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Fighting the Hidden Epidemic Facing Americans Prevention & Treatment COPD is the third leading cause of death in the United States, but experts believe half of its sufferers don’t even know they have the disease. The third leading cause of death in the United States is a disease that many of us have never even heard of, and its symptoms are often mistaken for a normal part of the aging process. While 16 million Americans have been diagnosed, healthcare experts believe that half of the people across the country who currently suffer from this disease are undiagnosed and don’t know they have it. A worsening problem It is the third leading cause of death in the United States, and is the only disease in the top five leading causes of death with increasing mortality rates. Approximately one in five Americans over the age of 45 are suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD is an umbrella term used to describe progressive lung diseases, encompassing emphysema, chronic bronchitis, refractory asthma, and severe bronchiectasis. The disease is characterized by increasing breathlessness, chronic coughing, chest tightness, and wheezing. Many people mistake their symptoms as a normal part of aging While smoking and tobacco use are prime factors, other contributing risks include fumes, chemicals and dust found in work environments, and genetics can play a role, even if a person has never smoked or been exposed to harmful lung irritants. Early detection is crucial in treating COPD before major loss of lung function occurs. Getting a diagnosis Over the past year, nearly 60,000 people with COPD were hospitalized or had an emergency room visit, and most of the ER visits could have been prevented with early diagnoses, proper treatment and disease management plans. That’s why it is so important that more people know about this disease. For that reason, November is National COPD Awareness Month. The COPD Foundation, a patient-led non-profit organization, was established to speed innovations and to improve the lives of patients with COPD and related disorders through research and education. If you or anyone you know suffers from any symptoms of COPD, it is important to talk to a doctor immediately for testing. To identify your risk, take the COPD Foundation’s Five-question Risk Screener

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Gabriel Embeha 2015 BEYOND THE LIVING AND THE DEAD (Notes on the Lived Mountains of Experience, Memory and Forgetting) Maurice Leenhardt and Causality In Maurice Leenhardt’s early twentieth century anthropological work on New Caledonia called Do Kamo we find the striking and estranging notion that there was no opposition, no contradiction between the dead and the living, nor any notion of the animate or the inanimate. Furthermore, says Leenhardt, since there was no notion of animate or inanimate in New Caledonia “there cannot be a causal schema in the inanimate world.” To illustrate this non-existence of both animate and inanimate causality Leenhardt writes that in New Caledonia: “A rock is thrown, but it is not the inanimate object which produces the bruise.” In addition to this fact that when a rock is thrown it was not the inanimate object which caused the bruise, it is equally true that the cause may not have been the person who threw it (i.e. his or her intentions), or his or her throw (measured in terms of force and so on.) In the case of injury or death in war, for example, the enemy was not the cause nor was the stone the cause but very often something much greater. This “something much greater” was neither expressed in terms of inanimate things nor in terms of living persons and their intentions. Rather, it was expressed in terms of logic, physics and ethics all running together as one to seek out and deal with the cause of the bruise as neither animate nor inanimate. What was being expressed in New Caledonia was the move from one state to another through one kind of body causing change in another. What we see when a rock is thrown and strikes a person is a physical tension of material contrasts changing, one affecting the other “in kind,” the result being an imitation of one thing caused by another. When Leenhardt says that in New Caledonia there was no opposition between the living and the dead, or the animate and the inanimate, he means that when those whom Europeans call “the living” caused other people or things to mime them they were identical with the dead, or when what Europeans

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Gabriel Embeha 2015 BEYOND THE LIVING AND THE [...] called “the dead” caused other people or things to mime them they were identical with the living. Equally, when what Europeans called an “inanimate” rock struck what they called an “animate” arm and that arm ceased to function as a healthy moving part, that arm would to a greater degree imitate the rock and the rock to a greater degree imitate the arm. We could say, if you will and not so tongue in cheek, that the arm of the victim had become “stoned” and the rock had become “armed.” Most important in determining of cause and effect in New Caledonia, however, was to understand that there were no absolute opposites between things but only matters of degree or ratio of contrast. Very seldom was such imitation total and permanent. Life in New Caledonia was a constantly shifting change in ratio and degree of imitation, between degrees of continuity and discontinuity, animate and inanimate, and these changes were wholly material and physical. Above all else, the changes brought about when a rock was thrown and struck an arm were material and physical changes and not “phenomena” thereof. The bruise was not primarily a sign, symbol, or phenomena but rather an imitative cause in itself leading to other instances of imitation, to other forms of physical change, which Europeans may (and often do) describe and place in some order which is referred to as social, mental, linguistic, symbolic or semiotic. In New Caledonian cosmology the physical and material were essentially imitative, standing as an imitative realm of things in themselves from which even language, symbolism, signification or thinking could not escape. The magical and the mythological, like the linguistic, were both second order. They were phenomena. All three were neither living individual nor living social causes in themselves but rather descriptions/determinations relations thereof. Phenomenology and Causality In contemporary social theory it is phenomenology that most appreciates and works with this insight into these objects of Leenhardt’s research. As anthropologist Thomas Csordas tells us in his contrast between phenomenological and semiotic thinking: “One need conclude neither that language is ‘about’ nothing other than itself, nor that language wholly constitutes

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Gabriel Embeha 2015 BEYOND THE LIVING AND THE [...] experience, nor that language refers to experience that can be known in no other way.” Language, writes Csordas, is itself a modality of “being-in-the-world.” In phenomenological thought, as in Leenhardt’s ethnographic description, this modality of being-in-the-world that is language is neither the source of human experience nor does it represent human experience in total. In phenomenology, however, while language is animate, causality is assigned to the realm of the inanimate and non-living. In Leenhardt’s ethnography language is neither animate nor inanimate and causality could never be inanimate as there is no notion of inanimate causality. It is in fact precisely on the issue of causality and the subordinate position it has been given in modern social thought by the followers of Edmund Husserl including phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty and Alfred Schutz, that one sees a stark contrast between the New Caledonian world, as Leenhardt describes it, and much contemporary social theory concerning the body. The material, physical body among the New Caledonians was not the material, physical body as it is variously understood in studies of magic and science. Magic and science are depicted and understood as symbolic or semiotic enterprises in which the actual causes of physical and material changes are less important than their meaning, their intention and the control thereof. Rather, in New Caledonia the material, physical body was regarded philosophically in a materialist fashion and scientifically through a science of physics, that is, regarded through New Caledonian materialist philosophy and physics. This materialist philosophy and physics, as Leenhardt depicts it, stands in particular contrast to phenomenology. In his book Do Kamo Leenhardt makes it quite clear that phenomenology is very helpful in moving towards, but essentially unable to grasp, this New Caledonian way of thought. Considering both systems in terms of practice and “how they work,” a contrast between New Caledonian and European materialist philosophy and physics is today quite premature. The relatively new area of science and technology studies has only in relatively recent years begun to explore the dominant European and sub-altern sides of this question

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Gabriel Embeha 2015 BEYOND THE LIVING AND THE [...] in detail, and it has scarcely considered the Melanesian or other sides which continue to lie beyond the subaltern. In terms of phenomenology and “being-in-the-world,” however, one can at least make the simple contrast between New Caledonian and European materialist philosophies that I am making here. While phenomenology has an inanimate notion of causality and denies causality to animate things, New Caledonian philosophy has neither an inanimate nor animate notion of causality. Phenomenological Analysis and “Extra-Sub-Altern” Science Perhaps one of the most important questions which Leenhardt’s ethnography brings up is how the scientist and materialist philosopher subjectively engages in the world. Another prominent Melanesianist, Roger Keesing, strongly insists that the Kwaio he knew were forever practical to the point of almost never appearing to have a philosophy or interest in cosmological description. In his description of this aspect of Kwaio life Keesing suggests, as Leenhardt seems to as well in the case of the New Caledonians, that in contrast to how science and materialist cosmology are most often viewed from a European perspective, in Melanesia a certain philosophy and physics are practiced in a subjective or personal fashion within the context of a human destiny and self-knowledge. But again, there is a difference between how something is viewed, talked-about, and how it is. If one is going to describe European physics or materialist philosophy as substantially different from that of Melanesia, one should have certain ethnographically empirical grounds upon which to base such claim. In putting causality in the realm of the inanimate, phenomenology has unfortunately and most often relied upon unfounded assumptions regarding European scientific practice. The result of the phenomenological view of causality and its positioning in regards to the animate and inanimate within humanity is that its brings us very close to a point from which we can much better understand such extra-sub-altern sciences and philosophies but then, at this very point, fails to allow or in any way encourage European understanding to follow through with an immanent critique of its own assumptions regarding the concepts and practices of life, death, the in

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Gabriel Embeha 2015 BEYOND THE LIVING AND THE [...] animate, animate, causality. What prevents phenomenological thought from following through with this extra-sub-altern critique is the very thing that gives it strength in its analyses of sub-altern and greater or lesser recognized European sciences and materialist philosophies. The problem here is not by any means the framework of, or the valuable critical enterprises working through the phenomenological view. Rather, the problem is a concept and practice at the heart of this view that can be solved toward the betterment of phenomenological theory. This problematic concept or practical way of regard is, ironically, best referred to as “the phenomenon.” Phenomenology Without the Phenomenon Addressing this problem brought to us by extra-sub-altern sciences and materialist philosophies, I propose that the notion of “the phenomenon” be replaced with the concept and practice of “the ancestral” viewed from the perspective of imitation. This is a shift from the specific ways the dead, living, animate and inanimate have been regarded in European thought to a more general form of regard. The basic reason for this move came from my earlier work on traditional healing and masquerade in West Africa, later work on causality in the context of Alzheimer’s disease, my interest in Melanesian ethnography, and my work with natural scientists in Europe. Through the notion of the ancestral imitatively construed the great strengths of phenomenological theory in addressing the concepts and practices of sciences in dominant European and sub-altern contexts can be preserved while at the same time allowing ethnographies about and actions of extra-sub-alterns to aid in better understanding the differences and similarities between dominant and sub-altern science and philosophies. The phenomenological approach prides itself, and rightly so, in its fundamentally human, sympathetic nature in approaching the world and its problems, including those brought by the misuse of materialist philosophy and the sciences. In phenomenology “the subject” is forever bound with his or her conceptualization of and practice within life. Meaning, in this regard, becomes the way in which the subject relates to cultural and the social powers. Through this study of meaning combined with a consciousness of his or her own engagement with it, the social researcher can better sympathize with the intricacies of

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Gabriel Embeha 2015 BEYOND THE LIVING AND THE [...] envious or erotic magic and myth within the subject and the social at the same time. By excluding causality, though, this sympathetic approach often loses sight of its own place within the world it describes. Put most basically, the questions “why me?” “why then and not another time?” “why this place and not that?” or “what am I to you?” and the wonder of a whole universe of possible causal combinations are answered in terms of experience, memory, and forgetting. Such questions, calling for a cause to be named, remain un-wondered, unexplained and excessively mourned. It is here that the social scientist and materialist philosopher begins to bury life experiences under a lived mountain of experience, memory and forgetting. In pointing to the inadequacy of language to capture and convey this mountain of experience, memory and forgetting, he or she often denies the personal nature of his or her practice of science, materialism and writing. In stressing the act and the will and in denying the cause and causality; in ultra-humanizing the human in the name of life, phenomena and their inevitable processing through abstract social and cultural categories, phenomenology denies the wonders of destiny and its transcendence of life and death. It also denies the ability of the individual as scientist or materialist philosopher to somehow divine and extract a nugget of gold from the mountain of life which it believes to be too immense or buried in eons of natural history. Perhaps the greatest problem in denying causality is the weight it puts on the everyday. In phenomenology most all of life is the everyday, consisting of phenomena worked through categories that create experiences that grow with the mountain experience, memory and forgetting. But when phenomena are replaced with the ancestral imitatively construed, the everyday disappears and the mountains of experience, memory and forgetting appear to possibly be clouds on some unknown horizon. Without categories and their use in processing phenomena to form experiences each experience is first a new experience that through the ancestral becomes recognized as old. Moving through the world we move through the ancestral all continually anew with much becoming recognized as old, i.e. experienced as the ancestral, as we go along. As we go along we imitate

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Can a bad choice in diet for your dog really have an impact? Yes, it absolutely can. On the rare occasion a dog may live a reasonably long life seemingly unaffected by a poor quality kibble diet, but this is not the common result. Feeding your dog a poor quality kibble is the equivalent of you eating nothing but fast food; You are going to eventually develop illness and disease and have a low quality of life due to the poor state of your health as a direct result of your diet. Perhaps if dogs lived 50-100 years we would see more of the same decline in them due to poor diet as we see in ourselves. Sure, you may be fine at first while eating your diet of cheeseburgers, fries and milkshakes - but eventually, you'll pay the price. Our dogs pay the price, too. A real food diet is exactly how it sounds, it is a diet that consists of only real food - raw, cooked or a combination of both - and contains no junk ingredients, harmful additives or preservatives. A real food diet is full of living nutrition, living enzymes and species appropriate foods that promote health, disease-resistance and longevity. The two examples of a real food diet are a raw food diet and a homemade dog food diet. While both diets require that you take your dog's nutrition into your own hands and lose the convenience of commercial kibble, they will inevitably change your dog's life for the better. WHY SHOULD I SWITCH MY DOG TO A REAL FOOD DIET? Real food promotes health in our dogs the same way a healthy diet affects us. If we eat lean protein, vegetables, fruits, healthy grains and stay away from junk and fast food we will find ourselves feeling better, looking better, getting sick less often and living longer. The same goes for our dogs! A diet high in protein, low in carbohydrates and containing no grains is how dogs can get strong, live longer and feel better. Dogs are carnivores. While they can and will eat grains and vegetables, they are biologically designed to eat the same diet as their ancestor, the wolf. Dogs are scientifically classified as carnivores, and there is a reason for that. Experts in biology, zoology and taxonomy have their cop

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Can a bad choice in diet for your dog really have an impact? Yes, it absolutely can. [...] ious amounts of research and evidence supporting the dogs classification as a carnivore. You can learn more about what makes the dog a carnivore by reading my article on the topic, click here. SHOULD I FEED A RAW FOOD DIET OR A HOMEMADE DOG FOOD DIET? Whether you choose to feed a raw food diet or a homemade dog food diet is entirely up to you. Whatever diet you are most comfortable with, and can provide easily and efficiently, is the one you should go with. A raw food diet consists of feeding your dog raw meat, raw bones and raw organs. This is the most species appropriate option for your dog. Carnivores and omnivores have been eating this type of diet for millions of years, and dogs really thrive on a raw diet. You can learn more about raw feeding and the amazing benefits by my reading my article: The Incredible Raw Food Diet for Dogs. A homemade dog food diet is not as species appropriate as a raw food diet due to the cooking of most ingredients and the high inclusion of carbohydrates, but it is absolutely superior to a commercial kibble diet. Cooking destroys nutrients and kills enzymes, which is why a balanced homemade dog food diet must contain a whole food multivitamin and use as many raw ingredients as possible. A homemade diet contains real food, high moisture content and absolutely no junk fillers. Real food promotes real health. Ideally, the most species appropriate homemade dog food contains no grains, is high in protein and has a medium to high carbohydrate content. You can learn more about the benefits of a homemade dog food diet here: The Benefits of a Homemade Dog Food Diet for Dogs. WHAT ABOUT HIGH QUALITY WHOLE FOOD KIBBLES? There are some excellent, nutritious, high quality kibble formulas on the market, that absolutely are the next best option if you choose not to feed homemade food or raw food. While the level of nutrition and the benefits of a real food diet are not present in kibble; A grain-free, junk-free, whole food kibble can be an excellent diet option. I

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Customs officials intercepted containers with concealed cargo worth Sh75 million last December. The officers discovered some 24, 40-foot, containers of concealed new garments and milk powder at the Port of Mombasa in the largest single seizure by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA). Out of the 24 containers, 21 had new garments and shoes disguised as cold rooms being imported by horticultural farms. Three containers had a consignment of milk powder disguised as flasks and sewing machines. The detection was due to the KRA’s increased collaboration with other state agencies in combating smuggling syndicates. The KRA used special non-intrusive scanners to detect the real contents in the consignments. Major ports of entry in Kenya now have the non-intrusive scanners that can detect and identify pre-cursor chemicals, strategic trade commodities as well as a special category goods. Smart gadgets have made it easier for Customs officials to detect imported illegal goods. However, it is important to note that maintaining the delicate balance between facilitating legitimate trade flows while deterring illicit business is a complex operational task for any Customs and border control agency. The trafficking of endangered species and animal parts such as ivory, tiger skins, and rhino horns, is estimated to be a $19 billion a year trade. Due to the secretive nature and lack of verifiable data on illicit trade, it is difficult to calculate with absolute precision the market size. However, most Customs, border and law enforcement officials, policymakers, and academicians agree that the illicit trade results in major financial and social costs to the global society. Modern-day smugglers use novel, flexible, stealthy logistical methods, assets, and systems to smuggle illegal goods across national borders to avoid detection and apprehension. The global nature of the economy (including illicit trade) has forced Customs and law enforcement agencies to share intelligence on detection and prevention. Illicit trade prevents fair and open markets from reaching their full economic potential and threaten state sovereignty. This trade also causes some enormous costs, such as the corruption and destabilisation of society, the harmful effects of drugs, lost productivity and other social costs, including those associated

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A slipped disc is a common and general term used to describe displacement of an intervertebral disc. Intervertebral disks are found in between the vertebrae of the spinal column. They act as shock absorbers and allow for some degree of flexibility. A slipped disc is a somewhat nonspecific term, however the word “slipped” implies acute or sudden onset of symptoms and usually results from a disc herniation which occurs when the central core of the disc ruptures. The ruptured jelly-like inner core of the disc can put pressure on neighboring nerve roots and cause pain, numbness, tingling, or weakness in the affected arm or leg. A slipped or herniated disc often occurs as a result of degenerative disc disease when the integrity of the disc weakens and results in the rupturing of the disc wall. Symptoms of Slipped Disc Symptoms of a slipped disc vary based on the location of the disc in the spine and the extent of the rupturing. If the condition does not put pressure on a nerve, it may be unnoticeable. If the disc is in the neck or cervical spine, pain or numbness in the shoulders, arms or hands may result. A slipped disc in the lower back or lumbar spine may cause pain or numbness in the buttocks, legs or feet. In more severe cases, a slipped disc can result in weakness in the affected arm or leg. Sustained weakness, numbness, or intractable pain should alert the patient to seek immediate neurosurgical evaluation. Treatment for Slipped Disc The main causes of slipped disc are degenerative changes from the natural aging process or from injury such as improper lifting of heavy objects. Smoking and obesity also increases the risk of developing a slipped disc. Treatments for slipped disc include medication to relieve pain, exercises and physical therapy to relieve pressure on the spinal nerves. In cases when conservative nonsurgical methods fail to relieve symptoms, surgical intervention may be required. Surgery is targeted at relieving the pressure from the nerve that is caused by the slipped disc. Surgery often involves minimally invasive microdiscectomy. The objective of this procedure is to remove the part of the disc that places pressure upon the affected nerve. The majority of the disc however is left behind. At Princeton Ne

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Use our online alert to urge Congress to invest in low-income tax credits See our Low-Income Tax Credits Recent Developments Page Learn more with our Economic Opportunity Campaign PowerPoint Presentation Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) In 1996, after pledging to “end welfare as we know it,” then-President Clinton and Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, known as the welfare reform law. The law replaced the entitlement to cash assistance, known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant program. TANF was created to reduce welfare dependency in two ways: first, by requiring recipients to work in order to receive cash assistance, and second, by limiting how long a family can receive welfare. Families with dependent children or pregnant women with an income below a percent of the federal poverty line (states choose the eligibility level) receive monthly cash assistance. Other changes to the program made in 1996 included: States may use TANF funds for a variety of services in addition to providing cash assistance. In fact, less than 30 percent of federal and state TANF funds are spent on cash assistance, with the remainder being used for services such as child care, employment programs, education, early childhood development, and programs addressing child abuse and neglect. TANF Falls Short in Meeting Need In 1996, 68 families received TANF for every 100 families living in poverty; by 2012, TANF only assisted 25 out of 100 poor families. Nationwide, TANF caseloads have fallen by 50 percent between 1997 and 2011, with individual state caseload declines ranging from under 25 percent to over 80 percent. This, however, is not because people are no longer living in poverty. Studies of families that leave TANF suggest that more than 50 percent have incomes below the federal poverty line. Although many welfare recipients have found work, often, they are low-wage jobs that provide no benefits. With the economic recession and rise in unemployment, many parents who moved from welfare

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While chi is more than biomagnetism, it can be measured by the degree of voltage running through your meridians. This electro-motive force leads your chi to your muscles, organs, tendons, and skin. As your chi radiates outward from the skin, it is especially noticeable coming from your palms. "This is why using 12,500 Gauss Palm and Headband Magnets placed on Lao gong cavities while doing silent meditation and during Qi Gong practice is so Imagine a pile of iron filings poured randomly on a piece of cardboard. Now, imagine taking a magnet and moving it in a straight line under the cardboard. You'll find the iron filings aligning themselves towards the direction of force. When used in Qi Gong, or while meditating, your Qi (chi) will soar in to the stratosphere. Now, how effective would they be in relieving pain and in promoting rapid healing? In an article in Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX they had their researchers report on the healing power of magnets. The result was that magnets caused changes in pain-receptor cells, causing the brain to release the chemical called enkephalin. In one double-blind study, people suffering from post-polio syndrome, where physical rehabilitation is required, discovered there was a 76 percent "And that's with just a small If small magnets can cause the brain to release the body's natural pain killer, enkephalin, what would these very powerful magnets (in fact, the most powerful magnets that can be made) do? Rare Earth 12,500 Gauss Magnets prove more powerful than herbs, massage and acupressure? In an issue of Science News, the University of Virginia, working under a grant from the National Institutes of Health, reported that laboratory animals can have dilated or constricted blood vessels affected by using magnets to alter blood flow in damaged tissue. The magnets that were used were only 700 gauss and for only 15 minutes Try them yourself and please let us know about

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Clare was born in Assisi around 1193. Assisi was a small city in the province of Umbria in Italy. Her family were very wealthy and she was educated in the domestic arts of spinning and needle work, reading and writing. One day before Clare was born, her mother was standing before the cross praying that the Lord would help her in child-birth. At that moment she heard a voice saying to her that she would give birth to a great light which would wonderfully illumine the world and so the baby was christened “Clare” which means clear shining light. As a young girl Clare listened to Francis of Assisi talking about God, and she was so captived by his words, that she felt a longing to know more about this God of love and mercy, which Francis spoke of with such inspiring enthusiasm. She heard him preach detachment from things and money, to live in faith, that God will provide as God cares for the birds of the air (Mtt. 6). In 1212 Clare left her family and joined Francis inspired by his faith. Clare lived and believed in Divine Providence. She depended on God to supply what she and the community needed. Her small group of followers became known as Poor Clares. Clare became totally enamoured with God. She renounced worldly goods, which gave her complete freedom of spirit, and she was enriched with the gift of God’s grace which she shared with all throughout her life of prayer. Clare was the first woman to write her own rule and she was an extra-ordinary woman of her times. Clare accepted all people and things as a gift from God. She lived amongst her community as an equal doing daily works with everyone else. She was attentive to the well-being of every sister. In the document on her canonization in 1255 a number of miracles are retold. Francis also respected Clare’s gifts of listening and insight. He and his brothers went to Clare whenever they had to make an important decision. Pope Gregory IX, a regular visitor, often consulted her opinion. Soon Clare and her communities became known for their care and prayers for people in need. Clare was canonized in 1255 just two years after her death. 800 years later Clare’s light still sh

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Web Server @ Home is where all this discussion started. This is follow up to that discussion. Please read it if you want to know motivation behind this discussion. Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. According to Cygwin Official Site (http://www.cygwin.com), GNU + Cygnus + Windows = cygwin. Following information is taken from cygwin official site, as it is, Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts: - DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality. - A collection of tools, which provide Linux look and feel. What Isn't Cygwin? - Cygwin is not a way to run native linux apps on Windows. You have to rebuild your application from source if you want it to run on Windows. - Cygwin is not a way to magically make native Windows apps aware of UNIX ® functionality, like signals, ptys, etc. Again, you need to build your apps from source if you want to take advantage of Cygwin functionality. Cygwin Installation is presented here with emphasis on web server requirements. Please note that do not install Apache using cygwin setup, because we want to build Apache for Windows Native Machine because of performance reasons. Also I am going to install SSH server to facilitate remote server management. FTP server is not included here since there is no need of FTP (Local Machine) but can be installed by following similar steps, presented here. cygwin Installation on Windows XP - Go to http://www.cygwin.com and download setup.exe - Locate following icon on cygwin.com and click on it to download. - Choose Installation Type - Select Install from Internet. - Choose Installation Directory – As per your requirement - Select Install For All Users and select Unix as Default Text File Type. - Select Local Package Directory. The folder you specify here is the location where the downloaded installation files will be saved. Enter the path of your choice highly recommended. - Select Connection Type – Same setting as your browser. If your antivirus/firewall program will pop up after you click Next, to check if you want to allow cygwin_setup.exe to access

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Web Server @ Home is where all this discussion started. This is follow up to that discussion. Please [...] the Internet. Yes, that's exactly what we want! - Choose Download Site/Mirror, nearest to your location - Select Packages – Click to select full view. You only need to select following additions to the by-default selected packages - cygrunsrv (category Admin) - ImageMagick, GD – required by Gallery 2 - apr, aprutil, rebase, minires, bison, cvs, flex, gcc, grep,libtool1.5, libxml, autoconf, autossh, binutils, libdb4.2-devel - libxml2, libxml2-devel - make, openssh, perl, readline, rsync, tar, gzip, vim, whois, patch - Select Apache2 Src – First Select Apache2, then select src and unselect binary. (You'll see few boxes along with version number. Select appropriate box) - Click Next - Now you can take a break and drink some coffee while the files are downloaded and installed. - Install icons as per your wish - Now back to work… Check if installation is okay – perform quick sanity check - Open Bash Shell by going to - Start->All Programs->cygwin - Click on Desktop Icon - By clicking on Icon in install directory - A Blank window with prompt will pop up - Run following & check these exists - `which ls` , `which vi`, `cygrunserver`, `which gunzip`, `which tar` - Any package missing can be installed any time, even later. But it may cause more pain in detecting if something is broken - Now lets setup SSH server - When the script asks you about "privilege separation", answer yes - When the script asks about "create local user sshd", answer yes - When the script asks you about "install sshd as a service", answer yes - When the script asks you for "CYGWIN=" your answer is ntsec - Start sshd service by 1. net start sshd 2. cygrunsrv –start sshd or from Windows XP service Panel - Test your SSH

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The roots of the current American predicament go back to the 1970s, when wages of workers stopped keeping pace with their productivity. The two curves diverged: Productivity continued to rise, as wages stagnated. The “great divergence” between the fortunes of the top 1 percent and the other 99 percent is much discussed, yet its implications for long-term political disorder are underappreciated. Battles such as the recent government shutdown are only one manifestation of what is likely to be a decade-long period. How does growing economic inequality lead to political instability? Partly this correlation reflects a direct, causal connection. High inequality is corrosive of social cooperation and willingness to compromise, and waning cooperation means more discord and political infighting. Perhaps more important, economic inequality is also a symptom of deeper social changes, which have gone largely unnoticed. Turchin puts for the view that times of intense social conflict (e.g., the Civil War) come about as the result of an “overproduction” of elites, who turn on each other. We’re there now, he says. More: We should expect many years of political turmoil, peaking in the 2020s. And because complex societies are much more fragile than we assume, there is a chance of a catastrophic failure of some kind, with a default on U.S. government bonds being among the less frightening possibilities. Of course, catastrophe isn’t preordained. History shows a real indeterminacy about the routes societies follow out of instability waves. Some end with social revolutions, in which the rich and powerful are overthrown. This is what happened to the Southern elites — decimated in the Civil War, beggared when their main assets, slaves, were freed, and excluded from national power in Washington. In other cases, recurrent civil wars result in a permanent fragmentation of the state and society. In some cases, however, societies come through relatively unscathed, by adopting a series of judicious reforms, initiated by elites who understand that we are all in this boat together. An interesting theory. I appreciate the way of analyzing the role elites and elite competition plays in the unraveling. But what I don’t see in Turchin’s

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Last week, at Pembroke College's opening convocation, President Henry M. Wriston of Brown University publicly came to the horrendous conclusion that "formal peace making is already a failure" and termed the United Nations "a squalling brat of an infant with only a fifty-fifty chance of survival." Passing on to the war-spawned and Willkie-coined phrase, "One World," President Wriston declared that "we do not have 'one world' even in the physical sense any more," alluding to the shooting down of American fliers over Yugoslavia. Wriston concluded with the remark that "if peace is to come, it must be peace within your own minds and hearts." Few pundits or citizens will disagree with Wriston's statement that, fundamentally, peace to be permanent must arise from within each individual citizen of every nation of the earth; permanent peace cannot be imposed from above, but many will take issue with Wriston's prematurely pessimistic conclusion that the United Nations has failed in its efforts to achieve lasting peace. After World War I, isolationists and liberals disillusioned with Versailles, alike, joined in temporary alliance to sell this country the defeatist bill of goods that the war had been fought in vain and that this country's "national sovereignty" was contingent on its avoidance of foreign infection from international organizations. And so the upper chamber of this nation's legislature, incidentally breaking Mr. Wilson's heart, decided not to involve the United States in the League of Nations lest this country be drawn into another World War. Russia was not permitted to become a member state of the League. And the League of Nations, lacking the power and support of the two mightiest nations of the earth, slipped steadily down the road to World War II. The United Nations differs fundamentally from the old League in that those two nations are the leading participants in the present world organization. President Wriston sees only "a squalling brat of an infant" in the United Nations, but that organization has substituted organized disagreement for the international chaos that accompanied the League. Where, in the 1920's, most international disputes sidestepped an ineffective League and were temporarily resolved through clandestine power politics, today's international organization has permitted a thorough air

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One day several years ago, when London's air was so laden that shipping dared not leave harbor, the Times ran the headline, "Continent Cut Off by Fog." But only the fog was unusual; Great Britain has traditionally been cut off from Europe. Since the days of henry VII and Cardinal Wolsey, England has tried to stand aloof from entangling alliances on the Continent and depend on sea power for strength. At the same time, Britain has feared the emergence of a great power in Europe. In line with these dual aims, the English have traditionally regarded themselves as the holders of the balance of power, rather than active participants in European politics. But after the crippling blows of the war, Britain no longer had the strength to act as a balancer, and in the present state of world politics, with two super states facing each other across a shrinking globe, there is little hope for those who would restore the old system. Many in England have recognized this change, yet until now it has not been reflected in British foreign policy. For although the English have vocally backed recent moves towards a federal Europe, they have paradoxically refused to enter or even actively support such European efforts as the Schuman Plan or EDC. And the absence of full British participation has been a major factor in France's failure to ratify the treaty creating the defense community. But the events of the last two days show that England has at last given up the policy of insular security. In a treaty with the defense community, the British government has pledged an armored division to serve in the proposed European army. Air force units will also be given. Although the treaty does not make the United Kingdom a member of EDC, it provides for co-operation that is so close and complete that there is little difference. Some French statesmen have indicated that they feel Britain has not promised enough. This view is hardly realistic, however. By making the present commitment, Britain has made a great concession of sovereignty. Certainly, in the event of war, more aid would immediately come. As opposed to France and other continental states, Britain is still a world power with world-wide obligations and responsibilities. The promise of an even closer and stronger union with EDC at this time would have left other area exposed. Now that Britain has given such concrete evidence of support, the French National Assembly must

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In this Issue: bits of serendipity to inspire and motivate fuel for your own continuous learning tips and tricks you can try today |Trash or Treasure||Memory Beads||An Interview with Michele Deck||Quipus from the Incans| It's not always easy to pause in our busy lives, pull out what's important, and remember what's essential. Fortunately, there are some great suggestions in this issue. But first let's identify the problem with this illustration in just 99 words. Trash or Treasure "Used bicycle parts - Some junk" That's the label on a typical cardboard box in Ralph's garage. This barn beside his home where he has lived (and accumulated) for over 50 years used to have space for three cars. Today there is barely room for one. The building is stuffed with treasures only Ralph would value. Bent yard tools, charred clothes from a house fire, a child's kindergarten craft projects, boxed and labeled fill the space from floor to ceiling. You can find anything. Unfortunately, it's not enough to be organized if you're still surrounded by junk. What if you needed to recall more than half a dozen steps in a process for a very long time - years, perhaps - and you never knew when you'd need to use that particular process? Would you trust your memory? Maybe you'd make a list. But where would you save the list so that you could pull it out at a moment's notice? It might be difficult to even remember having made the list in the first place! Perhaps you could tie your memory around your finger like a string and always have it "at hand!" That's the idea behind this month's Discovery. I watched Michele Deck, a Registered Nurse and educator from Baton Rouge, Lousiana, demonstrate this concept at her workshop at the Training 2009 Conference in Atlanta. To teach about the many things to remember during a disaster or emergency evacuation, she invited people to make a string of beads to represent the various details. If you look at my own string of beads (which I still have after three years!), the bead with the letter "H" is a reminder not to rely on the phone to stay in touch; use text mess

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In this Issue: bits of serendipity to inspire and motivate fuel for [...] aging instead. The next bead, a butterfly, is to help remember the needs for any pets. The star symbolizes the ultimate safe destination where you and your family have agreed to meet if separated. Red, like the Red Cross, is for medical safety: carry a supply of essential medications. Blue stands for water, the three gallons per person you'll need in transition. Green is for cash. Pack greenbacks because plastic won't work in a power outage. Black represents legal papers that you'll need to establish residency or citizenship. And, finally, the heart is a reminder of the friends and family members who are elderly or have a disability. Have you made special arrangements for their transport and care? Of course, this concept does not need to be reserved for disaster education. I designed the beads in the photo below to help people remember the eight major categories of developmental assets. Developmental assets are the positive qualities and attributes that can help people, especially youth, handle stress and build resilience. The more assets a person has, the happier and more successful they can be in general. Though there are 40 Developmental Assets as defined by The Search Institute, they can be grouped into those that are internal and those that are external to the individual. Within each grouping there are four categories. In my training, I teach people the following eight categories of assets then invite them to come up with examples that are more detailed. To help remember all this complexity, I use this breakdown of the assets and the beads that represent them. |40 Developmental Assets||Represented by…| |Support (Family support and communication, other adult relationships, a caring school and neighborhood)||Pink = Heart| |Empowerment (Personal growth, service to others, safety, youth are seen as resources)||Green = Growth| |Constructive Use of Time (Creative activities, religious community, youth programs, time at home)||Bell = Clock, Being on Time| |Boundaries & Expectations (Family, school, andneighborhood boundaries, adult role models, positive peers)||Red= Stop Sign| |Commitment to Learning (School engagement, achievement, motivation)||Yellow = The Color of a School Bus| |Positive

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In this Issue: bits of serendipity to inspire and motivate fuel for [...] Values (Integrity, honesty, responsibility)||Gold = Something of Great Value| |Social Competencies (Cultural competence, conflict resolution skills, decision-making skills)||"Ethnic" or "Tribal" bead = Having Comfort with Ambiguity| |Positive Identity (Personal power, self-esteem, sense of purpose)||An Initial of Your Name = Signifying You!| Learning Beads offers an alternative to the brain clutter of Ralph's barn in today's 99-Word Story. From an educational perspective, using beads in this way capitalizes on tactile learning to enhance memory. And, as suggested by the fact that I still have the beads I made with Michele three years ago, they are also hard to throw away, forget in a file drawer, or store in the garage! An Interview with Michele Deck When I decided to write about Memory Beads, I had a few questions about their origin. Michele Deck, an internationally renowned presenter, author, and educator is the co-founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of G.A.M.E.S., a company that provides seminars for organizations and specializes in adult learning and interactive teaching methods. Here's our conversation: Brian: Describe your work. What topics do you most often teach about? Michele: I spend most of my time educating educators about creative and effective ways to teach their learners. Brian: What was the genesis of your idea of using beads as a way to improve retention in your training? Michele: I was born in New Orleans and Mardi Gras beads are an important part of the culture. I thought if I could create a set of beads that meant something, people would keep them and more easily remember the message of my training. Brian: What reactions have you received from participants? Michele: I have received positive feedback from learners since using it in my Disaster Readiness Program because people find the beads usable as opposed to a written handout they probably will not find in an emergency. Brian: How do you explain why this technique is helpful as a memory aid?

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In this Issue: bits of serendipity to inspire and motivate fuel for [...] Michele: It is a visual and hands on way to remember critical content. Brian: What other topics have you used this technique for? Michele: I have used it as a counting tool for best ideas learned in a session. After a half day of content, I'll give a small group a bowl of beads and have them pick beads that represent each of the ideas they gained. Some pick one or two, others take 10 or 12. They get to decide which type of bead represents each thing they learned. Brian: Are there situations you would advise against using beads? Michele: Even though it would work with all technical content, I would not use this idea at the FBI academy or with the Police sniper team because I have found they think this is too touchy feely for them as analytical, technical thinkers. Brian: What are some other alternatives to a paper handout have you experimented with? Michele: I have used whole brain organizers which are a visual grid with simple pictures used as a memory tool. We put them on index cards that people can keep in their pocket. I've also used mind map placemats. Brian: What do you think is the key to engaging learners? Michele: I think the key to engaging learners is to have them make emotionally relevant connections to what they learned and how they will use it in their lives. Application of content and skills to a person's own life is critical to learning. To learn more, contact Michele Deck directly: GAMESInc4@aol.com Quipus from the Incans The ancient Incans, who lived in the mountains of South America, built a thriving civilization that was dependent upon a strong communication system. To maintain government, military, and commercial systems they needed to communicate reliably across steep mountains and deep valleys. Messages were "written" in the form of beads strung together to represent the communication. Runners would carry these strings of beads, called quipus, through the mountains from the king to his governors. We can carry the concept of quipus from ancient times to today by making our own memory devices. The Activity this month is to apply the Inc

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Also found in: Thesaurus, Medical, Acronyms, Idioms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia. An utterance used by a speaker who is fumbling for words. intr.v. hawed, haw·ing, haws To fumble in speaking. 1. The fruit of a hawthorn. 2. A hawthorn or similar tree or shrub. [Middle English, from Old English haga.] 1. A nictitating membrane, especially of a domesticated animal. 2. An inflamed condition of this membrane. Used to command an animal pulling a load to turn to the left. intr.v. hawed, haw·ing, haws To turn to the left. 1. (Plants) the round or oval fruit (a pome) of the hawthorn, usually red or yellow, containing one to five seeds 2. (Plants) another name for hawthorn [Old English haga, identical with haga hedge; related to Old Norse hagi pasture] an inarticulate utterance, as of hesitation, embarrassment, etc; hem 1. (intr) to make this sound 2. hem and haw hum and haw See hem23 [C17: of imitative origin] archaic a yard or close [of unknown origin] (Zoology) the nictitating membrane of a horse or other domestic animal [C15: of unknown origin] 1. to utter a sound representing a hesitation or pause in speech.n. 2. a hesitation; pause. 1. (used as a word of command to a horse or other draft animal, usu. directing it to turn to the left.)v.t., v.i. 2. to turn or make a turn to the left. Compare gee 1. [1835–45; appar. orig. the imperative haw! look! of Middle English hawen, Old English hāwian; akin to Latin cavēre to beware] 1. the fruit of the hawthorn. 2. the hawthorn. [before 1000; Middle English; Old English haga

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Also found in: Thesaurus, Medical, Acronyms, Idioms, En [...] , presumably identical with haga hedge, fence] [1515–1525; orig. uncertain] Past participle: hawed A verbal command sometimes used instead of reins to direct a horse to turn to the left. Switch to new thesaurus |Noun||1.||haw - a spring-flowering shrub or small tree of the genus Crataegus| Crataegus apiifolia, Crataegus marshallii, parsley haw, parsley-leaved thorn - southern United States hawthorn with pinnately lobed leaves Crataegus biltmoreana, scarlet haw - common shrub or small tree of the eastern United States having few thorns and white flowers in corymbs followed by bright orange-red berries Crataegus calpodendron, Crataegus tomentosa, pear haw, pear hawthorn, blackthorn - erect and almost thornless American hawthorn with somewhat pear-shaped berries cockspur hawthorn, cockspur thorn, Crataegus crus-galli - eastern United States hawthorn with long straight thorns Crataegus aestivalis, mayhaw, summer haw - hawthorn of southern United States bearing a juicy, acidic, scarlet fruit that is often used in jellies or preserves Crataegus laevigata, Crataegus oxycantha, whitethorn, English hawthorn, may - thorny Eurasian shrub of small tree having dense clusters of white to scarlet flowers followed by deep red berries; established as an escape in eastern North America Crataegus monogyna, English hawthorn - European hawthorn having deeply cleft leaves and bright red fruits; widely cultivated in many varieties and often grown as impenetrable hedges; established as an escape in eastern North America Crataegus coccinea mollis, Crataegus mollis, downy haw, red haw - American red-fruited hawthorn with stems and

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The Medieval Church culturally unified Christendom through a common language, Latin, and a common liturgy, tying men together with other men of their own time, but also with the whole communion of saints… Petrarch, ca. 1350, first employed the term “Medieval” to argue that his time (ca. 1350) had advanced beyond the so-called “dark ages.” No one living in the Middle Ages actually thought they were living in the Middles Ages, of course. Those who were somewhat educated tended to think of themselves as citizens of the Christiana Res Publica, or, as first coined by King Alfred the Great, “Christendom.” In most vernacular languages, peasants would refer to their world as something akin to “Middle-earth,” a land between heaven and hell. Usually, this would be some variation of the Germanic and Norse “Midgard” or “Middangeard.” There was no real start date to the Middle Ages. One might fairly date the beginning of the western Middle Ages to the sack of Rome, August 24, 410; to the death of St. Augustine, 430; or to the resignation of the last Roman emperor in the West, Romulus Augustulus, on September 4, 476. Generally, though, it is wise to think of St. Augustine of Hippo as the great nexus between the classical world and the medieval world. There was no real end date to the Middle Ages, either. One might fairly end the Middle Ages with the death of Dante (1321), or with the end of the European black plague (ca. 1350) and with the rise of what would soon be called “nationalist” sentiment. As St. Augustine of Hippo can be seen as the nexus between the Medieval era and the previous world, one might rightly see Dante as occupying a similar position a millennium later: a nexus between the Medieval and the early modern worlds. However we bookend the Medieval age, several things helped define the period. First, unlike any period before or after in the West, polycentricism proved the norm, as localism meant everything to the

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The Medieval Church culturally unified Christendom through a common language, Latin, and [...] peoples of that era. As the great historian Christopher Dawson put it: There were a vast number of political and social units—feudal fiefs, duchies, counties and baronies, loosely held together by their allegiance to king or Emperor. There were Free Cities and Leagues of Cities, like the Lombard Commune or the Hanseatic League. There were ecclesiastical principalities like the German prince-bishoprics, and the great independent abbeys. Finally there were the religious and military Orders—international organizations which lived their own lives and obeyed their own authorities in whatever country in Europe they might happen to be situated. Second, the Church, however decentralized by the various orders and diocesan structures, held primary sway over culture as well as social and political life. One need only look to the two greatest institutions of the period preserving culture—the monastery (at the beginning of the Medieval period) and the university (toward the end of the Medieval period)—to see the pervasive power of the Church. Third, political boundaries during the period were many, varied, and generally small and short-lived. There existed, tellingly, no nation-states during the period. These—armed with permanent revenue-collecting bureaucracies, trained and permanent militaries, and educational institutions—could not exist until governments (of whatever type) established or discovered and exploited permanent and relatively stable tax bases. The process of “nation-state” building continues to this day, often encountering massive local resistance as well as vying with immense international structures and pressures. As a corollary to point three, we should not be surprised that few great political thinkers arose during the Middle Ages. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Policraticus were, for all intents and purposes, anti-political political theorists. Fourth, four great divisions in law existed during the Medieval: Natural Law; Justinian/Roman Law; Canon Law; and Common Law. One might most easily think of these as, respectively, the laws of God and nature; the laws imposed from the top down; the laws of the Church (usually dealing with family and marriage

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The Medieval Church culturally unified Christendom through a common language, Latin, and [...] ); and the laws of the Germanic tribes. For those of us in the Anglo-Saxon-American tradition, the common law is the most important, as it is based on fundamental liberties such as a right to a trial by jury, the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and the right to one’s body and property. The Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian Germanic tribes jealously and zealously guarded the common law (which is much older than Christianity) for centuries, resenting any intrusion into it and often defending it to the death. King Alfred the Great, the first king of modern England, was the first to codify it, but the Magna Carta (especially points 1, 13, 38-41, and 63) is generally regarded as its greatest Medieval expression of the common law. Later, it was the basis of America’s revolution against the United Kingdom, as well as of the Declaration of Independence, the Old Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and of the Bill of Rights of 1791. In sum: Before the rise of the nation-state, the Middle Ages were sui generis for at least six centuries. The Medieval Church culturally unified Christendom through a common language, Latin, and a common liturgy, tying men together with other men of their own time, but also with the whole communion of saints. Politically, nearly every type of entity imaginable existed: free cities, abbeys, fiefs, bishoprics, counties, duchies, and those lands controlled by the various Orders, military or religious. In other words, Christendom embraced a cultural unity and beheld a polycentric political system. It was the Christiana Res Publica. “I saw monarchy without tyranny, aristocracy without factions, democracy without tumult, wealth without luxury,” Erasmus later wrote, idealizing the past. “Would that it had been your lot, divine Plato, to come upon such a republic.” Perhaps most important, medieval man believed that he knew his place in the Economy of Grace, in God’s universe. The Imaginative Conservative

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Riot Makhomanisi Mkhwanazi The Order of Mendi for Bravery in Profile of Riot Mkhwanazi Riot Mkhwanazi comes from a legacy of a proud people who never accepted apartheid. His father Madonso Mkhwanazi was one of the first people who defied apartheid laws by burning his ‘dompas’ (pass book) in 1930 during the burning of the dompas campaign. Madonso’s son, Riot, followed in his footsteps. Mkhwanazi came into contact with activists such as Steven Dlamini of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), who taught him politics. In 1959, he joined the ANC, the ANC Youth League and SACTU and was active in the Defiance Campaign and general resistance to apartheid. In 1962, he joined Umkhonto we Sizwe and was arrested in Zeerust, in the Marico Valley, now known as the Ngaka Modiri Molema District in North West. In 1964, he was arrested with Jacob Zuma, now President, when they were crossing the South African border to Botswana. Both were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment on Robben Island. There Mkhwanazi learned to read and write and participated in political education and debates. Soon before his release from Robben Island in 1974, Mkhwanazi, along with other prisoners due for release, received a letter from Nelson Mandela urging them to continue the struggle where they had left off before their arrest and imprisonment. After his release, Mkhwanazi was banned. He subsequently went into exile and spent many years in Mozambique, until the Nkomati Accord forced him and other ANC cadres to move out. He returned to South Africa in the early 1990s, along with others who had been in exile. Although Mkhwanazi is retired, he continues to inspire young people within the ANC with spellbinding stories of the struggle. He lives a peaceful life in KwaZulu-Natal.

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Whether you are convincing people about your community proposal, or trying to convince the investors to invest in your plan, or selling a product, or campaigning for an election, or trying to persuade your friends to watch a particular movie, your presentation skills are bound to determine the outcome. This is perhaps because your presentation reflects an impression upon your listeners that might result in your tentative loss or win. An individual acquainted with basic presentation skills gets opportunities to showcase his or her aptitude for interpersonal and non verbal communication along with the expertise in research, exploration, and writing. Presentation skills are thus very useful in almost all aspects of a life and your job. Further, it is quite obvious that in many situations, making an effective presentation requires learning to speak with confidence, and relinquish fear and anxiety. So, we have introduced a presentation skills development training to help the trainees deliver an effective presentation without having to go through any distress at the prospect of making presentation before huge audience. Objectives of the training program - To highlight the importance of presentation skills for your professional/career success - To instruct the practices of careful planning, gathering in depth information, selecting right medium, and organizing the information. - To demonstrate practical techniques to make preparations for your presentation - To instruct the ways to use visual aids such as PowerPoint appropriately to support your presentation. - To help the trainees learn the approaches of adapting to audience. - To help the trainees deliver a well composed and comprehensible presentation. This may include initiating your presentation with a good introduction that arouse audience interest, holding your audience’s attention, coherently connecting your ideas, and closing the presentation with the final words ringing in the ears of audience. - To master the art of delivering an effective presentation by embracing techniques to overcome anxieties, and feel more confident in front of an audience - To improve your delivery through an increased awareness of body language, gestures, eye contact, and non-verbal cues - To illustrate how to handle question-and-answer period by training how to focus on the questioner, respond appropriately, and maintain control Who can join? This course is for those who want to learn how to speak confidently before audience, and deliver an effective presentation. This course is also ideal for those who wish to build their presentation and public speaking skills, especially for applications in business and workplace

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Whether you are convincing people about your community proposal, or trying to convince the investors to invest in [...] environment. If you want to develop your skills in delivering presentations, administering a formal meeting or would like to enhance leadership and public speaking abilities, this course is for you. This course should be beneficial to employees and managers at all levels who, for instance are looking to develop presentation skills for updating monthly/weekly status to colleagues, and higher level authorities, for providing sales report to senior managers, for providing financial updates to investors, and so on. How is the course conducted? To tell you more about our training course, we hold our sessions within a small sized groups consisting of not more than 10 individuals. So the learning experience is bound be personalized, but at the same time, interactive enough to enhance your presentation skills before other members We undertake an approach of imparting presentation skills through continuous guidance, mentoring, coaching, and feedback. The entire training course will constitute lessons on planning your presentation, research, organizing your presentation, selecting an appropriate delivery method, non-verbal communication skills, adapting to audience, the art of delivery, handling questions responsively, and enhancing presentation with PowerPoint slides and other visual aids. Why this course at Training Nepal? Our presentation skills course is intended towards helping our trainees overcome common problems like fear, uneasiness, anxiety, stress, and so on that inhibit them from making effective presentations. Attending our presentation skill course should help you attain skills of speaking with confidence, thus making your presentation influential and at the same time professional enough to be deemed effective in overall. Our training program will comprise of a supportive group in which you will receive undivided attention, and along the way come up with opportunities to execute the skills and abilities you would have acquired. The skills you picked up through our course can then be easily implied to any other presentation schedules having larger audiences. We believe that an effective presentation should be structured appropriately by means of crafty opening and closing. So we train our learners to procreate a well structured and meaningful presentation. We also train our learners the ways to sketch preparatory notes, and make advance preparations in order to be able to dispatch a convincing and powerful presentation. For your assistance, facilitators will be available to provide feedbacks, and discuss problems you might encounter while working on improving your presentation skills.

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A letter from the Poor Law Commissioners dated 27 October 1845 is the first documentary evidence in the surviving Workhouse Minute Books of the impending disaster. In this letter the Board of Guardians are authorised to 'substitute other descriptions of diet therein mentioned, in lieu of potatoes as they may think fit, subject to the approval of the Poor Law Commissioners, and until they shall otherwise direct.' What is most striking when inspecting the Minute Books of these early years of the Famine is how little anyone knew about the potato blight disease. Despite a series of wide ranging reports into the 'State of the Potato Crop' which elicited information from Workhouses countrywide, including the Workhouse in Dungarvan Union, no-one was any the wiser as to the nature of the disease which affected the crop. It was not for want of effort that no solution was found for the disease. Solutions as wide ranging as applying lime to the diseased potatoes to manufacturing the rotten crop into potato flour or starch were all discussed by the Poor Law Commissioners in Dublin to no avail. At a local level, the Board of Guardians of the Dungarvan Union were experimenting with various methods of sowing and different types of potato beds. It was resolved at the meeting of the Guardians held on the 8th of November 1845 'that half an acre of potatoes be set immediately and that the same quantity be set in December, a portion of each setting to be in drills and a portion in lazy beds such, settings to be made under the direction of Messrs Carbery, Anthony and Kiely (members of the Dungarvan Board) and that every third drill now undug be left so until March and covered up by additional earthing.' Throughout November and December 1845 reports were gathered in by the local Board of Guardians from the various electoral divisions in the Workhouse Union (Dungarvan, Whitechurch, Ardmore, Kilgobnet, Kinsalebeg, Kilrossanty, Aglish, Grange, Ballylaneen, Colligan and Fews) on the state of the potato crops in these areas. The news in these reports cannot have been good as on the 7th of March 1846 the Guardians purchased a small quantity of

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A letter from the Poor Law Commissioners dated 27 October 1845 is the [...] Indian-meal with a view to testing it as a potato substitute. There was some good news for the paupers, the Board resolved that a meat dinner be provided for them on Christmas Day 1845. This dinner consisted of 1 lb. of meat for each adult pauper, with the under 12's receiving a ½ lb. Also for breakfast on Christmas morning each adult had 1 lb. of bread and an allowance of coffee to look forward to. It was the best meal many of these paupers were going to see for many years. Spring of 1846 saw the Guardians encountering problems with the supply of sour milk to the Workhouse. This deficiency in sour milk supply was made up by substituting ½ pint of sweet milk for every pint of sour milk that could not be obtained. It is not entirely clear why the problem with sour milk supply arose, although it is likely that as supplies of potatoes diminished the local populace were forced into buying larger quantities of sour milk to supplement their diet. This would have lessened the amount of sour milk available for purchase by the Workhouse. In April of 1846 potatoes were fetching a price of greater than 4 pence per stone in the Dungarvan market. The Master of Dungarvan Workhouse was instructed by the Board not to purchase potatoes, but to substitute a 1 lb. of bread for every 4 lbs. of potatoes that each adult pauper was receiving. It would be almost a decade (15th of December 1855) before potatoes would again feature in the diet of the inmates of the Dungarvan Workhouse. Indian-corn flour was initially used as a substitute for the oatmeal in the stirabout the paupers had at breakfast. Attempts were made to procure the Indian-meal in the quantities required for the Workhouse. Initial enquiries were made to the Government Stores in Waterford to supply the meal; however in line with Government policy of the time, the Central Commissioners in Dublin Castle refused to release this Indian- corn for sale to the Dungarvan Workhouse. A private contractor named J. Walsh (of Waterford City) eventually offered in early May

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A letter from the Poor Law Commissioners dated 27 October 1845 is the [...] to supply 10 tons (6 months supply) at 11 shillings per hundredweight for yellow meal and 12 shillings per hundredweight of white meal. It did not particularly matter to the paupers whether the Board purchased yellow or white meal as both are almost completely indigestible by the human body. The most common use for Indian-corn prior to the Famine had been as an animal feed. Unfortunately the Board of Guardians were unaware that it's nutritional value to humans was very limited because the mills in Ireland could not grind it sufficiently to make it digestible. The Dungarvan Workhouse was not alone in using Indian-meal as a substitute for oatmeal and potatoes, Workhouses all over Ireland seized on Indian-meal as a viable and above all economic solution to the problem of feeding their inmates. The price of bread (as supplied by Mr A. Brennan of Dungarvan) had increased from 6½ pence to 8 pence per 4 lbs. between March and September of 1846. This increased cost of foodstuffs, combined with an increased number of pauper inmates driven into the Workhouse by want, forced the Board to make financial economies. In the Autumn of 1846, having made enquiries of Dunmanway Workhouse about the effectiveness of treacle and water as a milk substitute, the Board resolved 'to change the dietary of milk to treacle and water for breakfast with bread and cheap soup for dinner.' Worse was to come; from early November 1846 an adult pauper's meal consisted of 10 ounces of Indian-meal mixed with treacle for both breakfast and dinner. Only hospitalised paupers (on the recommendation of the Medical Officer of the Workhouse) could receive alternative rations to the above. When questioned by the Dublin authorities as to the safety of substituting treacle in lieu of milk, the Medical Officer for Dungarvan replied 'although it is a fact, variety of food is conducive to health...he was of the opinion that the dietary of meal and treacle need not be disturbed, provided he might prescribe such changes as necessary in individual cases.' The

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A letter from the Poor Law Commissioners dated 27 October 1845 is the [...] Board ordered 'that the dietary do stand as at present.'Not surprisingly, over the following few months a serious outbreak of dysentery occurred in the house in which quite a few lives were lost. In early January 1847 treacle was discontinued as a food as it had obviously contributed heavily to the dysentery outbreak. The Poor Law Commissioners recommended to the Medical Officer on January 27th 'the expediency of adopting rice into the diet as a check to dysentery.' It was not until May that this advice could be acted upon. Rice was swiftly removed from the diet at the end of May when the dysentery outbreak had become less prevalent. Meanwhile over the winter of 1846/47 some of the food suppliers to the Workhouse were encountering financial difficulties. Mr Brennan, the bread contractor, had entered into a 6 month contract to supply bread to the Workhouse at 8 pence per 4 lbs. However, such was the spiralling increase in the price of flour that he applied to have his contract re-negotiated a mere two and a half months after commencement. This the Board of Guardians agreed to do. Correspondence between the Board in Dungarvan and the Waterford City Workhouse indicates that this re-negotiating of Workhouse contracts was not an uncommon occurrence at this particular period of time. The Guardians attempted to lessen their dependence on bread contractors by building ovens and purchasing a mill for use in the Workhouse. Notwithstanding this, they still had great difficulty in obtaining flour and consequently Indian-meal and whole meal were used in the manufacture of bread. April of 1847 saw deaths due to dropsy, dysentery and the first cases of sea scurvy. Mr T. Christian, the Medical Officer, recommended that the milk allowance to inmates be increased in order to combat the prevalence of these diseases. This the Guardians attempted to do but the only milk they were able to obtain was judged unfit for human consumption. Conditions for the poor in the surrounding area were even worse than the conditions tolerated by the paupers within the Workhouse. Mr Christian observed that many of the deaths occurring within the Workhouse were

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A letter from the Poor Law Commissioners dated 27 October 1845 is the [...] as a result of people gaining admission when they were beyond help. Following the robbery of 8 stone of flour from a cart bringing it from the Pouldrew Mills to the Workhouse in the early summer of 1847, all further deliveries were accompanied by a military escort. The summer of 1847 passed with the paupers surviving on their predominantly Indian-meal based diet. The onset of winter however was to bring even more misery. In October of that year the Master found he could no longer purchase milk for less than 9 pence per gallon at Dungarvan market. On one Saturday of that month it was reported that milk could not be purchased for less than 1 shilling per gallon. This prompted him to express the opinion that 'from the great quantity of all sorts of winter vegetables on the premises and a large quantity of peameal also, that the use of milk for dinner can be done away with.' Following consultations with Mr. Christian, it was decided to replace milk at breakfast time with a pint of soup made from the aforementioned vegetables and peameal. By the end of October the entire group of able-bodied men within the Workhouse were in open rebellion. Having refused to walk to the mountains where they were to engage in their menial work, they complained to the Master 'that they had not a sufficiency of food allowed them.' The Board promptly gave each able-bodied inmate 8 ounces of rye meal bread extra per day, whereupon no more complaints were heard (at least no complaints that have been recorded in the official Minute Book). An extra oven was built at the end of 1847. This extension to the existing bakery was necessary to cater for the increased numbers within the Workhouse, now almost at the thousand mark, and also to facilitate the making of biscuits. These were distributed to those not fortunate enough to gain admittance to the Workhouse. Within a few short months Indian-meal was substituted in place of these biscuits as it was found to be a more economical method of feeding the starving. Even this attempt at self-sufficiency was not entirely successful, as Major Bolton (who was a Poor Law In

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A letter from the Poor Law Commissioners dated 27 October 1845 is the [...] spector) observed on his visit to the Workhouse in December 1848 'the bread was sour, bad and not sufficiently baked.' He recommended the employing of a new baker. Extensive correspondence between Mr. Christian and the Poor Law Commission at this time indicates that the Commission were not entirely happy with his performance as the Medical Officer when advising on house diet. In a defence of his position he attacked Indian-corn as the principle cause of dietary problems within the house. He also advocated more care be taken in the preparation of vegetable soup 'as a well fed people could best resist the threatened epidemic of cholera.' This letter written in January 1849 also contained the following recipe for the Workhouse soup: Per 100 Gallons : This quantity of soup would feed 800 hundred people, each person would have received one pint containing 3 ounces (87 grams) of solids. Mr Christian also asserts that 'from his experience of vegetable soup, milk was not required as a constituent part of an adult paupers diet being perhaps only of benefit to infants under the age of two.' By late January milk was not available for purchase locally in the quantities required by the Workhouse, so it is possible that Mr. Christian was making a virtue out of a necessity. Three thousand people were resident in the Workhouse and it's auxiliaries at this time. This resulted in the Board of Guardians being unable to control the behaviour of the inmates to the extent they would have liked. From April of 1849 the level of reported theft within the Workhouse increased dramatically. From this time onwards many of the entries in the Minute Book become a catalogue of petty theft and corruption. The Workhouse staff themselves were not immune to temptation. The Matron of the Shandon Cholera Hospital, a Mrs Driscoll, was discovered to be diluting the inmate's whiskey ration (received by the sick only) with water. A nurse in the Workhouse's employ named Mary Carew was caught passing 2 lbs. of bread to her sister over the Workhouse wall. Most of the crimes brought to light by the visiting committee involved the theft of Workhouse bread. The bak

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A letter from the Poor Law Commissioners dated 27 October 1845 is the [...] ery at this time was staffed primarily with paupers, due to a shortage of finance to pay for extra baking staff. A statement made by two paupers to the aforementioned visiting committee reveals an extraordinary level of corruption among the bake-house staff. James Power and John Murphy stated that they were not receiving enough to eat. When questioned further they complained that bread was allowed to turn mouldy in the bake-house store rather than being handed out to the starving. They further complained that bread was being sold to paupers with enough money to pay for it by the bakery's workforce. A pauper named Ellen Picket was implicated as the ringleader in the sale of bread. A few hours later her son Peter Picket was discovered assaulting James Power, no doubt to ensure his silence in the forthcoming investigation. Peter Picket's intervention came too late to prevent the whole sad story being uncovered however. The bread stores were inspected and 'a quantity of black mouldy bread was found.' Power told of further incidents of bread being sold by the paupers in the bake-house and even detailed an instance when an attempt was made to smuggle bread out of the Workhouse in a coffin. A large quantity of rotten bread was discovered buried in the Workhouse grounds during the summer of 1849. At least ten people were reported to the constabulary for crimes relating to the mismanagement of the bread store at this time. By June of 1849 oatmeal had at least partially replaced Indian-meal as the mainstay of the pauper's diet within the Workhouse. Unfortunately for the poor on outdoor-relief they still received their relief primarily in the form of Indian-meal. The quality of this meal often differed considerably from that which was contracted for, this being the case for many foodstuffs supplied to the Workhouse at this time. Prior to entering into a contract with a supplier the Board of Guardians required the supplier to supply them with a sample of the goods. This allowed the Board to determine a certain standard quality with which the supplier must comply when supplying future orders. Unfortunately, this system of contracting did little to prevent poor quality Indian-meal, milk, and other food

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A letter from the Poor Law Commissioners dated 27 October 1845 is the [...] stuffs being continually supplied to the Workhouse. To the credit of the Board of Guardians (and especially the visiting committee who uncovered many of the abuses and problems) they did their best to maintain some standards as regards food quality. For example, each relieving officer was told to enter into his 'distribution book' the quality of the meal he distributed on each occasion. These entries were then drawn together to comprise the basis of a report by him to the Board of Guardians. The problem with this approach was that it merely served to confirm the extent of a problem (the supply of poor quality Indian-meal) that everyone seemed to be aware already existed. These well-intentioned reports on food, much loved by the Poor Law Commission and the Board of Guardians, did nothing to alter the source of the problem. It was a supplier's market and suppliers regularly exploited this fact. Another major problem facing the Board was food storage. The Workhouse was never designed to accommodate such a large quantity of people as it was forced to accommodate during the Famine. Initially the auxiliary Workhouses were used for storing some food (such as turnips). The extent of theft from these stores was such that the Board was forced to remove a lot of the food to the main Workhouse for storage. A distribution system was set up, although it did not run particularly smoothly with several instances of auxiliary Workhouses being over-supplied or under-supplied by the main Workhouse. Space was at such a premium in the Workhouse at this time that bags of flour were stored in the dining-hall from which 'paupers were in the habit of constantly stealing.' December of 1849 saw more problems for the Board. The turnip crop of that year grown in the Workhouse grounds proved inedible and was promptly sold as animal feed. This led to a sharp drop in the quality of the soup being served to the inmates. As this soup was the main form of sustenance for the inmates it was a disastrous occurrence. A visiting committee noted the 'badness of the soup for want of using the necessary vegetables' and recommended the purchase of onions, turnips or leeks. In response to this report the Master of the Workhouse recommended that the Workhouse

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A letter from the Poor Law Commissioners dated 27 October 1845 is the [...] field be tilled in the proportion of 1½ acres of onions, ½ acre of leeks, 1 acre of white carrots and the remainder in cabbage and turnip. However no immediate action was taken to purchase vegetables despite repeated requests for these in various visiting committee reports throughout the winter of 1849/50. The failure to take action on this recommendation was not simply callousness on the Board's part but was probably due to either a problem of supply with vegetables or more likely financial constraints. Indian-meal was still causing a lot of damage to the health of the paupers despite adding 2 ounces of oatmeal to every 6 ounces of Indian-meal from the start of 1850 onwards. A report dated 23rd of February 1850 recommended that 'for children between the ages of 5 years and 9 years white flour should be used in the soup in lieu of Indian-meal as dysentery was very prevalent among this age group.' Throughout the Spring of 1850 the Workhouse entered into monthly contracts for the supply of barley, Indian-meal, flour, whole-meal, oatmeal and wheat. The price of whole-meal rose by 2 shillings per sack from £1.1s per sack in February to £1.3s per sack in March. The supplier of all of the above was a Mr. W. B. Purser a local merchant and father of Sarah Purser who was later to become famous as a stained glass artist. Mr. Purser would have been the single most important supplier of goods to the Workhouse throughout 1850. The short term contracts the Workhouse entered into at this time must have made forward planning of the diet in the Workhouse difficult. As food prices were increasing at such a rapid rate merchants were very reluctant to tie themselves to a long-term contract. Contracts for non-essential foodstuffs such as sugar, tea, wine and whiskey were still negotiated on a six month basis. Bread baked in the Workhouse from May of 1850 comprised of half whole-meal and half barley.

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A letter from the Poor Law Commissioners dated 27 October 1845 is the [...] Reports of the time indicate that the bread was of very poor quality. From a survey by the visiting committee carried out at the time, a sample of loaves purporting to each weigh 28 ounces typically weighed 2 ounces less. It is probable that the deficiency in weight was a result of bakers retaining flour for personal use. This flour would then have been made into bread and sold to the bakers' fellow paupers. As summer arrived the grounds of the Workhouse were weeded and the weeds thrown into an ash pit. This action was taken as many paupers in their desperation for something to eat had taken to eating the weeds and had become ill. Some of the more resourceful paupers had taken to bartering their rations over the Workhouse wall in return for fish supplied by the local fish-dealers. The Guardians disapproved of this practice as they considered fish to be a very poor quality food. To prevent the occurrence of future bartering all paupers were forbidden to leave the dining-hall before consuming their rations. Any breach of this order or any other Workhouse rule was punished by stopping the rations of the guilty party for a day. Such a course was often taken and occasionally the rations of an entire section of the Workhouse (women's, men's or children's) were stopped because of widespread outbreaks of ill discipline or dissent. The Winter of 1850 saw some decrease in food prices. Whole meal was now costing 18s/10d per sack, a drop of over 4/- in price since the proceeding February. As a consequence of the decline in the inflated food prices the Workhouse was again able to procure coarse and kiln dried wheat on six month contracts. Most other cereals continued to be supplied on a monthly basis. Christmas of this year proved to be a low point in the behaviour of the Board of Guardians towards the paupers. The Master of the Workhouse suggested that '50 lbs. of flour lying disused in the store and 6 stone of sugar be distributed to the 1,243 inmates' for their Christmas breakfast in addition to their usual rations.

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NSF-funded scientist says major die-offs related to ebb and flow of sea level Posted August 15, 2008 Scientists who play the geologic version of the board game Clue when trying to identify the likely suspect for past mass extinctions on the planet have a new rule to consider. A study published online June 15 in the journal Nature suggests the consistent ebb and flow of sea level is the common link to mass extinction over the last 500 million years. NSF Press Release “The expansions and contractions of those environments have pretty profound effects on life on Earth,” said Shanan Peters, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of geology and geophysics and the author of the new Nature report, in a news release from the National Science Foundation (NSF) , which supported the research. Changes in ocean environments related to sea level exert a driving influence on rates of extinction, which animals and plants survive or vanish, and generally determine the composition of life in the oceans, according to Peters. “Impacts, for the most part, aren’t associated with most extinctions,” he said in the news release. “There have also been studies of volcanism, and some eruptions correspond to extinction, but many do not.” Since the advent of life on Earth 3.5 billion years ago, scientists think there may have been as many as 23 mass extinction events, many involving simple forms of life such as single-celled microorganisms. Over the past 540 million years, there have been five well-documented mass extinctions, primarily of marine plants and animals, with as many as 75 to 95 percent of species lost. The study doesn’t dismiss other influences, such as killer asteroids or massive volcanic eruptions, but Peters said his study provides a common link to mass extinction events over a significant stretch of Earth history. “The major mass extinctions tend to be treated in isolation by scientists,” Peters said. “This work links them and smaller events in terms of a forcing mechanism, and it also tells us something about who survives and who doesn’t across these boundaries. These results argue for a substantial fraction of change in extinction rates being controlled by just one environmental parameter.” Matthew Saltzman,

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In explaining scouts, we do best when we ask what a mother would like to see her child grow to be. If she wants an athlete, we can discuss athletic activities in Cub Scouts and athletic merit badges in boy scouts. If a father wants a STEM focused child, we can focus on those activities. Scouting can meet those needs because scouting is the only liberal arts activity for youth. We serve all interests. More importantly we encourage our scouts to expand their interests. An athletic scout may show little initial curiosity about the stars. Yet a little introduction to astronomy in Cub Scouts may open his eyes to the skies. That exposure to ideas and concepts that they never had considered is only part of why scouting works. We know what a scout needs to develop because it has been well studied over the last century. One of the summations of what a youth needs has been compiled by the Search Institute. They have summarized the skills and experiences that a youth needs at each age level in order to develop into a well-rounded and upstanding citizen. For each age level, the Search Institute has developed a chart of 40 Developmental Assets appropriate for the child’s age. In reviewing these assets, place a checkmark next to each developmental asset that scouting touches. Then repeat the exercise for each activity that you child participates in. You will find an average Cub Scout Pack or Scout Troop outscores most other activities. When you are talking to parents who don’t know scouting, these charts are a great method for the parents to formulate questions and independently determine that scouting is worth their family’s time. For parents who are considering withdrawing their son from scouting, these charts are a perfect method to diplomatically challenge their thinking. If you cannot explain how scouting serves most of the developmental assets, talk to your unit commissioner or the district membership committee. You may be losing scouts because you are struggling to explain “Why Scouting?” Saturday, November 21 Cub Scout Saturday: Naturalist Webelos, investigate the fall forest as you work at completing the requirements for your Naturalist. Younger scouts can enjoy a nature hike. Register at firstname.lastname@example.org 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. Zions

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Sediment losses and gains across a gradient of livestock grazing and plant invasion in a cool, semi-arid grassland, Colorado Plateau, USA Large sediment fluxes can have significant impacts on ecosystems. We measured incoming and outgoing sediment across a gradient of soil disturbance (livestock grazing, plowing) and annual plant invasion for 9 years. Our sites included two currently ungrazed sites: one never grazed by livestock and dominated by perennial grasses/well-developed biocrusts and one not grazed since 1974 and dominated by annual weeds with little biocrusts. We used two currently grazed sites: one dominated by annual weeds and the other dominated by perennial plants, both with little biocrusts. Precipitation was highly variable, with years of average, above-average, and extremely low precipitation. During years with average and above-average precipitation, the disturbed sites consistently produced 2.8 times more sediment than the currently undisturbed sites. The never grazed site always produced the least sediment of all the sites. During the drought years, we observed a 5600-fold increase in sediment production from the most disturbed site (dominated by annual grasses, plowed about 50 years previously and currently grazed by livestock) relative to the never grazed site dominated by perennial grasses and well-developed biocrusts, indicating a non-linear, synergistic response to increasing disturbance types and levels. Comparing sediment losses among the sites, biocrusts were most important in predicting site stability, followed by perennial plant cover. Incoming sediment was similar among the sites, and while inputs were up to 9-fold higher at the most heavily disturbed site during drought years compared to average years, the change during the drought conditions was small relative to the large change seen in the sediment outputs. Belnap, J., Reynolds, R. L., Reheis, M. C., Phillips, S. L., Urban, F. E., and Goldstein, H. L., 2009, Sediment losses and gains across a gradient of livestock grazing and plant invasion in a cool, semi-arid grassland, Colorado Plateau, USA: Aeolian

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What email address or phone number would you like to use to sign in to Docs.com? If you already have an account that you use with Office or other Microsoft services, enter it here. Or sign in with: Signing in allows you to download and like content, and it provides the authors analytical data about your interactions with their content. Embed code for: Psychology 101 extra credit Select a size General Psychology 101 Submitted to: Dr. T. Millet Extra Credit Fall 2016 Submitted by: April Hinton Date: 22 November 2016 The psychological definition of attribution from our textbook is defined by How individuals judge other people’s behaviors with their own statements about why other people behave a certain way. The two critical misjudgments people make are about prejudice and discrimination: Prejudice is the internal negative thoughts and ideas against another group of people based only on their “membership” to that other group. Discrimination on the other hand, is the negative behavior of acting on that prejudice against another group of people. Prejudice and discrimination can be socially learned from generation to generation. It can also be from misplaced aggression by putting the blame on someone else. Lastly, it can be from economic competition to make sure they survive financially better than others. Illustrate the two critical misjudgments people make using examples from my own history: There have been times when I used attribution. I did misjudge my son’s teachers on a few occasions using prejudice and discrimination. I felt something “off” about one of his teachers. I thought that she was a little slow, and I wondered about her own mental health. My actions were to tell other parents about negative information about what I thought about her. However, as I communicated with her more, that feeling has faded and I feel more confident in her abilities. She created a plan to help my son do well in school, and so far it’s working. Unfortunately, if the plan wasn’t working, I would still think that she wasn’t doing her job well enough. Ciccarelli, S. K. & White, J. N. (2014). Psychology (4th ed.). Pearson – Prentice Hall.

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Science of The Total Environment – 2017 Associations of prenatal and early childhood mercury exposure with autistic behaviors at 5 years of age: The Mothers and Children’s Environmental Health (MOCEH) study •We explored the associations between blood mercury levels and autistic behaviors. •This study involved an ongoing multi-center prospective birth cohort. •Blood mercury levels were repeatedly measured from early pregnancy to 3 years. •Autistic behaviors were assessed at 5 years with the Social Responsiveness Scale. •Prenatal and early childhood mercury levels were associated with autistic behaviors. Although mercury is an established neurotoxin, only few longitudinal studies have investigated the association between prenatal and early childhood mercury exposure and autistic behaviors. We conducted a longitudinal cohort study using an ongoing prospective birth cohort initiated in 2006, wherein blood mercury levels were measured at early and late pregnancy; in cord blood; and at 2 and 3 years of age. We analyzed 458 mother-child pairs. Autistic behaviors were assessed using the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) at 5 years of age. Both continuous SRS T-scores and T-scores dichotomized by a score of ≥ 60 or < 60 were used as outcomes. The geometric mean of mercury concentrations in cord blood was 5.52 μg/L. In adjusted models, a doubling of blood mercury levels at late pregnancy (β = 1.84, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.39, 3.29), in cord blood (β = 2.24, 95% CI: 0.22, 4.27), and at 2 years (β = 2.12, 95% CI: 0.54, 3.70) and 3 years (β = 2.80, 95% CI: 0.89, 4.72) of age was positively associated with the SRS T-scores. When the SRS T-scores were dichotomized, we observed positive associations with mercury levels at late pregnancy (relative risk

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Science of The Total Environment – 2017 Associations of prenatal and early [...] [RR] = 1.31, 95% CI: 1.08, 1.60) and in cord blood (RR = 1.28, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.63). We found that blood mercury levels at late pregnancy and early childhood were associated with more autistic behaviors in children at 5 years of age. Further study on the long-term effects of mercury exposure is recommended. Molecular Neurobiology – 22 July 2017 The Putative Role of Environmental Mercury in the Pathogenesis and Pathophysiology of Autism Spectrum Disorders and Subtypes Exposure to organic forms of mercury has the theoretical capacity to generate a range of immune abnormalities coupled with chronic nitro-oxidative stress seen in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The paper discusses possible mechanisms explaining the neurotoxic effects of mercury and possible associations between mercury exposure and ASD subtypes. Environmental mercury is neurotoxic at doses well below the current reference levels considered to be safe, with evidence of neurotoxicity in children exposed to environmental sources including fish consumption and ethylmercury-containing vaccines. Possible neurotoxic mechanisms of mercury include direct effects on sulfhydryl groups, pericytes and cerebral endothelial cells, accumulation within astrocytes, microglial activation, induction of chronic oxidative stress, activation of immune-inflammatory pathways and impairment of mitochondrial functioning. (Epi-)genetic factors which may increase susceptibility to the toxic effects of mercury in ASD include the following: a greater propensity of males to the long-term neurotoxic effects of postnatal exposure and genetic polymorphisms in glutathione transferases and other glutathione-related genes and in selenoproteins. Furthermore, immune and inflammatory responses to immunisations with mercury-containing adjuvants are strongly influenced by polymorphisms in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region and by genes encoding effector proteins such as cytokines and pattern

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Family therapy is a branch of psychotherapy that focuses specifically on family relationships. It works from the premise that a problem lies within the family as a whole, rather than with a single person within the family unit. It helps family members help each other and work things out together. It can be beneficial in enabling family members to express and explore difficult thoughts and emotions safely, to deepen their understanding of each other, to appreciate each other’s needs better and make changes in their lives. Family therapists use the term “family” to describe active long term relationships between people who consider themselves as such, irrelevant as to whether related by blood or not. As well as parents and children of all ages, they may work with grandparents, siblings, uncles and aunts, cousins, friends, carers and other professionals – whoever people identify as important to their lives. They may see children and adults individually and/or in groups. Family Therapy may be beneficial for children, young people and adults experiencing a wide range of relationship difficulties and life events. The types of problems family therapists work with include relationship difficulties, divorce and separation, illness in parents or children, bereavement, school and college difficulties and other life-changes that cause upset and pain. The therapists are highly skilled professionals, who have been trained to work with children, young people, adults, carers and other professionals. Only fully qualified family therapists are eligible to register as accredited Family and Systemic Psychotherapists with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). The therapists’ aim is to remain impartial throughout the process, and not to provide simple answers to problems and questions. They aim to actively engage all participants in sharing experiences and points of view and exploring ways forward that work for them. They take into consideration the family’s wider economic, social, cultural, political, and religious background, while respecting each individual's different perspectives, beliefs, views and stories. Our therapists are bound by a duty of confidentiality, unless circumstances suggest that the issues being discussed may pose a risk to clients or the wider community. Such issues include domestic abuse, child protection, money laundering and terrorism. In all circumstances, care is taken to protect confidentiality and no disclosure will be made without discussing the issues first, unless there is an urgent risk of harm. The service was hugely helpful and really benefited our family at a time of distress and anxiety in our lives.

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While researching topics about China, I kept running into claims that ice cream was invented in China, and Marco Polo brought the recipe back to Italy. To discover the facts, I did some virtual sleuthing and discovered that immigrants arriving in Ellis Island were treated to a bowl of ice cream upon arrival. I wonder if the Chinese arriving at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay got to eat ice cream. Considering the way the Chinese were treated then—probably not. Ice Cream History and Folklore says, “Most books are full of myths about the history of ice cream. According to popular accounts, Marco Polo (1254-1324) saw ice cream being made during his trip to China, and on his return introduced it to Italy.” In fact, “During China’s Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) something vaguely on the order of ice cream was made from cow, goat and buffalo milk, flavored with camphor and thickened with flour.” (The History of Ice Cream) More details came from Wonderquest: “The first concoction resembling ice cream was made in China during the Tang period…. Ice-cream makers … heated buffalo, cow, and goat milk together then fermented the brew to form yogurt. They thickened the yogurt with flour and flavored it with camphor (an insect repellant, of all things). Refrigerating first, they served the confection to the king.” Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover. His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy. Subscribe to “iLook China”! Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

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Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) was a Genoese trader, explorer, and navigator. He was born in Genoa, Italy, in the year 1451. "Christopher Columbus" is the English version of Columbus's name. His real name in Italian was Cristoforo Colombo; his name in Spanish was Cristóbal Colón. "Discovery" of America Columbus is often wrongly considered the first European person to have discovered the Americas. This idea is wrong for many reasons. For example, the Caribbean is not on the American mainland and Columbus only found the mainland in 1498 Also, the first European to find America was the Viking Leif Erikson, around 1000 AD. Finally, people do not agree that either Erikson or Columbus "discovered" America. Native Americans had been living there for thousands of years before them. These earlier discoverers did not change the world as Columbus did. Voyage in 1492 Columbus wanted to find a shorter way to get to Asia. He thought he could get to Asia by sailing west from Europe. He did not know about the countries in the Western Hemisphere, so he did not realize they would block him from getting to Asia. However, Columbus did not have enough money to pay for this voyage on his own. He was able to get the King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand II and Isabella I of Castile, to pay for the voyage. He promised to bring back gold and spices for them. The three ships were very small. Historians think that the largest ship, the Santa María, was only about 60 feet (18 metres) long, and about 16 to 19 feet (4.8 to 5.8 metres) wide. Columbus's other ships were even smaller. Historians think they were about 50–60 feet (15–18 metres) long. On October 12, 1492, after sailing for about four months, Columbus landed on a small island in the Bahamas. The natives called it Guanahani; Columbus renamed it San Salvador Island ("Holy Savior"). He met Arawak and Taíno Native Americans who lived on the island

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Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) was a Genoese trad [...] . They were friendly and peaceful towards Columbus and his crew. Not knowing where he was, and thinking that he had reached Asia, the "Indies," he called them "Indians." He claimed their land as Spain's. Columbus then sailed to what is now Cuba, then to Hispaniola. On Hispaniola, Columbus built a fort. This was one of the first European military bases in the Western Hemisphere. He called it Navidad (Spanish for "Christmas"). He left thirty-nine crew members there, and ordered them to find and store the gold. Treatment of native people On the day he landed in the Bahamas, Columbus wrote about the Arawaks and Taíno: |“||They ought to make good and skilled servants, [since] they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can very easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion ... I will take six of them ... when I [leave, so] they may learn our language ... With 50 men you could subject everyone and make them do what you wished.||”| According to Encyclopædia Britannica: |“||Columbus was determined to take back both material and human cargo to his sovereigns [Ferdinand and Isabella] and for himself, and this could be accomplished only if his sailors carried on looting, kidnapping, and other violent acts, especially on Hispaniola.||”| On September 24, 1493, Columbus left Spain with enough ships, supplies, and men to invade and make Spanish colonies in the New World. He had 17 ships and 1,200 men. These men included soldiers and farmers. There were also priests, whose job was to convert the natives to Christianity. On this voyage, Columbus explored some of the islands of the Lesser Antilles. He also sailed around most of Hispaniola and explored the sides of Jamaica and Cuba he had not seen on his first voyage. Then he went back to the Navidad fort. He found the fort burned down. Eleven of the 37 soldiers Columbus left at the fort were buried there. The rest had disappeared

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Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) was a Genoese trad [...] . Historians think this happened because of disease and fights with the Arawak people. Treatment of native people While Columbus was away from Navidad exploring Jamaica and Cuba, his soldiers stopped working on building a new fort and farms. They made the Arawaks give them food. They also stole things from the Arawaks. This made the Arawaks decide to fight back against the Spaniards. However, Spain had many weapons that the Arawaks had never seen, including steel swords, pikes, crossbows, dogs, and horses. This made it much easier for Spain to win fights against the Arawaks. Columbus also took revenge against the Arawaks for killing his soldiers at Navidad. There was not much gold on the parts of the island Columbus took over. To avoid getting their hands cut off, many Arawaks tried to run away from Columbus and his men. However, Columbus's soldiers used dogs to hunt them down and kill them. Bartolomé de las Casas said that the Spanish killed two out of every three native people in the area (though he may have been exaggerating). Start of the transatlantic slave trade In February 1495, Columbus started the transatlantic slave trade. He and his soldiers captured about 1,500 Taíno. Only 500 could fit on Columbus's ships, so Columbus told his men they could take any of the rest as slaves. They took 600 and let 400 go. Of the 500 natives that Columbus shipped to Spain as slaves, about 200 died on the trip. Half of the rest were very sick when they arrived. This was the first time people had ever been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to be sold as slaves. Columbus made another voyage in 1498. King John II of Portugal had said there was a continent to the southwest of the Cape Verde islands. On his third voyage, Columbus wanted to find this continent. Before the voyage, Queen Isabella reminded Columbus that he should treat all of the native people well and make them into Christians. On this voyage, Columbus sent three ships straight to the West Indies (the Caribbean).

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Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) was a Genoese trad [...] He led another three ships: first to two Portuguese islands, then to the Canary Islands, then Cape Verde. From Cape Verde, they sailed to the northern coast of South America and landed in Trinidad. He also explored part of South America and the islands now called Tobago and Grenada. On August 19, 1498, Columbus returned to Hispaniola. He found that many of the Spanish settlers there were unhappy. They thought there would be more gold in the New World. Some of them had rebelled while he was gone. Columbus had five of the rebellion's leaders hanged. He also tried to make the rest of the settlers happy by giving them land in Hispaniola. However, the settlers kept sending complaints to Spain. In 1499, Queen Isabella sent a man named Francisco de Bobadilla to Hispaniola. She gave him the power to do whatever he thought he should do. When he arrived in 1500, the first thing he did was to have Columbus arrested and sent back to Spain in chains. Treatment of native people When he was trying to make Spanish settlers happy, Columbus started the Encomienda system in Hispaniola. Under this system, Columbus would give a piece of land in Hispaniola to an individual Spanish settler. Sometimes, he would give away a whole native village. Any natives that lived in that area had to work for that Spanish settler. Natives had lived on this land for centuries. Columbus was giving their land away, and then forcing them to work on that land. Columbus's relatives said that Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy. Today, no historian can say for sure where Columbus was born. Most experts think the best evidence says he was born in Genoa. However, other historians think Columbus was born somewhere else, like Spain or Portugal. Some think he was originally a Jew who converted to Christianity. Columbus wrote that he first went to sea when he was 14 years old. In 1485, while in Córdoba, Spain, Columbus met Beatriz Enríquez de Trasierra. They lived together for a while. They

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Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) was a Genoese trad [...] had one child named Fernando. Columbus had a few different goals for his journeys to the New World. First, he believed he could find a shorter and easier route to Asia, which made things Europe did not. He believed he could find a shorter route to China. Other people had called this belief absurd. Columbus wanted to prove these people wrong. Second, Columbus wanted to find gold. Gold was the main kind of money used in Columbus's times. In his letter to Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Columbus wrote: “Gold is most excellent; gold is treasure, and [the person] who [has] it does all he wishes to in this world." This means that someone with gold can do anything he wants to do. Many historians believe that Columbus wanted to become a powerful person – and in order to become powerful, he needed to find gold. The Spanish conquistadors first settled on the islands of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Cuba, and Puerto Rico. They grabbed as much gold as they could. The Spanish also brought priests and forced the Native Americans to convert to Christianity. "Columbus map", drawn c. 1490 in the Lisbon workshop of Bartolomeo and Christopher Columbus The return of Christopher Columbus; his audience before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, painting by Eugène Delacroix Columbus awes the Jamaican natives by predicting the lunar eclipse of 1504. Replica of the Santa María, Columbus's flagship during his first voyage, at his Valladolid house Columbus Lighthouse (Faro a Colón), Santo Domingo Columbus monument near the state capitol in Denver, Colorado Christopher Columbus for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.

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Lord God, during this Lenten season, teach us to come before you in humility, lamenting the signs that your kingdom has not yet come in its fullness. Help us to acknowledge our finitude and failings, and guide us into a journey of remembering rightly, repenting honestly, and responding faithfully. We long for the coming of your mosaic kingdom in Jesus Christ, our Lord, and invite your Holy Spirit to lead us now. THIS DAY IN HISTORY: MARCH 26, 1790 U.S. Naturalization Law of 1790 In 1790, the United States government passed the U.S. Naturalization Law of 1790, which provided the first rules to be followed by the United States in regards to the granting of national citizenship. This Act reserved naturalized citizenship exclusively for “free white persons of good character.” It thus excluded American Indians, indentured servants, slaves, free blacks, and Asians from being able to live as citizens of the United States, and thereby restricted them of the basic protections and entitlements that white citizens were granted. In the face of the Declaration of Independence’s claim that “all men are created equal,” nonwhites were denied the right to vote, own property, testify in court, or receive governmental liberties and protections throughout much of U.S. history. African Africans were not granted full citizenship until 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution was ratified in the wake of Reconstruction. Additionally, Native Americans could only become citizens through individual treaties or intermarriage, until the passing of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Asian immigrants faced a number of different exclusionary policies, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924, which favored immigrants from northern and Western Europe over the “inferior races” of Asia and southern and eastern Europe. Asian immigrants were ineligible for citizenship until the 1954 McCarran-Walter Act removed all racial barriers for naturalization. Despite these exclusionary immigration policies based on race, many of these ethnic groups have provided to the economic prosperity and well-being of our nation. Today, views regarding immigration and citizenship

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Lord God, during this Lenten season, teach us to come before you in humility, [...] continue to be racialized, as“white persons” are consistently equated with citizenship, while people of color struggle to be seen as true Americans. SCRIPTURAL REFLECTION: Leviticus 19:33-37 33 “‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34 The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God. 35 “‘Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight or quantity. 36 Use honest scales and honest weights, an honest ephah and an honest hin. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt. 37 “‘Keep all my decrees and all my laws and follow them. I am the Lord.’” RESPONSE OF LAMENT AND CONFESSION: Please spend some time in personal response, crying out to God with prayers, poems, songs, or art that expresses your lament and confession. If you feel led, please share these responses with others, using #lentenlament #day26 You may close with the following: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. CLOSING PRAYER: AND NOW WHAT WAIT WE FOR? (Maria Stewart, 1835) “Almighty God, it is the glorious hope of a blessed immortality beyond the grave, that supports thy children through this vale of tears… Grant all prejudices and animosities cease among men. May we all realize that promotion cometh not from East nor from the West, but that it is God that putteth one up and setteth down another. May the rich be rich in faith and good works towards our Lord Jesus Christ, and may the poor have an inheritance among the saints in light, a crown incorruptible that fadeth not away, eternal in the heavens. And now what wait we for? Be pleased to grant that we may all at last join with the Israel of God, in celebrating thy praise.”

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Technology Expands the Definition of Literacy By: Josh Rivera My conception of literacy was limited to one’s ability to communicate thoughts and meaning through reading and writing. It was these skills that separated the educated from non-educated. This narrow definition of literacy must expand to include the many different methods that our culture uses to communicate given the new innovations in technology. According to Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan (2006), “In our 21st automated—a new literacy is required, one more broadly defined than the ability to read and write” (pg. 1). Recognizing and acknowledging the ubiquity of technology in American culture seems to be the first step towards addressing the equity issues that surround it, particularly within the field of education. Moving forward, a key question that educators must answer to ensure that all students are prepared to meet the expectations of the 21st century society—accelerated, media saturated, and century work force is; in what sense are literacies technologies? Many of our students are processing information at a pace that has never been matched before. According to Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan (2006), our students “posses digital competencies to effectively navigate the multi-dimensional and fast paced digital environment” (pg. 1). Considering these are skills the 21stcentury work force will require of their employees, how can we as educators support and strengthen this ability? The answer is to include digital and visual literacy skills within K-12 education. According to Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan (2006), “Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media (text, sound, images), to reproduce data and images through digital manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments” (pg. 2). Thus, literacies are technologies in the sense that they empower the user with the knowledge and skills necessary for meaningful participation within their community. New Definition of Literacy Generates Equity Issues At face value, the invention of, and innovations in technology seem to create new opportunities to participate, contribute, and influence decisions pertaining to one’s society. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case. As Rocap (2003) put it, “digital technologies create not only new possibilities, but new requirements, and at

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Technology Expands the Definition of Literacy By: Josh Rivera My conception of liter [...] times, obstacles for participation in social, economic, and political life” (pg. 58). In order to understand what Rocap is saying here, we need to look at the ways literacy is composed and the implications it has for public education. If literacy is suppose to be a social construction as it defines something that every child should know or be able to do, then we must ask ourselves what privileged member(s) of our society possess this responsibility? This role is powerful because their construction of literacy defines the official literacy of the society therein. According to Rocap (2003), although this process of standards development seems to be a process of social construction, we must understand that “social does not necessarily translate into it being either democratic or participatory” (pg. 64). Therefore, the process of defining an official literacy within a society can create and/or perpetuate current inequitable systems. Rocap (2003) says it best; “Economically and politically dominant or official literacies can and often do marginalize groups that engage in culturally diverse practices of communication and with non-dominant content” (pg. 61). Thus, the problem with official literacies lies in the fact that the dominant group’s values and beliefs are those that are represented and given privilege over those of non-dominant groups. That said, “digital equity is not simply an issue of equitable distribution of computers and connectivity, but, significantly, of education, resources, and opportunities that support meaningful participation in the definition, design, and use of the technologies for self- and community- defined purposes” (pg. 60). Once such a system is put in place, we can then focus on our won realities and problems; not those that are imposed on us. The New Definition of Literacy Proves Problematic for Some Native Americans The affects on Native Americans in light of the new definition of literacy is aresult of cultural and worldview differences. If the new definition of literacy now includes necessary skills and knowledge gained from a digital world, then such a definition would prove to be problematic if one’s culture struggles with identifying and participating in such a world. This so happens to be the case for Native Americans. These cultures value nature and the natural world of human beings,

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Technology Expands the Definition of Literacy By: Josh Rivera My conception of liter [...] which is in great opposition to what technology represents. The idea of the “sacred” according to Delgado (2003), plays a vital role in the decisions and actions of the Native American people. Delgado (2003) argues that technological inventions are products of the corporate Western mindset— a mindset that goes against Native culture’s worldview. Furthermore, Delgado (2003) says, “For some Native people being surrounded by the non-sacred—” (technology in this case)” goes against the very basic tenets of Native life and thought” (pg. 90). With these cultural values being considered, it is not surprising that the new definition of literacy has greatly affected the Native American communities. The discrepancy between Western culture and it’s dependency on technology with that of Native American culture and the value placed on nature and the sacred, create feelings of inferiority and disenfranchisement amongst the Native American people. If the new expectations of the 21st century workforce involve communication skills that require the use of technology, then Native people that lack this skill may consequently feel that their role in such a society is inadequate. For Native Americans, “Dependence on instinct, dreams, face-to-face interactions, common knowledge, common sense, rationalization, and observation are still preferred as ways of knowing and communicating” according to Delgado (2003) (pg. 91). Technology has taken out the heart-to-heart interactions between human beings thereby devaluing a Native American cultural belief. Teaching Strategies Promotes Digital Equity Effective teaching strategies can and have been used to promote digital equity. Many teachers have found ways to not only gain access to computers and connectivity, but more importantly, bridge the divide between popular Western culture with other cultures that struggle with accepting technology as a different form of literacy. In all examples that were cited in the readings, there was one common theme that guided the teacher’s instructional strategies; in all examples, the teachers focused on building students’ digital competencies however, their approach was not to teach “digital literacy” insomuch as “critical literacy”. According to Rocap (2003), critical literacies

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Technology Expands the Definition of Literacy By: Josh Rivera My conception of liter [...] “interrogate existing power inequities in society. They help to raise the voices of and improve life chances for traditionally underserved or oppressed individuals or groups, as well as promote education that supports social justice broadly” (pg. 66). This common theme made the teachers more effective in the classroom. Ted Jojola developed a CD-ROM program for Tewa students—a tribe found primarily in the Albuquerque area. The computer program focused on teaching and preserving the tribe’s native language, which had been deteriorating due to pressures of modern society to assimilate. The Tewa language is not pubically shared according to the cultural values of Tewa tribes. The computer program allowed members of the tribe to teach and preserve their language while protecting the privacy of the language. In this example the teacher took into consideration the values and beliefs of Tewa culture and strategized an instructional approach that was culturally accepted and meaningful. As educators work towards discovering instructional strategies that are inclusive for all cultures, we must do so in a certain frame of mind. This mind set, as Rocap (2003) put it, must “support the aspirations, values and future visions of their learners’ diverse families and communities, as well as promote principled democratic participation in the wider society…” (pg.64). When this criteria has been met, all our students stand a better chance of success. Delgado, Vivian. “Toward Digital Equity: Bridging the Divide in Education” NY, New York. Pearson Education Group, Inc. 2003 Flannigan, Suzanna., Jones-Kavalier, Barbara. “Connecting the Digital Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century. Educause Quaterly. Nov. 2, 2006 Rocap, Kevin. “Toward Digital Equity: Bridging the Divide in Education” NY, New York. Pearson Education Group, Inc. 2003

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US Muslims Feel Constant Tug Of Events Around the World "WHAT we are learning is that nobody will cry for the Muslims." That's a sentiment shared by several American Muslim men sitting outside an East Coast mosque last July. The men of Algerian, Egyptian, and Libyan descent were waiting for their children. But their minds were across the globe - in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where 40,000 Muslims were being "ethnically cleansed" by Serbs. They couldn't believe the West was merely watching as Muslims were denied weapons and Serb forces drove their families from what the United Nations called a "safe area." "Seeing this, as a Muslim person, makes me feel I am a member of the same community," Sameh, a soft-spoken environmental scientist, says of the Srebrenica Muslims. A "good" Muslim feels responsibility for the global community of Muslims, the umma. American Muslims' focus has been shaped by the experiences of many immigrants who fled persecution or stifling regimes, giving them an international mind-set and a familiarity with suffering. Their political outlook today is shaped by their involvement in Bosnian issues, Chechnya, Kashmir, and the Middle East. One can't visit an Islamic center and not see posters calling for the aid of Muslim victims. Bulletin boards show dynamited minarets and mosques, and announce meetings and marches to support those raped or disabled or hungry. Black Muslims also feel solidarity with the downtrodden, based on their ancestors' experience as slaves in this country. So despite the deep respect many Muslims feel for a country with so much freedom, they have a profound ambivalence about the history and exercise of American power abroad. "Most Muslims, if offered an Islamic homeland, would go there immediately," says Mamoun Fandy of Georgetown University in Washington. "But for the time being, America is the closest thing they can find." Immigrant Muslims are often critical of European colonialism in the Islamic heartland and US foreign policy indifference - or worse - there. To Muslims in the US, media images of Islamic extremists and talk of a new "Islamic threat" by US policymakers are misplaced. They see themselves as the group most under attack around the planet. Today

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US Muslims Feel Constant Tug Of Events Around the World "WHAT we are learning is that [...] , some younger Muslims want their community to shed its ties to Middle Eastern regimes and causes. But they also criticize the US for not pushing human rights standards in states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. US officials "accuse Islamists of terrorism," says Islam Abdullah, editor of The Minaret, a popular US Muslim magazine. "But they do not talk about their persecution." Bosnia, especially, galvanized American Muslims. A 3-1/2-year siege of highly educated Muslims in the European city of Sarajevo seems to them a clear-cut case of double standards - where universal values of democracy and human rights preached by the West only apply selectively. America's inaction in Bosnia has also undercut the support of Muslims who cooperated in the US-led Gulf war. Nor has the NATO mission in Bosnia led by President Clinton wholly assuaged them. "We are glad for progress," says Khalid Saffuri, head of the Bosnian Task Force at the American Muslim Council in Washington. "But this seems more like election politics." The example that America's long inaction in Bosnia set for the next generation concerns Ghazi Khankan, an Islamic leader in Long Island, N.Y. "I am a peaceful person, but I became radicalized by what I saw in front of my eyes," he says. "I am 62 and an American. If I am being radicalized, what is happening to young people?" Muslims also smart at a new discourse that fingers Islam as the chief threat to the West, replacing communism. "The Islamic Threat" has become a popular term in some State Department offices. Yet Muslims remember with irony that, during the cold war, the West encouraged the growth of Islam as a counter to Arab nationalism and the Soviet influence. Feeding Islamic radicals Such policies create the very anti-Western attitudes that radical Islamic leaders feed on, they say. Prof. Samih Farsoun, at American University, says: "That was the appeal of Ayatollah Khomeini. He said, 'The West doesn't care about Islam. It is using you.' " Yet many American Muslims admit that, despite what they regard as

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Vandenberg Air Force Base is located northwest of Lompoc, California in what used to be Camp Cooke. The base is under the jurisdiction of the 30th Space Wing, Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). Vandenberg is responsible for space and missing testing by the Department of Defense with a mission to place satellites in polar orbit from the West Coast. The base also has wing personnel that offer support for the LGM-30g Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Force Development Evaluation program. The Air Force Base is attached to the history of the former Camp Cooke, which was a training center built before US involvement in World War II. History of Camp Cooke In 1941, the US Army wanted to open more training centers to train armored and infantry troops for World War II. The Army purchased 86,000 acres off the Central Coast of California between Santa Maria and Lompoc. The land used to be open ranches. This area would eventually become Camp Cooke. The area was quite scenic with canyons, rolling hills, plateaus and remote woodlands that were far away from populated areas. It was considered the ideal training location. Construction began on Camp Cooke in September 1941. The Army activated the camp early despite that it wasn’t finished until much later. The base was named after Major General Phillip St. George Cooke who was a cavalry officer and had graduated from West Point in 1827. He was an officer in the Indian Wars, Mexican War and Civil War, where he fought for the Union side. Colonel Cooke led a wagon route to California and much of the railroad follows the same path that he took. Troop training could not wait for Camp Cooke to be completed. The 5th Armored Division began training in March 1942. Tanks and artillery were apart of daily life. They continued training until leaving for the front lines overseas. In addition to the 5th Division, the 6th, 11th, 13th and 20th Armored Divisions were also stationed here. They joined the 86th and 97th Infantry divisions as well as the 2nd Filipino Infantry Regiment. Anti-aircraft artillery, combat vehicles and hospital units were also developed for Camp Cooke. At

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Vandenberg Air Force Base is located northwest of Lompoc, California in what used to [...] one time during World War II, there were over 400 different outfits that passed through the base. German and Italian prisoners of war eventually made their way to Camp Cooke. They were kept separate from one another and worked at various jobs like civil engineering and mechanical engineering services, food service, laundry service and clerical positions. There were also positions in local community service where labor was severely lacking due to the war. Most of the time, the prisoners worked in agricultural sectors. In 1946, a maximum security army disciplinary barracks was built and housed military prisoners from the Army. As the camp closed in 1946, the personnel at the disciplinary barracks were tasked with installing caretaking facilities. Then the entire camp was turned over for grazing and agriculture. Camp Cooke became a training installation for units headed to Korea between 1950 and 1953. The camp was inactive by February 1953. The Vandenberg Air Force Base was built four years after Camp Cooke closed. Missile development in the 1950s required a place for adequate training and testing. Vandenberg Air Force Base became the first comat ready missile base. The remote distance from cities and the terrain was perfect for a new Air Force base. History of Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg was named in honor of General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, who was the second Chief of Staff of the US Air Force and chief architect of the modern Air Force. He would retire in 1953 and later die in Washington D.C. in 1954. Camp Cooke was largely inoperable when the first airmen arrived at Cooke Air Force Base in the 1950s. The buildings were rundown. The dirt trails were in need of repair. Renovation and construction began to build a better Air Force base and construct several necessary facilities like missile launch and control centers. The 392nd Air Base Group was activated in begin operations at Cooke AFB. The first Air Force ballistic missile wing was the 704th Strategic Missile Wing. The 1st Missile Division was also activated in Inglewood, California but later relocated

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Vandenberg Air Force Base is located northwest of Lompoc, California in what used to [...] to Cooke AFB. Most of the missile operations and training in the US was supervised by these two divisions. As the Russian Sputnik satellite went into orbit on October 4th, 1957, the US Air Force began to ramp up its space operations. The Department of Defense allowed launching ballistic missiles from Cooke AFB for testing. Operations began to increase until Cooke AFB had the largest Operational System Test Facility. In 1958, Cooke AFB was renamed to Vandenberg AFB and began testing PGM-17 Thor missiles, SM-65 Atlas, HGM-25A Titan I, LGM-25C Titan II, LGM-30 Minteman, LGM-118 Peacekeeper and ground-based midcourse defense interceptors. Vandenberg also launched the first polar orbiting satellite Discoverer I in 1959. Space exploration became a major focus for Vandenberg. In 1972, it was selected as the West Coast Space Shuttle launch and landing site. In 1995, the California Spaceport began operations under Spaceport Systems International. It comprised the existing launch pads, payload processing facilities, telemetry, runways and tracking equipment already in place. The shuttle program began launching more satellites including Delta IV and Atlas V. Space exploration and development continues to be a prime focus of Vandenberg. The SpaceX Falcon is the latest to launch in 2013. Housing at Vandenberg Vandenberg has a separate site set up for Vandenberg housing for families and individuals. You can browse all of the current neighborhoods and houses available, and there are also guides for residents who are relocating to the base. The Housing Management Office supports individuals and families moving to Vandenberg Air Force Base. You can reach this office at 805-606-3434 and the DSN is 276-3434. The Housing Management Office includes privatized housing, unaccompanied housing and off-base housing communities.

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Even if solar cells themselves were free, solar power would remain very expensive because of the huge structures and support systems required to extract large amounts of electricity from a source so weak that it takes hours to deliver a tan. This is why the (few) greens ready to accept engineering and economic reality have suddenly emerged as avid proponents of nuclear power. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident—which didn’t harm anyone, and wouldn’t even have damaged the reactor core if the operators had simply kept their hands off the switches and let the automatic safety systems do their job—ostensibly green antinuclear activists unwittingly boosted U.S. coal consumption by about 400 million tons per year. The United States would be in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol today if we could simply undo their handiwork and conjure back into existence the nuclear plants that were in the pipeline in nuclear power’s heyday. Nuclear power is fantastically compact, and—as America’s nuclear navy, several commercial U.S. operators, France, Japan, and a handful of other countries have convincingly established—it’s both safe and cheap wherever engineers are allowed to get on with it. But getting on with it briskly is essential, because costs hinge on the huge, up-front capital investment in the power plant. Years of delay between the capital investment and when it starts earning a return are ruinous. Most of the developed world has made nuclear power unaffordable by surrounding it with a regulatory process so sluggish and unpredictable that no one will pour a couple of billion dollars into a new plant, for the good reason that no one knows when (or even if) the investment will be allowed to start making money. – Peter W. Huber, 2009 (…) Another argument commonly advanced is that getting over carbon will, nevertheless, be comparatively cheap, because it will get us over oil, too—which will impoverish our enemies and save us a bundle at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. But uranium aside, the most economical substitute for oil is, in fact, electricity generated with coal. Cheap coal-fired electricity has been, is, and will continue to be a substitute for oil, or a substitute for natural gas, which can in turn substitute for oil. By sharply boosting the cost of coal

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Even if solar cells themselves were free, solar power would remain very expensive because of the huge structures and [...] electricity, the war on carbon will make us more dependent on oil, not less. The first place where coal displaces oil is in the electric power plant itself. When oil prices spiked in the early 1980s, U.S. utilities quickly switched to other fuels, with coal leading the pack; the coal-fired plants now being built in China, India, and other developing countries are displacing diesel generators. More power plants burning coal to produce cheap electricity can also mean less natural gas used to generate electricity. And less used for industrial, commercial, and residential heating, welding, and chemical processing, as these users switch to electrically powered alternatives. The gas that’s freed up this way can then substitute for diesel fuel in heavy trucks, delivery vehicles, and buses. And coal-fired electricity will eventually begin displacing gasoline, too, as soon as plug-in hybrid cars start recharging their batteries directly from the grid. (…) To top it all, using electricity generated in large part by coal to power our passenger cars would lower carbon emissions—even in Indiana, which generates 75 percent of its electricity with coal. Big power plants are so much more efficient than the gasoline engines in our cars that a plug-in hybrid car running on electricity supplied by Indiana’s current grid still ends up more carbon-frugal than comparable cars burning gasoline in a conventional engine under the hood. Old-guard energy types have been saying this for decades. In a major report released last March, the World Wildlife Fund finally concluded that they were right all along. But true carbon zealots won’t settle for modest reductions in carbon emissions when fat targets beckon. They see coal-fired electricity as the dragon to slay first. Huge, stationary sources can’t run or hide, and the cost of doing without them doesn’t get rung up in plain view at the gas pump. California, Pennsylvania, and other greener-than-thou states have made flatlining electricity consumption the linchpin of their war on carbon. That is the one certain way to halt the displacement of foreign oil by cheap, domestic electricity. The oil-coal economics come down to this. Per unit of energy delivered, coal costs about one-fif

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Even if solar cells themselves were free, solar power would remain very expensive because of the huge structures and [...] th as much as oil—but contains one-third more carbon. High carbon taxes (or tradable permits, or any other economic equivalent) sharply narrow the price gap between oil and the one fuel that can displace it worldwide, here and now. The oil nasties will celebrate the green war on carbon as enthusiastically as the coal industry celebrated the green war on uranium 30 years ago. The other 5 billion are too poor to deny these economic realities. For them, the price to beat is 3-cent coal-fired electricity. China and India won’t trade 3-cent coal for 15-cent wind or 30-cent solar. As for us, if we embrace those economically frivolous alternatives on our own, we will certainly end up doing more harm than good. Consider your next Google search. As noted in a recent article in Harper’s, “Google . . . and its rivals now head abroad for cheaper, often dirtier power.” Google itself (the “don’t be evil” company) is looking to set up one of its electrically voracious server farms at a site in Lithuania, “disingenuously described as being near a hydroelectric dam.” But Lithuania’s grid is 0.5 percent hydroelectric and 78 percent nuclear. Perhaps the company’s next huge farm will be “near” the Three Gorges Dam in China, built to generate over three times as much power as our own Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State. China will be happy to play along, while it quietly plugs another coal plant into its grid a few pylons down the line. All the while, of course, Google will maintain its low-energy headquarters in California, a state that often boasts of the wise regulatory policies—centered, one is told, on efficiency and conservation—that have made it such a frugal energy user. But in fact, sky-high prices have played the key role, curbing internal demand and propelling the flight from California of power plants, heavy industries, chip fabs, server farms, and much else (see “California’s Potemkin Environmentalism,” Spring 2008). They use energy far less efficiently than we do, and they remain

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“If a tooth has been broken as a result of accident or injury, rinse the mouth with warm water to keep the area clean. Use cold compress to keep the swelling down and get to a dentist’s office quickly. If the tongue or lip is bitten, clean the area gently with a cloth, and apply cold compress to reduce swelling. If the bleeding doesn’t stop, go to a hospital emergency room at once. In the case of a toothache, rinse with warm water; make sure food or foreign objects aren’t lodged around your tooth by using floss.” Don’t let the horror of dental problems plague you on a trip when you should be enjoying your vacation. Schedule an oppointment with any of the dependable Oakville dentists, and reinforce your teeth’s protection beforehand. So how often should you have a dental X-ray taken? Essentially, this should vary depending on your medical and dental condition. A person with severe periodontal disease will need an X-ray taken more often than a patient with a healthier mouth who comes in only for regular or minor procedures. It is recommended that patients who go to their dentist for minor procedures should, nonetheless, have X-rays, if deemed necessary for monitoring purposes, while patients with more extensive treatment, should have them taken more often. The biggest concern with X-rays is exposure to radiation. But today, most dentists will have digital x-ray systems which allow the dentist to see the image immediately and expose you to approximately 90% less radiation than conventional x-rays. Ultimately, it’s always safer to have the x-ray & diagnose the problem than to miss the diagnosis without the x-ray. The Bottom Line Dental X-rays help your local Oakville dentist deliver the best oral and dental care for you, especially in cases where the unexpected problem shows up, and your dentist has been able to provide the timely intervention. For this reason, dental practices, such as those of Dr. Arun Narang & Associates, see to it that their team of dentists is equipped to perform any necessary treatment. After all, what better way to take care of your teeth than to diagnose problems before they surface. Answering yes to many of these questions should warrant a visit to any of the reputable local Mississauga dentists, such as the practice of

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“If a tooth has been broken as a result of accident or injury, rinse the mouth [...] Dr. Arun Narang & Associates. The most basic periodontal disease prevention tips are also the most fundamental rule when it comes to oral health: brush at least twice daily, floss just as often and visit your dentist regularly. If you’re a smoker, do not smoke to excess; if you can manage at all, curb the vice completely. Recognize the danger of gum disease, and fight it with better oral habits and regular dental visits. Based on the condition of his/her teeth, the dentist will let you know when to schedule your next visit. Most dentists recommend that toddlers visit the dentist about every six months. If you haven’t found a dentist for your child yet, a trusted dentist in Mississauga like Dr. Arun Narang offers a full suite of dental services and treatments that ensure your child gets the best in oral health care. “This is why regular dental check-ups are so important. During routine visits, dentists can thoroughly examine their patients’ teeth and gums, and identify any decay or disease present. They can evaluate a patient’s oral condition to reveal any signs of teeth wear and tear, and learn how he/she is doing with taking care of his/her pearly whites. Leading dentists in Oakville; like Dr. Arun Narang & Associates, encourage their patients to develop good oral hygiene habits; such as, diligently brushing and flossing multiple times a day. The brushing can rid the mouth of most or all of the plaque on the visible surfaces of the teeth, but has a hard time with the plaque between the teeth. Floss is the solution for this situation. Regular brushing and flossing will keep the plaque from building up, and causing problems. In addition, dentists in Oakville strongly suggest that their patients have regular check-ups and cleanings as needed. Besides the benefits mentioned above, it is during th “In today’s world, people are often feeling excess stress due to increased workload, added responsibilities and so on. If stress is a contributing factor for you and you find yourself bruxing (grinding), see what’s available from experienced dentists like Dr. Arun Narang & Associates at Oakville Dental Arts

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Meet Louise Joy Brown. She was born on July 25th, 1978. She was the first ever baby to be conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF). By 2006, over 3 million babies had been born worldwide thanks to assisted reproductive technologies (ART). And some 60,000 babies are born every year thanks to IVF. In IVF, eggs are removed from the woman and fertilized in a lab, then implanted in a uterus for gestation. Of the eggs fertilized, the doctors pick the “best” of the lot, then usually implant around two or three so as to have a higher chance of pregnancy without risking many multiple births. If there were enough “good” eggs, then the non-implanted ones are often frozen and cryopreserved. This allows for the couple (or woman) to try again for another pregnancy if they want another child or if the first time around didn’t take. But problems can ensue. What if the couple doesn’t want any more children? What if they separate or divorce? This is a major ethical issue currently being fought in many courtrooms. Should the eggs be saved if one of the parents still wants to have children? Should they be donated to another couple trying to have children? Or should they simply be discarded as medical waste? Many, many court cases have been and are being fought over frozen embryos. In many cases, the couple has split and only one of the two wants to keep the frozen embryos. Perhaps one still wants to use them to have children, or to donate them, while the other doesn’t want to become a parent. How should the court rule? First of all, how can the court classify them? They are not legally persons yet, so it’s not the same as a custody battle over a couple of toddlers. But the embryos aren’t property either – they contain the genetic material of the parents and have the potential to be life. Many U.S. court cases have resulted in the parent demanding their right to privacy and to not have their genetic material used for procreation against their will winning the case, leaving the parent still wanting to have children or donate the embryos left behind. Most times, it is the ex-husband or ex-boyfriend who doesn

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Meet Louise Joy Brown. She was born on July 25th, 197 [...] ’t want to have the responsibility of a child, while the woman wants to keep the embryos, often because she can no longer produce eggs likely to result in a healthy baby. Cases such as increasing age or certain types or cancer are common. If the court rules with the parent in favour of not keeping the embryos, if the couple signs an agreement or if the frozen embryos themselves are abandoned, then the cryopreserved zygotes are destroyed by being placed in water. But is it even right to so simply destroy these pieces of pre-life? First of all, many couples don’t have the money available for ART, so the donation of unwanted embryos or eggs would be put to good use. Or the embryos could be donated for research, particularly stem cell research. Also, while many compare the process of discarding the embryos to abortion, I feel like it is something more. Imagine first a couple who froze several extra embryos after they had a successful pregnancy. However, later, one or both of them decide they don’t want the remaining embryos and have them destroyed. Now, imagine a second couple. They are able to naturally get pregnant, and do so with the full intention of starting a family. However, during the pregnancy, the couple decides they no longer want kids and have an abortion. Or perhaps they separate and maybe the father demands that the mother has an abortion because he doesn’t want a biological child that he would have to provide care or money for. I feel like abortion should be legal in some cases (but this is neither the time nor the place to discuss my exact views on abortion), but I hardly think it should be allowed if a woman or couple decide that they want to have children and start a family, then decide to abort the baby partway through the pregnancy because they changed their minds. And I think that the destruction of frozen embryos (while not a perfectly similar case) is also like this. From my research, I know at least these things about IVF: it is generally uncomfortable to stimulate and extract the eggs, and it can cost up to $15,000 for the original treatment plus up to $600 per year for embryo storage. Then I really don’t think most

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Meet Louise Joy Brown. She was born on July 25th, 197 [...] people would go and freeze their embryos just for kicks and giggles. So, I will assume that they created and froze these embryos with the intent of using them to have children. If you created these embryos with he purpose of using them to have children, then I view their destruction the same way I would view it if you got pregnant to start a family, but aborted the fetus at some point during the pregnancy. While I know that the doctors usually take more eggs than are necessary when going through IVF, I still don’t think their destruction should be undertaken so lightly and nonchalantly. At the very least, why not donate them for research? If you’re discarding them, you surely have no use for them. My suggestion for a solution to the problem is fairly simple. I would have the eggs and the sperm frozen separately, so that in case of divorce or some other circumstance, each partner could take their own donation and be on their merry way. I read an article recently about a court battle over some embryos. A woman and her boyfriend had frozen some embryos, but ended up splitting up. Now, the woman has had ovarian cancer and the eggs in storage are the only she’ll ever be able to have. However, since her ex-boyfriend’s sperm was also frozen with her already-fertilized eggs, he also had a say in their fate, and he did not want to have a child from his own genetic matter without it really being his kid. I see both people’s sides here. While I can imagine the woman’s desire to have kids that were actually her own, I can also see the man’s desire not have a child out there that was half him but really not his, not to mention probably having to pay child support or something of the like. Again, abortion enters heavily into this discussion. For those who believe that life begins at fertilization, the destruction of frozen embryos would be no less than murder. For people like Plato, who believe that “the human soul does not enter the body until birth”, then it is very much the same as doctors discarding any other medical waste. So, as Mariana said, “Ethics are very personal.” So

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New research has discovered a substance in tangerines not only prevents obesity, but also offers protection against type 2 diabetes, and even atherosclerosis. A study suggests that a high intake of omega-3 fats from fish helps prevent obesity-related chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. The worldwide prevalence of obesity has nearly doubled since 1980, according to a major study on how three important heart disease risk factors have changed across the world over the last three decades. The effect of a high-fat meal on blood vessel walls can vary among individuals depending on factors such as their waist size and triglyceride levels. An ingredient found in abundance in birch bark appears to have an array of metabolic benefits, according to new studies that are reported in the January issue of Cell Metabolism. Lifestyle changes between childhood and adulthood appear associated with whether an individual will maintain, improve or develop high-risk cholesterol levels. Report suggests that aggressively pursuing low blood pressure and cholesterol levels may not benefit, and could even harm, some patients with diabetes. New findings suggest that it's not whether body fat is stored in the belly that affects metabolic risk factors for diabetes, high blood triglycerides and cardiovascular disease, but whether it collects in the liver. Cholesterol can affect the flow of the electrical currents that generate the heart beat Even as low-carbohydrate/high-protein diets have proven successful at helping individuals rapidly lose weight, little is known about the diets' long-term effects on vascular health. People with diabetes who maintain intensive, low blood sugar levels are significantly less likely to suffer heart attacks and coronary heart disease. Obese people who drink fructose-sweetened beverages with their meals have an increased rise of triglycerides following the meal, according to new research. Statin Study group cites nearly 900 studies on the adverse effects of HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors (statins), a class of drugs widely used to treat high cholesterol. Cholesterol, both good and bad, gets plenty of attention when the subject is reducing the risk of heart disease. Yet triglycerides, a

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Ever wondered what happens with the millions of used auto tires disposed of every year? Ever dreamed of utility bills of less than $100 for the entire year? Just outside Taos, New Mexico is a large community of sustainable housing. These homes are built from used tires, packed dirt, adobe mud, aluminum cans, glass bottles and other recycled items. Concrete is used to fill in some walls and provide a smooth surface. Solar panels provide the electricity. Rain water is collected and reused/recycled four times. If you’ve ever wanted to consider how to build a home and have less impact on the environment, the Earthship neighborhood may be the place for you! We visited the neighborhood on a trip to Taos in July 2011. We were driving back to Taos from Ojo Caliente Hot Springs and noticed some very interesting, very low profile homes in the desert landscape. They literally looked like housing from another planet. Just off Highway 64 there is a visitor’s center which charges $5/person to visit. Please respect the private roads and homes of the area’s residents. Here’s a little information on the sustainability features of this unique housing: Electricity is produced through solar power and stored in batteries. DC power is used for lights, pumps and refrigeration. A power inverter converts DC power into AC for TV’s, computers, power tools and other needs. Rainwater is gathered during the wet season on the roof and stored in cisterns below. Through solar power, water is pumped into a solar hot water heater and as needed throughout the home. Water from sinks and showers is recycled through gray water treatment planters, feeding plants (like a vegetable garden) and flowers. Many earthships have extensive gardens-growing fruits and vegetables all year long, and thereby growing their own fresh produce. The water is pumped into toilet tanks for use. The black water is then pumped into a typical septic tank, and recycled for use in landscaping plants. Used tires are hard-packed with dirt. The packed tires create the walls and foundation. Their thermal mass qualities passively heat and cool the house by absorbing heat in the summer and releasing heat in winter. We were surprised at the pleasant temperature in the earthship on a pretty hot July day. The house is low profile and surrounded by earth. Most walls can

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The spectacular Pyramids of Giza, located in northern Egypt, have been a source of discussion and debate for many years. We can only surmise at how awestruck the people at the time must have been to bear witness to such a marvel – after all, the largest of three Pyramids, standing at 481ft, is believed to have been the tallest man-made structure on earth for almost 4,000 years. Completed around 2560 BC, the Great Pyramid of Giza was designed as a tomb or mausoleum. But what many historians and archaeologists believe to be most interesting is the sheer weight of every stone block that went into the Pyramid’s construction. It is estimated that each block weighed between 2.5 and 70 tons. When we think about how difficult it must have been for the workers at the time to have transported and deposited those blocks, especially upon the higher levels of the pyramid, we can’t help but wonder if some type of external help was obtained. At the time, the people would have only had access to fairly rudimentary construction materials, and in all likelihood had some form of weight- and pulley system developed, but it is unlikely that their expertise extended far beyond that. One theory states that a fulcrum system was utilized, but even that remains up for debate. The logistics involved in hauling stones of such colossal weight are mind-boggling, and in many ways seem to defy the technology of the time. It is believed that ramps were used in the construction process, but even so, their exact configuration remains unknown, and the ramps themselves would have to have been tremendously strong to support the weight of the stones. Taking all that into consideration, is it possible that extraterrestrials somehow assisted the people in the construction of the Pyramids? It is important to note here that some of the figures often bandied about when it comes to the construction of the Pyramids don’t quite add up. For instance, it is said that it took 20,000 workers a period of 20 years to build the Great Pyramid (of Khufu). That being the case, and based upon the number of stones in the Pyramid (estimated to be several million), a stone would have to have been

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The spectacular Pyramids of Giza, located in northern Egypt, have been a source of discussion [...] placed roughly every two or three minutes over those two decades in order for that schedule to make sense. We must also bear in mind that the Great Pyramid boasts astoundingly accurate angles, making it a true pyramid. The Egyptians were skilled mathematicians but even so, the exact alignment of the Great Pyramid (3/60th of a degree to true north) is astonishing. The mortar used to construct the Pyramid is of unknown origin, despite many attempts to reproduce it. These facts only add to the mystery of the pyramids and in many ways raise more questions than they answer. Based on the construction difficulties alone, one might suspect outside help. Celestial & Astronomical Relations The Great Pyramid was used to calculate solstices and equinoxes. The layout of the Pyramids as a whole reflects the ancient Egyptian practice of Duat, that is to say, designing and placing structures on Earth with the aim of mirroring the stars and other celestial bodies. The three Pyramids located in Giza, when viewed from above, form the constellation that makes up Orion’s Belt (three stars in a line, but slightly off-center). Historians commonly believe that this has to do with the worship of the Egyptian God Osiris. Osiris was the God of the Dead, the Afterlife, and of transition. In that respect, it makes sense that the Egyptians would have wanted their beloved leaders buried in accordance with the constellation that represented the God of those who have passed on. However, this begs the question – why Osiris/Orion’s Belt? What is it about that particular set of stars that captivated the Egyptians at the time? Could their “God” have been some form of extraterrestrial life that visited them, with origins in the Orion group of stars? More and more, those who examine ancient cultures are finding that in many instances, there is the possibility that the deities worshiped could have been aliens. There is no abundance of factual evidence one way or the other, however the mysteries surrounding structures such as the Pyramids, as well as the Egyptians’ obsession with the stars, leads some to believe that

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Overview of Resilience Solutions Here’s an overview of resilience solutions for businesses, states and cities, with links to additional resources: Business Resilience Solutions: Businesses take a variety of approaches in addressing risks, and often view climate change as a “threat multiplier” that makes existing risks worse. Business initiatives to build resilience include developing disaster recovery plans, adding onsite energy resources like combined heat and power systems or rooftop solar, and identifying backup supply and distribution chains. Small businesses may deploy different strategies like installing green roofs for water retention and communicating preparedness information to employees. C2ES examines how companies are preparing for climate risks, the strategies they are using to build resilience, and what is keeping them from doing more in Weathering the Storm: Building Business Resilience to Climate Change and Weathering the Next Storm: A Closer Look at Business Resilience. State Resilience Solutions: State governments are crucial in convening local and private interests related to climate change, and pooling the resources and expertise of the many departments or agencies that can be affected by or help address climate change. Fifteen states currently have climate adaptation or resilience plans, (with five more states currently developing them). States can be influential by adopting resilience practices in state-owned assets and operations and by adopting policies that mandate or incentivize climate resilience in insurance, transportation, and building codes. For example, Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Management Council includes changing sea levels in its special area management plan for communities on the shoreline. C2ES explores what states are doing on our State Action on Resilience page and explores how they can engage with businesses in Framework for Engaging Small- and Medium-sized Businesses in Maryland on Climate Resilience. City Resilience Solutions: Cities and smaller communities face a variety of challenges, whether they’re new, like sea level rise, or existing, like flooding or drought. Cities have developed standalone resilience plans, like Pittsburgh’s Resilience Strategy, while others have included resilience planning into master plans (e.g. Keene, New Hampshire) and hazard mitigation plans (e.g. Lewes, Delaware, and Baltimore). New Orleans developed a resilience strategy to implement throughout city operations resulting in

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Hurricane Katrina and Bernie Sanders: From Neoliberal Disaster to 'Political Revolution' There is only one presidential candidate who has consistently fought for the kinds of policies that New Orleans so desperately required prior to and during Katrina, and that it needs now more than ever. The 10th anniversary of the devastation of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has been an occasion for reflection on that horrific event and the state of the city’s recovery. Much of that commemoration, especially locally, has centered on the theme of resilience. This is understandable; in many ways the city has recovered, and many people have sacrificed much to make that recovery happen. In a city so dependent economically on tourism it is important to stress that New Orleans remains a desirable destination. It also makes sense that local officials, and New Orleanians generally, would want to celebrate and pat themselves on the back a bit about how far the city has come since the terrible days, months, and, for many people years after August 29, 2005. But the celebration can gloss important facts about the nature of the disaster and the limited nature of the recovery, and these are facts that, despite having come together in an especially powerful, tragic, and criminal way in New Orleans, are rooted in much more general conditions in American political and economic life. Like cities across the country, New Orleans has been controlled by powerful interests and ideologies that have slashed public services and investment while insuring that local, state, and federal governments serve profits over people. The consequences of these so-called reforms have been devastating. Cities have become home to unprecedented inequality. The affluent acquire ever-greater wealth through tax-breaks, subsidies, and political access while enjoying high-end restaurants, a lively entertainment scene, and upscaling neighborhoods—what in New Orleans is often referred to as “the recovery.” "What was needed [prior to Katrina] was precisely what powerful interests would not allow: adequate public investment in the levee system; state regulations to protect our wetlands; and a public commitment to housing, healthcare, education, and the economy that would have left more of us prepared for a disaster in the first place." Meanwhile, most Americans—and certainly most New Orleanians—are unable to find jobs with

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Hurricane Katrina and Bernie Sanders: From Neoliberal Disaster to 'Pol [...] decent wages, benefits, and security at the same time as the shrinking public sector limits their ability to access affordable housing, healthcare, and education. It is precisely this rapidly growing inequality, or what Bernie Sanders has referred to as “the great moral issue of our time,” that his campaign for President seeks to address. It is a message and commitment that should resonate in southern Louisiana. New Orleans now has the second-worst income inequality of any major city in the country. What separates New Orleans from other cities is that the attack on public investment, and the promotion of an unregulated private sector, contributed to the greatest disaster in U.S. history. Calls to fix the levees and invest in infrastructure prior to Katrina went unheeded, as did warnings from scientists that climate change would lead to larger storms, and that the destruction of Louisiana wetlands had weakened the region’s natural defenses. What was needed was precisely what powerful interests would not allow: adequate public investment in the levee system; state regulations to protect our wetlands; and a public commitment to housing, healthcare, education, and the economy that would have left more of us prepared for a disaster in the first place. And yet, if Hurricane Katrina delivered a hard lesson about the consequences of gutting public investment, we certainly did not apply this wisdom to the recovery. Instead, we doubled down. Dismantling the public sector has been the guiding mantra for those who have controlled the post-storm recovery. The chaos of Katrina not only provided cover for powerful interests to slash public services at a much faster rate but allowed them to pass off such policies as much needed “reform” (and then sell it as a “model” for the rest of the country). This sleight of hand has had disastrous results. Resilience only gets you so far in the absence of resources, a coherent plan, and a public commitment. Public housing was the first victim of what then Mayor Ray Nagin boasted was going to be a “market-driven recovery.” Contrary to what people outside the city seem to think, public housing in New Orleans did not get rebuilt after the storm. At a time when New Orleans needed affordable housing the most, it demolished public housing projects—among the stur

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Hurricane Katrina and Bernie Sanders: From Neoliberal Disaster to 'Pol [...] diest buildings in the city—to make way for upscale redevelopment. The consequences were predictable. Thousands of working poor people were displaced from their homes, and in many cases from the city, as the number of housing units plummeted and rents skyrocketed. This has a produced a city that is more than ever defined by a real estate market that not only reflects inequality but drives it. It is not simply that developers have made millions and now largely call the shots. It has been a much more intimate process, creating deeply felt divisions along race and class lines. Those who live in “certain” neighborhoods and own their homes have benefitted considerably from the "upside" of upscaling redevelopment—rapidly rising house prices, outrageous rents, and a gastro pub or yoga studio on every corner. But the vast majority of people have been left out of a shallow recovery—driven by real estate, tourism, and start-ups—that has created a city that is more expensive and less livable for most citizens. Education was not far behind housing. It started with our teachers, who were demonized, fired, and then demonized again for trying to hold together a public education system that was never adequately supported in the first place. Then, like housing, education was largely freed of city and state mandates, thereby allowing “reformers” and “entrepreneurs,” most of whom had little experience or expertise, free reign over what is perhaps our most vital public service. Again, the results have not been entirely unpredictable, even if overzealous advocates have often manipulated the data to demonstrate the “success” of the charter movement. Educational performance has not improved overall in New Orleans, and has actually gotten worse for the most marginalized. "Dismantling the public sector has been the guiding mantra for those who have controlled the post-storm recovery." Beneath the neoliberal triumphalism that has largely hijacked New Orleanians’ rightful pause to reflect on that literal cataclysm—“Before Katrina” and “Since Katrina” are now universal markers for dating even the most innocuous, personal or trivial events in local life—to register its continuing impact, and to celebrate actual people

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Hurricane Katrina and Bernie Sanders: From Neoliberal Disaster to 'Pol [...] ’s resilience, lie those realities of deepening inequality and a political regime organized around reproducing it. And, when exuberant “innovators” and marketizers exult in New Orleans' fabulous recovery and tout it as a model for other cities, it is that logic of ever deepening inequality and ever intensifying upward redistribution they laud and wish to replicate elsewhere. The Chicago Tribune’s execrable Kristen McQueary was only just stupid enough not to be more careful in gushing her crude, rhapsodic dream that a similar fate would befall Chicago so that “reformers” there might exert a similarly free hand in destroying social protections and imposing naked capitalist class power. (See her column here and her similarly revealing unpology here. For a critical response, see here.) This is the vision that the likes of Scott Walker, Bruce Rauner, and Louisiana’s own Bobby Jindal, the sociopathic Muppet who occasionally visits the governor’s mansion, hold for the United States as a whole. And that fact ties this moment of commemoration and reflection on the horror and depredation of Katrina’s aftermath directly to the crossroads we confront as we prepare for the 2016 elections. The political arrangements that led to Katrina’s disastrous aftermath were bipartisan and neoliberal. Democrats as well as Republicans, at local, state, and national levels, for decades bled the public sector, sold off or abandoned public goods, and mortgaged the environment—in south Louisiana in particular the wetlands that protected the New Orleans area from storm surge—to corporate interests, all justified with fairy tales about efficiency of the market or doing more with less. Assaults on the living standards of poor and working people persisted unabated without regard to whether Democrats or Republicans were in office. The attack on public housing that culminated in the travesty of demolition of sound housing stock in the midst of New Orleans’s worst affordable housing crisis originated in Bill Clinton’s administration and its HOPE VI program that sold upscaling redevelopment as providing “mixed income” housing for the poor. It was the Clinton administration’s “welfare reform” that

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Hurricane Katrina and Bernie Sanders: From Neoliberal Disaster to 'Pol [...] eliminated the federal commitment to income provision for the poor and contributed to further demonization of a so called “urban underclass.” The Clinton administration—like the Carter administration before it and the Obama administration after it—reneged on campaign promises to press for labor law reform to restore some measure of workers’ power against predatory corporations. "Assaults on the living standards of poor and working people in New Orleans persisted unabated without regard to whether Democrats or Republicans were in office." In that light, if New Orleans provides a lesson for the rest of the country, it is that we cannot afford the rule of bipartisan neoliberalism any longer; most of us never could afford it really, but the stakes grow higher all the time. We need a substantive, radical change in the center of gravity of American political life, and we believe that New Orleans’s experience in particular underscores that Bernie Sanders is the only candidate running who understands that fact of political life, and he is the only candidate who has lived in accordance with that understanding during the course of his political career. Sanders is the only candidate running for President who has consistently fought for the kinds of policies that New Orleans so desperately required prior to and during Katrina, and that it needs now more than ever. As more Americans have found out who Bernie Sanders is, and have begun to understand what he stands for, turnouts at his rallies have soared along with his poll numbers. His campaign platform is nothing short of a political revolution, and include the very kinds of policies that New Orleans so desperately needs: including a truly universal healthcare, a minimum wage of $15, expanded rights for workers, free tuition at public universities, and reducing the income gap between the rich and poor. He is, quite literally, the only candidate talking seriously about the issues that matter the most to most New Orleanians. As we in the city and others elsewhere commemorate the anniversary of Katrina, it would be good to consider that Bernie Sanders is the only presidential aspirant calling for policies that would have prevented that disaster from occurring on anywhere near the scale on which it did, would have made recovery from it more coherent, rational, just, and inclusive. And that is another lesson to take from this moment. We should take the moment

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How I Use It Students in my Spanish class never had much exposure to the sites in Spain. So, they were to look at Barcelona and Madrid, and based on what they saw in the app, decide which city seems more interesting to them. At first, I spent a lot o time marking sites in both cities as "favorites". All students signed in on the same account that I created. Once the lesson began, however, it was apparent that instead of requiring students to look at the favorites I had marked, they needed to just explore the "cards" themselves. The photos served as a great tool to helping my students visualize what Barcelona and Madrid look like. It was better for exploration purposes than Google Earth because the "cards" make it very easy to select sites and learn about them. I love that this app is international. It makes it much more relevant for my purposes. I also like that many cards had information in the target language. It was nice authentic language practice for my students. I wrote above that I was initially marking "favorite" places in advance of the lesson. Google Earth tours remain my tool of choice if I am setting a direct path with specific stops for my students. I had planned on allowing students to use this app for about five minutes; I thought they would get bored. The students proved me wrong, however. They were engrossed in what they were finding out. This activity lent itself to an overall feel of a city. As I mentioned, it was intended to be a very short activity. If I wanted to students to have a deeper learning, I definitely would have needed to integrate more structure, requiring students to write about or track specific findings. While I was skeptical of how this would differ from or offer anything better than Google Earth, I now see some useful applications of it in my classroom. I could certainly use it if I wanted students to create a vacation itinerary as well as for general exploration of a certain neighborhood or city. I noticed that some of my students even began to toggle between street view and the default map, demonstrating their curiosity. I won't count this one out!

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5 Ways Cybercriminals Want to Take Advantage of You Cybercrime is predicted to cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021. Those with bad intentions are launching cyber-attacks at organizations, governments, and consumers worldwide. At the same time, there is a shortage of skilled technical security experts. The many forms in which criminals operate online are astonishing. These are the 5 most malicious types of cybercrime, most of which affect both individuals and companies. - Hacking: They Want to Access Your Data Hackers seek to breach defenses and exploit weaknesses in a computer system or network. The worst case scenario is when a hacker accesses systems and leaks or uses private data. This can result in reputational and financial damages. Moreover, in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), organizations can be heavily fined. Criminal or black hat hackers should not be confused with ethical or white hat hackers. By simulating attacks on systems, ethical hackers help organizations to identify weak spots and determine how they need to improve their security measures. Some criminal hackers turn around to become security professionals. US hacker Kevin Mitnick spent five years in prison for various computer crimes. He learned his lesson, and decided to use his talents for something good. - Online Identity Theft: Come to my Barbecue Identity theft is much older than the World Wide Web. It is the deliberate use of someone else's identity, usually as a method to commit fraud. Online identity theft is easy to commit and therefore it is unfortunately very common. For example, scammers might set up a fake online profile of a beautiful person and ask for money. Fake accounts are also used to harass political opponents. On Twitter, many counterfeit accounts of US politician Sarah Palin were set up. One of them invited followers to her home for a barbecue, which forced security personnel to rush to her home to intercept unwanted visitors. - Malicious Software Doesn’t Love You Malware, short for malicious software, refers to a variety of hostile or intrusive software. Some forms of malware include: - Computer viruses: this malware replicates itself and infects other systems. - Trojan horses: malicious computer program which misleads users of its true intent. Many forms act as a

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Pre-University Paper, 2002 28 Pages, Grade: 11 3. Historical Background 3.1 James Cook and his way of treating the Native Australians 3.2 The Treatment of the Indigenous People of North America 4. The Treatment of the Aboriginals in the Australian society 4.2 General Consequences of the Racism 4.3 Reasons for the Children's Removal 4.4 Consequences of the Removal 4.5 Fate Report of a Stolen Child 5. National Reactions and Situations 5.1 The Redfern Statement 5.2 Official Government Statement 5.3 The Progress of the Reconciliation 5.4 The Bringing Them Home Report 5.5 The Future of the Aborigines under the John Howard Government 5.6 The Sorry Book 6. International Reactions and Conventions 6.1 The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (9th of December 1948) 6.2 The Human Rights Committee 6.3 The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination 6.4 Reactions of other Countries 6.4.1 The Federal Republic of Germany 6.4.2 The European Union 6.4.3 The United States of America 9.2.1 Sexual assaults reported by Inquiry witnesses 9.2.2 After-effects of forcible removal 9.3 Original Sources 9.3.1 Fate report of a Stolen Child 9.3.2 The 'Terms of Reference' of the 'Bringing them Home' report 9.3.3 The places visited by the 'Bringing them Home report' writers 9.3.4 The address of the Bundespresseamt I spent 11 wonderful months as an exchange student in the country at which behaviour I will look very critical in the following research paper. First of all, I am going to describe my relationship with Australia so the reader will get a better understanding of my point of view. One of the most shocking experiences I made by preparing this research paper was to realise that the racism in Australia is still alive. I had lived in this country for nearly a year and I did not realise at all, to what extent discrimination

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Pre-University Paper, 2002 28 Pages, Grade: [...] of Aboriginals goes. During the preparation time of the Olympic Games in Sydney (New South Wales) there was a big discussion going on about the issue of The Stolen Generation. Stimulated by the arrival of the international media, politicians were fighting in public about paragraphs concerning the Stolen Generation issue on the back of the Aboriginal people. This discussion had special effects on me, as a foreign observer. At this point, I interpreted speeches of some supporters of civil rights as too fussy and simply disturbing. Now that I know about the background of this topic concerning some matters, I changed my mind completely. After a stay of 11 months in Melbourne (Victoria), the time came for me to return to Germany. Many people were asking me whether I would be excited about going home. In these moments, I had to ask myself were my home was. At that time, the answer confused me because I felt my home was there. Certainly, I knew that Germany would turn again into my new/old home but at that very time, I felt quite strangely about this fact. All over, all I really feel privileged that I had the great opportunity to look over the borders of my own environment and to see another country and its way. This also is the reason why I will not mince matters. Australia has an unique status in the world. It is the oasis in the middle of several Asian third world countries. This status is hard to carry because on the one side, Australia has to respect the human rights and on the other side, it has to control the immigration. It is a very large country but there are only very few spots at which humans are able to live and to survive. This puts Australia into its special position. A century ago, Australia started to form its own government. The Australian out of nine different states and territories became one nation. This nation had to learn to get on well with the Aborigines, which turned out to be a great problem for the whites. The young newly formed government decided to assimilate the mixed blooded children into their new and free nation, not knowing that this would be the beginning of the Stolen Generation and would divide the country into half for a long time. Back to the present: Through two world wars, the worldwide economic crisis and the cold war,

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Pre-University Paper, 2002 28 Pages, Grade: [...] the young nation grew up and became an adult nation. Now Australia realises what happened to it but its nation is unsure about how to cope with the problem. In 1642, the Dutch sailor Tasman discovered the Van-Diemens-Land, which today is called Tasmania. On the morning of the 19thof April 1770, Zachariah Hicks, the first officer of the Royal Navy Whitby Cat1 Endeavour, was the first European who saw the coast of Australia. The secret order James Cook got of the British admiralty was to discover the legendary Terra Australia Incognita. On the 28thof April, the Endeavour dropped their anchors at Botany Bay and for the first time in history, a European crew got in touch with Down Under. James Cook was a very careful man and so he planned to make great effort to get on well with the native Australians. However, when Isaac Smith, who was a cousin of Cook's wife, made the first step on the new land, he was welcomed by a group of warriors, who were throwing stones and Boomerangs at him. Cook did not know what it was so he called it a Throwing stick2. In these few days two completely different cultures clashed together. Both sides did not hesitate to use weapons to defeat themselves and their traditions. Cook shot in the air for a few times to increase the radius of the Aborigines who were standing around him and his group. It seemed to work. From this time on, Cook could not get in touch with the Aborigines anymore. There were a few more contacts between the crew and the Aborigines at some other spots of the east coast. However, every effort to communicate with this newly discovered culture was dominated by misunderstandings. Arriving in North America around 1400, the whites mainly planned to increase their wealth. This certainly led to a lot of conflicts with the actual indigenous population of America. An additional factor of aggression was the fact that the whites were convinced they were members of the most superior culture. Many conflicts were caused by this arrogance, starting with casual trading and ending with the distribution of land. In the 16th century, the church proclaimed that it was not even certain

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Pre-University Paper, 2002 28 Pages, Grade: [...] that Indians were human beings. In many cases, the whites accused Indian tribes to be barbarically. The only valid measures to compare the Indians with the Europeans were European values. The main difference between the American indigenous politics and the Australian one was that in the U.S.A. there were treaties that arranged the living of both cultures. Often this did not lead to complete contentment on both sides. At least this gave the Indians a legal base for negotiations. Many Aboriginal tribes lost their land when the Europeans started to colonize the country at the beginning of the 19thcentury. Especially during the time of the gold rush (1851-1852), the Whites took the valuable land of the tribes and ignored their land rights. In 1937, the Commonwealth and all States passed the Policy of Assimilation, which guided the governments until the 1950s: The destiny of the natives of Aboriginal origin but not of the full blood lies in their ultimate absorption by the people of the Commonwealth, and [...] all effort should be directed to that end. Efforts by all state authorities should be directed towards the education of children of mixed blood at white standards, and their subsequent employment under the same conditions as whites with a view to taking their place in the white community.3 . In the 1960s, the policy was replaced by the Policy of Integration, which said Aboriginal people could continue their cultural beliefs and live alongside others of different cultures.4. In 1990, the government started the reconciliation process and founded the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, which purpose it is to solve the Mandatory Sentencing problem and the Native Title problem. In 1993, the National Court of Australia passed the Native Title Act in which they declared that the Aborigines had the right to negotiate. In 1995 and 1996, the Northern Territory and Western Australia passed the Mandatory Sentencing, which is designed to arrest people for property crimes up to twelve months. Poor social groups mostly commit these crimes. This leads to the assumption that its real use is to criminalise the Aborigines. It is easier to discriminate an evil Aborigine than a good one. This behaviour of the government

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Pre-University Paper, 2002 28 Pages, Grade: [...] reminds one of general war tactic: Dehumanising the enemy for decreasing the inhibition threshold of the warriors. Then in 1998, the newly elected government under John Howard, which still is in power nowadays, passed the Native Title Amendment Acts. These acts deprive the Aborigines of the right to negotiate and are the inversion of the National Title Acts of 1993. The UN is still very worried about these developments and asked Australia as the first democratic Western country to eliminate the racial discrimination: While the original 1993 Native Title Act was delicately balanced act between the rights of the indigenous and non-indigenous title holders, the amended act appears to create legal certainly for the Governments and third parties at the expense of indigenous title.5. Does not this tactic of the Australian government show the real 'rights' of the Aborigines? In my opinion the Whites are the real criminals6. They illegally took the land of the Aborigines who afterwards realised it and claim their rights today. The government works very hard dehumanising the Aborigines, thereby making them less believable and trustable. In 2001, the population of Australia consisted of approximately 19 million people. Among them live about 427 000 Aborigines, which is 2 percent of all Australians. Compared to the Whites, the social situation of the Aborigines is in a very bad state. 15.5 Aboriginal babies out of 1000 die at birth, which are 10 more than of the Whites. The life expectancy of the Aborigines is 20 years less than the White's one. Diabetes, tuberculosis and suicide are the reasons for the high death rate among the Aboriginal population. 21 percent of the males and 9 percent of the women abuse alcohol. In 2000, the general unemployment-rate was 7 percent, whereas 23 percent of the Aborigines were unemployed. One reason for the high unemployment rate is the bad education of the Aborigines: Only 32 percent of the Aboriginal children finish school. Most Aborigines are employed by

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Pre-University Paper, 2002 28 Pages, Grade: [...] the communities or the government within Community Development Employment Projects, CDEP. They earn about A$ 10,000 per year, which is A$ 2,500 under the official poverty line. From the beginning of white settlement great parts of the Australian society were convinced that a black child would not be able to survive in the high developed white society at all. Only to the mixed blooded children were given the chance to assimilate into white society. Many Australians thought that the problem's solution lay in the removal of mixed blooded children from home. The first law which regularised this was the Policy of Assimilation. As described above, the government wanted to give those mixed blooded children the chance to assimilate into the white and therefore European culture, religion and society. From their point of view, the problem was that the families of these children had a bad influence on them. Thus the decision was made to raise these children among Europeans. The aim was that the children would forget their origin. In their opinion, they imagined the best possible result could have been comparable to a low class white. This was a rather naive way of thinking. As far back as in the 1900s, Sigmund Freud discovered that the first months of life are the most important and most fixing ones for a child's physical and mental development. All in all, one could ask itself why the Government did not make any effort to study the Aborigines and their way of life. For example, Aborigines live together in big families. In case of illness or death of the mother there are always the grandparents and other family members who will care for the child. The Whites did not know about these traditions or, which is more likely, they did not respect them. Since before 1939 the Australian administrative bodies were given unrestricted power over all families with Aboriginal members7, the national Government passed the G eneral Child Welfare Act in that year. Although that law required the proof […] the children were neglected, uncontrollable or had to live in misery [, which includes the living by Aboriginal traditions] more and more children were removed from their [origin] families.8. Analysing so called Welfare it does not seem very generously anymore. In theory

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Pre-University Paper, 2002 28 Pages, Grade: [...] at least the court process in the Child Welfare Act provided some safeguards against the unfounded separation of children from their families. But in reality, this was not a big help for neither child nor parents, because the courts often were located far from the Aboriginal communities. The parents were not able to seek legal assistance. This and the following example show inefficiency of the law: In that time we had nobody. No-one to talk for us or anything… We had to just go there… and… if we wanted to say something then, in court, it was too late. They said it was already finished. And then, bang, they're gone. That was it (quoted by Wootten 1983 on page 15).9 The following example underlines the arbitrariness of the General Child Welfare Act: The interpretation of neglected and uncontrollable, which was mentioned in the Child Welfare Act, was done very widely. The word neglect included poverty and destitution and was a constant feature of most Aboriginal families. Children who refused to go to school were labelled uncontrollable. Often the reasons why the children ran away from home were that they were sexual abused or even pregnant. Nobody cared about their conspicuous behaviour and besides that -nobody would have believed them. In such cases the parents in which were forced to consent to the removal of their children the Board did not have to show that a child was neglected or uncontrollable10. These assimilation practices, which were displayed on examples of the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, carried on until 1975. Most of the following text is based on the Bringing them Home report11, which was published in 1997. Every child of the Stolen Generation was in danger to turn into a victim of sexual abuse. Girls were in a higher danger to get raped then boys. 7.7% of the boys and 17.0% of the girls reported that they were victims of sexual abuse12. Both genders often were victims of these crimes. Normally the children did not report those cases. The reason can mainly be found in the dependence the children had of their homes. The foster families were their only constant base they had

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Pre-University Paper, 2002 28 Pages, Grade: [...] , their only home. This is the reason why they were anxious of telling somebody what was done to them. In their opinion, the sneaking would have led to the destruction of their home. Usually the perpetrator put its victim under a huge pressure. Since in nine out of ten cases of sexual abuse the perpetrator came out of the child's very close social setting, the child was in a dilemma: Every option of revealing itself to its environment would have meant a great suffer for the young unsupported victim. Because the children often were taken away at a very low age, they did not have any contact to their parents who would have taught them essential abilities such as trusting the own feelings. The raped child often did not know how to interpret this incident. Sure, it did not feel good about being raped, but how could it have known that this was wrong. For example, a lot of young children do not feel happy about going to school or taking a shower but as they are taught these things are necessary. Unlike, nobody taught them that sexual abuses are wrong and they were not given the chance to ask. If nobody teaches you the norms of society, how can you rely on them? These children did not learn how valuable their feelings are. Often they took themselves as a matter of cause as human beings of a second class. Since a major aim of the children's removal was the destruction of cultural links, the children were living between two different worlds. On the one side there was their origin they did not know anything about. On the other side there was the white society, which did not include them. In most cases these children went through an identity crisis. As an adult, they very quickly learned that they were not members of this society. There were still too many differences, starting with the colour of their skin and ending with the traumatic experiences during their childhood. This characterises the Aborigines until today: They don't know where they belong to. The first one does not accept them and the other one is nearly erased by the first one, trying to assimilate the Aborigines into the white man's society, which does not want them. [Do you get it? … I don't either.] A lot of Aboriginal tribes forgot their traditions and they are slowly recovering from the experiences with the European culture

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Pre-University Paper, 2002 28 Pages, Grade: [...] . Therefore, you can say that the cultural base the Aborigines originally had was dumped by the Whites. If a White now criticises an Aborigine to be a drunken bum [and this is quite often true], this white person should ask itself whose fault it is that this colourful and peaceful race lost its identity and forgot the sense of life. It was forbidden for us to talk in our own language […] we weren't allowed to talk about anything that belonged to our tribal life.13 John was removed from his home as a baby in 1940. Until he was 10, he lived at Bomaderry Children's Home, an ecclesiastical managed orphanage. He describes the place as a not really terrible home but very impersonal. The Sisters of the Bomaderry Children's Home were nice to the children, but they did not clear them up about their origin and background. All the children thought the Sisters were their parents. The only thing they told all these young Aborigines was that they were Whites. This was part of the assimilation. As a result of this, the children were not allowed to speak to coloured people. 1 A special kind of ship, which carried coal in the London dockland 2 Aughton, Peter. Dem Wind ausgeliefert. 3 New South Wales Department of Education. Social Justice & Human Rights Issue: A Global Perspective [online] 4 New South Wales Department of Education. Social Justice & Human Rights Issue: A Global Perspective [online]. 5 Hett, Julia. Rassismus in Australien - GfbV-Stellungnahme zur Weltkonferenz gegen Rassismus [online]. 6 Please refer to the Redfern Statement (5.1) 9 Commonwealth of Australia. Bringing Them Home Report. Book 1, Page 34 10 Commonwealth of Australia. Bringing Them Home Report. Book 1, Page 34 11 For more information about this report please refer to National Reactions and Situations (5.4) for further details 12 Please refer to the Appendix (9.2.1) for further details 13 Commonwealth of Australia. Bringing Them Home Report

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On the evening of February 13, 1945, the most controversial episode in the Allied air war against Germany begins as hundreds of British bombers loaded with incendiaries and high-explosive bombs descend on Dresden, a historic city located in eastern Germany. Dresden was neither a war production city nor a major industrial center, and before the massive air raid of February 1945 it had not suffered a major Allied attack. By February 15, the city was a smoldering ruin and an unknown number of civilians–somewhere between 35,000 and 135,000–were dead. By February 1945, the jaws of the Allied vise were closing shut on Nazi Germany. In the west, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s desperate counteroffensive against the Allies in Belgium’s Ardennes forest had ended in total failure. In the east, the Red Army had captured East Prussia and reached the Oder River–less than 50 miles from Berlin. The once-proud Luftwaffe was a skeleton of an air fleet, and the Allies ruled the skies over Europe, dropping thousands of tons of bombs on Germany every day. From February 4 to February 11, the “Big Three” Allied leaders–U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin–met at Yalta in the USSR and compromised on their visions of the postwar world. Other than deciding on what German territory would be conquered by which power, little time was given to military considerations in the war against the Third Reich. Churchill and Roosevelt, however, did promise Stalin to continue their bombing campaign against eastern Germany in preparation for the advancing Soviet forces. An important aspect of the Allied air war against Germany involved what is known as “area” or “saturation” bombing. In area bombing, all enemy industry–not just war munitions–is targeted, and civilian portions of cities are obliterated along with troop areas. Before the advent of the atomic bomb, cities were most effectively destroyed through the use of incendiary bombs that caused unnaturally fierce fires in the enemy cities. Such attacks, Allied command reasoned, would ravage the German economy, break the morale of the

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On the evening of February 13, 1945, the most controversial episode in [...] German people, and force an early surrender. Germany was the first to employ area bombing tactics during its assault on Poland in September 1939. In 1940, during the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe failed to bring Britain to it knees by targeting London and other heavily populated areas with area bombing attacks. Stung but unbowed, the RAF avenged the bombings of London and Coventry in 1942 when it launched the first of many saturation bombing attacks against Germany. In 1944, Adolf Hitler named the world’s first long-range offensive missile V-1, after Vergeltung, the German word for “vengeance” and an expression of his desire to repay Britain for its devastating bombardment of Germany. The Allies never overtly admitted that they were engaged in saturation bombing; specific military targets were announced in relation to every attack. It was but a veneer, however, and few mourned the destruction of German cities that built the weapons and bred the soldiers that by 1945 had killed more than 10 million Allied soldiers and even more civilians. The firebombing of Dresden would prove the exception to this rule. Before World War II, Dresden was called “the Florence of the Elbe” and was regarded as one the world’s most beautiful cities for its architecture and museums. Although no German city remained isolated from Hitler’s war machine, Dresden’s contribution to the war effort was minimal compared with other German cities. In February 1945, refugees fleeing the Russian advance in the east took refuge there. As Hitler had thrown much of his surviving forces into a defense of Berlin in the north, city defenses were minimal, and the Russians would have had little trouble capturing Dresden. It seemed an unlikely target for a major Allied air attack. On the night of February 13, hundreds of RAF bombers descended on Dresden in two waves, dropping their lethal cargo indiscriminately over the city. The city’s air defenses were so weak that only six Lancaster bombers were shot down. By the morning, some 800 British

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On the evening of February 13, 1945, the most controversial episode in [...] bombers had dropped 1,478 tons of high-explosive bombs and 1,182 tons of incendiaries on Dresden, creating a great firestorm that destroyed most of the city and killed numerous civilians. Later that day, as survivors made their way out of the smoldering city, over 300 U.S. bombers began bombing Dresden’s railways, bridges, and transportation facilities, killing thousands more. On February 15, another 200 U.S. bombers continued their assault on the city’s infrastructure. All told, the bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force dropped 954 tons of high-explosive bombs and 294 tons of incendiaries on Dresden. Later, the Eighth Air Force would drop 2,800 more tons of bombs on Dresden in three other attacks before the war’s end. The Allies claimed that by bombing Dresden, they were disrupting important lines of communication that would have hindered the Soviet offensive. This may be true, but there is no disputing that the British incendiary attack on the night of February 13-14 was conducted also, if not primarily, for the purpose of terrorizing the German population and forcing an early surrender. It should be noted that Germany, unlike Japan later in the year, did not surrender until nearly the last possible moment–when its capital had fallen and its Fuhrer was dead. Because there were an unknown number of refugees in Dresden at the time of the Allied attack, it is impossible to know exactly how many civilians perished. After the war, investigators from various countries, and with varying political motives, calculated the number of civilians killed to be as little as 8,000 to more than 200,000. Estimates today range from 35,000 to 135,000. Looking at photographs of Dresden after the attack, in which the few buildings still standing are completely gutted, it seems improbable that only 35,000 of the million or so people in Dresden that night were killed. Cellars

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In the powdered food, because there is a strong cohesion and low fluidity in the fine powder, a problem occurs during production of the weighing and filling and when dissolved soup with hot water. As a solution, we generally granulate the fine powder and make up the granules. In the fluidized bed granulation process of powdered food, which is one of the granulation technologies, aqueous solution is usually sprayed as a binder to the powder to grow the granules, however, increase in the moisture content of granules often spoils the product quality and elongates successive drying period. We developed the efficient granulation technique by using the Aqua-Gas Binder (Steam-Water Two-Phase Binder) as the binder of the fluidized bed granulation. In instant corn soup, granules of the same size are formed in a small amount of water of about 30％ by aqua-gas binder. The characteristics of the granulated granules were found to have excellent fluidity and solubility as compared with the liquid binder. This brief overview covers some important aspects of microchannel (MC) emulsification, especially for food-grade applications. We introduce typical MC emulsification systems; fundamental characteristics of their droplet generation; and preparation of food-grade monodisperse emulsions, microparticles, and microcapsules. Major advantages of grooved MC emulsification plates include detailed direct observation of droplet generation from parallel MCs and a wide droplet size range. Straight-through MC emulsification plates are advantageous for higher productivity of monodisperse emulsion droplets. The uniquely mild droplet generation for MC emulsification exploits interfacial tension dominant at the micron level, suppressing degradation and denaturation of heat- and shear-sensitive emulsion components. Information on devices and operating parameters affecting the resultant droplet size is summarized, and effects of properties of MC array surfaces and emulsion components on droplet generation behavior are discussed. Layer-by-layer (LBL) deposition improves the stability of monodisperse oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion droplets prepared by MC emulsification. Coating with a maximum of seven layers of surface active components with alternating positive or negative charges changed the ζ-potential of the oil

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In the powdered food, because there is a strong cohesion and low fluidity in the [...] droplets, depending on the electrostatic properties of the outer layer. Several combinations of differently charged surface-active components have already been successfully applied for LBL deposition. The antifungal activity of nine fatty acid salts (butyrate, caproate, caprylate, caprate, laurate, myristate, oleate, linoleate, and linolenate) was tested on the spores of Penicillium pinophilum NBRC 6345 and Penicillium digitatum NBRC 9651. Potassium caprate showed the strongest antifungal activity at 4 log-units. At incubation times of 180 min, potassium caprylate and potassium laurate showed antifungal activities of 2 log-units against P. pinophilum NBRC 6345. These results suggest medium-chain fatty acid salts showed the highest antifungal activity. The minimum inhibitory concentration of potassium caprate against P. pinophilum NBRC 6345 was 175 mM, and >175 mM for other fatty acid salts. When mixed with short-chain fatty acid salts (potassium butyrate, potassium caproate) or medium-chain fatty acid salts (potassium caprylate or potassium laurate), potassium caprate caused a 4 log-unit reduction in fungal growth; however, when mixed with long-chain fatty acid salts (potassium myristate, potassium oleate, potassium linoleate, or potassium linolenate) it had no antifungal effect. Thus, long-chain fatty acid salts inhibited antifungal activity of C10K. We also evaluated the ability of C10K to inhibit fungal growth on orange rind. C10K effectively inhibited P. pinophilum NBRC 6345 growth on orange rind. Thus, C10K shows promise as an antifungal agent. Our aim was to assess the increase in amylase production in

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In the powdered food, because there is a strong cohesion and low fluidity in the [...] a novel submerged-culture system (involving co-culture of filamentous fungi) and the effect of medium composition on the amylolytic activity. Filamentous fungi, Aspergillus oryzae (HI-G strain) and Rhizopus arrhizus (P20 strain) were used asα-amylase and glucoamylase- producing organisms, respectively. The initial concentration of nitrogen and carbon sources, and the ratio of spores to mycelial weight of A. oryzae and R. arrhizus were found to influence the activity of amylolytic enzymes. Maxim enzymatic activity was achieved when initial maltose and ammonium acetate concentrations were 3％ and 1.29％ (w/v), respectively. Under these cultivation conditions, the cell concentration was 0.62 g per 100 mL, and glucoamylase andα-amylase activities were 675 and 4.68 U/mL, respectively. In addition, agitation speeds (50, 125, 200, 275, 350, and 500 rpm) in a 5-L jar fermenter affected the enzyme activity; an increase in glucoamylase production was obtained at 200 rpm after 120 h. These results indicate that high production of glucoamylase andα-amylase can be attained in a system of submerged co-culture of A. oryzae and R. arrhizus. Lactic acid bacteria primarily perform lactic acid fermentation by utilizing monosaccharides such as glucose. However, the polysaccharide fructan, which is the main component of garlic, generally cannot be fermented. We recently investigated fructan-utilizing bacteria to create lactic acid bacteria-fermented garlic food and isolated the Lactobacillus plantarum S506 strain from pickled shallots. We were able to efficiently perform lactic acid fermentation with

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