning to keep this population, so that this ‘ghost in the landscape’ can remain and flourish and also play an important part in reducing flood risk on adjacent land and villages.
You can watch this DWT video with Chris Packham which tells you more about their work and the campaign
The question, of course is what will happen now in England? My own view is that I believe that European beavers should be allowed to recolonise England and in so doing will play a useful role in providing new habitats for wildlife whilst also playing a vital role in reducing flood risk. I very much doubt they will cause landowners and farmers any problems. | <urn:uuid:9c66d657-0c0e-4036-9206-166036857f24> | {
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Google “cancer myths” and up pops a list of sites refuting anti-cancer diets and alternative therapies. While some of these myths have proven to be false or misleading, others can be less clear.
Here are four commonly made inquiries about what increases or reduces the risk of cancer, and what specialists say in regards to them.
Myth 1: Eating out may increase your cancer risk:
Large and frequent helpings of red meat and processed food may increase the risk of colon and stomach cancer. In any case, that there is no direct connection between eating “outside” food and an increase in cancer risk compared with having home-cooked food.
Eating out just means you might be more enticed to order processed food. Another drawback to eating out is you will have less control over how food is cooked.
For example, you can’t control how charred your steak is, thus you can’t prevent the cancer-causing substances that may increase your risk of growing pancreatic cancer by up to 60 percent, as per a University of Minnesota ponder.
Myth 2: Consume super foods to fight cancer:
Consuming more anti-cancer food like kale, garlic, blueberries and green tea wouldn’t protect you from cancer.
Truth be told, there is no such thing as a superfood that can fight cancer, as indicated by Gerard Wong, a senior dietitian with Allied Health Parkway Cancer Centre.
“Cancer is a complex disease with many possible causes that may affect different individuals differently. Claims that one type offruit or food has the ability to prevent or cure cancer entirely are a gross oversimplification. Eventually, a well-balanced diet and healthy lifestyle are still the main keys to reducing the risk of getting cancer”. Eating more of such food, however, has its merits as fruit and vegetables are part of a balanced diet.
Myth 3: Avoid sugar to prevent your body from growing cancer:
The fast-growing rate of cancer cells implies that they need a lot of fuel mainly glucose derived from sugar and carbohydrates. However, there is no evidence that demonstrates a sugar-free diet lowers the risk of getting cancer.
All the cells in the body need glucose to function and there is no way of directing glucose to only non-tumour cells. Even when sugar and carbohydrates are cut from the diet, the cancer cells can resort to fat and protein for fuel, as per the site of Cancer Research UK.
But there is an indirect link between cancer risk and sugar through obesity. The over-consumption of sugar can lead to weight gain. French analysts have revealed in The Lancet Oncology that nearly 500,000 cancer cases worldwide each year are cancer to obesity.
As per recent reports, public health experts predict that in the US, obesity will soon overtake tobacco as the leading preventable cause of cancer. Excess fat can function like an organ that secretes hormone-like substances that control growth, metabolism and reproductive cycles. It is these processes that fat can turn on and off that can affect cancer, especially breast and womb cancers, as indicated by Cancer Research UK.
Myth 4: Using a mobile phone increases cancer risk:
The verdict is still out on this one. The radio frequency energy emitted by the mobile phone, and even non-communication devices, such as the microwave oven are considered non-ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation, on the other hand, comes from X-rays and exposure to cosmic rays.
We only know that high doses of ionizing radiation are associated with an increased risk of developing blood cancers. This form of radiation isn’t the same as the radiofrequency radiation used in the telecommunications industry. However, the research has not possessed the ability to build up what kinds of non-ionizing radiation may lead to a tumour.
For example, rodents were found to have a higher incidence of malignant brain tumours when exposed to Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA for 2G and 3G phones), while those exposed to Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM for 4G telephones) had no association with cancer. Those were the partial results released by the US National Toxicology Program in May 2016.
The total outcomes will be declared for peer review and public comment by early 2018. This study highlights the difficulties in establishing cancer risk to different types radiation exposure and the requirement for a proper understanding of what exactly is being studied. | <urn:uuid:7129ee05-4fa7-41d7-a003-15b4b6c882b6> | {
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When we think about our carbon footprint, we often look at things like our car’s gas mileage, our home’s energy usage, and how far our food had to travel to get to the plate. Rarely mentioned in a discussion about carbon footprints, however, are musical instruments.
Many traditional musical instruments are made of wood, and likely the same kind of wood they’ve been made out of for centuries. However, the trees that produce much of this wood are in decline all around the world.
One graduate student in the School of Music at Michigan State University decided to do something about his musical carbon footprint. He built his own sustainable instrument made from local materials, but it’s not just any old instrument.
Current State’s Gabriela Saldivia looks at the issues of sustainability in todays musical instruments and how musicians are adapting. | <urn:uuid:27cce316-ef52-43ec-aa28-7c5bbe8148be> | {
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DEAR DOCTOR K:
Is there anything new on the horizon for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease?
Alzheimer’s disease affects more than 5 million people in the United States, alone. And that number is expected to more than double by 2050. I spoke to my colleague Dr. Gad Marshall about advances in Alzheimer’s treatment. He is an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.
Medical research has discovered that two proteins found in the brain are important in causing Alzheimer’s disease. The first is called amyloid-beta. This protein clumps together to form plaques in the brain. These plaques have long been recognized as a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.
Unfortunately, drugs and vaccines that target amyloid-beta have not so far proved very effective. The problem may be that by the time Alzheimer’s symptoms appear, plaque formation is already extensive. Much damage already has been done, and treatment may come too late.
Through research, doctors have developed techniques for spotting plaques of amyloid-beta when they are first forming, in younger adulthood. With that tool in hand, doctors are now conducting large studies to see whether treatment to lower amyloid-beta levels at a much earlier stage will reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Recently, new potential treatments have focused on a different protein: tau. Tau clumps together in the brain to form what are called “tangles.” Like the plaques of amyloid-beta, the tau tangles have long been a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. Tau helps to transport nutrients into the cells and to move waste out of cells.
However, when tau protein forms tangles, brain cells have trouble getting enough nutrients and eliminating waste. As a result, brain cells slowly die. In a recent report in the journal Brain, researchers examined the brains of more than 3,600 people who had died. They concluded that the presence of dysfunctional tau protein may be more important than amyloid-beta in causing the cognitive decline and memory loss seen in Alzheimer’s.
Tau tangles occur early in the disease process. The hope is that by designing treatments that target tau, we can prevent symptoms of Alzheimer’s, or slow down symptoms in those who already have signs of dementia. The challenge is to focus on the right ones. You need normal tau protein in the brain. The trick is to remove only the abnormal tau protein that is damaging nerve cells.
Several tau-focused drugs are in development. They include:
- LMTX. This drug is supposed to reduce the clumping together of abnormal tau proteins.
- TPI 287. This drug is designed to stabilize the nerve cell microtubules that are damaged by abnormal tau proteins.
- NILOTINIB. This FDA-approved leukemia drug is thought to help clear abnormal tau from the brain.
Leading Alzheimer’s researchers are optimistic that effective tau-focused treatments will be available within the next five to 10 years. You can learn about studies underway to treat Alzheimer’s disease at the website ClinicalTrials.gov. It lists the studies that are actively recruiting patients. | <urn:uuid:446e5b9f-4225-4811-9ab8-d8cbfc748842> | {
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The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) (also nicknamed the Desertron) was a particle accelerator complex under construction in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas, that was set to be the world's largest and most energetic, surpassing the current record held by the Large Hadron Collider. Its planned ring circumference was 87.1 kilometres (54.1 mi) with an energy of 20 TeV per proton. The project's director was Roy Schwitters, a physicist at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Louis Ianniello served as its first Project Director for 15 months. The project was cancelled in 1993 due to budget problems.
Originally posted by xDeadcowx
I really hope its the giant worms, that would be way more fun. | <urn:uuid:13b6f3bd-c54f-4a7e-bfdf-acb3af9dd385> | {
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Making a Difference: Autism Researcher Catherine Lord
As young woman, Catherine Lord joined the "army of undergraduate students" working with psychologist Ivar Lovaas at UCLA to treat children with autism with a new therapy.1 It was the early 1970s, autism treatment was in its infancy, and the children she tried to help came from institutions. "I was on a mission to teach these kids to talk," she recalled. "I thought, 'if I can talk, you can talk.'"
The college student became fascinated with this rare disorder. In time, she would become one of the foremost autism researchers, a co-creator of the tools widely used to diagnose autism, and the chief investigator for the phenotyping (clinical) part of the Simons Simplex Collection (SSC) project, among other achievements.
Much has changed since she earned a college degree in 1971, including our definition, understanding and treatment of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The number of children diagnosed with an ASD also has grown dramatically, to 1 in 88 children today.2
Looking for Causes of Autism
Dr. Lord, an author of more than 150 research papers and several books, became involved in the SSC project to research the causes of autism. The SSC is an interactive database of genetic, clinical and medical information from more than 2,600 families in the U.S. and Canada. Each family has one child with ASD, hence the name "simplex" or one, and some families also have typically developing siblings. Another large research database exists for "multiplex" families with two or more children with autism.
Researchers believed that simplex families could provide a glimpse into new genetic changes that contribute to autism risk. They could compare the genes of the child with autism to his or her siblings and parents, all of whom don't have autism.
They have made significant discoveries, she said. Chief among them has been finding tiny genetic changes – areas where material has been duplicated or deleted – in nearly 6 to 8 percent of the children with autism in the SSC.3
Scientists have not yet found a single genetic risk factor shared by most of the people with autism, but that knowledge itself is valuable. "The finding that it's not so simple is important," leading to new avenues of study, Dr. Lord explained.
Besides being a genetic database, the SSC contains information about the children's developmental histories. Scientists have drawn upon this information for behavioral and developmental studies of autism.
Using SSC data, for example, researchers at Kennedy Krieger Institute found that more children with ASD develop speech than previously believed, providing hopeful news to parents worried that a newly-diagnosed toddler may never talk. Other scientists have used the data to study autism topics as diverse as head sizes, friendships, anxiety, siblings, risk factors for aggression, repetitive behaviors, and the accuracy of autism spectrum diagnoses across different clinics.
"Being a person interested in behavior, I always thought this would be a great secondary gain of having this database," said Dr. Lord, who earned a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University in 1976. She is a co-creator of two tools used to diagnose children, the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised.4 She helped develop the new definition of autism spectrum disorder, which took effect in 2013. She also directs the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain, which provides early intervention and other services, in White Plains, New York.
What Lies Ahead for Autism Research
I think we need a hypothesis about the development of brain functioning that explains why you would have basic deficits in social behaviors and communication, and repetitive behaviors....
Looking forward, Dr. Lord said, she believes one of the major questions facing researchers is why autism has two seemingly different but linked components: problems with social and communication skills, in addition to repetitive behaviors, such as hand-flapping, rocking and lining up toys.
"I think we need a hypothesis about the development of brain functioning that explains why you would have basic deficits in social behaviors and communication, and repetitive behaviors, starting at an early age. We need a hypothesis that takes into account that there is this strange link between social deficits and wanting to do something repetitive," she said.
"I think another challenge is trying to figure out what these brain pathways that are associated with autism have in common, and what does that mean for the neurochemistry of autism. We need a better understanding of what is behaviorally off about autism," she said.
Whether you are in Buenos Aires or Stockholm, she said, finger-flicking and other repetitive motions of children with autism look remarkably similar. "But we don't know what it means, or why the child does it," she said.
"We know there are a number of different kinds of repetitive behaviors that kids do. What do those behaviors have in common, and how are they different from what other people [who don't have autism] do?"
During an early analysis of the SSC data, a researcher noticed that you could tell the children with autism from their unaffected brothers and sisters by looking at one piece of information: whether they have friends, she said. But that leads to more questions. "There are so many other disorders where kids don't have friends, and there are many reasons why people don't have friends. But we need to have better understanding of that," she said.
Four Decades of Change
When I started doing this 40 years ago, autism was a last resort diagnosis.
Questions remain in the study of autism, but the last 40 years have brought many changes, such as greater public awareness and acceptance, she said. Parents are seeking developmental testing for their children at younger ages than they did years ago, she said. They know what symptoms to look for. "Many parents are more aware of the social skills deficits associated with autism. They are thinking, 'Gosh, my child is not responding to his name,' which was not so much of a red flag for parents 30 years ago." Another change: fewer children being diagnosed with autism also have intellectual disability, she said.
"When I started doing this 40 years ago, autism was a last resort diagnosis," she said.
Like other developmental disorders, autism carried a stigma. That was evident in a 1965 Life magazine article about Dr. Lovaas's new behavioral therapy for autism. The article described the children as being "far-gone mental cripples" who have a "special form of schizophrenia called autism." Their behaviors were "grotesque" and "infuriating."5 Doctors now understand that autism and schizophrenia are different conditions. And magazine articles would be unlikely to describe people with disabilities in such negative and highly-charged terms today.
Now, Dr. Lord said, autism is a word that carries with it understanding and a degree of hope for parents. "Particularly once families have accepted that their child has learning differences, some families actively seek a diagnosis of autism, and that's a difference," she said. "They see this as an attractive alternative to a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and intellectual disability."
Part of that hope comes from better therapies and early intervention. "We have a much better understanding of the miracle of the ordinary child talking fluently," she said. As an undergraduate, she had tried to get children to repeat words. Now, therapists focus on the broader concept of social communication, using newer techniques. "We ask, 'How can we get this child to communicate? And how do I pull this child into a social world?'"
After decades devoted to the study, diagnosis and treatment of autism, her personal goal is both simple and profound. "We can't make the autism go away," she said, "but if we could find a place in this world for every kid with autism, where he or she finds joy and a sense of competence, at the level of ability possible, and independence, then we will have made a difference."
- Q+A with Autism Expert Catherine Lord. (2013, March 11) Retrieved from http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/news/q-a-with-catherine-lord.php
- Centers for Disease Control Summary of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Prevalence Studies, Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/documents/autism_prevalencesummarytable_2011.pdf
- Anderson, C. (2012, January 9) Simons Simplex Collection: The Key to Findings in Three Major Autism Genetics Studies. Retrieved from http://www.iancommunity.org/cs/simons_simplex_community/key_genetic_findings
- Western Psychological Services publishes the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule by Catherine Lord, Ph.D., Michael Rutter, M.D., FRS, Pamela C. DiLavore, Ph.D., and Susan Risi, Ph.D., and the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised by Michael Rutter, MD, FRS, Ann Le Couteur, MBBS, and Catherine Lord, Ph.D.
- Grant, A. (1965, May 7). Screams, Slaps and Love. Life. Pages 92-95. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=TVMEAAAAMBAJ&q=Allan+Grant#v=snippet&q=Allan%20Grant&f=false
Photo courtesy of Dr. Lord. | <urn:uuid:5d56a2e4-ce44-4711-8080-452e80574507> | {
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From Europe to Africa to North America, 2017 is a year full of spectacular anniversaries – and plenty of travel opportunities. Jane Austen lovers can revel in the 200th anniversary of her birth, hikers can wind their way through Denali National Park and history buffs can visit Germany to honor Martin Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses.
Founding of Denali National Park & Preserve – 100 Years
As recently as 2016, the mountain towering over the park’s 6 million acres was named Mount McKinley, after the American president whose popularity soared following his assassination in 1901. Assisted by the Boone and Crocket Club (a hunting and conservation league), naturalist Charles Sheldon lobbied Congress to establish it as a national park, fulfilling his goal in 1917, when Congress established the park and named it for McKinley. But in 1980, in a compromise arrived at by Congress, the park changed its name to Denali National Park, after the native Athabascan name for the mountain, while the mountain remained McKinley. In 2015, President Obama visited the country’s tallest mountain to officially declare the mountain would return to its indigenous designation of Denali.
Despite the winter season, the Park Service is hosting birthday festivities this February that will include snowshoe walks, skiing, ranger-led bike rides, and the Human Hundred Centennial Challenge (which requires logging 100 human-powered miles across the terrain, be it on foot, ski, sled or by bike).
The Virgin Islands Become Part of the U.S.– 100 Years
This year is the 100th anniversary of the transfer of the islands of St. Croix, St. John and St. Thomas from Denmark to the United States for $25 million. Plans for purchasing the islands began in 1867, with Secretary of State William Henry Seward hoping to extend U.S. territory and influence through peaceful means. But it wasn’t until after the sinking of the Lusitania in 1917 that the islands became truly important to U.S. foreign policy. At that point, the government, fearing the German annexation of Denmark could lead to Germany using the Danish West Indies as a naval base, opened negotiations to purchase the islands from the Scandinavian nation.
Located about 40 miles from Puerto Rico, the islands offer innumerable opportunities for exploring the natural world and the history of the Caribbean. Visitors can snorkel Hurricane Hole off St. John, a vibrant coral reef filled with a rare abundance of species, or stop by the Whim Plantation Museum on St. Croix to see an authentic Dutch sugar estate from the 1700s. To make the journey even more enticing, the U.S. Virgin Islands Centennial Commemoration is offering $300 in spending credits for anyone who comes to one of the three islands for three nights or more, books their travel before October 1, 2017, and stays at a participating hotel.
Ghana’s Independence – 60 Years
After decades of colonial rule, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African nation to throw off its European imperialists and declare independence on March 6, 1957. The independence movement was led by Kwame Nkrumah, who fought for sovereignty throughout Africa, saying “Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent.” Although Ghana dealt with corruption and economic mismanagement early in its history, it has since recovered and become a model of political reform. Celebrate Ghana’s independence with chichinga beef kabob while listening to horn and guitar infused Highlife music. To learn more about Ghana’s history and connection to the Atlantic slave trade, visit the slave castles that once served as fortified trading posts and later shifted to holding slaves.
Celebrations commemorating the anniversary will be held in the capital city of Accra, where an annual Independence Day Parade will be held on March 6.
Jane Austen’s Death – 200 Years
Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Knightley—Jane Austen has given the world some of its most memorable romantic entanglements. Though Austen never married, she created a world populated with love and longing and social blunders. Her stories have played a role in the public consciousness ever since.
To recapture some of her magic, there will be celebrations all across England. A Grand Jane Austen Ball near Winchester, multiple live performances in Hampshire, Jane Austen Study Day at the British Library and plenty of events at Jane Austen’s House Museum. And if you’re lucky, the Jane-embossed British 5 pound note, which is worth nearly $25,000.
Canada’s Independence – 150 Years
America’s neighbor to the north is celebrating a big anniversary in 2017: the 150th year of independence. Home to indigenous people for thousands of years, the country was first colonized by Vikings from Iceland at l’Anse aux Meadows on the island of Newfoundland. Several hundred years later, John Cabot’s 1497 expedition resulted in the first map of Canada’s east coast. In the following years, the nation was tugged between Britain and France, as its modern multilingual regions prove. As the country evolved and grew, the movement for a Canadian federation arose alongside the desire for a national railroad system and a solution to the conflict between French and British factions. Canada Day marks the occasion of three provinces becoming one country. On July 1, 1867, the Constitution Act united Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Canada province (including Ontario and Quebec). In the following decade, the country acquired the provinces of Manitoba and Prince Edward Island as well as the possessions of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
To celebrate the 150th anniversary, all national parks will be free and open to the public, and there will be numerous celebrations throughout the year, from National Aboriginal Day (celebrating indigenous people with concerts and powwows) to Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day (which celebrates French heritage in the province of Quebec). Travelers can also visit the historic tall ships that will be visiting 30 Canadian ports over the summer.
Martin Luther’s 95 Theses – 500 Years
For the first decades of his life, Martin Luther was no more than an anonymous monk. But in 1517, after years of disagreeing with the practice of indulgences (in which parishioners could pay for their sins to be absolved without doing penance), he wrote a text that would profoundly shake and reshape religious tradition for the next 500 years. Luther’s 95 Theses criticized the Catholic Church, proclaimed the Bible as the central religious authority and claimed Christians could achieve salvation through their faith. His theses spurred the evolution of Protestantism, fracturing what had once been the central faith of Europe.
To celebrate the 500th anniversary of Luther finishing his theses in Wittenberg, travel across Germany to learn about the age of Reformation. From museum exhibitions to church services, there are dozens of options for exploring Luther’s life and the impact of his teachings.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – 125 Years
For fans of Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Britain’s preeminent detective, there’s reason to celebrate: 2017 marks the 125th year of the publishing of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle was a doctor by training, and wrote his Sherlock Holmes mysteries in his spare time, inspired by authors like Edgar Allan Poe. In addition to his medical and literary work, he also traveled as a ship’s surgeon on a whaling boat in the Arctic Circle and later to Africa. Eventually, after a virulent flu nearly killed him, Conan Doyle abandoned his medical career to focus solely on his writing.
Celebrate the mystery of the famed author’s creation with a Sherlock Holmes Anniversary Tour around London, go on a multi-day tour around England, or visit the Museum of London for a dedicated exhibition this fall. You can also revisit the original stories online.
Marie Curie’s Birth – 150 Years
Marie Curie was a woman of firsts. The first woman in Europe to receive a doctorate of science, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for physics with her husband and Henri Becquerel (for the discovery of radioactivity) and the first—and so far only—person to win a Nobel Prize in a second science (chemistry). Sadly, her work on radioactivity was also what ultimately ended her life.
Curie’s is a life well worth celebrating and 2017 marks the 150th anniversary of her birth. The Museum of Marie Sklodowska-Curie in Poland (where she was born) will feature a new exhibit in honor of her birth, and the Musée Curie in France (where she worked) offers several anniversary exhibits throughout the year.
Langston Hughes’s Death – 50 Years
Poet, novelist, jazz aficionado and one of the leading members of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes died 50 years ago this year. He wrote extensively about black life in America. Inspired by the likes of Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg, Hughes worked to give an honest perspective of life for African-Americans, which earned him a fair amount of criticism from other writers. But he was also an inspiration, and as Du Bose Heyward wrote in 1926, when Hughes was only 24, “always intensely subjective, passionate, keenly sensitive to beauty and possessed of an unfaltering musical sense.”
To celebrate his life, you can stroll by the poet’s Harlem home, where he lived for the last 20 years of his life and which reflects his involvement in the Harlem Renaissance. It was saved from gentrification in 2016 and is now being turned into a cultural center. You can also visit the National Museum of African American History And Culture in Washington, D.C. to see the massive display of Hughes’s poem “I, Too” on the wall of the new museum.
Finland’s Independence – 100 Years
Beginning as early as 1155, Finland slowly fell under the dominion of Sweden, the regional power. Despite hundreds of years of living under Swedish rule, the ethnic Finns maintained their language and gradually developed their own culture beyond that of more general Nordic culture, including music produced by the ancient string instrument called the kantele and their smoke saunas. In the beginning of the 19th century, Finland came under Russian control as a spoil of war between Sweden and Russia, becoming an autonomous Grand Duchy, which meant Finns had a role in governance but the Russian emperor in St. Petersburg was ultimately the highest ruler. But after more than 100 years under Russia, the country sought its independence. In 1917, taking advantage of the Russian Revolution, the Finnish Parliament approved a declaration of independence, resulting in a civil war and ultimately the establishment of the Finnish republic.
To celebrate 100 years of the country’s independence, Finland will be hosting events across the country and throughout the year. There will be concerts, ice skating tours and art exhibits from the artist cooperative ONOMA. | <urn:uuid:ed836c43-a874-4800-a6a9-c21d95e5f482> | {
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MONDAY, July 20, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Children older than 10 can spread the new coronavirus as readily as adults do, according to a South Korean study that included nearly 65,000 people.
It also found that children younger than 10 are about half as likely as adults to spread the virus, The New York Times reported.
The findings, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, come as debate about reopening schools in the fall rages across the United States
“I fear that there has been this sense that kids just won’t get infected or don’t get infected in the same way as adults and that, therefore, they’re almost like a bubbled population,” Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota, told The Times.
“There will be transmission,” Osterholm said. “What we have to do is accept that now and include that in our plans.”
Along with physical distancing, hand hygiene and masks, Osterholm and other experts say schools have to decide when and how to test students and staff, when and how long people need to quarantine, and when schools should be closed and reopened, the Times reported.
Copyright © 2019 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Childhood Diseases: Measles, Mumps, & More
Subscribe to our Newsletter and get the complete health program for a health you. | <urn:uuid:26cfd6b7-c93c-40ef-b0cf-0c807bda71cd> | {
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A separate peace relationship between phineas
A separate peace important quotes and phrases note: the first parenthetical page reference refers to the paperback edition, while the second refers to the hardback edition. Separate peace unit test study play chapter 1: describe the relationship between the narrator and phineas the narrator is best friends with phineas. John knowles’ a separate peace reveals gene’s perceived war with phineas and phineas’ internal conflict with world war ii to be intertwined with each other through gene’s misunderstanding of phineas and phineas’. English ii honors 4 november 2002 a part of ourselves in a separate peace by john knowles, the characters of phineas and gene were best friends, roommates, and soul mates. A separate peace, by john knowles, is set in the early years of world war ii the plot centers on the relationship between gene and phineas, two boys who attend the devon school, a boarding school in new england.
Set at the fictional elite new hampshire prep school of devon (based on knowles's own alma mater, phillips exeter academy) during world war ii, a separate peace focuses on the relationship between gene forrester, the intellectual and somewhat introverted narrator, and his athletic, charismatic roommate phineas, or finny the central event of . - the theme of a separate peace the persistent theme of a separate peace is the deterioration of a complex friendship the bond between two boys (finny and gene) becomes tested and attacked, as the reader observes a seemingly utopian relationship fall into decadence. A separate peace study describe the relationship between the narrator and phineas - finny considers gene as his best friend - finny kind of teases him a lot.
In the novel a separate peace, the author john knowles creates a unique relationship between the two main characters gene forrester and phineas, also known as finny the boys have a love hate relationship, which becomes the base of the problems throughout the book the setting of this novel, a . In the novel a separate peace by john knowles, the relationship between phineas and gene is greatly influenced by gene's undying amount of loyalty to finny. A separate peace describe the relationship between gene and finny chapter 1 .
Theme of friendship the central theme of john knowles' a separate peace is mainly based on the friendship between the two main characters, phineas and gene phineas also known as finny, is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete, and gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. The “incident” has changed the relationship between gene and phineas because there is tension between the two of them john knowles sets a separate peace in . Long before the term 'bromance' gained its cachet, long before middle school depictions of 'mean girls' and female rivalries, fowles' separate peace concerns the relationship between two boys in a privileged prep school before the beginning of wwii, when all would be changed forever. This site might help you re: a separate peace- compare/contrast gene and finny okey dokey, so i'm having to do an independant study for my english class over a separate peace by john knowles one part of the assignment is to do a vinn diagram over gene and finny-- well, i can write essays all day long but this diagram has really stumped mei need to write things. Previous from innocence to experience in a separate peace next quiz pop quiz phineas (finny) brinker hadley elwin (leper) lepellier .
A separate peace relationship between phineas
In john knowles novel, a separate peace, knowles proves through an adolescent relationship, that in order to have a reliable friendship, one must accept another completely, revealing that jealousy can not co-excist within a friendship. A separate peace explores conflicts between two close friends, gene forrester and phineas gene is a studious, hardworking boy, while phineas, or finny, is an adept, natural athlete they are well acquainted at the beginning of the story, but the connection between them becomes questionable as gene’s starts to have mixed feelings about phineas. A separate peace chapter questions chapter 1 describe the relationship between the narrator (gene) and phineas (finny) what does phineas wear as a belt at . A seperate peace: indestructible relationship in the novel, a separate peace by john knowles, the main characters, gene and phineas, develop an indestructible relationship - a seperate peace: indestructible relationship introduction.
- A separate peace chronicles the relationship between two roommates and best friends, gene and phineas, as they approach their final year of boarding school the novel opens in 1958, long after world war ii has ended.
- John knowles’ a separate peace deals with the issue of war and peace by showing peace, personified by phineas, to be happy, naïve and confident, and war, personified by gene, to be tortured, malicious and insecure, and that resolution to the conflict between.
Study guide questions for a separate peace what did phineas want to do who completed the activity 6 describe the relationship between the narrator and phineas. Gene was a lonely, introverted intellectual phineas was a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete what happened between them at school one summer during the early years of world war ii is the subject of a separate peace a great bestseller for almost a decade–-one of the most starkly moving . Phineas, or finny for short, is gene's best friend he is the other main character of the story the main focus of the story is the relationship between gene and finny. | <urn:uuid:a97aec3c-a353-4c26-a4e0-9be397221954> | {
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For their first unit of the year, my college composition classes aren’t writing essays. They’re designing games. Digital Breakout games, to be exact.
I’ve taught college composition for four years, and the same concerns keep nagging at me about these young writers:
- They want to create the perfect draft the first time. The end.
- Instead, they see revision as editing their grammatical errors.
- They provide surface feedback in their peer reviews.
- They don’t feel purpose or authenticity in their writing.
These are issues I need to address, and they aren’t easy fixes. However, the first step in my attempt is to shake up our first unit and instead of focusing on “writing,” we’ll be focusing on game design.
The secret: The game design process mimics the writing process. It mimics the major steps of EVERY creation/maker/design/invention process.
Clearly, for any writer or designer who ever created, there is no single process, and processes can change depending on the project. But the key steps remain: Ideation, Creation, Feedback, Iteration, More Feedback, Iteration, etc, until the project meets Nirvana or the final deadline, whatever comes first.
By teaching writing students game design, we’re also teaching them the design process for writing (or art, or inventing, or whatever you’re making.) That’s just what I want to do — the put my students into a design situation they’ve never been and discover that the steps are the same, and that all the steps are important and applicable to writing.
Here’s my plan in more detail:
- Ideation. Writers will first have to work together in groups to analyze digital Breakout games that currently exist, find the patterns, and then develop their own themes and ideas. They’ll also need to consider the age and purpose of their game.
- Creation. After the team delegates parts of the game to work on, writers will begin creating those components. In a digital Breakout game, many of the components include writing, so this also serves as a baseline assessment for me to see where my writers are in their abilities.
- Feedback. Teams will playtest other teams’ games and provide feedback. This will require some frontloading in demonstrating what clear and specific feedback looks like.
- Iteration. Back to work revising the game. Students may have to adjust the game — Was it too difficult? Too easy? Should they remove some red herrings? Did they see “tricks” other teams had in their games that they want to adapt to their own? (Then it’s back to Feedback, as needed.)
- Publication. The games will then be submitted to the Digital Breakout EDU sandbox, publicized via social media, and shared with our local teachers if applicable to their teaching areas.
In addition, the plan hits a liberal number of 21st Century Skills, so there’s that.
Granted, this process could be taught with any writing activity: Essays, arguments, short stories, heck, even haikus. (In fact, starting with shorter writings, like poems or short shorts, might be more effective in teaching the design process than longer texts.)
But why is game-based and game-inspired learning gaining momentum? Randy Pausch touched on it in his book The Last Lecture. Games, if well-designed, have the ability to teach without the learner knowing it. Mars Generation One teaches argumentation while students explore their space station, and FanGeopolitics teaches the interconnectedness of foreign issues in geography disguised with professional sports draft mechanics.
Many young writers are anxious about their writing. I get it: writing is personal. It makes you feel vulnerable.
Games — especially a game created as a team — have lower risk involved. Designing a game is more playful and less threatening than writing — or at least that’s what I’m hoping for my students. By experiencing the design process through game design rather than writing, my goal is for students to be less obsessed with writing the perfect draft the first time, less threatened with giving and receiving feedback, more open to deeper revisions.
I want them to see writing like game design. Go in knowing it won’t be perfect, but knowing you can also have fun in the feedback/playtesting and in your revising/iteration. | <urn:uuid:2864b40a-c01c-428c-bd54-9f6555a66315> | {
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Bananas are rich in minerals and vitamins which make them one of the healthiest fruits. They have a very unique flavor and aroma. This fruit provides many health benefits as well as help during treatment of various health conditions and issues.
Eating bananas regularly will help you treat the following conditions:
- Kidney cancer
- Morning sickness
Bananas are even able to improve the performance of your brain and that way makes us smarter. Other 10 benefits of regularly eating bananas are:
Bananas fight Anemia
Bananas are rich in potassium which strengthens the blood and prevents and treats anemia.
Bananas fight Inflammation
The vitamin B6 which is found in bananas has very powerful anti-inflammatory properties when it comes to joint pain. It also stimulates white blood cell production, treats type 2 diabetes as well as supports the function of the nervous system.
Bananas Prevent Calcium Loss
Not only that they prevent the loss but they also improve the calcium absorption which makes the bones and teeth stronger.
Bananas Boost the Energy Levels
Bananas provide your body with the energy it needs, so make sure you eat 2 bananas before doing an energy-draining physical activity.
They Prevent Kidney Cancer
Bananas prevent kidney stones due to their support of calcium absorption; they also protect your eyes from macular degeneration.
Bananas help digestion
All the digestive issues can be solved by eating bananas since they are rich in dietary fiber. You can also treat constipation and regulate bowel movement by eating this fruit.
Bananas Regulate Blood Sugar Levels
Diabetics should consider eating more of this fruit because it can regulate blood sugar levels. Also, PSM symptoms and mood swings can be relieved by bananas.
Bananas make you smarter
The potassium that bananas contain improves brain function which has causes improvement of the cognitive and reasoning abilities.
Bananas prevent Heart Attack and Stroke
The potassium and sodium in bananas also reduce the risk of stroke or a heart attack.
Bananas treat Depression
Bananas are rich in tryptophan, a compound that turns into serotonin when consumed. Serotonin is a very potent neurotransmitter which can regulate the mood as well as treat depression.
From the reasons explained above we can conclude that bananas truly are a miraculous fruit that has so many health benefits. To enjoy these benefits try to include more bananas in your diet, they really are a healthy and tasty treat. | <urn:uuid:58fa2da2-e0c6-490b-8733-8ed5ae2e8386> | {
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Anna LehmanMrs. CopenhaverAmerican History 21 February 2018 Republican Presidents in the Jazz Age During the roaring twenties, or Jazz Age, three republican presidents were consecutively elected to serve. Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover were a great part of the Jazz Age and made many decisions on how to handle the events at the time. Warren G. Harding, America’s 29th President, only served in office for two years, due to the inevitable Curse of Tippecanoe. He was nominated for the republican candidate seat because it was stated that nobody else was better for it, and their was a shortage of better suitors. He surprisingly won against James Cox, Democratic candidate, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt with the help of his campaign manager and later to be Attorney General, Harry Daughtery. He told the public he would bring a “return to normalcy” after the Great War. He wanted to end foreign involvement and keep the peace in the country. He also believed in limiting immigration, enlarging the tariffs, and supporting business and the rich by lowering the income taxes. Harding’s term was mostly defined by his “Ohio Gang” of cabinet members. He appointed very smart leaders, but most of them were close personal friends. Three scandals erupted for his half-term. The first, and probably most well know idea of corruption, was the Teapot Dome Scandal. Albert Fall, the Secretary of the Interior, illegally leased government land to oil companies to gain $400,000. Secondly, Charles Forbes, Secretary of Veterans Bureau, was accused of stealing money from the veteran’s funds. Lastly, Harry Daughtery was accused of accepting bribes and giving away government secrets. Surprisingly, Harding wasn’t involved or associated with any of these crimes. His two year term ended because of a sudden heart attack. Harding’s Vice President, Calvin Coolidge, immediately swore into office as soon as Harding died. Coolidge was known to be silent and pensive, and was not nearly as social as Warren G. Harding. He was known for wanting less government interference with people’s lives, therefore, he supported the idea of limited government. | <urn:uuid:15d0c099-eaf2-4835-bd85-682e8e248fd7> | {
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Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a technique in which electrodes are surgically implanted in the brain, and electrical impulses are delivered to brain circuits that aren’t functioning properly as a way to help control symptoms of neurological disorders.
How DBS works
A DBS system includes three components that are surgically implanted. Small holes are drilled through the skull to allow the placement of electrical leads in the brain. A small battery-powered stimulator is implanted under the collarbone. The stimulator is connected to the electrical leads via a wire placed beneath the skin that runs along the neck and behind the ear.
For Alzheimer’s patients, DBS is often targeted to a brain area called the fornix, part of the brain’s memory circuit. The fornix is a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with memory, with other areas of the brain.
DBS in clinical trials
Functional Neuromodulation, a company developing DBS therapies for Alzheimer’s, sponsored a Phase 2 clinical trial (NCT01608061) that began in 2012 and included 42 patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease in the U.S. and Canada.
DBS systems were implanted in all participants. In one group, the systems were turned “on” and electrical impulses were delivered to the participants’ brains. In the comparison group, the systems remained “off.” Results were reported in 2016 in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
They showed that the surgery and electrical stimulation were safe and well-tolerated. No significant differences were seen between the “on” and “off” groups in terms of participants’ performance on cognitive tests.
Cerebral glucose metabolism, an indicator of brain activity, increased in the “on” group at six months compared to the “off” group, but the difference was not seen at 12 months.
Another Phase 2 trial (NCT03290274) is currently recruiting Alzheimer’s patients at the Hospital San Carlos in Madrid, Spain, for a study of DBS. DBS will be applied to the fornix in three patients. In another three patients, DBS will be used to stimulate a different brain region, the basal nucleus of Meynert. The study will evaluate the safety of DBS and its impact on Alzheimer’s disease progression.
Xuanwu Hospital in Beijing, China, is also recruiting Alzheimer’s patients for a Phase 2 clinical trial (NCT03352739 nicknamed FANTASIA) of DBS of the fornix or the basal nucleus of Meynert. DBS devices will be implanted in most of the participants; in some, the device will be turned on (experimental group), in others, it will remain off (sham group). There will also be a control group that will not receive surgery but will just take donepezil for the duration of the study.
The study will look at participants’ performance on cognitive tests, volume of the hippocampus as assessed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and brain metabolism measured by positron emission tomography (PET).
Functional Neuromodulation has started a Phase 3 trial in up to 210 Alzheimer’s participants ages 65 and older. The study implanted the first participant in September of 2019. Participants will all receive a DBS system targeting the fornix of the brain but a third of the participants won’t have the system turned on until after a year to serve as a control group. The study will monitor the 12-month change from baseline in Integrated Alzheimer’s Disease Rating Scale (iADRS) and the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale – Sum of Boxes (CDR-SOB). The study is expected to be completed in October of 2020.
Last updated: Sept. 30, 2019
Alzheimer’s News Today is strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website. | <urn:uuid:dd5a655f-0868-4173-98ab-e7919ee95ee3> | {
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What is Botanical Illustration?
Ancient Herbals and Floral Art
The first books to include floral art were ancient books about plants as medicine. These old herbals were used to both identify plants and to explain how to use herbs to treat illness. The oldest of these books were painstakingly copied by hand. The artwork was redrawn each time, as well.
Once the printing press was invented, artists figured out how to make illustration art a part of the bookmaking process. They carved woodcuts and engraved plates with the image of the plant. The image was printed multiple times in black ink. Each plate was then colored by hand with paint. Physicians and scholars used these drawings as reference books.
Antique printed plates were made this way:
Botanical Art and the Age of Exploration
In Europe, great ships sailed the world and brought back spices and other riches. They also brought back tales of unusual plants and animals in these new worlds. Each expedition included a naturalist who often drew and painted the new species he observed. These artists sent back pictures that amazed and intrigued people. Science and art flourished together as a result of these explorers.
Europeans began to have greater wealth and enjoyed more leisure time. People became intrigued with flowering gardens and exotic plants. This interest peaked in drawing and painting plants and flowers. New pigments and colors arrived on the scene and soon painting, especially in watercolors, became a popular pastime. Contemporary botanical art carries forward this exquisitely beautiful artistic movement.
Contemporary watercolor botanical illustrations are made as follows:
Botanical Illustration and Modern Science
Science illustration was kept alive in the field guides and documentations of botanists in the 19th and 20th centuries. At the same time, there were rapid advances in art media—graphite pencils, colored pencils, technical pens, watercolor brushes, and intense pigmented paints. In the 20th century, breakthroughs in photography expanded the printing process. This allowed high-quality copies of artwork to become readily available. Any type of media could be easily mass-produced.
Watercolor painting is the most traditional medium of botanical illustration, but, through digital imaging, any medium can now be reproduced for printing. Today’s botanical artists use a wide range of materials and techniques, such as
Illustration Art Changes with the Times
In recent years the illustration focus of botanical art began to change. Botanical artists still train in both botany and art. However, now the new art leans towards innovations in materials and in compositional design. Advanced techniques in materials and technique make the art seem so real it looks like it can be lifted from the paper. Contemporary botanical art has come a long way from the simple images of cave art and hieroglyphs. | <urn:uuid:6834b4e9-f142-4f1c-aa71-dc52e3adf8b8> | {
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The concept of home has deep meaning for most people. It may go even deeper for Jerry Moore, professor of anthropology at California State University, Dominguez Hills. During his career as an anthropological archaeologist, he’s been – as he calls it – “digging into people’s home for 30 years,” searching for clues that help to unravel a fundamental question, what does it mean to be human? And, he has written about it in “The Prehistory of Home” (University of California Press, Berkeley, 2012).
“The human experience is such a vast topic, but breaking it down makes it digestible. Focusing on home was a good choice [for the book], because most anyone can relate to having a home or being brought up in one,” Moore said.
Homes reflect the people who live in them, and the homes, themselves, reshape the experiences of their inhabitants, according to Moore, whether from man’s first hut to an $85 million 57,000 square-foot Holmby Hills mega mansion.
“How we get there… that is a fascinating topic and what intrigued me to write this book,” Moore said.
In “The Prehistory of Home,” Moore goes as far back as Neanderthals to examine the creation of home. From their beginnings, he explained, homes had “…distinguishing cooking areas and tool-making spaces, differentiating the space of the living from the space of the dead. They exhibited this human propensity to create order at home.”
Equally versed in current times, Moore gives insights into the modern construction of homes. He said in post-1920s home life, the rise of companionate marriages over marriages of convenience led to a desire for more privacy, which resulted in a greater physical distance between the parent and children’s rooms.
“People no longer married primarily to have families, but they married for full, rich unions where husbands and wives were companions and sexual partners. Five-hundred years earlier the children slept in the family bed with parents,” said Moore.
With an archaeological passion that spans the ages, Moore has a knack for comparative analysis and has structured his book to juxtapose homes that are ancient and distant with homes that are modern and near.
“The very process of trying to make the past relevant to a modern reader requires from a writer to think about how the past intersects with the writer. At various parts of the book I write about my archeological experiences,” Moore said.
In one of his travels to sites worldwide, Moore visited farm house ruins in a potato famine village along the west coast of Ireland. As the scarcity of food drove out the Irish residents, their homes became ruins for later generations to ponder. In the book, Moore counter balances those observations with ones made during a brief modern archeological survey in Lancaster, Calif., which he called “the zip code with the highest rate of home foreclosures in Southern California.” The dwellings of both regions left behind chilling relics of their outward migration. Describing the evidence of the modern ruins in Lancaster, Moore said, “It’s really easy to see foreclosed homes. In fact, you can spot them a block away, because the lawns are dead.”
While discoveries through investigations such as these may seem mundane, it is the seemingly routine inspections that advance anthropological knowledge through archeology.
“Most people know what [archaeology] is, and most people are wrong,” said Moore with a hearty chuckle. “Everybody knows about Indiana Jones and Laura Croft tomb raider. But, what most folks don’t realize, on one hand what we do as archaeologists is not nearly as violent as the things they do. [On the other hand], most people don’t realize how small pieces of the past can lead to just stunning insights into the human experience.”
These insights are, however, sometimes inclusive, misleading, or insufficient to make comprehensive or accurate conclusions about what may have really occurred. For many, these ambiguities are construed as shortcomings in the practice of archaeology.
“For some people it is one of the most frustrating things about archaeology, but for most archaeologists it’s what we find most fascinating. We find these incredibly concrete traces of past lives; that corn cob, that skull, those beads. They’re there and behind them are all these enormously difficult to answer questions,” said Moore. “But in large part, that’s where all the fun is, trying to figure out these things.”
In addition to sometimes ambiguous findings, archaeologists are faced with the challenge of how to tell the world about what they do learn. While a good number of archaeologists could improve on communicating with the average reader, Moore said it isn’t entirely their fault. Needing to document findings, archaeologists often bury them in academic reports where the average reader is unlikely to go. Moore intends to reach those readers through his book and hopes to do the same with future projects. He said he would like to be “multi-lingual” – writing for academia and for a general commercial audience, adding that his conversational writing style comes from his teaching philosophy of keeping people interested.
“If you can’t engage people, you can’t teach them. I can’t teach students if they are asleep,” said Moore who has taught and engaged scores of students during his 20-year teaching career at CSU Dominguez Hills.
As for his book, the underlying lesson plan is as broad as the audience he hopes to attract.
“I want the reader to realize that they are a part of a broad shared legacy of what it means to be human.” Moore said. “And, homes have been a part of the human experience even longer than we have been Homo sapiens.”
Moore, who earned a doctorate and a master’s degree in anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara; and a bachelor’s in anthropology from California State College, Stanislaus, specializes in prehistoric cultural landscapes and built environments, archaeology of Andean South America, and archaeology of Western North America. He has edited and authored several articles and books, including “Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists” (Altamira/Rowman and Littlefield Press; 1st edition, 1997; 2nd edition 2004; expanded 3rd edition, 2008; 4th edition, forthcoming 2012), “Cultural Landscapes in the Prehispanic Andes: Archaeologies of Place” (University Press of Florida, 2005), “Architecture and Power in the Prehispanic Andes: The Archaeology of Public Buildings” (Cambridge University Press, 1996). | <urn:uuid:532c0c1b-45bb-443a-b599-d81a5d12cdeb> | {
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RSC Adv. 2022 Oct 10;12(44):28788-28799. doi: 10.1039/d2ra04845k. eCollection 2022 Oct 4.
An innovative method is introduced for environmental dust mitigation from a hydrophobic surface by a sessile water droplet. The sessile water droplet is located between two parallel plates having hydrophilic (at the top) and hydrophobic (at the bottom) states. The water droplet is located at the top hydrophilic plate, and the effect of the plate spacing on dust mitigation rate is examined. The droplet behavior is analyzed for different plate spacings and various droplet sizes using a high-speed camera. The fluid and the particle motions are simulated inside the droplet while adopting the experimental conditions. The findings demonstrate that the sessile droplet can effectively mitigate dust. Reducing the plate spacing increases the droplet meniscus diameter and enhances the dust removal rate. The surface tension force on the hydrophilic surface remains greater than that of the pinning force on the dusty hydrophobic surface even though the Magdeburg and surface tension forces contribute to the droplet pinning force on the hydrophobic dusty surface. Flow current is developed in the droplet fluid during the squeezing period, which considerably enhances the dust removal rate from the hydrophobic surface. The cleaned area increases with the droplet volume and plate spacing. Stria patterns are observed on the circumference of the dust-removed area. The present study provides a detailed analysis of a new method of dust removal from surfaces for self-cleaning applications. | <urn:uuid:6679fe33-83b0-44ed-8058-4ae3e10fab01> | {
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Centuries on, what the Reformation was and what it accomplished remain deeply contentious. Peter Marshall’s sweeping new history—the first major overview for general readers in a generation—argues that sixteenth-century England was a society neither desperate for nor allergic to change, but one open to ideas of “reform” in various competing guises. King Henry VIII wanted an orderly, uniform Reformation, but his actions opened a Pandora’s Box from which pluralism and diversity flowed and rooted themselves in English life.
With sensitivity to individual experience as well as masterfully synthesizing historical and institutional developments, Marshall frames the perceptions and actions of people great and small, from monarchs and bishops to ordinary families and ecclesiastics, against a backdrop of profound change that altered the meanings of “religion” itself. This engaging history reveals what was really at stake in the overthrow of Catholic culture and the reshaping of the English Church.
Peter Marshall is professor of history at the University of Warwick, winner of the Harold J. Grimm Prize for Reformation History, and author of numerous books, including The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction. His book Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2018. He lives in Leamington Spa, UK.
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Spirits of nature are wandering.
Singing the imitation of the actions of the hunters and elephants.
Elephant-hunter, take your bow!
All animals frightened of the hunters.
African songs have instruments and dances to their ritual songs. They could have danced intensely to the action.
There it is! Elephant-hunter, take your bow!
Ritual hunting songs reveal an attitude toward nature and the spirits of nature.
Movements of the African ritual song dancers must have slowed down because of the killing of the elephant by the hunters.
We did it. We killed the elephant.
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Fact and Affect in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury
To provide a working definition of idiocy, in 1910 the American Association of Mental Retardation offered the following index:
|Level of retardation ||IQ|
The drawbacks of this model are significant, since it measures only the patient’s behavior as seen from the outside. From this perspective, behaviour can only be scientifically described. Functions of the mind are categorized in the name of objectivity without regard to the value that inheres in us as agents. I like the opening of William Faulkner’s 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury simply for the alternative to such objectifying thinking that his work provides. But his prose also makes various contributions to our appreciation of the kinds of gestures and cadences necessary for a ‘retarded’ person to make sense of his life.
In my view, Faulkner’s decision to use the autistic young man and the black servant as the book’s key narrators is part of a broader effort to render the subtle dynamics by which a family disintegrates and unites. While there are clear grounds for sympathy with Benjy, if we are sucked into the extremities of his outlook then we risk giving up on objectivity completely in exchange for something close to madness. By contrast, in the novel’s final section Faulkner’s language approaches omniscience, opening up a wider space that allows for unity and reflection. The question, then, has two formulations: can we achieve facticity within the Compson family’s world? And should this be possible, would it be our best affective option?
What is at stake in these questions of identification can be glimpsed in the first pages of the novel, when Benjy’s motives are interpreted by his sister Caddy. Caddy is the only figure aware of what truly counts for her brother, and she absorbs his psychological needs in this manner:
‘Did you come to meet Caddy.’ she said, rubbing my hands. ‘What is it. What are you trying to tell Caddy.’ Caddy smelled like trees and like when we are asleep.
What are you moaning about, Luster said. You can watch them again when we get to the branch. Here. Here’s your jimson weed. He gave me the flower.
It is the reader’s challenge, and Caddy’s talent here, to see Benjy accurately and explain why he is tied to the space of the school gates from which she emerges. And yet this feat of hermeneutic friendship only sharpens the sense of weakness, as he retreats into pure sensation rather than articulating anything about what underlies their relationship. There is a manifest failure to discriminate between “trees” and “flower” as keepsakes of her presence, and, more radically, to notice the difference between races as the dialogue moves from the white sister into the company of the black servant.
As the novel’s first phase, April Seventh 1928 takes place the day after Caddy’s excommunication from the family. She has been banished from their life following the discovery that the child she had during wedlock was not in fact her husband’s. But in Benjy’s remembrances of her actions we see that Caddy’s susceptibility to temptation was also a source of energy and presence. Nowhere is this tension better displayed than in an image that laid the foundation for the text. Describing the groundwork for The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner told Jean Stein in 1956:
It began with a mental picture. I didn’t realise it was symbolical. The picture was of the muddy seat of a little girl’s drawers in a pear tree, where she could see through a window where her grandmother’s funeral was taking place and report what was happening to her brothers on the ground below.
How to strain something “symbolical” from the rough-hewn, feisty effluence of this scene? When he fleshes out the vision, Faulkner shows how Caddy’s peculiar eroticism enables her to climb the tree and gain a new sense of perspective: she makes herself knowledgeable of facts about death that adults prefer to keep to themselves, telling Jason “I don’t care whether they see or not.” This drive towards new knowledge and adventure lead ultimately to Caddy’s transgression and her exile from the Compson family, leaving her brothers to live in a place from which the only person capable of true affirmation has been removed. Without Caddy nothing can happen by dint of impulse or desire and so the self must switch into a sense of dread like that voiced by Lady Compson when she says of Benjy, “He’ll wake up at daybreak, and I simply cannot bear another day like today.” The day in question has been engulfed by Benjy’s lamenting Caddy, which takes the form of loud and constant “moaning” perceived by Luster in the passage cited above and not, tellingly, reported by the narrator, Benjy himself, because these outbursts are now so integral to his being that they have become natural features of consciousness rather than salient phenomena.
A lesser novelist would play on the existential melodrama of this screaming, but Faulkner’s writing evinces a genuinely exploratory drive: he endows Benjy with various tones to delineate the multiplicity of his experience. There is no sense in the text of a theatrical struggle with self; instead, Faulkner employs a more variegated style into which voices slip, almost parenthetically, as a means of registering our private lives and desires. Thus, in chromatic prose lyric, Faulkner ends the first section:
Father went to the door and looked at us again. Then the dark came back, and he stood black in the door, and then the door turned black again. Caddy held me and I could hear us all, and the darkness, and something I could smell. And then I could see the windows, where the trees were buzzing. Then the dark began to go in smooth, bright shapes, like it always does, even when Caddy says that I have been asleep.
Through style we find our imaginations entranced by this moment when all the trauma can melt into intimacy and an incipient peacefulness that grows within the lilting parataxis of each sentence. Prose of this tenor is perhaps what opened Faulkner up to the charge of verbal stupidity: Alfred Kazin described his prose as “the most intermittently incoherent and ungrammatical rhetoric in all American writing.” But for Benjy the passage allows speech to become as fluid and evanescent as those “smooth, bright shapes,” and it also allows the reader to engage with his past life. We have gone a long way from Benjy’s pursuit of schoolgirls who resemble Caddy, a botched chase that occasions the calcified phrasing of “I was trying to say, and I caught her, trying to say.” His memory can instead reiterate that verb in the softer key of “says that I have been asleep,” the final clause acting as a notation about the pleasure of ceding linguistic control to Caddy and inhabiting the future-perfect tense she sets against his more intuitive sense of reality.
Nevertheless, these closing moments retain an ambiguous quality, since they are faintly shaded by the father. In that perspective, sleep in the passage can be seen as prefiguring the darkness of Quentin’s suicide in the next section. Living at Harvard, Quentin is haunted by Father Compson’s careworn abstractions, which are handed down as readily as the watch he inherits:
I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools…Like Father said down the long and lonely light-rays you might see Jesus Christ walking, like. And the good St Francis that said Little Sister Death, that never had a sister.
The anxiety stemming from his past prevents the idealistic Quentin from gaining enough intellectual distance to assess the claims made upon his existence. He is restricted to wrestling with subjectivity in his father’s terms, which unfold with a smothering regularity made audible in the alliterative march “down the long and lonely light-rays.” Even if spirituality seems available in the tableau of Christ and St. Francis—presenting an image for analysis—any hope of extracting meaning from this sculpted form is frustrated when experience is made into a negative with “that never.” This negativity is activated by the father, whose role is to ruin the experiments of youth in the novel and block Quentin’s bids to find new values in Boston that might substitute for traditional Southern postures. Indeed, as the connection between fields and “philosophers and fools” suggests, there can be no romantic American fusion of self with landscape in The Sound and the Fury. Rather than the vividness associated with the South in countercultural beat narratives of the 1950s, Faulkner’s descriptions colour the region with a distinctly darker palette.
In the original scroll of Kerouac’s On the Road, nature’s radiance is still pullulating as Jack and Neal cross the Gulf of Mexico into a land where they can evade their respective marriages and set limits that are organic: “‘We’re in the South! We’ve left the winter!’ Faint daybreak illuminated green shoots by the side of road.” Yet in Quentin’s narrative the South does not provide escape but generates despair, centering upon his psyche whilst remaining outside of his full control:
I’ve got to marry somebody Versh told me about a man mutilated himself. He went into the woods and did it with a razor, sitting in a ditch…But that’s not it. It’s not not having them. It’s never to have had them then I could say O That That’s Chinese I don’t know Chinese. And father said it’s because you are a virgin: don’t you see? It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That’s just words and he said So is virginity and I said you don’t know. You can’t know and he said Yes. On the instant when we come to realise that tragedy is second-hand.
Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom.
Part of the terror here resides in how Quentin’s discomfort with doctrine prevents him from seeing anything as commonly true; instead, everything is particularised by his own sexual failure and distress. While Father Compson relates to the tragedy of Caddy’s pregnancy with a restrained, Emersonian sense that the “only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is,” this inability to know her life causes Quentin to posit suicide as the only action he can dictate motives for and own authentically. Faulkner’s prose strives to make suicide intelligible amongst the misapprehensions of “Chinese” and of the bridge, which, with the paragraph break, seems like a guide to reading until its long shadow redirects the reader to Southern opacity.
The final section of The Sound and the Fury dwells on the difficulty of assimilating the family’s doom to a larger ethical system, and this move is marked by the introduction of Dilsey as a person worthy of the mode of literary attention that omniscient narration brings. Significantly, the omniscient perspective does not constitute some kind of universal humanism capable of framing the entire story, but simply voices the truth of what Dilsey sees and the wisdom she carries. When, after a brittle exchange with Lady Compson, she steps out of her role as servant, she can portentously offer a more abstract view of the family’s plight:
‘One o’clock,’ she said aloud. ‘Jason ain’t coming home. Ise seed de first en de last,’ she said, looking at the cold stove.’ I seed de first en de last.’
While the imperative for Quentin was “not to spend your breath trying to conquer” each moment, Dilsey’s ability to see the first and the last indicates how redemptive Faulkner is in his notion that durational time—an overall sense of history—is finally able to heal the fissure in clock time. This broader sense of time is reinforced by the relics (such as the old village show that subtends the narrative) which people the text, acting as things which refuse to stay dead. To judge from her first visual entrance in the novel, Dilsey also seems like something of a relic or “ruin”:
She had been a big woman once but now her indomitable skeleton rose, draped loosely in unpadded skin that tightened again upon a paunch almost dropsical, as though muscle and tissue had been courage or fortitude which the days or the years had consumed only until the indomitable skeleton was left rising like a ruin or landmark above the somnolent and impervious guts, and above that the collapsed face that gave the impression of the bones themselves being outside the flesh, lifted into the driving day with an expression at once fatalistic and of a child’s astonished disappointment.
This is sublimely mature writing, particularly in its matching of physical and philosophical properties. In another Southern novel that stays close to the grotesque genre, Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, the child narrator, Enoch, describes his foster parent, whose “hair was so thin it looked like ham gravy trickling over her skull.” For O’Connor here, as for Faulkner, the body is not one coherent substance but an object that embodies our corporeal otherness and challenges liminality. The image of hair trickling over the skull is useful because it points towards the alterity central to the passage above where Dilsey gives “the impression of the bones themselves being outside the flesh” and is pictured earlier exuding sweat that “precipitated not so much a moisture but the quality of thin, not quite congealed oil.” Despite their pronounced ugliness, these details act as strong proof of tangibility. And in Dilsey’s case bones protrude from skin just as this character outlasts the cycle of pain wrapped around the Compson world. Rhythmically, the omniscient voice can make this victory possible by its shift from the initial monosyllables into a “rising” polysyllabic rhetoric that evokes her relationship with fate and virtue. It is as if the omniscient voice itself manages to see the first and the last of Dilsey’s existence, to honestly render the heroism within the bare, animal nature of her body.
Just as the omniscient voice lends linguistic force and realism to Dilsey, Reverend Shegog’s sermon transforms her body into an affective spectacle. Faulkner was interested by the potential for physical semblance to be dissolved and reconstituted through the spoken word, which is the effect of religious discourse when:
The congregation seemed to watch with its own eyes while the voice consumed him, until he was nothing and they were nothing and there was not even a voice but instead their hearts were speaking to one another in chanting measures.
Any sense of ego becomes powerfully dispersed in the sacraments of song; Benjy and Dilsey are bonded in a way that, unlike his possessive love for Caddy, is not founded on the demand for favour and appreciation from others. What emerges instead is an awesome unity of being, and with her hand on his knee Dilsey lets this show: “Two tears slid down her fallen cheeks, in and out of the myriad coruscations of immolation and abnegation and time.” Even amongst the elaborate feminine rhymes, those two teardrops are central in this moving portrait of a belief that does not assume a dominant role by claiming to heal the idiot but simply creates a setting where he can fall silent and attune to something beyond the facts of his existence. Tears become the most responsible form of communication in the novel, and as images they indicate a facet of the text produced through but not bounded by the omniscient voice. Later in the visit to church we see Dilsey drying “her eyes on the hem of her topmost robe”: this is a tactile, important detail with which to conclude, reminding me of the second stanza from Tennyson’s poem “Marianna” (1830):
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
The persona’s tears are balanced with the natural ambience of evening, appearing less as parts of a psychological event than raw material moored to landscape. Through Dilsey, Faulkner finds a way of withstanding self-consciousness and its complexities, the forces that drive Benjy insane. He understands that any attempt to control one’s emotional environment, like Benjy’s insistence on keeping Caddy present, will shut out our most sincere vulnerabilities and diminish our lives. Revelation can happen only when our bodies are open and responsive to change, and when our minds are trained not on what we can know but on what we might hope to feel and see. | <urn:uuid:6c7e0196-ae26-4901-9567-25bdf59cf0c9> | {
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Software Said to Match Quantum Computing Speed
While work continues on developing the fundamentals for super-fast quantum computers, a group of researchers has shown that, at least for some sorts of problems, classical computing could match the eventual speed of a working quantum computer -- with the correct software algorithms in place.
"We're putting lots of money into building quantum computers, but we shouldn't underestimate the power of algorithms," said John Watrous, who works at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo at Ontario, Canada.
As a by-product of studying the predicted performance of quantum computing, Watrous and other researchers have shown how an algorithm little used in today's software could provide a new level of problem-solving performance in traditional computers, one that could match, in theory anyway, speeds obtained by quantum computers.
Their work was published in the latest edition of the Communications of the ACM, the flagship publication of the Association for Computing Machinery.
"One striking implication of this characterization is that it implies quantum computing provides no increase in computational power whatsoever over classical computing in the context of interactive proof systems," the paper notes.
In June, an earlier version of this paper won the Best Paper Award at the esteemed Symposium on Theory of Computing for 2010. The award shows that the work has major implications for the field of computer science, especially given that STOC judges rarely award quantum computing work, noted Scott Aaronson, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the work.
Quantum computing is often touted as the next stage of computer technology, one that could offer large-scale performance improvements after Moore's Law has been exhausted.
Taking advantage of the properties of quantum mechanics, a quantum computer could conceivably offer "exponential parallelism" in the aid of solving problems, Aaronson points out in a commentary accompanying Watrous' paper.
No quantum computers have been built yet, though companies such as IBM are beginning to develop the basic building blocks that could one day make such a computer.
The work of Aaronson and his colleagues seemingly settles a debate over whether or not one group of mathematical problems, called quantum interactive proof systems, are more or less difficult to solve than another set of problems, called classical interactive proof systems.
They are not, the paper asserts. But, due to the fact that these sets of problems are theoretical, the finding itself says little about quantum computing, beyond its ability to solve such abstract problems, Watrous admitted.
In order to set up the study, however, the researchers used an algorithm to evaluate potential speed in classical computation. Called the matrix multiplicative weights update method, it was developed from research in two mathematical fields of study, combinatorial optimization and learning theory.
The algorithm provided a way to solve a problem using parallel processes, the kind easily executable with today's multi-core processors and computer clusters. It provided a way to match the efficiency of quantum computing, for this set of problems.
Surprisingly, this matrix-based method hasn't been applied to parallel computing before, Watrous said.
"It has never been considered to my knowledge in a parallel setting," he said of the method. "We had to show that this method could be parallelized, and we couldn't find any reference to anyone doing that."
Watrous, while stating that he does not work in the commercial field of computer science, speculates that more work could be done in finding and adopting other mathematical algorithms that could speed the computational performance of hardware available today.
"We could try to build quantum computers to solve problems but we could also just design new algorithms to solve problems," he said.
Aaronson said that the algorithm could be used in commercial fields of computing, particularly in the field of semi-definite programming, which looks at ways of solving optimization problems. "These are very common in industrial optimization," he said.
The researchers showed that "for a certain class of semi-definite programs you can get not the exact answer but a very good approximate answer, using a very small amount of memory," he said. | <urn:uuid:98f024e5-f5c5-46c1-9ca5-cbcb72ea0b74> | {
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Many children and adolescents remain out of school in GPE partner countries, mostly from the marginalized groups. Understanding who these children are and why they are out of school is a vital step in policy and planning. The Out-of-School Children Initiative (OOSCI) is a partnership between UNICEF, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, and the Global Partnership for Education, which aims to support governments to create solutions to bring these children back to school.
The session reflected on the lessons from OOSCI since 2010, examined some key methodological issues around counting out-of-school children, and considered how evidence can be used in the future to improve policy and planning, and remove barriers to educational opportunity.
Moderator: Stuart Cameron, Equity and Inclusion Thematic Lead, GPE Secretariat
- Mark Waltham, Chief of Education, UNICEF Nepal Country Office
- Wongani Grace Taulo, Senior Education Advisor, Gender Equity and Inclusion (GIE) UNICEF
- Sheena Bell, PhD Student, Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Toronto Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) (formerly UIS, UNICEF)
- Bilal Barakat, Senior Policy Analyst, Global Education Monitoring Report (GEMR), UNESCO | <urn:uuid:7f9540e0-121a-42fb-b8da-e8c35f3d0a2e> | {
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Crime prevention is,“the anticipation recognition and appraisal of a crime risk and the action taken to remove or reduce it.” Crime prevention encompasses many aspects of policing with the intention of reducing crime and increasing citizens’ feelings of security. This is accomplished through programs that directly deter criminal activities or through policies and interventions that reduce the potential for crime in our communities.
In the Hamilton Police Service, Crime Prevention takes on the wider goal of working in partnership with our communities to develop and implement programs that promote safety and positive relationships throughout the community. Crime Prevention is closely tied to Community Services in providing quality service and information to the public.
**Hamilton Police are available for school and community presentations on a variety of school and crime prevention topics. Please contact Lindsay Sindrey at 905-546-4900, or email email@example.com for more information.**
CRIME PREVENTION TOPICS
IN AN EMERGENCY CALL:
HAMILTON POLICE SERVICE – NON-EMERGENCY (SWITCHBOARD):
HAMILTON POLICE SERVICE – CRIME PREVENTION:
ANONYMOUS INFORMATION – CRIME STOPPERS:
McGruff the Crime Dog® is here: http://mcgruff.org. Click to watch videos, play games, get safety tips and more! | <urn:uuid:9073bd2e-0be2-4b76-b9cf-ff1ba5723ce0> | {
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Uzair Younus on automation's impact on the global economy
Fourth industrial revolution
By: Uzair Younus
Bill Gates made headlines earlier this year when he argued that robots taking away human jobs should be taxed. His argument is that governments have a responsibility to intervene in order to slow down the proliferation of automation, as it has the potential of creating mass unemployment. It is a sign of the times that the person who has made his fortune because of technological innovation is now arguing for the curtailment of coming technologies. Welcome to The Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The world has seen three such revolutions in the past: the first began in 1784 when humans harnessed mechanical power and systematically shifted away from animals. The second came about in the late 19th and early 20th century, as new forms of power generation, electricity, and division of labour brought about mass production of industrial products. Digital systems, modern communications, and the advent of the modern computers ushered in the third industrial revolution, bringing to us products such as the smartphone and social media.
Each revolution built on the progress made in the previous era and the fourth industrial revolution is no different. During the current revolution we can expect existing and future technologies to become fully embedded in societies and humans. Advances in robotics and automation, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and material sciences will fuel this era and fundamentally change the functions of the modern economy. The effects of the fourth industrial revolution are expected to be far more profound, for better and for worse, than what we have ever seen. To put things into context, the third industrial revolution led to more people having access to a mobile phone than basic sanitation, a fundamental human need.
The effects are already being witnessed in the form of weak job growth and stagnant wages in traditional sectors juxtaposed with the dazzling fortunes of technology unicorns (startups valued at over $1 billion) and their founding members. The benefits are accruing to those who are literate and capable of taking advantage of emerging technologies. These people reside in and around high-wealth, high-income innovation hubs such as Silicon Valley. On the flipside, the core of industrialised economies where millions of blue-collar jobs have historically resided has hollowed out, leading to an erosion of prosperity.
A report suggests that two-thirds of all jobs in the developing world are at risk of being lost through automation.
Automation and robots have led to much of the gloom in industrialised economies. At the beginning of this century the US employed over 15 million people in the manufacturing sector. In the 17 years since, the country has lost close to 3m manufacturing jobs while manufacturing output has increased by almost 30pc. This has transpired during a period in which the US underwent its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
New research by Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University concludes that that there are “large and robust negative effects of robots on employment and wages” and that the adoption of a robot for every 1,000 workers decreased employment by 6.2 workers and wages by 0.7 per cent in the US. These industrials robots have destroyed jobs in sectors that have traditionally created millions of blue-collar jobs such as the manufacturing of cars, electronics, metals, plastics, and chemicals.
Economies that have not yet become fully industrialised are also undergoing similar changes. China’s manufacturing base is rapidly evolving and the country has purchased more than 25pc of the 248,000 industrial robot units sold around the world in 2015. Foxconn, a company that manufactures core components for Apple in China and employs an army of workers, recently replaced over 60,000 workers with robots at a single factory.
While industrialised economies are already losing jobs, the risk to developing economies is far greater: a World Bank report suggests that two-thirds of all jobs in the developing world are at risk of being lost through automation. This is because developed economies have wealth, institutions capable of implementing forward-looking policies, and a historic track record of successfully dealing with the industrial revolutions of the past.
For emerging economies, the risks, if they materialise, can upend the economic and social gains they have made in recent years. A number of emerging economies witnessed high levels of growth by utilising their cheap labour to manufacture goods for the rest of the world. The expectation was that these economies would follow a growth trajectory similar to that followed by industrialised economies. As millions of people are put to work to manufacture exports, countries would fully realise their demographic dividend. Export-oriented industrialisation would increase incomes and wealth, thereby increasing consumption expenditure in the economy. Ultimately the country would transition to a consumer- and service-oriented economy. A country like South Korea was the blueprint for this type of growth, and China is, in many ways, undergoing a similar evolution.
Technologies of the fourth industrial revolution have the potential to make this development model defunct before most of its benefits are realised by the rest of the world. While industrial robots are already replacing blue-collar workers, automation through artificial intelligence is beginning to replace service-sector jobs as well. A report discussed at Davos suggested that over 5m mostly white-collar jobs will be destroyed by this revolution in 15 industrialised and developing economies by 2020. JPMorgan Chase & Co., for example, recently deployed a programme called COIN which automated 360,000 hours of work conducted by lawyers every year to review and interpret commercial-loan agreements.
These technological advances could also eliminate the benefits of wage-arbitrage that attracted manufacturing companies to developing economies where labor was relatively cheaper. As industrial robots become ever-cheaper and advances in material sciences enable 3-D printing of products, companies would not stand to gain as much by moving their manufacturing to developing economies. In fact, they would be attracted to setting up manufacturing in industrialised economies due to the availability of skilled labour capable of using these technologies.
If developing economies are to grow, they must implement policies that equip people with the skills required to operate and develop new technologies. Basic reading and writing skills will not be enough: the workforce of the fourth industrial revolution must know how to write and read computer code and work in conjunction with sophisticated hardware and software. The fourth industrial revolution is like a bullet train coming and it is up to policymakers to prepare and enable the masses to either get on board or risk being a casualty in its path. | <urn:uuid:dd03827f-feb8-46dd-8225-5486ac7edd68> | {
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In the past few years, there’s been a surge in new terminology and identity labels. Let’s talk about why labels matter and the LGBTQIA+ community:
- Labels Describe, Not Define
Having a word for your identity means you can describe who you are to others. If you don’t have the language to describe how you feel, you can’t articulate it to others. This can be incredibly isolating for trans people. However, labels can change over time, and that is okay. Sexual orientation and gender identity are fluid, and can change over time, and the language you use to describe your experiences is allowed to change to reflect that.
- Finding a Community
Discovering that there is a word for your experience can be an extreme relief for queer people. Not only can you finally describe what you’re feeling, but you can then find a community of people who share a similar identity and experience. Having peer support can help to reduce internalised shame and promote better wellbeing.
- But Why All These New Words?
While these identities have always existed, there haven’t always been the words for us to describe ourselves and find a community. Thanks to the internet, social media, and greater societal acceptance, the language and terminology is developing to create new communities.
- But I Don’t Want to Label Myself!
That’s okay too! If you don’t feel a deep connection to any label, you don’t have to label yourself. However, please do respect the language and terminology that others use for themselves. For others, labels can be a very important and deeply-felt part of their identity.
- What Are Some Common Labels?
- Gay: attraction to persons of the same gender.
- Bisexual: attraction to two or more genders.
- Pansexual: attraction to individuals regardless of sex or gender identity.
- Asexual: a term for someone who does not experience sexual attraction
- Aromantic: a term for someone who does not experience romantic attaction
- Queer: an umbrella term for a wide range of non-conforming gender identities and sexual orientations
- Demisexual: a term for someone who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone.
- Transgender: an umbrella term that describes a wide range of gender identities where an individual’s gender identity is incongruent with their assigned sex at birth.
- Cisgender: a description of a person whose gender identity aligns with their sex assigned at birth
- Trans man: assigned female at birth and identifies as male.
- Trans woman: assigned male at birth and identifies as female.
- Non-binary: an umbrella term for a person, regardless of assignment at birth, who identifies as a gender that is not exclusively male or female.
- Agender: does not identify with any gender
- Bigender: identifies as fluctuating between the two binary genders (male and female)
- Genderqueer: identifies as a gender not exclusively male or female (often used interchangeably with non-binary)
- Demigirl: identifies as partially, but not exclusively female
- Demiboy: identifies as partially, but not exclusively male
- Trans masculine: assigned female at birth and identifies more strongly with masculinity. This includes trans men, demiboys, and other masculine-of-centre genders.
- Trans feminine: assigned male at birth, but identifies more strongly with femininity. This includes trans women, demigirls, and other feminine-of-centre genders.
For me, finding the words to describe what I was feeling was an incredible relief. I’d spent my whole life knowing I was a boy, but not knowing that it was possible to do something about my body to make it align with my mind. In the absence of a label for my identity, I had other labels like ‘freak’ and ‘dyke’ thrust upon me, which was negative and damaging.
When I stumbled upon the word ‘transgender’, I felt like a weight was lifted. I thought I’d have to live my entire life miserable and uncomfortable in my own skin. Once I knew the word for what I was feeling, I used the internet to find role models, resources, and information. I went from being completely alone in the world to finding an entire online community in less than a day. Discovering that there’s a word for what you’re feeling can bring with it an immense feeling of relief and connection. Labels aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but they can save lives. | <urn:uuid:8ed5c40e-448c-48e5-8d3e-356792f25af9> | {
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Gro Harlem Brundtland
Prime Minister of Norway (1986-1989 and 1990-1996)
Place and Date of birth:
Oslo, April 20, 1939
Medical doctor and Master of Public Health (MPH) from Harvard University.
Spent 10 years as a physician and scientist in the Norwegian public health system. In 1965 she joined the Ministry of Health where she worked on children's health issues including breastfeeding, cancer prevention and other diseases. She worked in the children's department of the National Hospital and Oslo City Hospital and became Director of Health Services for Oslo's schoolchildren.
At the age of seven, she was enrolled as a member of the Norwegian Labour Movement in its children's section and has been a member ever since, leading the Labour Party to election victory three times.
In 1974, Dr Brundtland was offered the job of Minister of the Environment. During the 1970s she acquired international recognition in environmental circles and a political reputation at home. In 1981, at the age of 41, she was appointed Prime Minister for the first time. Gro Harlem Brundtland was the youngest person and the first woman ever to hold the office of Prime Minister in Norway. With two other periods as Prime Minister from 1986-1989 and 1990-1996, Dr Brundtland was Head of Government for more than 10 years.
Throughout her political career, Dr Brundtland developed a growing concern for issues of global significance. In 1983 the then United Nations Secretary-General invited her to establish and chair the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission). The Commission, which is best known for developing the broad political concept of sustainable development, published its report Our Common Future in April 1987. The Commission's recommendations led to the Earth Summit - the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
Dr Brundtland stepped down as Prime Minister in October 1996 and went on to become Secretary General of the World Health Organisation from July 1998 to July 2003.
In 2007 she was appointed Special Envoy for Climate Change by UN Secretary-General. | <urn:uuid:75f72282-a726-4fab-befe-a22f4a622d17> | {
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In a new regular feature, guest editors and writers will bring news from around the world on the present energy transition that is now taking place. This instalment looks at how a BESS can solve potential EV charger problems, following the recent announcements that buildings such as supermarkets and workplaces need to install electric vehicle charge points from 2022.
EV charging for facilities managers – how to avoid shocking problems
Branded the ‘decade of delivery’, the government announced new legislation which will require large organisations to install charging points from next year. It has also pledged that up to 145,000 extra charge points for electric vehicles will be installed across England each year.
FMs will need to address this issue very soon, or be in for a nasty shock when it comes to their energy supply or bill.
Matthew Lumsden, CEO of Connected Energy answers some of the questions he is asked most often about the implication of installing EV chargers.
What are the options if our site is already maxxing out its energy supply?
Where sites are grid constrained, with an electricity connection which isn’t large enough to supply more energy, a battery energy storage system (BESS) is the solution. A BESS can be a cheaper and greener solution than upgrading network supplies to overcome grid constraints.
The National Grid has described battery storage technology as “essential to speeding up the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy. Battery storage systems will play an increasingly pivotal role between green energy supplies and responding to electricity demands”.
How will the BESS provide clean energy?
A 300 kW BESS housed in one container can manage the grid supply to a cluster of EV chargers. It can store energy at times when the electricity supply is cheaper, or that has been generated from renewable sources.
Even better is when the premises has an array of solar panels and the solar energy is stored in the BESS and used to help supply the EV chargers.
The battery supply chain is already stretched, where will these extra batteries for storage systems come from?
Battery storage units can be made from used EV batteries, giving a vital second life to the batteries.
Of course, the BESS doesn’t have to be made from second life batteries and there are plenty around the world made from new batteries. But the battery supply chain is already stretched with energy storage systems competing with car manufacturers for new batteries already in short supply - second life use adds capacity as well as sustainability.
How long will the BESS last and what is the carbon saving?
A BESS installed today is expected to be operational until 2042. During that time its batteries will need to be switched out a few times, at intervals of around seven years in a second life system, or ten for brand new batteries.
Research conducted by Lancaster University proves that using a first life 360 kWh BESS can give a benefit of 329 tonnes of CO2 emissions over the life of the system, a second life BESS gives a benefit of 473t CO2e.
The second life system therefore saves an additional 144t CO2e. This is a massive contribution to CO2 savings which any organisation with carbon reduction or ESG targets will be hard pressed to achieve in any other way.
If batteries aren’t fit for vehicles, how are they fit for battery storage systems?
Batteries are improving in quality all the time, so range is increasing all the time, but the point at which they are considered no longer fit for life in a vehicle is when they reach ~75% State of Health (SoH).
Batteries do not have to be discarded when they reach 75% SoH however. They still have significant charge capacity and can be used in battery energy storage systems (BESS) until the battery reaches 50% SoH. This could mean up to ten years’ more life for that battery .
Once the batteries are in use in the BESS, they are monitored individually on a real time basis to ensure that both the cells and battery management systems are working as they should. If any anomalies are identified the battery is isolated, powered down and an engineer is alerted. Individual batteries can be isolated while the remaining system continues to operate.
If this solution is so great, why isn’t everyone doing it?
Using EV batteries to manage and store energy at EV charging points has been described as a ‘no brainer.’ Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands are already doing it and a few places in the UK have seen the light.
Dundee City Council named ‘Europe’s Most Visionary Electric Vehicle City’ was the first place in the UK to install BESS at EV charging points, with each unit being made from used Renault Kangoo batteries.
The UK government recently awarded National Highways £11 million to invest in energy storage for rapid motorway EV charging, so the solution is now being widely adopted.
Cranfield University has just commissioned the UK’s largest BESS system using entirely second life batteries. The university will install three 300kW battery storage units each housing 24 second-life Renault Kangoo car batteries across its campus in Bedfordshire.
Its system is being installed to allow the university to completely reimagine how energy is balanced on its site. It will be able to make greater use of renewable energy from solar panels, reduce the use of fossil fuels and switch to new systems such as air heat source pumps.
Making sense of the circular economy
BESS at large premises and EV charging stations will be made from both first and second life batteries in the future but with 30 million electric cars on the road by 2030, the need to maximise the use of the batteries is clear.
Connected Energy uses second life batteries in storage units, and at present relatively low volumes of batteries are moving through to recycling. With increased volume and efficiencies of logistics and process, and the introduction of tools like battery passports, expect to see many more BESS sitting alongside EV charging stations in future.
What do FMs need to know about this/what is the impact on operations?
FMs can approach their energy supplier to explore options including a review of energy consumption patterns and potential savings which could be made.
Connected Energy has drawn up a list of five signs which indicate a site would benefit from the BESS, including:
- An annual energy bill of over £100K
- Installation of new equipment that will increase energy consumption
- A need to reduce carbon footprint
- Installation of solar panels
- Switch from carbon offsetting
A site audit is also required to assess whether enough space is available to install a unit, each one of Connected Energy’s 300kW battery storage units is in a standard metal shipping container. Disruption to a site should be much less than the work required to installing a new energy transformer and cables, and less expensive too.
No wonder battery assets have been heralded as the green transition superpower.
Article written by Matthew Lumsden, CEO, Connected Energy | Published January 2022 | <urn:uuid:4bd07eea-1724-40f9-a41b-51bc787a5bbf> | {
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CBD and the boom of legal marijuana may be blowing up headlines in daily news, but the history of cannabis and its use in medicine goes way back – try more than 10,000 years back. For centuries people seeking natural medicine, royalty, and medical professionals alike have turned to cannabis for its benefits to health. Despite common misconceptions, CBD itself has only been around for less than 80 years since its discovery in 1940, and it’s not yet fully legal.
A Brief History of Cannabis Throughout the Ages
Some of the first cases of marijuana use can be traced back to what is now the regions of Romania and Taiwan, with evidence dating back 5,000-10,000 years. For hemp use, most of the initial evidence can be traced back to ancient China. From around 6000 BCE and beyond, hemp was used to construct tools, clothing, and shoes, and was also added to food.
It wasn’t until around 2700 BCE that there was a written record of hemp being used as a medicine. Such records revealed that Emperor Shen-Nung of the Sung dynasty developed his own hemp oils, to be used as topical ointments for pain relief.
In the United States, cannabis was widely used as a patent medication during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Federal restrictions of cannabis use didn’t come about until 1937, with the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act. No longer considered to have medicinal uses, criminal penalties for possession of marijuana and hemp became increasingly standard.
This was especially true following the Boggs and Narcotic Control Acts during the early to mid-1950’s. Such legal restrictions on cannabis (including the Controlled Substances Act of 1970) have contributed to limitations on cannabis research by restricting its availability for academic research. | <urn:uuid:0237a592-7744-4274-8b12-106da7cce40d> | {
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noun: ransomware; 1. a type of malicious malware/software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid.
The Tewksbury, Mass. police department was taken over by CryptoLocker. Their most recent back-up on an external hard drive was also corrupted, and their most recent non-corrupted back-up was 18 months old.
The Tewksbury P.D. enlisted the help of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Massachusetts State Police, and private info-security firms — all to no avail. After nearly five days of unsuccessful attempts to decrypt the locked systems, they decided to pay the attackers roughly $500 in Bitcoin.
Tewksbury Police Chief Timothy Sheehan told the Tewksbury Town Crier, “It was an eye-opening experience, I can tell you right now. It made you feel that you lost control of everything. Paying the Bitcoin ransom was the last resort.”
How much will ransomware cost me?
The demanded costs to unlock your files can vary greatly. The prices can range from $25 up to $1000 or more. It is also important to note that paying the ransom does not guarantee that you will ever get your files back.
How does ransomware infect my system?
Ransomware usually infects a system in one of two ways:
1. Your system may become infected by visiting malicious or unsecured websites.
2. Ransomware infections also come through email attachments or links from untrusted emails or emails that have been hacked.
What can I do to prevent ransomware?
1. Have and maintain a firewall. – Your first line of defense is a strong and well maintained firewall.
2. Use Anti-virus software. – While no Anti-virus protection is good enough to catch everything….the combination of firewall and AV protection is your best combination for protection.
3. Make sure your pop-up blocker is enabled and working. – Many ransomware infections come in the form of a pop-ups that end users click on, thereby unknowingly downloading a virus.
4. Only go to trusted websites. – Make sure everyone in the office is aware of this policy and state clearly what types of websites are not to be visited under company policy.
5. Only open links and attachments from trusted senders. – If there is any question about the authenticity of the sender, call them to verify that the email is legitimate.
6. Make sure your backups have “multiple restore points.” – One of the most important tips is to make sure your backups can be restored from multiple restore points. Some of the most common backup solutions can only restore to the last known backup. For example, if you leave work today at 5:00pm and at 7:00pm your system is infected with Ransomware and your backups run at 10:00pm….you now have a backup of your data, but unfortunately the backup is of corrupted data.
What should I do if I become infected?
1. Shut down your computer and disconnect it from the internet immediately.
2. Call the authorities.
3. Call your trusted IT professionals, Integrated Solutions. | <urn:uuid:042872bc-4850-4d68-877c-249d74b737a7> | {
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Computers. a word or other term used to electronically retrieve data, Web pages, or other information from files, databases, etc.: When you search the shopping website, ads relating to your search terms will appear along with your search results.
Who Coined The Term Fashionista?In light of a recent article about the birth of the word “fashionista” in which Stephen Fried apologized for coining the term, we’d like to delve into the -ista suffix in hopes of understanding why English speakers combine it with certain words. But first, let’s look at “fashionista.” This word originally appeared in Stephen Fried’s 1993 biography of supermodel Gia Carangi. He invented it as …
Is “Anti” Actually An Inclusive Term?It might surprise you to know that the negative anti is being hailed as a more inclusive way to talk about groups facing discrimination.
- search engine,
- search engine optimization,
- search me,
- search order,
- search party,
- search warrant,
- search, right of,
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019 | <urn:uuid:c01faea6-1b29-4ee7-a42e-2a593237f9cd> | {
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Design challenges & solutions in daylighting the Saw Mill River
The rapid growth and industrialization of Yonkers, N.Y., in the second half of the 19th century took its toll on the Saw Mill River, which served sawmills, gristmills and carpet mills as both a power source and a receptacle for waste materials. By the 1920s, the heavily polluted waterway was regarded more as a public burden than an asset. In response, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed a massive flume that carried the river beneath the city at Larkin Plaza. Eighty years later, the city decided to restore this geographical resource by “daylighting” the river—that is, returning it to its natural, open-air state, and making it the centerpiece of a public park.
Paulus Sokolowski & Sartor (PS&S) of Warren, N.J., was selected as the design engineer for the project, which was the brainchild of former New York Gov. George Pataki and has been championed by former Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone.
“When we first solicited proposals for how best to turn the Saw Mill River from a liability into an asset, PS&S was by far the most creative,” Amicone said. “They shared a very exciting vision of how the river could be leveraged for maximum impact to the community. More importantly, they thoroughly understood and addressed the many complex engineering challenges associated with the project.”
As the design engineer, PS&S was responsible for creating a park with maximum aesthetic appeal around a complex, functioning river system. This required careful consideration of hydrology; riverine wildlife migration and habitat requirements; how to preserve historic and community resources; pedestrian safety; river flow and tidal influence; flood control; storm water management; landscape design; and other essential aesthetic concepts. The final design included the maintenance of the flume to carry the larger storm flows, and incorporated appropriate hydrophytic and indigenous terrestrial vegetation with active debris netting chambers to manage and improve the river’s water quality before it entered the Hudson River. As a result of this project, Larkin Plaza, formerly utilized primarily for parking, provides significant community and ecological benefits, and is itself an objective in Yonkers’ plan for social and economic growth.
Challenges: Modeling the Flow
From a design and engineering perspective, this project created a variety of challenges related to both park aesthetics and a complex, functioning hydrological system. In order to accurately predict the river flows through the varied flow characteristics of the new river elements, including the pools, riffles and weirs, PS&S utilized flow prediction models.
Initially, PS&S examined the range of the river flows from available data sources, including Federal Emergency Management Agency studies, the Army Corps of Engineers and a U.S. Geological Survey gaging station in Yonkers. The boundary conditions for the river flow identified a low flow condition of 40 cu ft per second (cfs) and the extreme 100-year event of 1,910 cfs. While confined to the flume, the river flood threat was substantially mitigated; uncovering the watercourse removes, to some extent, the protection of the flume. The low end of the flow range posed a second challenge: To fulfill its aesthetic role as the focal point of the public space, the river needed sufficient volume to create sensory interest.
The concept for the project was to maintain the existing flume to carry the large storm events and control flow to the daylight portion of the river for the base flow and metered storm events. This was accomplished within the confluence chamber, which was analyzed utilizing HEC-RAS and Hydraflow. Various model scenarios were developed to establish the appropriate geometry of the diversion structure within the chamber. An iterative analysis was performed for varied dimensions to determine the most effective diversion characteristics to shunt all of the base flow to the daylighted section of the river, while incorporating a bypass for flows that exceed base condition and climb during storm events to more than 200 cfs. The diversion structure developed would continue to allow flows to the daylighting during all storm events but carry the bulk of the large storms within the existing flume.
Following the separation of the flow, the restricted flow to the daylighted portion of the river was analyzed to maintain the desired results of a visual and audible centerpiece throughout the varied, now restricted flow rates of 40 cfs to the high flow of 200 cfs. An additional design consideration entered the equation with a tidal influence at the confluence of the daylighted river. Within the corridor to be daylighted, the Saw Mill River makes the transition from a freshwater system to the brackish water of the Hudson River. As the tidal influence also would affect the flow regime within the daylighted waterway, hydraulic design of the daylighted portion also would be controlled by the flow characteristics of the Hudson River. It was important to maintain a strong river presence during dry weather and control the flow during wet weather events while respecting the daily tidal influences. The combination of pools, riffles and weirs was developed to incorporate a number of visual and sensory events for the public. The hydraulics of these events were analyzed using HEC-RAS software.
In order to capture the full range of potential events, the HEC-RAS analysis included a full range of storm events and flow rates while applying the varied tidal conditions at the confluence with the Hudson River. The hydraulic river model consisted of the various river daylight elements, including the initial daylight pool and weir, upper pool, riffles, lower pool, tidal weir and tidal pool. The model for the daylight reach was evaluated for base flow, and 10- and 100-year storm events. Additionally, each of these events was modeled under downstream boundary conditions for the varied tidal conditions from spring low tide, low tide, slack tide, high tide, spring high tide and the 100-year storm event elevation.
The daylight river water surface elevation under each of these flow scenarios, as well as the flow velocities produced within the daylight river, were identified and analyzed for purposes of slope armoring, maintaining visibility in low flow and development of the park elements. The extreme event producing the highest water surface elevation was not coincidental with the maximum velocities within the new river system. Examining the entire range of potentially coincidental events with tidal events allowed for the understanding of maximum water surface elevations and maximum flow velocities dictating the details of the various elements of the new daylighted river system.
The velocities developed within the model then were utilized to design the riprap slope protection along the length of the river. The water surface elevations determined through the modeling exercise established the minimum elevations of the pedestrian bridge and surrounding park walks and features. On the opposite end of the flow regime is the low flow (base flow) condition; under low-tide cycles, there was a concern the river would “disappear.” At minimum flow, the stepped design of the channel takes advantage of the sloping topography and employs a section of riffles—a short stretch with a large grade differential that increases water speed—to maintain the flow and audibility necessary to draw the attention of park visitors. The pools serve as a visual presence of the river during low-flow conditions.
Construction commenced in December 2010 and was nearly complete in September 2012. The hydraulic modeling predictions have proven to be quite accurate through several significant precipitation events, including Superstorm Sandy. Public reaction to the New River Park has been overwhelmingly positive. The daylighting has created a point of interest—a destination rather than a pass-through—that has and will continue to attract people to the neighborhood and bring business to surrounding establishments. In bringing people to the water, the city will again harness the power of the river that once ran the mills. | <urn:uuid:b482014d-6cdd-483c-94a9-cbc7ab42b5fb> | {
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|Click here to view the item|
|Title:||A first step toward school integration, 1958 June|
Pamphlet written by Anna Holden in cooperation with the Nashville Congress of Racial Equality group, 1958. The pamphlet tells how a CORE group helped parents and children, despite the violence of segregationist mobs, to desegregate public schools in Nashville, Tennessee in the fall of 1957. This pamphlet also addresses southern communities that did not accept the 1954 Brown v. Board decision along with a chronology of all major events in the Nashville school desegregation struggle through April 1958. Forms part of the Civil Rights Ephemera Collection.
|Subjects:||McKinley, Linda Gail | McKinley, Grace | Fehr Elementary School (Nashville, Tenn.) | Congress of Racial Equality | School integration--United States | African Americans--Civil rights--Tennessee--Nashville | Segregation in education--Law and legislation--United States--History | Discrimination in education--Law and legislation--United States--History | Social change--Tennessee--Nashville | School integration--Tennessee--Nashville | Social justice--Tennessee--Nashville | Civil rights movements--Tennessee--Nashville | Civil rights workers--Tennessee--Nashville | Nashville (Tenn.)--History--Sources | Nashville (Tenn.)--Social conditions | Nashville (Tenn.)--Race relations | Nashville (Tenn.) | Davidson County (Tenn.)|
|Collection:||Nashville Public Library Digital Collections Portal: Civil Rights|
|Institution:||Nashville Public Library|
|Contributors:||Public Library of Nashville and Davidson County. Special Collections Division | Civil Rights Online Collection (Public Library of Nashville and Davidson County. Special Collections Division) | Congress of Racial Equality|
|Online Publisher:||Nashville, Tenn. : Special Collections Division of the Nashville Public Library | 2006|
1 pamphlet : col. ; 6 x 8.5 in.
Civil Rights Ephemera Collection, Special Collections Division, Nashville Public Library.
|Rights and Usage:|
U.S. and international copyright laws protect this digital content, which is provided for educational purposes only and may not be downloaded, reproduced, or distributed for any other purpose without written permission. Please contact the Special Collections Division of the Nashville Public Library, 615 Church Street, Nashville, Tennessee, 37219. Telephone (615) 862-5782.
Forms part of the online collection: Civil Rights Online Collection.
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