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In the business context, profit means a financial gain or to put it more precisely, the surplus that is gained from a business activity and that remains after total costs of producing and selling goods and services are paid.
As can be seen from the introductory sentence, the words that are close in meaning to profit are gain or financial gain, financial benefit, surplus, earnings, yield, etc. Let us now look at some examples of how to use these words in context.
Last year, the company achieved a financial gain of almost £75 million.
The new programme is expected to result in a financial benefit of around £5bn.
The company has performed well this year, making a surplus of £7.5m.
This transaction doubled the earnings of the Group.
We anticipate obtaining at least a 10% yield on our investment.
The word profit often emerges in the context of net profit, gross profit and operating profit, so let us look at the difference among these three terms. Gross profit, also referred to as gross margin or sales profit, is the difference between the company’s total revenue and the total cost of production and purchase of materials. When we deduct all fixed and variable expenses that are associated with the day-to-day operations of a business, e.g. utilities, payroll, rent, etc. from the gross profit, we get operating profit or recurring profit. Finally, net profit is the profit of a company after all expenses, operating costs, debts and taxes have been deducted. It is also referred to as net income, net earnings or the bottom line. You are also likely to come across the term pre-tax profit, very often abbreviated as EBIT, which stands for earnings before interest and taxes.
Here is the mathematical formula to explain it more clearly:
Total revenue – Cost of goods/services sold = Gross profit
Gross profit – Operating costs = Operating profit
Operating profit – Expenses and taxes = Net profit
In order to help you put these terms and phrases in sentences which you might use at a meeting when discussing business results, below you will find examples of the most frequent collocations of the term profit.
The holiday sale generated record profits.
Although it did not break records, the campaign brought in a healthy profit.
In the year ending 31 December 2016, the company earned a | <urn:uuid:1c0b54cd-1ab0-46e7-b72c-851cb9255b2b> | 512 | 0 |
The Twelfth principle involves our belief in the coming of the Messiah and the Messianic age. The Messianic age will take place when the Jews will regain their independence and all return to the land of Israel.
According to Maimonides in his commentary to the Mishna "We should not set a time for his coming, not try to calculate when he will come from Scriptural passages. Our sages thus teach us "May the sprit of those who try to calculate the time of the end [i.e., the time of the coming of the Mashiach] rot". Many times in the history of the Jewish people there were those who disregarded this warning and endeavored to set a time for the coming of the Messiah. In many occasions those attempts brought terrible consequences. In the times of the false Messiah, Shabetay Tzebi (1665-1666 CE), many Jews lost all their properties and put themselves in danger, following false hopes. We should simply believe that the Mashiach will come, "if not today, B'H, tomorrow".
The word "Messiah" (Mashiach in Hebrew) does not mean "savior" but "anointed". In ancient Israel, when a King was appointed by the court and a prophet (see Mishne Tora, Kings, 1:3) he was anointed with a special oil (shemen hamishcha). When the prophet Shemuel appointed Shaul, the first King, the Scripture says: "And Shemuel took the jar of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him" (I Samuel, 10:1). The Mashiach, therefore, will be a King, a political leader like Shaul, David or Solomon. He will be a leader who will be known by his "wisdom and understanding, his counsel and power, his knowledge of HaShem, and his reverence for Him."
The Mashiach will be a descendent of the house of King David. God promised King David that every King in Israel will come from him.
(to be continued)
Hurricane "Sandy" and Abraham Abinu
In the aftermath of the devastating storm that hit U.S. Eastern Coast we elevate our prayers to Bore Olam, first of all to thank Him | <urn:uuid:7006666f-0380-4e0b-a07b-56c2036aa415> | 512 | 0 |
(CNN) -- Tuesday's Virginia earthquake triggered the shutdown of a nearby nuclear power plant and spurred declarations of "unusual events" at plants as far away as Michigan, U.S. authorities reported.
Dominion Virginia Power said both reactors at its North Anna plant, less than 20 miles from the epicenter of the magnitude-5.8 quake, shut down after the first tremors. Amanda Reidelbach, an emergency management spokeswoman for Louisa County, said the plant vented steam, but there was no release of radioactive material.
David Heacock, the utility's chief nuclear officer, said the plant was operating on emergency power and the units were safely deactivated.
"The plants are designed for this kind of a seismic event," Heacock said. "There is no apparent damage to anything at the plant right now."
Heacock said the plant had four diesel generators supplying backup power and that those generators had three days of fuel. However, off-site electric power was expected to be restored later Tuesday, he said.
Dominion Virginia said reactors at its other nuclear station, the Surry plant near Newport News, were still running.
The North Anna plant is about 50 miles northwest of Richmond and about 90 miles southwest of Washington. Operators declared an alert -- the second-lowest level of emergency reporting under U.S. nuclear regulations -- after the quake struck shortly before 2 p.m., the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.
Twelve other plants in six states issued an "unusual event" declaration, the lowest level of emergency notice, according to the NRC. They included the Shearon Harris plant in North Carolina; the Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland; Pennsylvania's Susquehanna, Three Mile Island, Limerick and Peach Bottom plants; the Oyster Creek, Hope Creek and Salem plants in New Jersey; and the D.C. Cook and Palisades plants in Michigan.
"All these plants continue to operate while plant personnel examine their sites," the NRC said.
CNN's Emily Smith, Jeanne Meserve, Scott Bronstein and Shawn Nottingham contributed to this report.
Radiation News Archive
- ► Nov 2013 (14)
- ► Sep | <urn:uuid:067c7233-cdf4-41e4-8b0b-674c7b949ad7> | 512 | 0 |
Organized crime refers to a network of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals in an organized manner and who are engaged in illegal activities. Such criminal organizations are well organized with a clear chain of command and segregation of duties among its members in a much similar way to a lawful organization or government. The only distinction between organized crime organizations and other lawful organizations is that they are engaged in illegal activities. It is organized crime organizations that are usually responsible for transnational crimes. Transnational crimes denote crimes that have significant effects in more than one country. This is because such transnational crimes involve borders crossing. Examples of crimes of a transnational nature and which are perpetrated by organized crime groups include drug trafficking, terrorism, cybercrime, money laundering and smuggling of weapons and people. Several countries have acted to counter these transnational crimes through collaboration, sharing of information and extradition of suspected criminals to their respective countries for prosecution. This paper shall examine two particular types of organized crimes that are of a transnational nature, namely Excise fraud and VAT fraud, and explore the impact of these crimes on victims as well as the general society. Next, the paper shall look into the impact of advances in technology and computerization on crime and the differences between the three levels of crime prevention. In conclusion, the paper shall consider the area that has the greatest need for crime prevention policy to avert crime (Hopkins, Tilley, & Gibson, 2012).
It may sometimes be the case that perpetrators of transnational crime may never leave their resident country. However, crimes that these criminals perpetrate may have a direct impact on other nations and particular victims of such crimes. A case in point is cybercrime where criminals use the internet to perpetrate crime. Usually, the internet has no boundaries and anyone who is a consumer of the internet may fall victim to fraud.
Excise fraud involves the smuggling of goods into a nation so as to evade the excise tax levied on imports and exports. Organized criminals are involved in this crime that is of a transnational nature as they have the requisite capacity and networks to achieve the same. A major way in which excise fraud has been perpetrated in the United Kingdom has been through the smuggling of tobacco and cigarettes into the country. The HM Revenue and Customs which has the primary role | <urn:uuid:cf4a1fd8-3494-4093-b94f-5ba66552a8a7> | 512 | 0 |
Organized crime refers to a network of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals in an organized [...] of checking on smuggling of goods estimated that between 1-2.3 billion pounds in revenue were lost due to smuggling of cigarettes. It is reported that out of five cigarettes that are smoked in the UK, one of them is smuggled. Tobacco smuggling in the UK is a transnational crime, as it transcends the nation and is practiced by well organized groups. Most of the smuggled tobacco into the UK comes from several countries such as China, the Baltic States, the Balkans and Africa. It is also emerging that Belgium has come out as a primary source of illicit cigarettes in addition to traditional sources such as China, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore (Hopkins, Tilley, & Gibson, 2012). Regional airports have been used as conduits for the smuggling of goods by tourists and other organized criminals. This has been made possible by relatively cheap flights. Once goods reach their destination, the goods are diverted into the illicit market without payment of the requisite excise duty. The tracks left by this illegal act are covered by use of forged documents. Other smuggled goods include fuel and alcohol. The impact of excise fraud on the economy as evidenced in this discourse is the loss of revenue that would otherwise be used for developmental purposes in the society (Ridley, 2008).
Value Added Tax fraud is aimed at evading paying the tax. This fraud is divided into three categories such as registered evader fraud, thief fraud and unregistered evader fraud. In the first type of fraud, registered VAT traders fail to declare the correct returns or liability so as to suppress the amount of tax to be paid. Organized criminals find this type of fraud luring owing to the huge profits present as well as the comparatively low penalties charged to defaulters. However, organized crime features more prominently in thief fraud where criminals set up bogus company registrations with the aim of stealing Value Added Tax. One of the types of thief fraud is repayment fraud where VAT is recovered on purely fictitious transactions made possible by bogus companies. Advances in technology have facilitated the creation of apparently authentic invoices to support the fraudulent | <urn:uuid:cf4a1fd8-3494-4093-b94f-5ba66552a8a7> | 512 | 23 |
Email::Date - Find and Format Date Headers
use Email::Date; my $email = join '', <>; my $date = find_date($email); print $date->ymd; my $header = format_date($date->epoch); Email::Simple->create( header => [ Date => $header, ], body => '...', );
RFC 2822 defines the
Date: header. It declares the header a required part of an email message. The syntax for date headers is clearly laid out. Stil, even a perfectly planned world has storms. The truth is, many programs get it wrong. Very wrong. Or, they don't include a
Date: header at all. This often forces you to look elsewhere for the date, and hoping to find something.
For this reason, the tedious process of looking for a valid date has been encapsulated in this software. Further, the process of creating RFC compliant date strings is also found in this software.
my $time_piece = find_date $email;
If it can't find a date, it returns false.
find_date is exported by default.
my $date = format_date; # now my $date = format_date( time - 60*60 ); # one hour ago
format_date accepts an epoch value, such as the one returned by
time. It returns a string representing the date and time of the input, as specified in RFC 2822. If no input value is provided, the current value of
time is used.
format_date is exported by default.
my $date = format_gmdate;
format_gmdate is identical to
format_date, but it will return a string indicating the time in Greenwich Mean Time, rather than local time.
format_gmdate is exported on demand, but not by default.
This software is copyright (c) 2004 by Casey West.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself. | <urn:uuid:0e1c5721-3816-4921-bc87-2b439a87f124> | 460 | 0 |
The Cure for Cavities and Prevention of Other Oral Diseases
The Cause of Cavities
The formation of cavities is well understood and can be prevented. Bacteria in our mouth metabolize sugar and it becomes an acid. This acid makes the holes in our teeth we call cavities.
Diet and Sugar Exposure Time
It is important to avoid extended exposure to sweetened foods and drinks; especially those foods with added fructose and sucrose. Avoid frequently consuming sugary products. When you do, limit the exposure time. For example, eating a chocolate bar for 5 minutes is much better than sucking on Jolly Ranchers for 45 minutes or chewing sugar gum for an hour. Drinking a soda for 10 minutes during lunch will have less exposure time than sipping a soda for an hour at work, or a Gatorade during a workout. In general, avoid sugars that are in your mouth for an extended period of time. Some foods are acidic in nature, such as diet soda, and can also damage teeth with prolonged exposure.
Bacteria collect on your teeth in a film called plaque. We can prevent cavities by removing plaque regularly. We do this by brushing and flossing. Brush your teeth two times a day for two minutes each time. Floss once a day.
Fluoride and Other Aids
The outer layer of the tooth, the enamel, can incorporate fluoride into its structure making it more resistant to acid. Fluoride can be found in your toothpaste, your drinking water, and treatments done by the dentist. With fluoride, the correct amount and type of application is important. Discuss with Dr. Smith what is right for you. There are other products that can help as well, such as xylitol. Ask Dr. Smith about these additional products and their correct use.
Periodontal disease can be devastating and can even cause a patient to lose all of their teeth. Bacteria found in plaque is a cause for this disease as well. Bacteria cause inflammation and damage the tooth’s supporting structures: the bone and gums. Brushing, flossing, and regular professional cleanings can help prevent periodontal disease.
Tobacco is the leading contributing factor of oral cancer, but anyone can get it. An | <urn:uuid:6b921033-9dd2-4653-a94b-195a56da59a2> | 512 | 0 |
The story of Noah is one that almost everyone has heard. Even children who are never brought to church know of a story with a lot of animals in it. Christians know of God’s salvation of Noah and two of every kind of animal on the earth.
Despite our familiarity with the story of Noah, there are many mysteries surrounding it. Some things can be explained better today through modern science while other things must still be taken on faith because we do not have an adequate explanation for them.
The story of Noah begins at the end of Genesis 5. This is one of those chapters that if you’re reading on your own, you likely skim very quickly. It contains the lineage from Adam to Noah. We won’t concentrate on this much or even read it except to note the ages of people. All of the people mentioned lived hundreds of years, almost 900 or more. The only one who does not is Enoch who lived 365 years and God took him away without suffering death.
The other thing that is worth noting is the age at which these men fathered children. While Adam was the father of Seth at 130 years, we can tell because of statements in Genesis 4, the rest of these men may not have been direct fathers but rather ancestors. Genesis does not make an attempt to cover the birth of every person but rather notable people along the lineage of Noah and Abraham. Genesis 5 ends by saying that after Noah was 500, he became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This does not mean to imply that Noah had triplets, nor that he was still fathering children at 500. Even for the accounts in Genesis, this would be old as the oldest other father is Methusaleh who became the father of Lamech at 187.
The incredible lifespans deserve a bit of our attention as they will abruptly shorten after Noah and the flood. By Genesis 11, the children of Noah live only half as long as he does and in a few generations the lifespan is cut in half once again to 200 or less. This is still phenomenal but nothing like before. There is a timespan of slightly less than 300 years between the time that Noah exits the ark to the birth of Abraham. I never thought of it until I did the | <urn:uuid:9c77be8f-1d1a-43dc-a538-4a7040832886> | 512 | 0 |
The story of Noah is one that almost everyone has heard. Even children who are never brought to church [...] math but Noah is still alive when Abraham is born. With the death of Noah comes the end to all of the extraordinary ages to what we would consider normal lifespans.
So what is the cause of all of this? There are a few explanations and in all likelihood, it is a combination of all of these. The first is that God is supernaturally expanding people’s lifespans. God keeps people alive longer so that they populate the earth. In this case, it is no surprise at all that the person who apparently walks so close to God that God allows him to escape death, Enoch, is the father of the person who lives longer than any other man, Methusaleh. Even among incredible lifespans, Methusaleh is blessed. And by the way, Methusaleh dies in the same year that the flood occurs. I believe that either God held off the flood until his death or that He mercifully allowed Methusaleh to die before he was swept up in the floodwaters.
The second possible explanation is that of genetics. In short, there is a longevity gene. Noah is the last to have it before it is lost with the flood. He passes it on to his children, but they only receive half of the benefits because they don’t receive it from their mother. Their half gene is then passed on to their children who only have one quarter of the benefits as Noah. This would explain why the ages rapidly decrease and at a rate that is essentially halving every generation.
The third explanation is the environment before the flood. Going back to the second day of creation, we should note what takes place.
6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
We know that the air contains moisture and that clouds are a collection of water in tiny droplets but this appears to be more. At creation, the earth is more like a tropical rain forest that does not need rain because of the canopy of water overhead. Genesis 2:4-6 | <urn:uuid:9c77be8f-1d1a-43dc-a538-4a7040832886> | 512 | 23 |
The story of Noah is one that almost everyone has heard. Even children who are never brought to church [...] gives more indication as to what all of this looked like.
4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.
There was no rain and the earth essentially took care of itself because of the streams that sprung up and the moisture in the air. The thick atmosphere served as protection from the sun and numerous harmful things like radiation which we know about now. There is no telling what kinds of diseases did not exist because it could not live in such an environment.
The other likely difference was atmospheric pressure. The water in the air weighs more than simple oxygen and thus creates more pressure. Scientists have researched this and believe that the atmospheric pressure was possibly double what it currently is. Now I couldn’t begin to tell you how that is a benefit aside from the fact that it apparently is. Hyperbaric chambers are designed specifically to increase the pressure around the body which helps with oxygen in the bloodstream. Football players have started using these in their homes to recover from injuries. The medical community is using them for everything from treating burns, to carbon monoxide poisoning, to healing crush injuries. There are also studies being conducting regarding the use of hyperbaric chambers for the treatment of autism and even certain types of hearing loss. In other words, the world before the flood could have been an environment that allowed the body to heal itself much better than today.
So that’s the background of the world before Noah and the flood. But the most important question surrounding our story is “why did the flood happen?” In short, it was because of sin but it was greater than this.
Finally we get to Genesis 6 and the story of Noah.
1 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the LORD | <urn:uuid:9c77be8f-1d1a-43dc-a538-4a7040832886> | 512 | 23 |
The story of Noah is one that almost everyone has heard. Even children who are never brought to church [...] said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
Mankind is doing what it is supposed to be doing, that is being fruitful and multiplying. They are getting married and having children. But something is wrong with the sons of God marrying the daughters of men. This appears to be a mixed marriage of some sort that is not just a mistake, it is apparently an abomination in the eyes of God.
We’re going to deal with a few interpretations, beginning with the most innocent of them here. This could simply be that followers of God are marrying people who do not worship Him and because of this His followers are being led astray. This leads to more sin in further generations and soon there are few people who are worshipping the Lord.
Another interpretation is that the sons of God referred to a particular nation or people group who followed God. The daughters of men were another nation that did not follow the Lord. By intermarrying, there were the same problems that the Israelites had when they intermarried. The bloodline was corrupted and people were led astray.
I believe that more is happening than this however as the next verse appears to indicate.
4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
We have no good explanation as to who or what the Nephilim were. They appear to be half breeds of some variety however. And whatever their mix is, they are astounding in appearance, so much so that they are legendary. So here’s the third possibility. This is an interbreeding between men and angels or rather fallen angels.
There appears to be a vague reference to this in Jude 6-7
6And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. 7In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the | <urn:uuid:9c77be8f-1d1a-43dc-a538-4a7040832886> | 512 | 23 |
The story of Noah is one that almost everyone has heard. Even children who are never brought to church [...] punishment of eternal fire.
We know that there are fallen angels and Jude makes it clear that some have already been punished. Some angels continue to roam free, those which we know as demons. The sin that these angels committed must have been very great if God has already bound them while others roam free. The fact that Sodom and Gomorrah are referenced in the next verse seems to tie these angels to a sin of sexual immorality.
Some point to Matthew 22:30 to say that angels are neuter and do not marry.
At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.
There is no indication that angels are neuter however. There is nothing to indicate that angels can’t marry, only that angels do not. Those who act in defiance of God may very well engage in marriage however. As Jude indicated, some left their home, this would make sense if these fallen angels left heaven to marry humans on earth.
If all of this is true, it would make sense why a half man, half fallen angel creature would be a creature of legend. Every time I read this, I think of the Greek and Roman legends of demi-gods – half god, half man. Perhaps there is a slight basis in truth to their stories.
Whatever the truth is, it appears that humanity has been corrupted and led into deep sin. I believe that the sin has to do with terrible sexual sin as well the garden variety sins. We will deal with the issue of sexual sin next month when we look at Sodom and Gomorrah however.
Humanity has become so corrupted that God has no choice but to essentially start over again.
5 The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of | <urn:uuid:9c77be8f-1d1a-43dc-a538-4a7040832886> | 512 | 23 |
The daylight saving effect argues that sleep disruption caused by daylight saving time changes results in a negative impact on stock returns on the trading day following the changes.
Even if the effect does exist it’s unlikely to be economically significant, but it is interesting to academics in the context of behavioral finance and whether external factors (such as the weather) can influence the mood of investors sufficiently to affect share returns.
Compared to other market anomalies this is a pretty straight-forward one; the academic debate has largely centered around methodology.
This article presents a brief review and listing of academic papers on the daylight saving effect.
An academic paper in 1976 found that transitions to and from daylight saving time (DST) caused sleep desynchronosis (disruptions). One paper described it as having an effect similar to jet lag. In 1980 a paper claimed that DST changes led to an increase in traffic accidents; while another paper a little later claimed it led to a decrease in accidents. Oh well.
As far as we’re concerned the story starts in 2000 when Kamstra, Kramer and Levi found that in the US, UK, Canada and Germany DST had a negative impact on stock returns on the trading day following the changes. They called this the daylight saving anomaly. A new anomaly – this was quite exciting, nowadays there aren’t that many new anomalies found in stock markets (certainly not in developed markets).
Anyway, this got the ball rolling.
Unfortunately not many others agreed with them. First up was Pinegar (2002) who looked at the US market and only found significance for the autumn DST changes, and that that was attributable to two data outliers for the market in October 1987 and October 1997. Kamstra, Kramer and Levi (2002) replied quickly to this maintaining their claims by showing that the distribution of returns on days following DST changes shifted to the left.
Next up was Worthington (2003) who found no effect in the Australian market. Lamb, Zuber and Gandar (2004) replicated and agreed with the findings of Pinegar (2002) and aggressively concluded that the original findings of Kamstra, Kramer and Levi (20 | <urn:uuid:68d00842-b7dd-44b9-9d35-693ca096bdc7> | 512 | 0 |
The daylight saving effect argues that sleep disruption caused by daylight saving time changes results in [...] 00) “did not survive serious scrutiny”.
The disagreements continued with Müller, Schiereck, Simpson and Voigt (2009) who found no daylight saving effect in European bond and equity markets.
Gerlach (2010) had a different slant, claiming that any correlation between stock returns and DST changes was not due to the daylight saving effect but rather to seasonal patterns in market-related information.
Gregory-Allen, Jacobsen and Marquering (2010) criticized the original paper for using too little data; and crunched the numbers on 22 markets and over a longer period. They found no evidence of an observable DST effect on stock returns.
Berument, Dogan and Onar (2010) widened the study to look at volatility as well as stock returns, and found no DST effect. This started a merry game of paper ping-pong with Kamstra, Kramer and Levi (2010) replying with a “comment” that criticized the analysis of Berument, Dogan and Onar (2010) and maintaining the effect was still in place. Berument and Dogan (2011) replied with a “reply”, effectively saying, “isn’t”. Which prompted Kamstra, Kramer and Levi (2013) to reply with a “rebuttal” to the “reply” to the “comment” effectively saying, “is”.
INDEX (of papers listed below)
[Papers listed in reverse date order; ♠ indicates major paper.]
- Effects of daylight-saving time changes on stock market returns and stock market volatility: rebuttal
- Does Mood Affect Trading Behavior?
- A reexamination of the effect of daylight saving time changes on U.S. stock returns
- Effects of daylight saving time changes on stock market volatility: a reply
- The Daylight Saving Time Anomaly in Stock Returns: Fact or Fiction?
- Effects of daylight-saving time changes on stock market volatility: a comment
- Daylight | <urn:uuid:68d00842-b7dd-44b9-9d35-693ca096bdc7> | 512 | 23 |
The daylight saving effect argues that sleep disruption caused by daylight saving time changes results in [...] and investor sentiment: a second look at two stock market behavioral anomalies
- Effects of daylight savings time changes on stock market volatility
- Daylight saving effect
- Robust global mood influences in equity pricing ♠
- Do Daylight-Saving Time Adjustments Really Impact Stock Returns?
- Weather, Biorhythms and Stock Returns – Some Preliminary Irish Evidence ♠
- Don’t lose sleep on it: a re-examination of the daylight savings time anomaly
- Losing sleep at the market: an empirical note on the daylight saving anomaly in Australia
- Losing Sleep at the Market: The Daylight Saving Anomaly: Reply ♠
- Losing Sleep at the Market: Comment
- Losing Sleep at the Market: The Daylight-Savings Anomaly ♠
Effects of daylight-saving time changes on stock market returns and stock market volatility: rebuttal
Authors [Year]: Mark J. Kamstra and Lisa A. Kramer and Maurice D. Levi
Journal [Citations]: Psychological Reports, 112(1), pp89-99
Abstract: In a 2011 reply to our 2010 comment in this journal, Berument and Dogen maintained their challenge to the existence of the negative daylight-saving effect in stock returns reported by Kamstra, Kramer, and Levi in 2000. Unfortunately, in their reply, Berument and Dogen ignored all of the points raised in the comment, failing even to cite the Kamstra, et al. comment. Berument and Dogen continued to use inappropriate estimation techniques, over-parameterized models, and low-power tests and perhaps most surprisingly even failed to replicate results they themselves reported in their previous paper, written by Berument, Dogen, and Onar in 2010. The findings reported by Berument and Dogen, as well as by Berument, Dogen, and Onar, are neither well-supported nor well-reasoned. We maintain our original objections to their analysis, highlight new serious empirical and theoretical problems, and emphasize that there remains | <urn:uuid:68d00842-b7dd-44b9-9d35-693ca096bdc7> | 512 | 23 |
The daylight saving effect argues that sleep disruption caused by daylight saving time changes results in [...] statistically significant evidence of an economically large negative daylight-saving effect in U.S. stock returns. The issues raised in this rebuttal extend beyond the daylight-saving effect itself, touching on methodological points that arise more generally when deciding how to model financial returns data.
Does Mood Affect Trading Behavior?
Authors [Year]: Kaustia, Markku and Elias Henrikki Rantapuska
Journal [Citations]: SAFE Working Paper, 4
Abstract: We test whether investor mood affects trading with data on all stock market transactions in Finland, utilizing variation in daylight and local weather. We find some evidence that environmental mood variables (local weather, length of day, daylight saving and lunar phase) affect investors’ direction of trade and volume. The effect magnitudes are roughly comparable to those of classical seasonals, such as the Monday effect. The statistical significance of the mood variables is weak in many cases, however. Only very little of the day-to-day variation in trading is collectively explained by all mood variables and calendar effects, but lower frequency variation seems connected to holiday seasons.
A reexamination of the effect of daylight saving time changes on U.S. stock returns
Authors [Year]: Jayen B Patel
Journal [Citations]: Journal of the Academy of Business & Economics, 12(2), pp109-114
Abstract: We examine the effect of daylight saving time changes on U.S. stock returns for the period January 2001 to December 2010. Utilizing CRSP value-weighted and equally-weighted equity indices, our results indicate that daylight saving weekends are not significantly lower than that of other weekends. Furthermore, our significance results remained consistent when we separated our data by fall and spring daylight saving time changes for comparisons. We therefore conclude that the daylight saving time changes does not impact the U.S. stock market.
Effects of daylight saving time changes on stock market volatility: a reply
Authors [Year]: Hakan Berument and Nukhet Dogan
Journal [Citations]: Psychological Reports, 109, pp863-878
Abstract: There | <urn:uuid:68d00842-b7dd-44b9-9d35-693ca096bdc7> | 512 | 23 |
The daylight saving effect argues that sleep disruption caused by daylight saving time changes results in [...] is a rich array of evidence that suggests that changes in sleeping patterns affect an individual’s decision-making processes. A nationwide sleeping-pattern change happens twice a year when the Daylight Saving Time (DST) change occurs. Kamstra, Kramer, and Levi argued in 2000 that a DST change lowers stock market returns. This study presents evidence that DST changes affect the relationship between stock market return and volatility. Empirical evidence suggests that the positive relationship between return and volatility becomes negative on the Mondays following DST changes.
The Daylight Saving Time Anomaly in Stock Returns: Fact or Fiction?
Authors [Year]: Gregory-Allen, Russell and Ben Jacobsen and Wessel Marquering
Journal [Citations]: Journal of Financial Research, 33(4), pp403–427
Abstract: Stock market returns in 22 markets around the world show no evidence of a daylight saving time effect. Returns on the days following a switch from or to daylight saving time do not behave any differently from stock market returns on any other day of the week or month. These results reject earlier conclusions in the literature—based on less data—that investors’ mood changes induced by changes in sleep patterns significantly affect stock returns.
Effects of daylight-saving time changes on stock market volatility: a comment
Authors [Year]: Mark J. Kamstra and Lisa A. Kramer and Maurice D. Levi
Journal [Citations]: Psychological Reports, 107, pp877-887
Abstract: In a recent article in this journal, Berument, Dogan, and Onar (2010) challenged the existence of the previously documented daylight-saving effect. Kamstra, Kramer, and Levi’s original finding (2000) was that average stock market returns on Mondays following time changes are economically and statistically significantly lower than typical Monday returns. Kamstra, et al. hypothesized that the effect may arise due to heightened anxiety or risk aversion on the part of market participants after they experience a 1-hr. disruption in their sleep habits, in accordance with prior findings in the psychology literature linking sleep des | <urn:uuid:68d00842-b7dd-44b9-9d35-693ca096bdc7> | 512 | 23 |
The daylight saving effect argues that sleep disruption caused by daylight saving time changes results in [...] ynchronosis with anxiety. Berument, et al. replicated the original findings using ordinary least squares estimation, but when they modeled the mean of returns using a method prone to producing biased estimates, they obtained puzzling results. The analysis here, based on standard, unbiased modeling techniques, shows that the daylight-saving effect remains intact in the U.S.
Daylight and investor sentiment: a second look at two stock market behavioral anomalies
Authors [Year]: Jeffrey R. Gerlach
Journal [Citations]: Journal of Financial Research, 33(4), pp429–462
Abstract: Kamstra, Kramer, and Levi (2000, 2003) describe two stock market behavioral anomalies associated with changes in investor sentiment caused by daylight saving time (DST) changes and seasonal affective disorder (SAD). According to the hypothesized effects, DST changes and SAD affect asset prices by changing investors’ risk aversion. Although changes in the timing or amount of daylight are correlated with unusual stock market returns, I present evidence they do not cause those unusual returns. Instead, seasonal patterns in market-related information during the sample period are the likely cause of the correlation between stock market returns and DST changes or SAD.
Effects of daylight savings time changes on stock market volatility
Authors [Year]: Berument, M. Hakanand Nukhet Dogan and Bahar Onar
Journal [Citations]: Psychological Reports, 106
Abstract: The presence of daylight savings time effects on stock returns and on stock volatility was investigated using an EGARCH specification to model the conditional variance. The evidence gathered from the major United States stock markets for the period between 1967 and 2007 did not support the existence of the daylight savings time effect on stock returns or on volatility. Returns on the first business day following daylight savings time changes were not lower nor was the volatility higher, as would be expected if there were an effect.
Daylight saving effect
Authors [Year]: Luisa Müller and Dirk Schiereck and Marc W. Simpson and | <urn:uuid:68d00842-b7dd-44b9-9d35-693ca096bdc7> | 512 | 23 |
The daylight saving effect argues that sleep disruption caused by daylight saving time changes results in [...] Christian Voigt
Journal [Citations]: Journal of Multinational Financial Management, 19(2), pp127–138
Abstract: Kamstra et al. [Kamstra, M.J., Kramer, L.A., Levi, M.D., 2000. Losing sleep at the market: the daylight saving anomaly. The American Economic Review 90, 1005–1011] argue that the mean weekend return following the changes in daylight saving time is less than the mean weekend return throughout the rest of the year. Opposing studies, such as Pinegar [Pinegar, J.M., 2002. Losing sleep at the market: comment. The American Economic Review 92, 1251–1256), reason that the observed results depend upon methodology. We extend the ongoing discussions by providing further evidence for equity markets and bond markets in Germany and across Europe. We further demonstrate that the daylight saving effect does not serve as a potential rationale for the weekend effect.
Robust global mood influences in equity pricing ♠
Authors [Year]: Michael Dowling and Brian M. Lucey
Journal [Citations]: Journal of Multinational Financial Management, 18(2), pp145–164
Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between seven mood-proxy variables and a global equity dataset using a variety of group tests. The mood-proxy variables are constructed from weather data (precipitation, temperature, wind, geomagnetic storms) and biorhythm data (seasonal affective disorder, daylight savings time changes, lunar phases). This study contributes a greater understanding of the relationship between mood and equity pricing through testing the strength of the relationship between groups of mood-proxy variables and both returns and variance. Using a large and globally diverse equity dataset, robust econometric testing approaches, and testing deseasonalised and regular weather variables, we conclude that seasonal affective disorder and low temperatures show the greatest relationship with equity pricing.
Do Daylight-Saving Time Adjustments Really Impact Stock Returns?
Authors [Year]: Douglas G. Steigerwald and Marc Conte
Abstract: We study | <urn:uuid:68d00842-b7dd-44b9-9d35-693ca096bdc7> | 512 | 23 |
The daylight saving effect argues that sleep disruption caused by daylight saving time changes results in [...] the possible impact of daylight-saving time adjustment on stock returns. Previous work reveals that average returns tend to decline following an adjustment. As averages are sensitive to outliers, more recent work focused on the entire distribution of returns and found little impact following adjustments. Unfortunately, the general nature of the alternative hypothesis reduces the power of the distribution test to detect an effect of adjustments on the location of the distribution. We construct robust tests that are designed to have power to detect a time-adjustment effect onthe location of returns. We also develop a more novel test of exponential tilting that is designed to accommodate possible heterogeneity in the return distribution over time. When we apply these test to S&P 500 stock returns, we are unable to rigorously detect a time adjustment effect on stock returns.
Weather, Biorhythms and Stock Returns – Some Preliminary Irish Evidence ♠
Authors [Year]: Dowling, Michael and Brian M. Lucey
Journal [Citations]: International Review of Financial Analysis, 14(3), pp337–355
Abstract: We investigate whether there exists a relationship between eight proxy variables for investor mood (based on the weather, biorhythms, and beliefs) and daily Irish stock returns over the period 1988 to 2001. Our study is motivated by recent research which argues that people’s decisions are influenced by their feelings, especially when the decision involves risk and uncertainty (e.g. Loewenstein et al., 2001). We find that some of the variables proposed in the literature (rain and time changes around daylight savings) are minor but significant influences. We also find preliminary evidence for the relationship between mood proxy variables and equity returns being more pronounced in times of positive recent market performance. This finding is consistent with psychological research showing that people in a good mood (in this case, because of presumed gains in their investment portfolios) are more likely to allow irrelevant mood factors to influence their decision-making (e.g. Mackie and Worth, 1991).
Don’t lose sleep on it: a re-examination of the daylight savings time anomaly
Authors [Year]: Lamba, Rein | <urn:uuid:68d00842-b7dd-44b9-9d35-693ca096bdc7> | 512 | 23 |
The daylight saving effect argues that sleep disruption caused by daylight saving time changes results in [...] hold P. and Richard A. Zuberb and John M. Gandar
Journal [Citations]: Applied Financial Economics, 14(6), pp443-446
Abstract: A recent study finds evidence of a new financial market anomaly linking daylight savings time changes with market returns – spring and fall daylight savings time weekends are typically followed by large negative returns – and that these returns are significantly lower than regular weekend average returns. The present study finds that neither the consistency nor the magnitude and statistical significance claimed for this anomaly survives serious scrutiny.
Losing sleep at the market: an empirical note on the daylight saving anomaly in Australia
Authors [Year]: Worthington, Andrew C.
Journal [Citations]: Economic Papers: A journal of applied economics and policy, 22(4), pp83-93
Abstract: The ‘daylight saving effect’ predicts that the mean weekend return following the spring and fall/autumn changes in daylight saving time is less than the mean weekend return throughout the rest of the year. With this market anomaly, the change in market participants’ behaviour is linked with sleep desynchronosis and the change in circadian rhythm and its negative impact on sleep patterns. This study investigates the purported daylight saving effect in Australian equity market returns over the period 1979/80-2002/03 using parametric testing and regression analysis. After adjustments are made for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation in the data, neither the transition to nor the movement from daylight saving is associated with returns that differ from other days. The results also show the absence of any significant weekend effect in the Australian equity market.
Losing Sleep at the Market: The Daylight Saving Anomaly: Reply ♠
Authors [Year]: Mark J. Kamstra and Lisa A. Kramer and Maurice D. Levi
Journal [Citations]: The American Economic Review, 92(4), pp1257-1263
Losing Sleep at the Market: Comment
Authors [Year]: Pinegar, J. Michael
Journal [Citations]: The American Economic Review, 92(4), pp1 | <urn:uuid:68d00842-b7dd-44b9-9d35-693ca096bdc7> | 512 | 23 |
The following is taken from chapter 4 of Teach Like a Champion 2.0. It’s one of my favorite sections of the new book.
It’s natural for teachers to write lessons that focus on what they will be doing: which key points they will cover, questions they will ask, activities they will facilitate, work they will assign, and so forth. Still, the most effective teachers I know Double Plan, that is, they plan at least as carefully what their students will be doing each step of the way. You might imagine a sort of T-chart lesson plan in which the teacher details her actions on the left side and what students should be doing on the right, but it was in the course of reviewing lesson materials from top teachers that I realized that many of them Double Plan in a more specific format: lesson packets.
A lesson packet is a carefully designed handout that students work on during the lesson. It has space to write or take notes as well as background readings posted in it; it’s a lesson plan from the student’s perspective. (You can see an example of a packet here.)
Packet planning is an effective tool for Double Planning because it forces you to see the lesson through your students’ eyes. Teachers who do this best design packets that satisfy six goals, which we’ll explore in more depth in the next sections.
Goal 1: Everything in One Place
A well-designed packet gives both teacher and students everything they need for the lesson at their fingertips. Whether you’re teaching students how to solve systems of equations or exploring the theme of the destruction of familial structure in Night, a packet can make sure that students have all of the lesson materials accessible in one place, minimizing the need to distribute additional materials, take out new documents, and move back and forth between activities, such as reading a text and writing about it. Great Double Planners embed it all: graphs, tables, maps, primary source documents, sometimes novel excerpts, places to write, and more. Further, having a copy of the packet yourself enables you to work from the same set of materials as your students, allowing you to manage the student experience—such as which activity to flip to or what passage you’re reading—quickly and effectively.
Champion teachers also turn packets into a powerful Double Plan tool by making detailed margin notes. For instance, Colleen Driggs used the margins of her packets to carefully plan | <urn:uuid:a72a7d38-2120-4837-8177-b5d671021c5a> | 512 | 0 |
The following is taken from chapter 4 of Teach Like a Champion 2.0. It [...] the pacing of each activity and section of her lesson. She noted everything from the length of her Do Now to the amount of time she would give students to read and then write for each independent practice question. Likewise, Taryn Pritchard, a middle school math teacher at Leadership Prep Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, uses this space to plan the format of the questions she will ask, as well as identify the students she will call on for each question. As we’ll discuss later, in the section “Synergy with Checking for Understanding” (goal 4), this level of planning enables teachers like Taryn to strategically collect data from students across a range of ability levels and frees them up to focus on other things, such as which follow-up questions they will ask or which topics they need to reteach. Meaghan Reuler, a fifth-grade reading teacher from the same campus, includes stage directions in her packets, or reminders to do things like “Put two scholars’ work up on the document camera and evaluate which is better supported” or “Look for students to be marking up the question” as she circulates during independent work. By scripting in key teacher actions that might not ordinarily show up in a packet, Meaghan frees herself from having to rely on multiple planning documents. She keeps everything she needs in one place.
Strong Double Planners also work in the margins during instruction to keep a running record of any revisions and adjustments they want to make to the lesson. Jason Armstrong, a fifth-grade math teacher from Roxbury Prep in Boston, often jots observations about things that surprised him or that he wants to change for the next time he delivers this lesson. For example, during a lesson on classifying quadrilaterals, Jason noted that “some didn’t realize that they should use the previous page for filling these out” or “some had trouble recognizing that sides could be parallel and congruent at the same time.” He also flagged sections that students did not complete and added time stamps to indicate precisely when the majority of students reached specific points in the packet, so that he could improve his pacing for next time. Similarly, Bryan Belanger, an eighth-grade math teacher at Troy Prepar | <urn:uuid:a72a7d38-2120-4837-8177-b5d671021c5a> | 512 | 23 |
The following is taken from chapter 4 of Teach Like a Champion 2.0. It [...] atory Middle School in upstate New York, adds revision notes in the margins during the lesson so that he can make same-day changes to his lessons. This allows him to act on what he learned while his memories of the lesson are still fresh.
Goal 2: Synergy with Pacing
A well-designed packet supports airtight pacing because it minimizes transaction costs involved with switching between tasks, formats, and activities. Embedding everything into students’ packets allows you to skip pace-killing routines like distributing novels or collecting papers. Although it may seem trivial, saving minutes this way each day can help you add back days of lost instructional time to each school year.
Champion teachers often add visible markers to handouts so that it’s easier to make sure everyone is on the same page. For instance, eighth-grade history teacher Ryan Miller of Williamsburg Collegiate in Brooklyn color-codes the pages so that lecture notes appear on red paper, readings on yellow, and so forth. Color-coding handouts also makes giving What to Do (technique 57) directions much easier. All Ryan has to say is “Flip to your notes on Social Security in yellow,” or “Make sure the red one-pager is in your portfolio.” This helps Ryan shave several seconds off each transition and makes his directions stickier for students.
As we discuss in the chapter on pacing, one way to draw attention to mileposts (see Chapter Six, “Pacing,” for a definition of the term)—reference points inserted along the route of a journey to make the distance covered more visible to travelers—and to create the “illusion of speed” is to walk through the agenda for the lesson. Many teachers who Double Plan with packets already do this because their packets inherently provide students with a visual rundown of what’s to come. They can embed new and intriguing activities, not to mention images and icons, into packets, building suspense and excitement and giving students something to look forward to.
Goal 3: Engineered for Accountability
Double Planning with packets forces you to consider how you will at each step hold students accountable for the content and quality of their work. The teachers who do this best require students to constantly interact with their packets, and they engineer | <urn:uuid:a72a7d38-2120-4837-8177-b5d671021c5a> | 512 | 23 |
The following is taken from chapter 4 of Teach Like a Champion 2.0. It [...] the physical space students need to do so. For example, Maggie Johnson, an eighth-grade teacher at Troy Preparatory Middle School, provides space for her students to write everything, from recording the objective to taking notes during a discussion (see Maggie’s packet here). She even includes a specific space labeled “Leave this space blank” for students to go back and rewrite their answers to writing prompts to make them stronger. Regardless of your approach, the key takeaway is that effective Double Planning involves constant written accountability—even for tasks that don’t traditionally involve a lot of written work (for example, reviewing the lesson objective or tracking class discussions).
When you have a million things on your mind, it’s easy to overlook an activity, forget a question, or neglect a topic that you intended to cover. Because Double Plan packets provide teachers with such a clear road map about what they and students should do at every step, teachers are less likely to let activities slip through the cracks or to shortchange important content. If it’s on the page, it’s visible and therefore more likely to get covered. And if you still manage to skip something, students will often let you know.
On a similar note, when you script your questions into your packets, it also holds you accountable to ask them in the same form that you planned. This prevents you from unintentionally diluting the rigor of your planned questions or leading students astray with tangential prompts (for more information, see Chapter Nine). The same holds true for What to Do directions: the more clearly you script those into your packets, the easier it will be to ensure that students do what you planned, in the manner you intended.
Goal 4: Synergy with Checking for Understanding
Because Double Planning with packets inherently Standardizes the Format—enabling champion teachers to monitor the content and quality of student performance reliably and efficiently—these teachers often use them to collect and organize information on what students know and don’t know. During their lessons, champion teachers gather data through observation as they circulate. Occasionally, they might stop to compare students’ written work with the target responses that they’ve scripted into the margins of their packet. (For an example, see part of Taryn Pritchard | <urn:uuid:a72a7d38-2120-4837-8177-b5d671021c5a> | 512 | 23 |
The following is taken from chapter 4 of Teach Like a Champion 2.0. It [...] ’s packet here) Planning target responses holds you accountable to sticking with the standard that you initially set. It’s easy to accidentally miss errors or “round up” student responses, but it’s much harder to do that when you can immediately compare students’ work against a concrete exemplar. Scripting target responses also enables you to experience the lesson through their eyes, which can help you better anticipate error, gauge pacing more accurately, and draft clearer What to Do directions so that students can spend time grappling with content rather than the logistics.
Once champion teachers collect data, they use a variety of approaches to record and organize it in their packets. For instance, Taryn Pritchard of Leadership Preparatory Bedford Stuyvesant uses the margins to keep track of students who make common errors. Later, she intentionally Cold Calls these students (technique 33) so that she can address their common misunderstandings in front of the whole group. Taryn also jots the names of students who produced particularly stellar work so that she can Cold Call them to share their unique approach or insights with the class. In cases where students make isolated errors or need individual assistance, teachers like Ryan Miller of Williamsburg Collegiate also use their packets to keep a running log of the students they plan to check in with during independent work. This frees them up to devote their energy to collecting data and acting on it.
Goal 5: Success Oriented
The most effective Double Planners wire their packets to help as many students as possible meet or exceed a high standard of excellence. To do this, they view the lesson from the student’s perspective and then systematically add supports or remove obstacles to success, without diluting rigor.
In one history class, for example, the teacher embedded the rubric she’d use to evaluate the quality of students’ analysis of primary source documents. We’ve also seen teachers add supports like a “tip box,” examples of correct work, standard-setting directions (for example, “Remember to include 4+ sentences”), and reminders about the resources students should refer to when tackling a question (for example, “Be sure to use your notes from yesterday’s lecture on fascism”). Taken together, these additions set up students to | <urn:uuid:a72a7d38-2120-4837-8177-b5d671021c5a> | 512 | 23 |
What is an audit?
In general terms, an audit is a systematic review and assessment of a quantity of information.
In the context of professional services, an audit is an assessment of an organisation's financial records and procedures, and sometimes other aspects of the way in which they work.
The key purpose of the audits professional services firms conduct is usually to assess whether or not an organisation's financial records give a "true and fair" view of that organisation's financial position.
The kind of issues that this kind of audit might address include:
- whether its financial records agree with those held by its bank
- whether its assets and investments have been correctly valued in its financial statements
- whether its financial procedures and controls are efficient and sufficiently rigorous whether it's in compliance with all relevant regulation.
What are the different kinds of audit?
There are several different kinds of audit, including:
- External audit: Most large and medium UK businesses, public sector organisations and charities must be audited by an independent external organisation, which is usually a professional services firm, every year.
- Internal audit: Many organisations choose to undertake ongoing reviews of their finances and ways of working to ensure that they're well prepared for their annual external audit and to maximise their efficiency and performance. This process could be conducted by teams within the organisation or by a professional services firm.
- Non-financial audit: Some external and internal audit procedures include reviews and assessment of non-financial aspects of an organisation's operations. These aspects could include an organisation's environmental record, health and safety procedures, human resources or market reputation.
Why is auditing important?
The audit procedure is important for a number of different reasons and for a number of different parties.
Management: Those running an organisation need to have access to an accurate assessment of the company's finances and operations in order to manage it effectively day to day and plan for its future.
Shareholders/stakeholders: Those who own shares in a company, or other kinds of stakeholders in an organisation, will want reassurance that the organisation is being properly run so that their investment is protected to the extent possible.
Lenders: Banks and other parties who have lent money to the organisation will want reassurance that the company is on track to repay the money lent to it (plus interest) on the schedule agreed.
Potential investors: Those considering investing in an organisation will | <urn:uuid:dff911b8-2f22-478e-ad4b-218b36e3dfe0> | 512 | 0 |
What is an audit?
In general terms, an audit is a systematic review and assessment of a [...] want access to an accurate audit of an organisation in order to decide whether or not to proceed.
Regulators: Regulators require organisations to be audited to ensure that they can monitor that organisation effectively.
Other parties: Tax authorities, suppliers, customers and employees may also take an interest in a company's audit.
Who can conduct an audit?
Those involved in conducting an audit must be of an appropriate professional competence, which in practice means that they must be suitably qualified chartered accountants, or supervised chartered accountants in training, employed by a professional services firm.
How are audits conducted?
Audits usually require an in-depth examination of organisation's financial records, assets and ways or working. For this reason, it's usual for the staff conducting the audit to work at the organisation's premises while they do so.
How long does an audit last?
The length of an audit procedure is dependent on the size of the organisation being audited. The process can take anything from a few days to a few months.
What current issues are there surrounding audits?
There are a number of issues around the conduct of audits currently being debated in the professional services world.
The Big Four monopoly: Currently, the vast majority of large corporates and financial services organisations in the UK are audited by the "Big Four" professional services firms - Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC. This monopoly has arisen through a combination of strong historic relationships between these firms and their clients and the fact that many large organisations are required in their constitutional documents or by their investors to use a Big Four firm. Many in the professional services industry and other commentators see this monopoly as breaching the anti-competition principles enshrined in UK and EU law. Measures to combat the monopoly, such as joint audits or rotational systems, have been proposed and are currently under consideration.
Auditors and the financial crisis: As the question of how the circumstances arose that led to the financial crisis and the subsequent global economic downturn continues to be considered, it's been suggested that in some cases auditors were not sufficiently rigorous in their analyses of the financial records of banks and other financial institutions.
Audit and non-audit | <urn:uuid:dff911b8-2f22-478e-ad4b-218b36e3dfe0> | 512 | 23 |
Thursday, 29 May 2014
History - Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin was a controversial Englishman, naturalist and geologist who lived between 1809 and 1882. He came up with the idea of evolution. That is to say that humans have evolved over many many years from another species of animal - basically monkeys.
At the risk of over-simplifying all his works and theories here, suffice it to say that he believed that one species does change into another.
In his book On the Origin of Species he writes "As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form."
In other words, each generation would evolve a little bit more than its predecessor in order to improve itself and adapt to its environment and thus survive. He added that "light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history".
Ever since the theory that men could be descended from apes came to light people have been arguing for and against that particular possibility.
What I'd like us to focus on, however, is the possibility that we may have evolved, over time into what we are now. We may not have started as apes, but perhaps we were always humans who looked like apes; i.e. we were covered with a lot of hair to keep us warm since clothes had not yet been invented and were not easily purchased on the Internet.
As we learnt to cover ourselves, first with fig leaves, (they don't cover much do they), and then with various animal skins, we evolved into humans with less and less body hair. So ... what I am saying is ... we did not evolve from apes but from humans who were covered with body hair when they roamed naked and then lost this covering when fashionable clothing was made available in shops and on-line.
Are you with me so far?
It doesn't matter if you don't agree. Just hold that thought for a moment.
Now then ... as time goes by we "evolve" | <urn:uuid:8ee12d8d-b864-49f7-ac4b-a2b912f74a41> | 512 | 0 |
Thursday, 29 May 2014
History - Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin [...] or adapt to survive our various environments. There is evidence for instance that in the Middle Ages people were much smaller and shorter than they are now. This is seen from the size of doorways in castles, and from bones found in graves. But as time went by and diets improved, as well as health standards, today's people are much bigger and stronger compared to their Middle Ages counterpart.
Now, if we accept this fact. It follows that we continue to evolve as time goes by into the future. Who knows how future people would look like!
Do we need toe nails for instance? What are they used for? Perhaps future people will not have toe nails.
But as we get busier and busier a second mouth would come in handy. We could use one mouth for talking, or answering the phone, and another for eating our lunch. This way we don't need to have a lunch break and we would work for longer and be more productive.
Personally, I'd like a mouth on top of my head. This way I could put a sandwich under my hat and eat it whilst going to work.
It would also be a good idea to have an extra eye. Say at the end of your index finger. This way you could clean your ear and see what's inside at the same time.
You know how you sometimes say "I've only got one pair of hands!" Well ... wouldn't it be nice to have two pairs of hand? Both coming from the side like now. This way I could drive the car and scratch my bottom at the same time.
I'm beginning to like this evolution thing. I wonder what else we could think of? A turkey with 12 legs so we can have one each on Thanksgiving and Christmas? Problem is ... he'd run too fast and we won't be able to catch it. Scrap that idea!
Can you think of any evolutionary ideas which would benefit us in the future? Don't be shy now ... let your imagination run wild and share your thoughts with us.
I promise not to laugh! | <urn:uuid:8ee12d8d-b864-49f7-ac4b-a2b912f74a41> | 468 | 23 |
By Maggie Reiter, Graduate Research Assistant
Major causes of turfgrass winterkill are crown hydration, direct low temperature kill, anoxic conditions under ice sheets, diseases like snow mold, and winter desiccation. These factors often work together to cause turf loss, and damage can be variable across the landscape of a golf course, sports field, or home lawn. During Minnesota winters, we don’t worry much about desiccation because we have consistent snow cover that protects the turf. This year, however, snow cover is scarce and most of Minnesota has snow accumulation below average. In some parts of Minnesota, the snowfall departure is around 20 inches below historical means (Midwest Regional Climate Center).
Desiccation is extreme dryness that occurs when water in the plant is lost at a faster rate than water is replaced. This is a form of abiotic stress that can happen any time of the year. Symptoms of desiccation involve tissue damage that appears as browning and thinning of the turf canopy. Desiccation to the leaves can be tolerated, and usually water dehydration is not severe enough to affect the crown of the plant. But, newly-seeded or succulent plants are more susceptible to harm and death could occur. Desiccation is most harsh on elevated areas that are exposed to dry winds (Beard, 1973). Winter desiccation can injure semi-dormant turfs in frozen soil, where the plants are not able to uptake water as fast as they lose water. In Minnesota, these conditions may happen in the late winter or early spring, especially with our recent lack of snow cover.
An anti-desiccation study at the University of Minnesota Turfgrass Research, Outreach, and Education Center
There is not a great deal of research on winter desiccation injury and management. In a field setting, winter damage is often a dynamic combination of factors and the impact of each effect is difficult to discern. In a greenhouse or laboratory, desiccating conditions can be challenging to reproduce. There is a decent volume of research on turfgrass drought, but the results cannot be translated to desiccation because drought tolerance is not the same as desiccation tolerance. Drought tolerant plants are able to maintain moisture inside cells when water availability is scarce. Desiccation toler | <urn:uuid:cd16ddd0-8170-4ab6-8a8b-8929ac73ba0c> | 512 | 0 |
By Maggie Reiter, Graduate Research Assistant
Major causes of turfgrass winterkill [...] ant plants are able to survive reduced water content in cells and recuperate when water becomes available (Alpert, 2005).
A general rule of thumb is to be wary of desiccation when air temperatures are more than 20 degrees F above soil temperatures. Control measures for winter desiccation include installing wind breaks or snow fences in areas with perennial problems. Golf courses and sports fields can use protective covers and heavy sand topdressing for high-value turf. Anti-desiccant products exist for turf, ornamentals, and trees. These treatments coat plants with a sealant to prevent water loss through the leaves.
Heat waves are projected to increase in frequency and magnitude while changes in precipitation will be variable (IPCC, 2014). This climate will continue to reduce snow cover in the North Central and could foster desiccating conditions for turfgrass. Although winter desiccation is not heavily reported in Minnesota at this time, it is something to be watchful of in the future.
Alpert, P. 2005. The Limits and Frontiers of Desiccation-Tolerant Life. Integrative and Comparative Biology 45:685-695.
Beard, J.B. 1973. Turfgrass: Science and Culture. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
IPCC. 2007. Climate Change 2007: Summary for Policymakers. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, and New York, NY.
Midwest Regional Climate Center. 2014. Regional Maps: Snowfall Season-to-Date and Annual Snowfall Normals. Illinois State Water Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. | <urn:uuid:cd16ddd0-8170-4ab6-8a8b-8929ac73ba0c> | 447 | 23 |
JUNIORS – Second and Third Grade
Year 1: Change & Continuity
Humanities, Science, Design
Juniors explore the concept of change and continuity through studies of the Earth's geologic history, its weather systems, and human measurement of time. Students learn about the minerals, rocks, and soil that make up the Earth and study how the face of our planet—in particular our home region—has changed over time. Students also learn what makes the weather, what causes the atmospheric changes that we experience, and how we can predict those changes. They carefully measure and log this data at our Arbor weather station, as well as tracking the stream flow of our creek across the seasons. Juniors also explore the concept of time by learning about and constructing simple clocks and calendars.
- Geology: geologic history, the rock cycle, earth science, mapping
- Electricity & Magnetism
- Weather: clouds, the water cycle, wind, temperature, storms
- Time: clocks & calendars
- Independent Projects
Science and design overlap constantly under these themes. Juniors use the well log from our campus well to create a scale representation of the soil layers beneath our feet, tall enough to unfurl down the side of their two-story building. Another collaborative effort is a meteorology mural. Children also work to design and build a variety of time-keeping devices, studying simple machines to understand the mechanics of weight-driven clocks and trouble-shoot their models.
Year 2: Communities
Humanities, Science, Design
In this year of culture and geography, Juniors study North America, with a particular focus on the Northwest. We begin with a look at the emergence of our continent and the prehistoric animals that inhabited it. Students learn about the first Americans' migration from Asia and the development of distinct Native American cultures. The arrival of Europeans, westward expansion, and the settlement of the Northwest allows us to discuss migration in terms of the "push" and "pull" factors that cause communities to disperse and form anew elsewhere. Juniors delve into the history of Portland and explore concepts of engineering through a close look at the city's bridges.
- North America: physical geography & paleontology
- First Americans: the Kalapuya & other North American | <urn:uuid:533dd5cd-d307-4d13-a40c-93dd64163311> | 512 | 0 |
JUNIORS – Second and Third Grade
Year 1: Change & Continuity
H [...] tribes
- Colonization & Human Migrations
- Westward Expansion: Lewis & Clark, the Oregon Trail
- Early Settlement of Portland
- Portland Bridges
We open the year by collaborating on a large, three-dimensional map of the continent's topography. Other major projects include the excavation of an archaeological test pit and the design and construction of model bridges, which we test for weight-bearing capacity.
Junior students are ready to explore a math landscape of big ideas, complex real-world problems, strategies, and models. They come to us with a solid background in number relationships and have had experience with addition and subtraction. The thematic curriculum invites work with large numbers and even negative numbers, as we investigate very cold temperatures and compare distances above and below the earth's surface. Multiplication, division, and an increasingly thorough understanding of place value allow for rich explorations. The acquisition of knowledge and mastery of these new concepts is not linear. We work to help each student take up developmentally appropriate tools—number lines, tables, symbols, etc.—to represent her math thinking as she learns to organize and solve problems. The greater complexity of the work in the Junior classroom requires greater skill in recording ideas and strategies, and in learning to look over the work with an eye to reasonableness, accuracy, and completeness.
- Number & Operations: building, extending, & predicting simple number & growth patterns; solving for unknowns with addition/subtraction; understanding place value beyond three digits; estimating; functions; multiplication & division facts; zero, identity, & distributive properties; factors
- Geometry: identifying, describing, comparing, classifying, & measuring shapes using vocabulary of angles & sides, perimeter & area; fractions of rectilinear and circular shapes; using concrete & pictorial modeling to represent & predict reflections, rotations, & translations; using coordinates to describe motion from one point to another; measuring angles
- Measurement & Data: linear, weight, volumetric, & temporal measurements; calculating the difference in lengths of objects; telling time on analog clocks; comparing coin values; understanding relationships between units of scale; graphical representations of data
By the Junior years, most students are reading and | <urn:uuid:533dd5cd-d307-4d13-a40c-93dd64163311> | 512 | 23 |
Topic: Political Parties
|Table of Contents|
Vocabulary Terms and Identifications
Biographies of Key Historical Figures
Parties are basically organizations that mobilizes voters on behalf of
a common set of interests, concerns, and goals. In many countries
political parties can play a crucial part in their democratic processes.
A political party formulates political and policy agendas as well as selects
candidates, and conduct election campaigns, and furthermore, they manage
the work of their elected representatives. Political parties
also link citizens and the government, while they provide the means by
which people can have a voice in their government.
Vocabulary and Identifications
1) Federalist- supporters of ratification of the Federal constitution. They became the first political party under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton, who favored a strong national government.
2) Inauguration official- ceremony which a person assumes or takes over a government office.
3) Majority - the candidate or ballot measure receives at least half plus one of the total vote cast.
4) third party -any political party other than two major parties.
a committee established by and representing a corporation labor union or
special interest group that raises money and gives comparing contributions.
Important Chart: The Rise
of Political Parties
|Social Make- Up|
New England and Mid-Atlantic Coast
|Artists, shopkeepers, settlers, and southern plantation owners, small farm owners in the south and from western regions of the nation.|
|Attitude Toward Government|
|Wanted to imitate
(rule by the rich) but without a king.
Saw the common people as unable
Willing to censor the press for political power.
democracy than in the
Common people were able to govern themselves.
greater involvement by the people
through lower voting qualification.
Reduce government interference
Favored freedom of speech & press.
|View on the Constitution|
|Held "loose constructionist" view that the Federal government had implied powers not listed in the Constitution.||Held ''strict''
view of the constitution:
limit the powers of the central
government and support states rights.
|Foreign Policy Positions|
|Favored Britain in culture and trade.||Distrusted Britain
& wanted closer
relations with France | <urn:uuid:fa5650d2-a7dc-4156-a176-762dc67718a7> | 512 | 0 |
Topic: Political Parties
|Table of Contents|
Vocabulary Terms and Ident [...] , which had
just been through a democratic
of Important People
Hamilton was born in 1775. During his childhood was not afforded much opportunity formal education but through the tutoring of his step-mother he learned a great knowledge of the french language and history. Hamilton attended King's College where he attained a BA degree in one year. At age 25, Hamilton began his political career for which he is most remembered for. Hamilton served from 1782 to 1783 in congress and was elected to continental congress. In 1787 Hamilton was one of the authors of The Federalist, a commentary on American constitutional law an principles of government. Hamilton became one of two famous leaders in the Political Parties. Hamilton died in 1804.
Jefferson was born in 1743 in Albemarle County VA. He studied at the college of William and Mary, where he later read law. Jefferson was a great correspondent but not a very good public speaker. In both the the Continual Congress and the House of Burgesses he contributed thorough his writing rather than through public speeches. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence at age 33. A few years later he wrote a Bill the established religious freedom. In 1796 he became vice president and eventually president. Then he retired to his home in. On July 4, 1826 he died.
year was Thomas Jefferson born in?
a) 1743 b) 1734c) 1473d) 1347
old was Jefferson when he drafted the Declaration of Independence?
a) 36 b) 35 c) 34 d) 33
year did Jefferson die?
a) 1284 b) 1825 c) 1826 d) 1895
what year did Hamilton born in?
a) 1758 b) 1755 c) 1775 d) 1756
year did Hamilton die in?
a) 1804 b) 1859 c) 1865 d) | <urn:uuid:fa5650d2-a7dc-4156-a176-762dc67718a7> | 512 | 23 |
It's no secret that energy prices are escalating and most often the most effective ways to save money and energy is to improve the efficiency of your home. Heat likes to move from warmer to colder areas. On a cold winter day, heat from inside your home wants to travel to the cooler area outside, resulting in heat loss. On a warm summer day, the heat from outside the home tries to penetrate your home's walls to find the cooler air conditioned areas of your home.
Insulation is the material found in your home's walls and other areas of your house to help stop air infiltration and heat transfer. When insulation is correctly installed, it will keep your house warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It will also help save money, improve your health by reducing pollen and dust, preserve natural resources, prevent ice dam formation, reduce noise and in some cases, make you eligible for tax credits.
Energy prices are escalating and it is no wonder that many homeowners are looking to find ways to make their homes as energy efficient as possible. Making your home energy efficient can increase the value of your home approximately $20.00 for every $1.00 reduction in annual utility bills, according to the Appraisal Journal. Reduce heating and cooler costs by reducing air infiltration, managing the moisture in your home and creating proper ventilation. By making these improvements, you may be eligible for additional rebates through participating utility companies. For example, Focus On Energy provides a 33% rebate on certain improvements and Xcel Energy will match that totaling 66% of your money back!
Preserve Natural Resources
All of us can help protect the environment by making our homes as energy efficient as possible. The less energy we use in our everyday living, the less pollution we generate. Energy that we use comes from the burning of fossil fuels at power plants all around the world. Those power plans contribute to smog, acid rain and global warming. Simply stated, by sealing our homes' duct work, increasing our insulation and keeping air from infiltrating our homes, we can help save some of our natural resources and the environment.
What do we consider noise? Noise is unwanted sounds that come from today's noise laden living and working environments: the television in the other room, a running dishwasher in the kitchen, the neighbor | <urn:uuid:150d86f2-ea2c-438f-a4f2-9164f27d031f> | 512 | 0 |
The name Endcount refers to the current total population of a species that is close to extinction. A number tending towards zero. Humans have had a dramatic impact to planet Earth. Our population has grown from 2 billion in 1927 to 7 billion today. Our rapidly growing demand for food, shelter, material goods and individual wealth comes at a huge cost to the environment and the creatures that share our planet with us. We have impacted some species so much that they now number fewer than 35 individuals left in the wild. Over 4000 species are classed as critically endangered and almost 6000 species are endangered.
To bring attention to the human impact on the cohabitants of our planet by putting the message in a context that raises awareness and provokes conversation. Our first project is focused on key species threatened with extinction across the globe. We want to create beautiful and thought provoking art that changes the way people think about these problems. At the same time we want to raise the profile of charities working to save these species and to assist with fundraising for them.
Endcount is a collaboration between Aurelie Perthuis (Lily) and Joe Bramwell-Smith. We met whilst working at News.com.au where we were telling news stories in innovative ways through multimedia interactive content. In 2010 we started collaborating on an idea of Lily’s for an art project documenting threatened species and data. Lily wanted to create artworks using the numbers found on IUCN Redlist and other sources, She then approached Joe who was at that time a multimedia developer, to create an application. After discovering a mutual interest in the subject matter and compatible skills we sat down to work out how we could best get the message out there and Endcount was born.
Our first initiative was a series of artworks that aim to highlight the declining numbers of certain endangered species through a mixture of fine art and data visualisation. Each piece is a mix of code, print, canvas and paint that captures the extreme fragility of these creatures. Each artwork is a representation of the total number of remaining members of a given species ranging from a few hundred to a number of thousand.
We started by building an app that we can use to create the base of the artwork. The app allows us to dynamically generate the current number of creatures in the wild. We | <urn:uuid:b0e2f163-def3-4135-8d6b-1f8334af0d36> | 512 | 0 |
The name Endcount refers to the current total population of a species that is close to extinction. [...] then start by sketching the species to be reproduced in vector. Once the digital version is generated and then finished in Illustrator it is sent to the printer to come back as a paint-ready physical canvas which is then painted over to provide depth. The process combines research, fine art, code, digital art, printing and painting to create a totally unique representation of the species at risk.
Painter, Digital artist
Lily Perthuis is a french born artist / designer living in Australia since 2004. She now works part time as an editorial designer for one of the largest publishing companies in Australia and is pursuing her dream as an artist. She has been commissioned in various art projects including an exhibition in Melbourne and Sydney. Lily’s work was also featured in the 2010 Semi-Permanent book, a few magazines, the TOP design TV shows and various blogs. Lily has a passion for art, technology and storytelling and maintains a strong link between her digital design work and physical art. “As a figurative painter, I mainly depict the human-animal interaction in our modern society through the making of art. Our fast-paced modern world doesn’t always allow us to experience an intimate connection with the natural world we are hoping to save.” Lily Perthuis www.lilyartist.com
Engineer, Product Manager, Digital Artist
Joe Bramwell-Smith is an English born digital strategist and product manager who has lived in Australia since 2003. His skills include: software development, web design, digital art, product management, digital strategy and marketing. Joe’s working life has involved some of the largest technology and publishing companies in the world as well as advertising, digital agencies and technology startups. “I am struck by the complacency that many feel towards the world we live in. By creating this work and promoting it I hope to encourage people to think about the impact that they are having, change their behaviour and actively participate in the conservation of our planet.” Joe Bramwell-Smith. | <urn:uuid:b0e2f163-def3-4135-8d6b-1f8334af0d36> | 463 | 23 |
Botanical Name: Triticum vulgare
Family Name: Gramineae
Common Name: Wheat germ oil
Part used: Germ
Specific Gravity: 0.92-0.94 at 25°C
Optical Rotation: 25° -37°
Refractive Index: 1.469-1.478 at 40°C
Blends well with: Almond and other carrier oils
Uses: The oil protects cell membranes from oxidation.
It works wonders on the skin.
Countries where it is found
The plant is native to the United States. The crop is now cultivated in China, Southwest Asia, North Africa, Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Turkey, and South Europe.
Harvest is done when the stalks turns from green to yellow to brown. The plant is best harvested in June when the wheat has dried well. Sometimes, a combine harvested is used in harvesting wheat.
History of the plant
The history of wheat dates back to 7000 B.C. Research has proved that wheat was found in some of the world's oldest excavations in eastern Iraq. The plant was first grown in the United States in 1602 and later spread globally.
The oil is extracted by cold pressing the germ of the wheat kernel. The wheat germ is pressed with great weight. The oil is amber to brown in color with a heavy odor and nutty flavor.
Commonly known benefits
Wheat germ oil is a rich source of vitamin E, anti-oxidants, proteins, and lecithin.
Vitamin E protects the body from the effects of free radicals thereby fighting cancer, heart disease, and premature aging.
In addition, this vitamin works with minerals zinc and selenium for powerful antioxidant protection. Vitamin E also aids in blood clot.
The oil works wonders on skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis and heals burns, inflammations, and ulcers. Tropical applications aids dry skin.
When applied externally, the oil treats dry areas, dermatitis, scars, stretch marks, sun spots, and wrinkles.
The oil is rich in essential fatty acids | <urn:uuid:de518588-ccd1-4a18-b8d2-6787e5a6cbfd> | 512 | 0 |
This article is part of our special report The true face of the second leading cause of death.
Progress has been made on tobacco products health warnings but the next round of graphic labelling should also mention the less-known chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which happens to be the second cause of death worldwide, MEP Karin Kadenbach told EURACTIV.com.
Karin Kadenbach is an Austrian member of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) in the European Parliament.
She spoke with EURACTIV’s Sarantis Michalopoulos.
COPD is the second cause of death worldwide. Is Europe sufficiently addressing this critical situation? What could be done better? Does the Commission have a role to play?
In Europe, we are conscious of the challenges posed by non-communicable diseases, like chronic respiratory diseases, but only a few countries have adopted national management plans for diseases like COPD.
COPD in Europe affects 1 in 10 people over 45 and it is among the 10 top causes of death in the European Union, varying from country to country. We need to rethink our healthcare systems to respond to the needs of patients with chronic respiratory diseases and I think the European Commission should take stock of the good examples that exist, and propose a white paper or a strategy guiding member states on what policies to consider preventing and managing diseases like COPD.
Not only to ensure the EU in all policies approach, but also to warn about lethal but slow diseases like chronic respiratory diseases. The EU cannot afford the cost of inaction against COPD.
Last year, you and some of your colleagues in the European Parliament signed a joint declaration on the issue. Has there been any development since then? Is the Parliament ready to take the initiative on COPD?
I proposed this written declaration on chronic respiratory diseases because I believe a public health issue like COPD needs to be an EU issue.
In 2016, COPD was the second cause of death worldwide, because of expanding smoking patterns and exposure to polluted ambient air from cooking, heating and harmful particles indoors, among other things.
The EU cannot hide behind the lack of health competence to act. We can adopt EU policies under our responsibility and positively affect COPD, like tobacco control measures, air pollut | <urn:uuid:99a8f5a5-2bb0-434e-a730-bc7eeb0d9aa9> | 512 | 0 |
This article is part of our special report The true face of the second leading cause of death.
[...] ants levels, research, or healthy ageing policies.
Lost productivity due to COPD is enormous. How could this be addressed for COPD patients?
We want to keep people in the workforce but with an ageing population, this is becoming more difficult. In the case of COPD patients, the problem is their lungs can deteriorate very quickly, isolating them at home.
Although the damage caused by COPD cannot be repaired, I think the care planned for COPD patients has to focus on stopping the disease from progressing, with treatment, but also with complementary medicines like kinesiotherapy and psychology.
Access to these disciplines is unequal depending on the member state but research shows that it does work, so we should be prescribing them more often. We also need to facilitate patients remaining at work, as it has been demonstrated that having an active life decreases the level of severity of the disease, and reduces healthcare costs due to COPD.
Which countries perform better?
Although there is no great European performer in the field of COPD management, the European association representing COPD patients (efanet.org) has documented good practices at national level.
In Germany, Ireland and the UK, doctors are performing COPD screening lung tests in health check-ups, which is the very first step to fight the disease back. I think all countries should include spirometry for people at risk of developing COPD, like other patients are having an electrocardiogram or a mammography.
Austria – my own country –, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, have been providing access to pulmonary rehabilitation and smoking cessation programmes for free. Professional support and reimbursement of treatment to quit smoking is a fundamental measure to decrease respiratory disease and while I encourage the other member states to adopt it, I would like to see a strong signal from the European Commission pointing out at these win-win measures to the member states.
Smoking is the main cause of COPD. Is the EU doing enough to protect public health? Do initiatives like plain packaging go in the right direction or do you believe other measures should be imposed?
At present, the EU has focused on decreasing tobacco consumption through marketing measures, but that doesn’t cut the problem off. Plain | <urn:uuid:99a8f5a5-2bb0-434e-a730-bc7eeb0d9aa9> | 512 | 23 |
New research based on high-resolution x-ray movies reveals that despite having extremely underdeveloped muscles and wings, young birds acquire a mature flight stroke early in their development, initially relying heavily on their legs and wings to work in tandem to power the strenuous movement. The new study, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, is important for understanding the development of flight in modern birds and reconstructing its origins in extinct dinosaurs.
“The transition from ground-living dinosaurs to flight-capable birds is one of the major evolutionary transitions in vertebrate history, because flight is the most physically demanding form of locomotion,” said lead author Ashley Heers, a postdoctoral researcher in the American Museum of Natural History’s Division of Paleontology. “The kind of flight that we normally think of in living birds—for example, what you might see in a pigeon or a robin—involved a huge evolutionary overhaul of the animal’s basic body plan over time. And although scientists have been studying flight for more a century, there’s actually a surprising amount that we don’t know about how birds fly.”
Adult birds have many anatomical features that presumably help meet the demands of flight. However, juvenile birds, like the first winged dinosaurs, lack many hallmarks of advanced flight. Instead of large wings, they have small “protowings,” and instead of robust, interlocking forelimb skeletons, their limbs are more gracile and their joints less constrained. These traits are often thought to preclude extinct theropods—the group of dinosaurs most closely related to modern birds—from powered flight, but young birds with similar rudimentary anatomies flap their wings as they run up slopes and even briefly fly, challenging longstanding ideas about the origin of flight.
To further explore this work, Heers and colleagues used a technique called x-ray reconstruction of moving morphology (XROMM)—which essentially produces a 3-D x-ray movie—to visualize skeletal movement in developing birds.
“For a long time, researchers weren’t able to tell how birds were moving their skeletons because, of course, they are covered in feathers and muscles,” Heers said. “This x-ray technique allows us | <urn:uuid:91ab534f-24d1-41fe-a35d-e3127bec9bed> | 512 | 0 |
New research based on high-resolution x-ray movies reveals that despite having extremely underdeveloped [...] to look at what’s happening inside of the animals as they’re performing different behaviors.”
At Brown University, the researchers used XROMM to look at Chukar partridges (Alectoris chukar) at a variety of ages as they flapped their wings to help climb steep slopes—a behavior scientists call wing-assisted incline running (WAIR). They found that when flap-running at similar levels of effort, juvenile and adult birds show similar patterns of joint movement. Despite their undeveloped anatomy, young birds can produce all of the elements of the avian flight stroke and modify their wing stroke for different behaviors, just like adults.
How is this possible? The study suggests that the cooperation between a juvenile bird’s legs and wings is key in early life: the force generated by flapping pushes the birds forward as well as upward, improving traction as they climb.
“When wings and legs are viewed in isolation, it is difficult to imagine how animals lacking flight adaptions could produce useful aerodynamic forces,” Heers said. “However, flapping behaviors that involve cooperative use of wings and legs, like WAIR, require less muscle power and less aerodynamic force than level flight. Transitional behaviors therefore allow flight-incapable juveniles to transition to flight-capable adults in a continuous fashion, supplementing their underdeveloped wings and flight muscles with their legs until the flight apparatus can fully support body weight.”
This wing-leg cooperation is a bridge between leg- and wing-based modes of locomotion. And the study indicates that extinct theropod dinosaurs might have done the same thing with their “mini-wings” before flight evolved.
“Baby birds anatomically look a lot like some of the dinosaur fossils that we see,” Heers said. “And so, by studying baby birds and looking at how they actually use these dinosaur-like anatomies, we can get a better sense of how these long-extinct animals might have been using their wings.”
Ashley M. Heers , David B. Baier, Brandon E. Jackson, Kenneth P. Dial. Flapping before Flight: High Resolution, Three-Dimensional Skeletal Kinematics | <urn:uuid:91ab534f-24d1-41fe-a35d-e3127bec9bed> | 512 | 23 |
Some time ago I wrote an article titled: Cyberbullying Hits Home. Following that article I was approached by some organizations who had so much more information to provide. Trend Micro's Lynette Owens, who runs the Internet Safety for Kids and Families program, provided some amazing insights as part of this interview. As a strong advocate on this issue, Lynette is very involved in her community, and her efforts in Massachusetts have made an impact in establishing it as a state at the forefront of developing laws to address these unsettling issues.
According to Trend Micro:
"While many schools are taking a step in the right direction, many parents are still unclear about what they can do to help their kids. Eighty-three per cent of parents claim to be very concerned about their child's online security, yet only 30 per cent report visiting their child's social media profiles."
Here's the interview with Trend Micro's Lynette Owens:
Has the Internet amplified the incidences of bullying?
Yes and no. Bullying is still bullying, which has been going on for ages, however, the Internet has enabled methods of bullying that did not previously exist. It is no longer limited to school grounds, the audience (and witnesses) can be a larger group, and for reasons good and bad, it can be more public and better documented.
Does the Internet create a protective veil that subjects people (who may not normally be labeled as bullies) to be vindictive and hurtful online?
For adults and teens alike, there are some who may be more emboldened to 'say' something online under the presumption of anonymity. Or, even when your identity is known, if you are not interacting live, you aren't faced with the hurt and pain that you inflict, you don't have to 'own it' the same way. To bully someone in person, you have to be immune to that... most people aren't.
Additionally, something benign said online can be misinterpreted. Humour or sarcasm cannot always come across clearly in ones and zeros. And this misunderstanding can then escalate into conflict that might never have happened if the conversation was done offline only.
Can you provide statistics on Cyberbullying? What are the incidences of bullying? For example the differences in race | <urn:uuid:eb0709d1-44dc-4dd9-828f-77b9ba50c753> | 512 | 0 |
Some time ago I wrote an article titled: Cyberbullying Hits Home. Following that article [...] , sexuality etc. Where do these occur? Social platforms?
From the most recent research by the Cyberbullying Research Center (CRC), it is about 20 per cent among 11-18 year olds, though it depends on age. Online bullying tends to be reported more frequently among female than male teens per research by both the CRC and Mass. Aggression Reduction Center (MARC ), and peaks around 10th grade (then starts to decrease after that). Common types (as per MARC) are:
What is being done to raise awareness of this?
There are multiple effort going on nation-wide and internationally to address the issues of cyberbullying, including:
Are laws starting to catch up and help identify and mitigate occurrences? Do you foresee changes within Facebook, YouTube etc. that include disclosure of information and closing accounts where incidences of Cyberbullying occur? What about screening for user age requirements?
What are schools doing to educate kids and build awareness for this?
On a nation-wide basis, more and more schools are starting to look at cyberbullying in a larger context. More and more districts are adopting internet-connected technologies for educational purposes. The more evolved districts realize that teaching kids how to use technology safely and responsibly is an important part of that education process. Cyberbullying is one of the many areas addressed in what is known as Digital Citizenship curriculum. When you teach kids how to be good digital citizens, you teach them about what they see and download as much as about what they post and share with others. Some of the curriculum that covers digital citizenship in schools are from Common Sense Media, the iKeepSafe Coalition, and NetSmartz.
Can you give case examples where action has been taken to bring more attention to this?
In Natick, MA, as in many districts, a peer leadership program is now in place at the middle and high school levels. This program encourages students to take an active role in helping to minimize the incidences of bullying in school. Additionally, a parent group called the Natick Anti-bullying coalition was formed by a group of concerned parents, experts, church leaders, afterschool programs and sports coaches to address/prevent bullying that might happen outside | <urn:uuid:eb0709d1-44dc-4dd9-828f-77b9ba50c753> | 512 | 23 |
"to blow something out of (all) proportion"
to make a situation seem much worse than it really is
Related words and phrases:
Two colleagues are talking ...
Colleague 1: Why is Eugene so upset? The latest report shows only a slight downturn in the numbers. And that is normal for this time of year.
Colleague 2: Eugene likes to blow things out of proportion. He thinks the numbers show a permanent trend.
Colleague 1: But it is only a small downward change, right?
Colleague 2: Exactly. The numbers improve again as we progress into the year. They always do.
Two students are talking ...
Student 1: Susan didn't say hello to me in the hallway. She must hate me.
Student 2: Maybe she didn't see you.
Student 1: I must have done something to upset her. Now I probably have no chance with her, ever. My life is over.
Student 2: Don't you think you are blowing one small encounter out of all proportion? Go and talk to her on the next break. I am sure that nothing happened.
Blowing the news out of all proportion, he made it sound as if the world was coming to an end.
1) Sometimes, certain issues are blown out of proportion, giving a wrong perception once it becomes viral and spread on the social media ...
2) ... that what should be seen as an insignificant event is blown out of proportion by the media and latched on by political parties and figures.
3) ... challenges of daily life can themselves lead into more rumination and get blown out of proportion, further fueling the depression.
4) He feels many residents are blowing things out of proportion but he does admit some students don't follow the rules.
5) She has even blamed the media for blowing things out of proportion and trying to start a "full-blown war."
6) ... alleging they were "blowing things out of proportion through their prejudiced campaign"...
7) ... to call it what it is -- preliminary -- and not blow it out of proportion.
8) When you blow it out of proportion, their future lives become difficult. Let the victims live normal lives.
9) ... the media tend to focus on the bad, and "blow it out of proportion", | <urn:uuid:f23c4c74-5d57-4382-a233-7163c1c9568d> | 512 | 0 |
A new study conducted by researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital found that an estimated 5.25 million football-related injuries among children and adolescents between 6 and 17 years of age were treated in U.S. emergency departments between 1990 and 2007. The annual number of football-related injuries increased 27 percent during the 18-year study period, jumping from 274,094 in 1990 to 346,772 in 2007.
"We found that nearly 2,000 pediatric and adolescent football-related injuries were treated every day in emergency departments during football season," said Lara McKenzie, PhD, study co-author and principal investigator in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. "We need to do a better job of preventing football-related injuries among our young athletes."
According to the study, published in the journal Clinical Pediatrics, the most common injuries were sprains and strains (31 percent), fractures and dislocations (28 percent) and soft tissue injuries (24 percent). In addition, concussions accounted for 8,631 injuries each year. Adolescents aged 12 to 17 years old suffered a greater proportion of the injuries (78 percent), and were more likely to sustain a concussion or be injured at school when compared to younger players. Children aged 6 to 11 years old were more likely to sustain lacerations, and were often injured at home.
"Prevention and treatment of concussions are the focus of many discussions at every level of play – from the junior level all the way up to the National Football League. Our data shows that young athletes are at risk for concussions," said Dr. McKenzie, also a faculty member at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. "Every day during football season, an average of fifty-seven 6 to 17 year olds are treated in U.S. emergency departments for football-related concussions. The potential long-term consequences of this type of injury make this an unacceptably high number."
Data for this study were collected from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance | <urn:uuid:b7e33666-790e-422e-9210-e0f545d136d1> | 512 | 0 |
A new study conducted by researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute [...] System (NEISS), which is operated by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The NEISS dataset provides information on consumer product-related and sports and recreation-related injuries treated in hospital emergency departments across the country.
The Center for Injury Research and Policy (CIRP) of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital works globally to reduce injury-related pediatric death and disabilities. With innovative research at its core, CIRP works to continually improve the scientific understanding of the epidemiology, biomechanics, prevention, acute treatment and rehabilitation of injuries. CIRP serves as a pioneer by translating cutting edge injury research into education, advocacy and advances in clinical care. For related injury prevention materials, or to learn more about the Center for Injury Research and Policy, go to http://www.injurycenter.org. While visiting our website, sign up for the RSS feed in the What's New section of our media center to receive e-mail updates of our latest news.
Ranked in U.S.News & World Report's 2010 "America's Best Children's Hospitals" and Parents magazine's 2009 top 10 "Best Children's Hospitals" lists, Nationwide Children's Hospital is one of the nation's largest not-for-profit freestanding pediatric healthcare networks providing care for infants, children, adolescents and adult patients with congenital disease. As home to the Department of Pediatrics of The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Nationwide Children's Hospital faculty train the next generation of pediatricians, scientists and pediatric specialists. The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital is one of the top 10 National Institutes of Health-funded free-standing pediatric research facilities in the U.S., supporting basic, clinical, translational and health services research at Nationwide Children's Hospital. Currently, two buildings totaling approximately 300,000 square feet are dedicated to research on the Nationwide Children's campus. An additional 225,000 square feet of research space will be added when a third research building opens in 2 | <urn:uuid:b7e33666-790e-422e-9210-e0f545d136d1> | 512 | 23 |
A new study conducted by researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute [...] 012. More information is available at http://www.NationwideChildrens.org/Research.
Lara McKenzie, PhD http://www.nationwidechildrens.org/gd/applications/controller.cfm?page=3812&pname=bio&rID=159
Erin Pope | EurekAlert!
Amputees can learn to control a robotic arm with their minds
28.11.2017 | University of Chicago Medical Center
The importance of biodiversity in forests could increase due to climate change
17.11.2017 | Deutsches Zentrum für integrative Biodiversitätsforschung (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
DNA molecules that follow specific instructions could offer more precise molecular control of synthetic chemical systems, a discovery that opens the door for engineers to create molecular machines with new and complex behaviors.
Researchers have created chemical amplifiers and a chemical oscillator using a systematic method that has the potential to embed sophisticated circuit...
MPQ scientists achieve long storage times for photonic quantum bits which break the lower bound for direct teleportation in a global quantum network.
Concerning the development of quantum memories for the realization of global quantum networks, scientists of the Quantum Dynamics Division led by Professor...
Researchers have developed a water cloaking concept based on electromagnetic forces that could eliminate an object's wake, greatly reducing its drag while...
Tiny pores at a cell's entryway act as miniature bouncers, letting in some electrically charged atoms--ions--but blocking others. Operating as exquisitely sensitive filters, these "ion channels" play a critical role in biological functions such as muscle contraction and the firing of brain cells.
To rapidly transport the right ions through the cell membrane, the tiny channels rely on a complex interplay between the ions and surrounding molecules,...
The miniaturization of the current technology of storage media is hindered by fundamental limits of quantum mechanics. A new approach consists in using so-called spin-crossover molecules as the smallest possible storage unit. Similar to normal hard drives, these special molecules can save information via their magnetic | <urn:uuid:b7e33666-790e-422e-9210-e0f545d136d1> | 512 | 23 |
Their research will ultimately improve wireless network access in offices and also security in prisons where the illicit use of mobile phones is widespread.
The project, which begins in January 2007, is in collaboration with the universities of Manchester (who received £228k) and Auckland (New Zealand), and the Police Information Technology Organisation which has pledged a further £30,000. This will bring the total funding for the project to £581,000 over three years.
Dr Batchelor explained: ‘Our research will involve integrating frequency selective surfaces into building walls. These surfaces can either pass or block certain radio frequencies meaning that transmissions can be contained in, or passed out of sealed rooms. This has promising implications for ‘reusing’ radio signals in adjacent rooms and increasing the total number of wireless channels available, or conversely, blocking signals completely and stopping people from making unauthorised mobile phone calls. Modern architectural regulations are aimed only at structural and aesthetical issues, while ignoring the problem of controlling access to an ever expanding wireless infrastructure.’
Dr Batchelor is a Senior Lecturer in Electronic Engineering with research interests in the design and modelling of multi-band antennae for personal and mobile communication systems, and reduced size frequency selective structures for incorporation into smart buildings for control of the radio spectrum. Professor Parker is Professor Emeritus of Radio Communications, with research interests in microwave antennae, frequency selective surfaces for microwave and millimetre wave multiband antennae, radomes, and the electromagnetic architecture of buildings, particularly time-dependent and frequency-dependent screening for secure buildings.
Gary Hughes | alfa
Smart buildings through innovative membrane roofs and façades
31.08.2017 | Fraunhofer-Institut für Organische Elektronik, Elektronenstrahl- und Plasmatechnik FEP
Concrete from wood
05.07.2017 | Schweizerischer Nationalfonds SNF
DNA molecules that follow specific instructions could offer more precise molecular control of synthetic chemical systems, a discovery that opens the door for engineers to create molecular machines with new and complex behaviors.
Researchers have created chemical amplifiers and a chemical oscillator using a systematic method that has the potential to embed sophisticated circuit...
MPQ scientists achieve long | <urn:uuid:47175d84-7fa0-41de-bc2e-e3e0e0c288d6> | 512 | 0 |
Their research will ultimately improve wireless network access in offices and also security in prisons where the illicit [...] storage times for photonic quantum bits which break the lower bound for direct teleportation in a global quantum network.
Concerning the development of quantum memories for the realization of global quantum networks, scientists of the Quantum Dynamics Division led by Professor...
Researchers have developed a water cloaking concept based on electromagnetic forces that could eliminate an object's wake, greatly reducing its drag while...
Tiny pores at a cell's entryway act as miniature bouncers, letting in some electrically charged atoms--ions--but blocking others. Operating as exquisitely sensitive filters, these "ion channels" play a critical role in biological functions such as muscle contraction and the firing of brain cells.
To rapidly transport the right ions through the cell membrane, the tiny channels rely on a complex interplay between the ions and surrounding molecules,...
The miniaturization of the current technology of storage media is hindered by fundamental limits of quantum mechanics. A new approach consists in using so-called spin-crossover molecules as the smallest possible storage unit. Similar to normal hard drives, these special molecules can save information via their magnetic state. A research team from Kiel University has now managed to successfully place a new class of spin-crossover molecules onto a surface and to improve the molecule’s storage capacity. The storage density of conventional hard drives could therefore theoretically be increased by more than one hundred fold. The study has been published in the scientific journal Nano Letters.
Over the past few years, the building blocks of storage media have gotten ever smaller. But further miniaturization of the current technology is hindered by...
11.12.2017 | Event News
08.12.2017 | Event News
07.12.2017 | Event News
15.12.2017 | Power and Electrical Engineering
15.12.2017 | Materials Sciences
15.12.2017 | Life Sciences | <urn:uuid:47175d84-7fa0-41de-bc2e-e3e0e0c288d6> | 465 | 23 |
“There are several species of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, that can form surface blooms in the Baltic Sea,” explains Malin Mohlin from the University of Gothenburg’s Department of Marine Ecology.
“Which species ends up dominating a bloom depends partly on how they deal with an increased amount of UV light and a shortage of nutrients. Nodularia spumigena is most toxic when there is little nitrogen in the water but sufficient amounts of phosphorus.”
As a result, wastewater treatment processes that concentrate on removing nitrogen can make cyanobacterial blooms more toxic. Wastewater therefore needs to be cleared of both nitrogen and phosphorus.
Mohlin’s research shows that Nodularia spumigena can be expected to be most toxic at the beginning of a bloom in July. At that time there is generally more phosphorus than nitrogen in the water, and the cyanobacteria have not yet to float to the surface but are found deeper in the water where they have not yet been exposed to UV light.
Surface blooms of cyanobacteria, which are a type of phytoplankton, have increased in both frequency and magnitude in the Baltic Sea in recent decades, and researchers are divided on the cause. Some put it down to eutrophication – an excess of nutrients in the water – caused by human emissions of nitrogen and phosphorus over the past 150 years. Others have studied the Baltic Sea’s bottom sediment and argue that this is a natural phenomenon that has been ongoing for more than 7,000 years and is due instead to climate variations.
Different species of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria bloom at different times. Aphanizomenon species tend to bloom from May to June, but from July to August the toxic species Nodularia spumigena normally dominates for as long as the surface water is warm and still.
The toxin it produces is called nodularin and is a hepatotoxin – a toxin that attacks the liver. Livestock and dogs around the Baltic Sea have died after consuming large quantities of toxic water during blooms.
The thesis has been successfully defended.For more information, please contact: Malin Mohlin | <urn:uuid:bcf30cb5-71f4-4f16-8642-3b862a191a5a> | 512 | 0 |
“There are several species of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, [...] , Department of Marine Ecology, University of Gothenburg
Helena Aaberg | idw
Single-stranded DNA and RNA origami go live
15.12.2017 | Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard
New antbird species discovered in Peru by LSU ornithologists
15.12.2017 | Louisiana State University
DNA molecules that follow specific instructions could offer more precise molecular control of synthetic chemical systems, a discovery that opens the door for engineers to create molecular machines with new and complex behaviors.
Researchers have created chemical amplifiers and a chemical oscillator using a systematic method that has the potential to embed sophisticated circuit...
MPQ scientists achieve long storage times for photonic quantum bits which break the lower bound for direct teleportation in a global quantum network.
Concerning the development of quantum memories for the realization of global quantum networks, scientists of the Quantum Dynamics Division led by Professor...
Researchers have developed a water cloaking concept based on electromagnetic forces that could eliminate an object's wake, greatly reducing its drag while...
Tiny pores at a cell's entryway act as miniature bouncers, letting in some electrically charged atoms--ions--but blocking others. Operating as exquisitely sensitive filters, these "ion channels" play a critical role in biological functions such as muscle contraction and the firing of brain cells.
To rapidly transport the right ions through the cell membrane, the tiny channels rely on a complex interplay between the ions and surrounding molecules,...
The miniaturization of the current technology of storage media is hindered by fundamental limits of quantum mechanics. A new approach consists in using so-called spin-crossover molecules as the smallest possible storage unit. Similar to normal hard drives, these special molecules can save information via their magnetic state. A research team from Kiel University has now managed to successfully place a new class of spin-crossover molecules onto a surface and to improve the molecule’s storage capacity. The storage density of conventional hard drives could therefore theoretically be increased by more than one hundred fold. The study has been published in the scientific journal Nano Letters.
Over the past few years, the building | <urn:uuid:bcf30cb5-71f4-4f16-8642-3b862a191a5a> | 512 | 23 |
Doctors for USA WEEKEND
Think you’re too young to worry about Alzheimer’s? Most people — more than 5 million, according to latest counts — develop the disease after age 65. But 200,000 Americans have been diagnosed in their 40s and 50s. Alzheimer’s can’t be prevented or cured, but the sooner you’re diagnosed, the sooner you can take steps to manage symptoms and live better for longer. Here are five warning signs.
You forget what you read. Memory loss is the most common sign, but not every lapse is symptomatic. Occasionally losing track of car keys can happen to anyone. But not remembering recently learned information, such as a conversation you just had, could be cause for concern. Other memory-related signs: forgetting important dates or asking for the same information over and over.
You call a tea kettle a water pot. Struggling more to find the right words to identify objects is an early sign of Alzheimer’s, as is difficulty expressing your thoughts or participating in conversations.
You run more red lights. Not because you’re in a rush, but because you misjudged the distance. Alzheimer’s may disrupt your brain’s ability to understand spatial relationships, interpret what you see and even sense of time and place.
You act differently. Perhaps you feel inexplicably anxious, confused or depressed, maybe you’re more irritable or aggressive, you may also become easily upset or fearful for no real reason. People with Alzheimer’s also start withdrawing from hobbies and once-loved social activities.
Your walk is wobbly. The science behind this is preliminary, but it’s backed by three new studies. Researchers found that changes in gait, such as more variable strides, may indicate a decline in cognitive function, and provide an early clue to Alzheimer’s.
The Doctors is an Emmy-winning daytime TV show with pediatrician Jim Sears, OB-GYN Lisa Masterson, ER physician Travis Stork, plastic surgeon Andrew Ordon, health and wellness expert Jillian Michaels and psychologist Wendy Walsh. Check www.thedoctorstv.com for local listings. | <urn:uuid:56328882-aeb1-4525-a51e-3d7a2a77ebe0> | 503 | 0 |
Reading to a child every day isn’t just about promoting literacy or getting bonding time, it’s also about flexing the storytelling muscle.
Stories are really, really important--they are how we give an otherwise chaotic world meaning. It's the difference between observing and inferring: Grandma is making tea vs. Grandma must be sad; she's making tea. It's also the difference between sequencing and expressing causality: Grandma is sad. Grandma is making tea. vs. Grandma is sad, so she's making tea to feel better.
There is an emerging body of research on the relationship between narrative skills and autism, and we know that kids with ASD have deficits in this area.1 A number of studies suggest that reading fiction (but not nonfiction) develops empathy and theory of mind skills.2 This is an emerging area of research, but it seems logical. When we read fiction we practice adopting another's point of view.
But for a child on the spectrum, attending to an adult reading a story can be really difficult. And being read to in a peer group, a skill which a child must master in order learn in a less restrictive classroom environment, is even harder. With my twins, I’m lucky to have a built-in peer dyad, but in the absence of a suitable sibling, attending a kids' story hour at your branch library, or maybe even at a local children’s bookstore, can be a good option for getting the social reading practice your child needs.3
In the home, it's a good idea to find a consistent time of day to ritualize reading. Luke and Harry know that we will read 4+ books every night before bed, and keeping to this regular routine means that things go more smoothly. Bedtime is the most manageable time of day for most families to read together, and that's why the 'bedtime story' is such a huge children's lit sub-genre. While I personally believe that any book your kids enjoy can be read at bedtime, there are some purpose-made bedtime story gems out there. Here are four of our favorites:
1. Goodnight, Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, Clement Hurd (illustrations)
I know, I know, I’m treading some super-revolutionary ground | <urn:uuid:9b708fd1-613b-4657-8bce-45ac3b7501f5> | 512 | 0 |
Reading to a child every day isn’t just about promoting literacy or getting bonding time, [...] here.
Like many, we've been reading this book to our kids since their birth and this lifelong familiarity is undoubtedly a critical factor in its staying power. But no matter when you come to it, "Goodnight Moon" is work of genius, and I was not the least bit surprised to learn that it took Brown over two years to polish her initial draft. It's so well done that you don't even realize how perfect it is:
In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of --
The cow jumping over the moon
The simple rhyme and easy rhythm help the child anchor themselves in the text. The airy pacing, so well timed for hovering on a page, gives a reader like me who wants to add a sound effect embellishment, the space to do so: In the great, green room / There was a telephone RING! RING! And a red balloon / And a picture of -- / The cow jumping over the moon MOO!
The frame zooms in and out, showing us socks drying on a laundry line as well as the stars outside a window. It's a good opportunity to practice that great 'Where's Waldo' skill of scanning, which Lily, our boys' OT, tells us is good input for a hyposensitive visual stimmer like Harry. Lots of books designed for scanning (of the "I Spy" variety, for instance) can be too chaotic; not this one.
"Goodnight Moon" doesn't have a true story, but it's still a fictional world. The text explores a child character's ritual set to poetry--an anthropomorphized baby bunny's bedtime ritual, to be specific. My favorite moment happens when we say goodnight to "nobody" and are treated to a mysterious, blank page. It can be read so many ways, and it is this tiny imaginative challenge that is so subtle and appropriate for a child who needs lots of practice with abstract ideas.
2. The Goodnight Train by June Sobel, Laura Huliska-Beith (illustrations)
"The Goodnight Train" is Luke's favorite bedtime book. And it is so preferred that | <urn:uuid:9b708fd1-613b-4657-8bce-45ac3b7501f5> | 512 | 23 |
Reading to a child every day isn’t just about promoting literacy or getting bonding time, [...] I can use it as an opportunity to practice his verbal manding. "I--want--Goodnight--Train--please," he says, with perfect eye contact.
After I read it to him, Luke usually wants a turn to "read" it to me. Normally, when he knows a text well, he scripts like mad--in the non-functional, automatic sense of wandering around the apartment talking to himself.
This is completely different. He holds the book so I can see, turns the pages in a decently close approximation of his memorized performance, and, rocking his joint attention skills, uses eye contact to check in and make sure I'm listening and enjoying. Because he's so excited about doing this, his articulation of the text has steadily improved; he really wants to get it right. Poor articulation is one of Luke's biggest communication barriers, so this is huge. The whole thing is heart-bursting, happy-cry-inducing kind of stuff.
Hooray for the formula of train book + bedtime story. It must have made for a sweet book pitch. But the magic here is much more than any formula. This book is special.
The goodnight train gets ready for its journey, leaves the station, accelerates to the climax of the book, and then, tiredly, slows down and turns in for the night. In the execution of this, using pitch-perfect word choice and subtle changes in rhythmic emphasis, Sobel achieves precisely what a bedtime book is supposed to: capture our attention in a dynamic and exciting way, and build to a sleepy denouement. As her appealing train meanders through bright and cleverly drawn landscapes, there is real skill with how she makes the reader feel the pace, the train's change in speed. Take this early passage depicting the moment the train begins to accelerate:
Slumber, lumber up the hill.
Cars climb slowly up until...
Roll the corner, rock the curve.
Blankets bounce with every swerve.
Rock-a Rock-a Rock-a Rock-a Shhhh! Shhhh!
This sense of movement is just infectious to read aloud. And the train sounds built into the | <urn:uuid:9b708fd1-613b-4657-8bce-45ac3b7501f5> | 512 | 23 |
Reading to a child every day isn’t just about promoting literacy or getting bonding time, [...] text every few pages are both well-spelled phonetically (for the train-sound novices of the world) and also just super-clever. You can't help but appreciate the artistry in combining recognizable train sounds with sleepy time theming. Respect.
3. The Going-To-Bed Book by Sandra Boynton
"The Going-To-Bed Book" is the closest thing to a successful bedtime social story that I've found, although the story oddly takes place on a boat. The animals go below deck to take a bath, hang up their towels, change into PJs, and brush their teeth. In a fun twist, they go above deck to do some moonlit exercising, then they turn off the lights and let the ocean waves rock them to sleep.
My kids have a particular love affair with Sandra Boynton, but I suspect this may be fairly universal. Her signature--the googly eyed cartoon animals, the small-scale square board book design, and her hand-drawn font--is instantly recognizable and puts children at ease.
Read straight, this isn't her best book. But my wife Janet and I found it surprisingly ripe for end-of-the-day sensory integration. Riffing off of the weird physical comedy of animals exercising on a ship deck before hitting the sack, we developed a number of physical routines. We rub the kids' backs and tummies when the animals bathe ("SCRUB SCRUB SCRUB!"). We hand-over-hand a simulation of teeth brushing ("They brush and brush and brush their teeth."). And when the animals exercise we bend and stretch our kids' arms and legs, which they find hilarious, but which also gives them some pretty great proprioceptive input. At the end of the book ("The moon is high. The sea is deep. / They rock / and rock / and rock / to sleep."), we lift our giant 3-year-olds and rock them exaggeratedly to really get the vestibular input going, and, as a finale, toss them into their beds, which often produces a delighted squeal (and requests for an encore read).
All this sensory input is good for our kids, and | <urn:uuid:9b708fd1-613b-4657-8bce-45ac3b7501f5> | 512 | 23 |
Reading to a child every day isn’t just about promoting literacy or getting bonding time, [...] while parents of typical children might shy away from so much physicality "riling them up before bed," parents of kids with sensory processing disorders know that kids who need this kind of input will do everything better--including sleep--when their needs are met.
As I said, there's nothing organic about "The Going-To-Bed Book" that makes it a sensory book, but it's an example of a book that allows for this kind of approach.
4. Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney
Harry's ABA therapist Marigold brought a copy of "Llama Llama Red Pajama" to our apartment a few months ago and we've been borrowing it ever since. At the moment, both boys are at different stages in an ABA program where they are learning to label emotions based on pictures of people with highly exaggerated facial expressions. This book is the cartoon llama version of that program.
The plot is easy to follow. Mama Llama reads Baby Llama a bedtime story, kisses him goodnight, and goes downstairs to do the dishes and chat on the phone. Baby Llama, of course, starts to feel lonely and calls out for a drink, then gets impatient when Mama Llama doesn't come back right away. He gets sad and starts crying, then angry and starts stomping. Then he worries that she might never come back, and starts screaming in fear. Mama Llama races upstairs and explains that mama always comes back, and that he needs to learn to be patient. Obviously, it ends with kisses and a certain sleepy llama falling asleep.
The text rhymes, has a tight structure, and is highly repetitive. Each verse begins with the words "Llama llama red pajama" so the child always can anticipate the action. Emotional moments are individually explored in their own complete verse, so you don't have to worry about stopping to ask a child, "How does Baby Llama feel now?" It won't throw things off. This is a book that is easy to stop and start.
Luke doesn't care for it, and I think that's because he's not ready to follow a plot based on | <urn:uuid:9b708fd1-613b-4657-8bce-45ac3b7501f5> | 512 | 23 |
Reading to a child every day isn’t just about promoting literacy or getting bonding time, [...] a character's changing emotional state (and its causality). For Harry, the fact that the point of view character is a child and the situation is familiar has made the difference. Eventually, I think it will be a good book for Luke too.
by Margaret Wise Brown and Illustrator Clement Hurd (HarperFestival)
$8.99 USD, board book edition
What we love: Lots of repetitive syntax (sentences starting with "Goodnight...", etc.); great rhythm and easy rhyme scheme; well-paced with room to ad-lib; encourages abstract thinking; illustrations work for scanning.
Challenges: Illustrations are high contrast (which is difficult for some kids with ASD); old fashioned elements (like a 40s era telephone) won't be familiar and may even confuse a child still learning to tact their modern counterparts.
The Goodnight Train
by June Sobel and Illustrator Laura Huliska-Beith (HMH Books for Young Readers)
$7.99 USD, board book edition
What we love: Trains; text includes high-interest train sound effects that are well scripted; good rhyme scheme and rhythm; the structure really makes sense for bedtime.
Challenges: Illustrations are gorgeous, but there's a lot going on and it may be too much for some kids to track.
The Going to Bed Book
by Sandra Boynton (Little Simon)
$5.99 USD, board book edition
What we love: It's very short; an actual bedtime social story; familiar styling of Sandra Boynton books breeds comfort; simple and funny; great opportunities for integrating proprioceptive, vestibular, and deep pressure sensory moments.
Challenges: Lots of people really can't get past a bedtime ritual book that takes place on a boat and involves exercising (and I guess the joke may be lost on a child who takes things very literally); the boat has a Noah's Ark feel to it (but the story doesn't go there); and finally, it misses a key element in the bedtime ritual--reading.
Llama, Ll | <urn:uuid:9b708fd1-613b-4657-8bce-45ac3b7501f5> | 512 | 23 |
Reading to a child every day isn’t just about promoting literacy or getting bonding time, [...] ama, Red Pajama
by Anna Dewdney (Viking)
$17.99 USD, hardcover edition
What we love: Lots of repetition; animal character; good for practice recognizing emotions from facial expressions; opportunities for exploration of the causality of emotion in a highly relatable situation.
Challenges: Too expensive; "Llama llama red pajama" is a bit of a tongue-twister; it's a "mama" book (so not the best choice for kids with a single father or two dads).
1. Research has shown that children with autism have deficits in receptively understanding meaningful elements of narrative. One such study, "The Frog Ate the Bug and Made his Mouth Sad” was published in April 2000 in The Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. It found that children with autism were less likely to show emotional understanding of the characters in a story. Other more recent studies, like Constructing fictional stories: A study of story narratives by children with autistic spectrum disorder, which was published in the journal Research in Developmental Disabilities in October 2014, seem to confirm these findings elaborating that children with autism have trouble constructing longer stories with causal elements.↩
2. Recent scholarship has consistently found relationships between reading fiction and empathy (Exploring the link between reading fiction and empathy: Ruling out individual differences and examining outcomes, published January 2009 in The European Journal of Communication Research) and theory of mind skills (Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind, published in October 2013 in Science). One study published in October 2006 in The Journal of Research in Personality, Bookworms versus nerds: Exposure to fiction versus non-fiction, divergent associations with social ability, and the simulation of fictional social worlds, actually concludes that while reading fiction regularly was a positive predictor for empathy/social-acumen skills, reading lots of nonfiction was a negative predictor for the same.↩
3. Something to remember about libraries and bookstores is that they often don't understand how to accommodate a child with autism. A common scenario is | <urn:uuid:9b708fd1-613b-4657-8bce-45ac3b7501f5> | 512 | 23 |
Newly Discovered Coral-Reef Fish Species Named After Outgoing US President
Outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama is well known for its constant move to protect nature and wildlife. Due to this, scientific communities keep on honoring the president by naming newly discovered species of animals after him.
In addition to a trapdoor spider, a parasitic hairworm, an extinct lizard and speckled freshwater darter, Obama now has a colorful coral-reef species named after him.
The new species, described in a paper published in the journal Zookeys, is a small pink and yellow coral-reef species that can only be found within the marine protected area in Hawaii. Discovered during the June 2016 NOAA expedition to Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the Tosanoides obama has spot on the male that reminds the researchers of Obama's campaign logo.
"We decided to name this fish after President Obama to recognize his efforts to protect and preserve the natural environment, including the expansion of Papahānaumokuākea," said Richard Pyle, a scientist at Bishop Museum and lead author of the paper, in a press release. "This expansion adds a layer of protection to one of the last great wilderness areas on Earth."
Obama expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument last August. Now covering 582,578 square miles, the marine national monument in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands is considered to be the largest permanent marine protected area on Earth.
Tosanoides Obama was first discovered and collected during a dive at the so-called Twilight Zone of the Kure Atoll. Twilight Zones, or also known as mesophotic coral ecosystems, are among the poorly explored of all marine ecosystem. Located at depths of 150 to 500 feet, the reefs can't be observed using only a conventional scuba gear.
The male Tosanoides Obama have a distinctive spot on the dorsal fin near the tail. The spot reminds the scientists of Obama's campaign logo, blue around the edge and red with yellow stripes in the center. | <urn:uuid:a74aaab5-8aff-4fea-bf17-54b69fcd4ad5> | 497 | 0 |
Material recycling – what’s the NORM to be?30 June 1998
The recycling and reuse of material arising from the decommissioning of nuclear facilities can significantly reduce the volumes to be disposed of as radioactive waste. Internationally accepted release levels for such material are necessary to be able to do this. This issue dovetails with the NORM question – what to do about “naturally occurring radioactive material” (NORM) which becomes concentrated in various non-nuclear industrial processes and which can have the same activity levels as the potentially reusable material from decommissioning, but occurs in much larger quantities.
The decommissioning of nuclear facilities will give rise to large amounts of redundant material over a relatively short period. One characteristic of this material is that much of it is metal, most of which is surface contaminated. The conditioning and disposal of these large volumes of materials represent one of the most substantial cost fractions of decommissioning projects. Consequently, the minimisation of the volumes that have to be disposed of is a high priority goal. The recycling of such material (or its reuse or disposal) without radiological restrictions has been identified, by a task group of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s Co-operative Programme on Decommissioning, as a significant means of achieving this aim. Moreover, recycling has its beneficial aspects, such as conservation of natural resources and protecting the environment. However, the absence of consistent, internationally accepted criteria to regulate the release of recyclable material significantly restricts recycling and reuse as material management practices.
CONCEPTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The international discussions on release of materials for reuse or recycling are taking place mainly through:
• The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), which has supplied the basic recommendations regarding principles for protection from ionising radiation.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has translated these general principles into recommendations on nuclide specific release levels.
• The European Commission (EC), which is preparing its own recommendations for countries within the European Union.
• The OECD/NEA’s Task Group on Recycling and Reuse which has analysed the international proposals from the point of view of the potential implementers of the recommendations and criteria that are being drawn up by the IAEA | <urn:uuid:ddc31588-0e8d-4891-8048-7682fe8cac17> | 512 | 0 |
Material recycling – what’s the NORM to be?30 June 199 [...] and the EC.
In 1988, the IAEA and the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), in co-operation, issued Safety Series No 89 recommending a policy for exemptions from the basic safety system of notification, registration and licensing that form the basis of regulatory control. Safety Series No 89 suggests:
• A maximum individual dose/practice of about 10 µSv/year and
• A maximum collective dose/practice of 1 man-Sievert/year to determine whether the material can be cleared from regulatory control or other options should be examined.
A revised International basic safety standards for protection against ionising radiation and the safety of radiation sources (BSS) was published in 1994. It was based on the recommendations of the ICRP and jointly sponsored by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), the IAEA, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the OECD/NEA, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO). The International BSS gives a list of nuclide specific exemption values (both quantities and concentrations).
In May 1996 the EC issued a Council Directive laying down its BSS for radiation protection, with nuclide specific exemption values very similar to those in the International BSS. However, the EC BSS makes a difference between “practices” covering processes utilising the radioactive, fissile or fertile properties of natural or artificial radionuclides (ie the nuclear industry) and “work activities” where radioactivity is incidental, but can lead to significant exposure of workers or the public. The EC BSS list of exemption values covers only practices.
In January 1996, the IAEA published recommended nuclide specific clearance levels, for solid materials in TECDOC 855, which was issued on an interim basis and will be revised after about three years to react to comments received and to experience gained in its implementation.
The EC has also published, very recently, recommended clearance levels for steel, aluminium, copper and alloys of these metals. While the IAEA TECDOC 855 treated | <urn:uuid:ddc31588-0e8d-4891-8048-7682fe8cac17> | 512 | 23 |
Material recycling – what’s the NORM to be?30 June 199 [...] only unconditional clearance, the EC approach provides two options for releasing material:
• Direct release based only on surface contamination.
• Melting at a commercial foundry followed by recycle and reuse. Mass specific and surface specific levels are provided.
In its analysis of the international recommendations published by the IAEA and the EC, the NEA Task Group has noted that both organisations consider only the radiological risks associated with the release of material. The exclusion of other considerations means, for instance, that valuable recyclable materials like stainless steel and inconel (75% nickel) and non-recyclable burnable trash are treated in the same manner. The NEA Task Group, studying the recycling of scrap metals, viewed recycling in a broader context, evaluating both the radiological risks with recycling as well as the non-radiological risks associated with the replacement of the disposed material.
The NEA total health risk approach has later received support at a number of international meetings:
• One of the observations and recommendations of the First European ALARA Network Workshop was “the need to take into account a total risk approach with various trade-offs such as radiological and conventional risks ...”
• The Belgian waste management agency – ONDRAF/NIRAS – in a presentation at the SFEN Conference on Decommissioning (Avignon, March 1998), interprets one of the IAEA Safety Principles for Radioactive Waste Management as follows:
“... the ethical principle is the conservation of raw materials for future generations ... the analysis on the risks and the inconvenience of a practice needs to take the whole chain of the practice into account. That means, for example, that the risk attached to recycled materials needs to be compared to the risk of the extraction and the transformation of new materials.”
Specifically, the Task Group compared the recycling of 50 000 t of scrap metal, utilised so that the individual radiological exposure was limited to 10 µSv/y, to the disposal and replacement of the same amount of material in the USA. The results of this comparison are given in the table on previous page, and show that:
• The radiological risks associated with both alternatives are very small in comparison | <urn:uuid:ddc31588-0e8d-4891-8048-7682fe8cac17> | 512 | 23 |
Material recycling – what’s the NORM to be?30 June 199 [...] with the non-radiological industrial safety risks.
• These non-radiological risks are much lower for recycling because product manufacture starts from scrap metal. The risks associated with mining and refining of metal are avoided.
EMERGENCE OF THE NORM ISSUE
Radiation protection and the management of radioactive material have hitherto been concerned mainly with artificial nuclides arising within the nuclear fuel cycle. In the last few years there has been an increasing awareness of naturally occurring radioactive material and the enhancement of its concentration in various non-nuclear industrial (NNI) processes. This technologically enhanced NORM can be of the same activity levels as low level waste and is very similar to the candidate material for exemption and clearance in the nuclear industry (NI), but occurs in quantities that are huge in comparison, as is illustrated in the table above, which shows the volumes and the radioactivity in some of the technologically enhanced NORM arising in the United States.
The current management of NORM materials is very inconsistent with that of similar materials arising in the nuclear industry. Some examples are discussed below:
• The currently operative EC Directive 84/467/Euratom of 1984 exempts (from reporting and prior authorisation) activity concentrations lower than 100 Bq/g or, for “solid natural material,” 500 Bq/g. This rule is interpreted differently in different countries:
• In the Netherlands, NORM wastes from the oil and gas industry are exempted on the 100 Bq/g basis, including the short-lived decay products assumed to be in equilibrium with the long-lived parent nuclides. Scales from the decontamination of “tubulars,” under this activity level, are considered to be not radioactive, but chemical waste, and is returned to the customer for disposal under his responsibility.
• In Germany, the same type of material is exempted at the 500 Bq/g level, without taking into account the short-lived decay nuclides.
• At off-shore installations in several countries, the scales from tubulars (with activity concentrations of up to several hundreds of Bq/g) are | <urn:uuid:ddc31588-0e8d-4891-8048-7682fe8cac17> | 512 | 23 |
Material recycling – what’s the NORM to be?30 June 199 [...] ground into a powder (“macerated”), mixed with seawater and discharged into the sea.
• Concrete from the demolition of certain buildings at the MZFR Reactor Decomm-issioning Project, Karlsruhe, Germany, was released at the level of 0.5 Bq/g (b/g nuclides) and 0.05 Bq/g (a nuclides). Some of this concrete was used for road surfacing in the neighbourhood of the Forschung-szentrum, Karlsruhe.
Recently a German company was authorised to use 100 t/y of the slag, arising from the melting of scrap from the oil and gas industry, also as road building material, provided that the Ra-226 activity concentration in the slag was below 65 Bq/g and the slag was diluted by a factor of at least four with other material. This means effectively a release level of 16 Bq/g.
The table of exemption values in the recently issued EC BSS covers only practices. The exemption values for work activities are not explicitly given. However, in various reports published by the EC, there are statements that seem to imply an inconsistent double standard and that other criteria could be considered for the exemption/clearance of material from NNI. Some examples:
• “The same radiological criteria as for exemption (in NI) cannot be applied.”
• “The concept of triviality of individual doses does not seem to be relevant.”
• “Table A of Annex 1 (EC BSS) ... is not meant to apply to natural radioactive substances arising in bulk from oil and gas production.”
The papers and discussions at an Amsterdam meeting in 1997 on radioactivity in the non-nuclear industries also reflected these views.
One major stumbling block for the rational and consistent radiological regulation of technologically enhanced NORM is represented by the current international recommendations for exemption and clearance for material in the nuclear industry.
Both exemption and clearance values are derived from the same SS 89 criteria for individual and collective doses. The higher levels for exemption are explained by the moderate quantities considered, while studies on | <urn:uuid:ddc31588-0e8d-4891-8048-7682fe8cac17> | 512 | 23 |
Material recycling – what’s the NORM to be?30 June 199 [...] clearance has involved much larger quantities of material (typically 10 000 t of scrap metal in Europe). The currently proposed clearance levels are already at (or below, according to some experts) the limit at which release measurements can be made on large quantities of candidate material at reasonable costs.
If radioactivity is to be regulated in a consistent manner, it will be practically impossible to relate release levels to quantities, when the much larger volumes of radioactive material arising in the non-nuclear industries will be brought under regulation in the near future. The problem can be illustrated in the table.
A possible way out of this dilemma could be a proposal made at an IAEA meeting in May 1997 on Exclusion, Exemption and Clearance. The proposal was to “collapse” the values for exemption and clearance into one set, based on the BSS exemption levels. It found a lot of support at the meeting. Some of the reasons are the following:
• The values for clearance and exemption for the various nuclides “are always within a factor of 100 of each other, usually much closer and sometimes the same.” For nuclides of most significance to the nuclear industry, such as Co-60, Cs-137 and Ra-226, the factor is 10.
• That, in any case, the IAEA TECDOC 855 groups the nuclides in decades because “uncertainties ... allow ... only categorisation by order of magnitude.”
• The BSS exemption levels are to be adopted for transport regulation.
• Legal aspects of trans-frontier movement: strictly speaking, the BSS requires reporting only if exemption levels are exceeded.
• The rapporteur on the session on “Implementer’s perspectives” states that “Few people, except experts, understand the difference between exemption and clearance. Having two sets of values would only confuse the public.” Even at this specialists’ meeting, the rapporteur pointed out that it was “apparent from the presentations and subsequent discussions that there remains confusion over the concepts exclusion, exemption and clearance.....”
• In the overall summary of the meeting, it is suggested that “another use of such a | <urn:uuid:ddc31588-0e8d-4891-8048-7682fe8cac17> | 512 | 23 |
Material recycling – what’s the NORM to be?30 June 199 [...] (single) set of values could be in the context of the Waste Safety Convention where, at some future time, an international definition of radioactive material is likely to be needed.”
• This “collapsed” list could also be used for exemption/clearance in the non-nuclear industries.
Before the recycling and reuse of material arising from the decommissioning of nuclear facilities can be in wide use, internationally accepted radioactivity release levels are necessary. In the meantime, various national and international bodies have issued interim or draft recommendations on exemption and clearance levels. These have been discussed at a number of fora during the last few years. Recent discussions have also covered the management of radioactivity in “non-nuclear” industries, where naturally occurring radioactivity is “technologically” enhanced to levels, at which aspects of radiological protection to workers and the public would have to be considered.
These discussions indicate that:
• There is a well-motivated case put forward by decommissioners for the adoption of a single set of values for both exemption and clearance, eg the exemption levels specified in the Basic Safety Standards.
• There should be a perceivable consistency in the regulatory treatment of radioactivity in the nuclear and non-nuclear industries. Any other approach would be difficult to explain and justify from the radiation protection point of view.
|There are a number of related terms regarding the release and recycling of low level contaminated material which are often confused. The following are the definitions: • Exclusion. Exclusion covers activity sources not amenable to control, such as K-40 in the human body, cosmic radiation, etc. • Exemption. The term exemption had earlier been used to denote all radioactive material placed outside regulatory control because of the low risk they give rise to and because control would be a waste of resources. Later this term has been restricted to cover radioactive sources which never enter the regulatory regime, typically small sources such as tracers used in research, calibration tracers and some consumer products containing small sources or low levels of activity per unit mass. • Clearance. Clearance is used to denote material that has been released from regulatory control. Clearance can either be unconditional or conditional.| | <urn:uuid:ddc31588-0e8d-4891-8048-7682fe8cac17> | 507 | 23 |
Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more all for only $19.99...
A titular metropolitan see of Augustamnica Prima in Egypt, mentioned in Ezekiel 30:15 sq., (A. V. Sin), as the strength or rampart of Egypt against his enemies from Asia, which clearly outlines the eastern frontier of the Delta. Sin in Chaldaic, and Seyân in Aramaic, means mire, like the Greek Pelousion, which is a translation of it; and which, according to Strabo (XVII, i, 21), refers to the mire and the marshes which surrounded the town. The latter was very important, being on the route of the caravans from Africa to Asia, also because its harbour joined the sea to the branch of the Nile called Pelusiac. The Pharaohs put it in a good state of defence. Among its sieges or battles were: the expedition of Nabuchodonosor, 583 B. C.; that of Cambyses who stormed it, 525 B.C. (Herod., III, 10-12); that of Xerxes, 490 B.C., and of Artaxerxes, 460 B. C.; the battle of 373 B.C. between Nectanebus King of Egypt, Pharnabazus, Satrap of Phrygia, and Iphicrates, general of the Athenians. In 333 B.C. the city opened its gates to Alexander; in 173 B.C. Antiochus Epiphanes triumphed under its walls over Ptolemey Philimetor; in 55 B.C. Anthony captured it; and in 31 B.C. Augustus occupied it. The Shah Chosroes took it in A.D. 616, Amru in 640; Baldwin I King of Jerusalem burned it in 1117. The branch of the Nile became choked up and the sea overflowed the region and transformed it into a desert of | <urn:uuid:cb568642-90d2-4844-8b19-5fa552c4bd2e> | 512 | 0 |
Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download [...] mud. A hill, covered with ruins of the Roman or Byzantine period and called Tell Farameh, marks the site. There are also the ruins of a fort called Tineh.
The first known bishop is Callinicus, a partisan of Meletium; Dorotheus assisted at the Council of Nicæa; Marcus, Pancratius, and Ammonius (fourth century); Eusebius (first half of the fifth century); George (sixth century). Pelusium became the metropolitan see of Augustamnica when that province was created, mentioned first in an imperial edict of 342 (Cod. Theod., XII, i, 34). The greatest glory of Pelusium is St. Isidore, died 450. Under the name of Farmah, Pelusium is mentioned in the "Chronicle" of John of Nikiû in the seventh century (ed. Zottenberg, 392, 396, 407, 595).
LE QUIEN, Oriens christianus, II, 531-34; AMÉLINEAU, La géographie de l'Egypte à l'époque copte (Paris, 1893), 317; BOUVY, De sancto Isidoro Pelusiota (Nîmes, 1884).
APA citation. (1911). Pelusium. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11610d.htm
MLA citation. "Pelusium." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11610d.htm>.
Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Douglas J. Potter. Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. February 1, | <urn:uuid:cb568642-90d2-4844-8b19-5fa552c4bd2e> | 512 | 23 |
We had a very adventurous week, inspired by our key text Man on the Moon by Simon Bartman
In Literacy, we began the week by meeting Bob (the main character in Man on the Moon). All we were shown was Bob in his home, we became detectives spotting clues to tell us more about Bob e.g. photos, objects etc. We then wrote questions to ask Bob so we could find out all about him and we sent these questions to Bob. By the next day, Bob had sent a reply including a letter with a gift, his book Man on the Moon. Bob challenged us to read his book and to use it to help us answer our questions we had asked. We then chose our favourite parts of the story and we wrote explanations to explain why it was our favourite part. During PE Bob invited us to visit the moon, we packed our lunches, put our space suits on and boarded our rockets. We had a wonderful time; we enjoyed exploring the moon, we met aliens, discovered deep craters and we loved making footprints in the dusty moon’s surface. Finally, we wrote postcards to our family and friends to share our amazing adventure on the moon, we used adjectives and time openers to help bring our writing to life.
During Maths, this week, we have been learning about digits (numerals including 0 to 9). Our first challenge, was to sort different numbers into one, two, three and four digits. We then had to solve problems, including a challenge called Digit Street, we had to answer a range of questions involving digits, odd and even numbers and calculating including adding. It was a tricky challenge, but we tried our best to use our skills to answer the questions. We ended the week with another problem to solve; to describe a number using clues without revealing the number e.g. it has 2 digits, 1 ten, 7 ones . . .what is the number?
In Topic, this week, we learnt about timelines and we recorded our lives so far on a timeline including important events e.g. being born, getting our first tooth and our first day at school. Next week, we will continue to learn about the explorer Edmund Hilary.
A very busy week girls and boys! We hope you have a restful weekend and we look forward to seeing you on Monday. | <urn:uuid:6b64365c-d937-4b44-a84e-e5aca60bb1e2> | 510 | 0 |
by Jennifer Anne Brown, M.S.W. and Pam Provonsha Hopkins, M.S.W.
Anger. Not an emotion you probably want to talk about. It may be normal and it may be necessary, as two Seattle-area counselors insist, but it's also uncomfortable and sometimes destructive.
Yet, say Jennifer Anne Brown and Pam Provonsha Hopkins, authors of the new What Angry Kids Need, angry kids are the ones they prefer to work with.
"Because these are energetic, passionate children who understand that feelings need to be expressed, and that's what they're trying to do—however misguided they are in the methods they choose," says Hopkins.
"Kids who yell, kick, hit, throw things and attack others can be extremely rewarding to work with," agrees Brown.
If you're the parent of an angry child, this perspective may be hard to understand, especially if you remember being told that children are to be seen and not heard and that it's not acceptable to express strong negative feelings such as anger.
Another surprising point: acting angry doesn't necessarily mean you are angry.
That's right, Hopkins and Brown emphasize: you may act angry—in fact, you may believe you're angry—when you're really feeling rejected, frustrated, lonely, hurt or scared.
"These are emotions that make us feel vulnerable. Rather than admit that we're feeling rejected, we may get angry," the authors point out.
Kids often demonstrate anger more quickly than adults because of their limited life experience.
"They may seem to be over-reacting to a situation because they lack understanding of the possible positive outcomes," says Hopkins. For example, a very young child who doesn't understand that parents regularly return from errands or work may feel abandoned when left with a babysitter.
The authors identify four other developmental reasons for children's anger:
Developmental stages aside, some kids seem to be angrier than others. In What Angry Kids Need, Hopkins and Smith provide several possible explanations. These include the child's health, temperament, past life experiences, stressful family, school, child care or social situations and the violence shown in the media.
What Angry Kids Need concludes with practical, realistic advice for parents, teachers and the others who care for | <urn:uuid:a4dfdde9-1d92-486b-a989-4e287dc187cb> | 512 | 0 |
Archives New Zealand’s tools for digital preservation come from a variety of sources and where possible are open-source and/or community driven, proven, and best-of-breed. The mix of tools includes:
Archway archival management and online finding aid (existing system used for physical records)
Rosetta digital preservation system (acquired jointly with the National Library, and used globally in numerous libraries, archives, and museums)
For now, this combination of tools satisfies the minimum requirements for undertaking digital transfers. This current mix may not cater for all eventualities and will evolve with Archives New Zealand hopefully paying it forward into the global mix.
By talking a little bit about the tools that we use, we hope it will help organisations to understand more about the context around digital transfer, and may also help organisations to understand what might work for them.
Archway is a purpose built archival management system developed in 2005 for Archives New Zealand to document government records in the context of their creation and use. Archway contains descriptions of records that have been transferred from government organisations to our four offices in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington. There is also a wealth of information in Archway about the government of New Zealand from 1840 to the current day. Detailed histories of government departments, the functions they performed and the types of records they created provide an essential background for locating records, and understanding their content and purpose.
Archway is an implementation of the Australian Series System for describing archives in context. It separately documents seven core entities and the key relationships (of control and succession) that exist between them. These core entities are: record, series, disposal authority, agency, organisation, jurisdiction, and function.
Archway is used by Archives New Zealand to provide access to the accessioned born-digital records. Whether archives are physical or digital, Archway is the gateway to public archives.
Rosetta is the long-term preservation system used by both Archives New Zealand (for the Government Digital Archive) and the National Library of New Zealand (for the National Digital Heritage Archive). It is designed to enable effective preservation of, and access to, digital archives and heritage collections.
With the Rosetta system, large amounts of digital data, including audio, video, and textual information, can be stored and | <urn:uuid:f01bd2e7-9f4b-45f4-9644-35582eed03e2> | 512 | 0 |
Archives New Zealand’s tools for digital preservation come from a variety of sources and where possible are [...] managed, ensuring the preservation of donated or transferred digital content. Rosetta provides various tools for management of digital collections and digital content. It is based on the OAIS (Open Archival Information System) model.
The main purpose of the system is to provide long-term preservation for digital objects. Rosetta is not a content management system, nor a digital library, nor a digital asset management system. Instead its purpose is to enable active preservation (i.e. not only bit-stream preservation, but also preservation of the intellectual content of files independently from its format); metadata extraction and storage; risk management; and the support of preservation planning and preservation actions.
One of the reasons to choose an off-the-shelf and well established solution was to benefit from an existing roadmap for the system development, including an existing community of users. We are able to influence system evolution and the development solutions through the various Rosetta user groups.
The other tools used at Archives New Zealand are DROID, JHOVE, and the NLNZ Metadata Extractor. These are used independently of Rosetta as part of a digital transfer process and then inside Rosetta, forming a gateway into the system, enabling the management of digital records.
DROID is a file format identification freeware created by The National Archives (TNA). DROID is used to tackle the first stage of the transfer, helping Archives New Zealand to understand what a public office has.
DROID relies on the technical registry called PRONOM file formats register / database which is enriched regularly. Signature files are generated by PRONOM and used by DROID for file format identification.
If a record doesn’t have an identifiable file format inside the PRONOM database, then it is a clue we might need to research it further – the agency may not know what it is, or be able to access it themselves! The result of this research will either be a more nuanced sentencing decision between Archives New Zealand and the public office, or the generation of a new record in the PRONOM database which will help us, and worldwide organisations, to identify similar records in future.
JHOVE, a widely-used open source format validation tool, is used in conjunction with DROID at Archives New Zealand. | <urn:uuid:f01bd2e7-9f4b-45f4-9644-35582eed03e2> | 512 | 23 |
Archives New Zealand’s tools for digital preservation come from a variety of sources and where possible are [...] JHOVE checks if the file format corresponds to the format specification. If not, then there is a chance that the file can no longer be read or is broken in some way (malformed for example). Another impact is that metadata extraction cannot be completed and the file will require further analysis inside Rosetta.
“JHOVE only reports full conformance to a profile, that is, it focuses on the semantics of a file rather than its content: a file which is well-formed but not valid has errors.”
NLNZ Metadata Extractor was developed by The National Library of New Zealand. It allows the Rosetta digital preservation system to extract metadata from various file formats. An example is the extraction of Author and Description fields from word processed documents. The tool can also extract information such as Artist and Song Name from audio files, and various metadata from web-archives.
If a file is not-well formed, or valid but it hasn’t been picked up or identified by JHOVE, then there is a chance it will then fail the NLNZ Metadata Extractor. Should this occur, then it will also require further analysis inside the Rosetta system.
The use of these tools together is quite common in the digital preservation community to identify and validate file formats for long-term preservation. While JHOVE provides a more robust and greater metadata output than DROID, it handles a much smaller range of standard-based file formats than DROID. NLNZ Metadata Extractor handles some trickier formats, like those from Microsoft which do not have open specifications, so using each tool to assess records that are candidates for transfer offers a good comparison mechanism.
While it is not impossible that a file that fails any of these tests will end up in the government digital archive, it does create a point in time where both Archives New Zealand and the public office can reflect on how we create, and maintain, the public records for which we are responsible. It also presents an opportunity to improve the community’s knowledge in this area.
For more information, please have a look at this blog from the Open Preservation Foundation which looks at this very subject from a global perspective: http://openpreservation.org/blog/2016/03/13/what-is-the-point- | <urn:uuid:f01bd2e7-9f4b-45f4-9644-35582eed03e2> | 512 | 23 |
Commercial dish wash and laundry must be supplied with a softened water supply to work correctly. You can soften water with chemicals but it’s a lot more expensive than putting salt in a softener. Zeolite-based water softeners – whether stand-alone or integrated – need a supply of salt so they can periodically recharge the ion exchange column. Salt does not soften water. Salt recharges the ion exchange column in the softener – it is the zeolite ion exchange unit that softens the water.
[notice]You need to ensure the water softener is ¾ full of salt at all times.[/notice]
[important]How Water Softeners Work[/important]
Most water softeners use an ‘ion exchange’ resin in which hardness ions are exchanged for sodium (Na+) ions. This works because by and large sodium salts are soluble and magnesium and calcium salts aren’t. So, any magnesium or calcium salts that pass through the resin have their calcium or magnesium swapped for sodium. Think of the resin as being a magnet and the hardness being iron filings. From time to time the resin needs ‘recharging’ by flushing a large amount of common salt (sodium chloride – NaCl) through to replace the sodium and wash out the other salts it has taken out of the water. A bit like getting the iron filings off the magnet.
Once the resin is saturated with calcium and magnesium the softener enters a 3-phase regenerating cycle.
- First, the backwash phase reverses water flow to flush dirt out of the tank. In the recharge phase, the concentrated sodium-rich salt solution is carried from the brine tank through the mineral tank. The sodium collects on the beads, replacing the calcium and magnesium, which go down the drain.
- Once this phase is over, the mineral tank is flushed of excess brine and the brine tank is refilled. Most water softeners have an automatic regenerating system. The most basic type has an electric timer that flushes and recharges the system on a regular schedule.
- During recharging, soft water is not available.
A second type of control uses a computer that watches how much | <urn:uuid:f9f89457-cd46-4c6f-8097-7a57fc210fe5> | 512 | 0 |
Commercial dish wash and laundry must be supplied with a softened water supply to work correctly. You can [...] water is used. When enough water has passed through the mineral tank to have depleted the beads of sodium, the computer triggers regeneration. These softeners often have reserve resin capacity so that some soft water will be available during recharging.
A third type of control uses a mechanical water meter to measure water usage and initiate recharging. The advantage of this system is that no electrical components are required and the mineral tank is only recharged when necessary. When it is equipped with two mineral tanks, softened water is always available, even when the unit is recharging.
This is the reason you need to keep plenty of salt in the tank: you never know when the unit will take itself offline to recharge the column.
[important]Types of Water Softener[/important]
Water softeners for commercial dishwasher come in 5 varieties: manual, integral, continuous, automatic cold and automatic hot.
Manual Water Softener
A stainless steel cylinder about the size of a medium fire extinguisher with a water inlet and water outlet. Manual water softeners need to be manually regenerated several times a week depending on water hardness and number of washes. This is a massive pain in the arse and rarely gets done. Manual water softeners are fitted near to the dishwasher or in a cupboard nearby and regular access to them is needed.
Integral / Internal Water Softener
These look similar to the water softeners in domestic dishwashers and need to be topped up with salt regularly but unlike domestic dishwashers, they do not operate automatically. On most machines the customer has to remember to operate the water softener by running a recharge cycle. On a higher specification machines a warning light will come on reminding you that a recharge cycle is needed.
Continuous Water Softener
These look and operate just like the water softeners in domestic dishwashers; all you have to do is keep them topped up with salt.
Automatic Water Softeners (Hot / Cold)
The water softener is plugged into the mains and connects to the water and drainage supply. Its operation is fully automatic; it just needs to be kept full of salt. Automatic water | <urn:uuid:f9f89457-cd46-4c6f-8097-7a57fc210fe5> | 512 | 23 |
Commercial dish wash and laundry must be supplied with a softened water supply to work correctly. You can [...] softeners are usually installed next to the dishwasher, under the dishwasher stand or in an adjacent cupboard.
Choice of Softener
The manual water softener is the cheapest and will work in all water conditions. On the downside it takes the most looking after and a regular routine to maintain its performance. People often forget this with the inevitable impact on wash results – which they blame on the chemical. Integral water softeners have very limited resin capacity and so are only suitable for moderately hard water areas and for low usage situations. Continuous water softeners have the same low resin volume but as they operate continuously, they are suitable for moderate use in moderate water quality areas. Automatic water softeners have the resin capacity and are capable of operating in all water quality areas and at high wash volumes but are the most expensive.
Although you can get chemicals formulated for hard water areas there really is no substitute for a water softener when one is needed. Also salt is cheaper than chemicals; spending a few hundred quid on a softener soon pays for itself.
[error]Magnetic Water Softeners[/error]
Many claim you can soften water with a magnet. You can’t. It’s everso simple; water isn’t magnetic, nor is hardness. (A related scam is that you can clean beer lines with magnets – this is also nonsense).
Magnetic water softeners are claimed to rely on several principles depending on the particular system in question and how gullible the sales person thinks you are. Claims include water has a dipole and so can be softened using magnetism. This is Utter, Utter Bollocks (µ2B). Water does have a dipole has an electrical dipole, not a magnetic one and nothing will change that. No amount of magnetism will soften water.
Another explanation quoted is that magnetic water softeners ‘ionise’ water to remove hardness. Rubbish. You can’t ionise water with a magnet – or anything else – except by chucking ions into it. (Atoms in many compounds are held together electrostatically; when you chuck crystals of table salt (sodium chloride) into water it dissociates into ions | <urn:uuid:f9f89457-cd46-4c6f-8097-7a57fc210fe5> | 512 | 23 |
Transparency Market Research has published a new report "Bleaching Chemicals Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020" to its report store.
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/13/2015 -- Bleaching chemicals are primarily used in chemical reactions to remove color from the base material on which they are applied or used. The bleaching chemicals are oxidizing agents that make the substrate bright and colorless. The global bleaching chemicals market is expected to leverage from the demand for bleaching chemicals across various industries such as textile, paper and pulp, water treatment, household cleaning, and others.
Browse Full Global Bleaching Chemicals Market Research Report With Complete TOC @
Environmental Regulations to Restrict Growth of Global Bleaching Chemicals Market
The bleaching chemicals are usually peroxide- or chlorine- based. Some of the commonly used bleaching chemicals are hydrogen peroxide, chlorine, chlorine dioxide sodium hypochlorite, sodium percarbonate, and others. The global bleaching chemicals market will be driven by the growing demand from industrial sector as well as households. However, environmental regulations are expected to restrain the growth of the bleaching chemicals market. Bleaching chemicals are used in skin lightening products as well. Usage of bleaching chemicals in cosmetics industry has opened new opportunities for the global bleaching chemicals market.
Water Treatment Industries to Drive Demand for Chlorine-based Bleaching Chemicals
On the basis of constituents, chlorine-based, peroxide-based, and miscellaneous bleaching chemicals are the three broad product categories in the global bleaching chemicals market. Used widely as household cleaners, chlorine-based bleaching chemicals work as disinfectants in water treatment, particularly drinking water. In regions such as Asia Pacific and Rest of the World, water treatment industries are expected to rapidly grow owing to the chronic problem of water pollution. Growth in water-treatment industries across the globe is expected to propel the demand for chlorine-based bleaching chemicals.
Make an Inquiry:
Peroxide-based bleaching chemicals find wide applications such as hair coloring in cosmetics industry. Chemically, per | <urn:uuid:3689a056-05b2-40b2-a550-abaced6f8020> | 512 | 0 |
Transparency Market Research has published a new report "Bleaching Chemicals Market - Global Industry Analysis [...] oxides contain a single oxygen-oxygen bond. Reactions of peroxides lead to breakage of oxygen bond and release of reactive oxygen molecules. Peroxide-based bleaching chemicals usually contain hydrogen peroxide along with another constituent such as sodium carbonate.
Pulp and paper industry have emerged as the major end user industry in the global bleaching chemicals market. The bleaching action on wood pulp makes it suitable for paper manufacturing by removing all the impurities. Textile industry is another major end user industry in the bleaching chemicals market and the growth of the textile industry is expected to fuel the demand for bleaching chemicals.
Asia Pacific to Dominate Global Bleaching Chemicals Market
The global bleaching chemicals market has been dominated by Europe and North America. The demand for bleaching chemicals in North America can be attributed to the extensive usage of bleaching chemicals across various end-use industries. In Europe, strict government regulations has restrained the market for bleaching chemicals. In the coming years, Asia Pacific is expected to emerge as the fastest growing region in the market owing to the growing demand from paper and textile industries. Countries such as India, China, Malaysia, Thailand, and Bangladesh look promising markets for bleaching chemicals. Some of the key players in the global bleaching chemicals market are Hercules and Hercules Corporation, Akzo Nobel, Kemira Oyj, Aditya Birla Chemicals, and others.
Browse TMR Blog Chemical & Materials Reports:
About Transparency Market Research
Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.
Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports. | <urn:uuid:3689a056-05b2-40b2-a550-abaced6f8020> | 496 | 23 |
With new research revealing the detriment of a high fat diet, causing condition such as ADHD in children, Diet Doc launched a new initiative to provide safe and natural weight loss for parents, who can in turn model great eating habits for their own children and help prevent the onset of poor diet related illness early on in childhood.
Escondido, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/25/2013 -- According to research performed at the University Of Illinois College Of Medicine, and reported in Psychoneuroendocrinology, scientists believe that there may be a possible link between high fat diets and learning disabilities in children. Researchers believe that an unhealthy diet can affect the metabolism of dopamine, a chemical in the brain that plays a major role in reward-motivated behavior, motor control and controlling the release of several important hormones. Scientists believe that, just as stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine amplify the effects of dopamine, so too, does a high fat diet. Researchers have found increased levels of the chemical in children with ADHD, as well as those that are overweight or obese.
With new research revealing the detriment of a high fat diet, causing condition such as ADHD in children, Diet Doc launched a new initiative to provide safe and natural weight loss for parents, who can in turn model great eating habits for their own children and help prevent the onset of poor diet related illness early on in childhood. There are various factors that affect childhood obesity, but the influence of children’s role models; their parents, is by far the most significant. Diet Doc realizes that parents are the most powerful teaching tool and those who practice healthy eating habits and lead their children by their own example are far more likely to have children that are happier and healthier. With this connection in mind, Diet Doc offers updated diet plans specifically capable of providing parents with great habits which they can in turn model for their children, providing long term health benefits.
Parents who are ready to make the transition to a healthier lifestyle by losing excess weight will work closely with certified nutritionists, who uniquely design prescription hormone diet plans that are safe, effective and convenient, while offering long term lifestyle results. Prescription hormone diet plans are created for those who are struggling with a weight loss plateau and want to lose that stubborn last 10 pounds, but especially for | <urn:uuid:dba291c1-59b7-4938-92f3-6ed21e93ec7c> | 512 | 0 |
With new research revealing the detriment of a high fat diet, causing condition such as ADHD [...] those who must lose 100 pounds or more. By personally working with each patient, the prescription hormone diet plans are sure to fit comfortably into each patient’s particular lifestyle while being compatible with individual nutritional and medical needs. These prescription hormone diet plans give every parent the opportunity to avoid childhood obesity and to make life-changing weight loss and a healthier future for the entire family a reality.
Each prospective patient will complete a detailed, yet quite simple, medical evaluation. A Diet Doc in-house doctor consultation enables the board certified physicians to evaluate each patient’s entire system and to identify any barriers that may be prohibiting hormone diet plans fast weight loss. By utilizing Skype and Telemedicine, Diet Doc has successfully guided thousands of patients toward a healthier future without costly, inconvenient and time consuming visits to weight loss clinics. The initial evaluation and consultation, as well as future checkups and progress appointments, can be accomplished from the comfort of the patient’s own home via the phone or internet.
Qualified patients will receive the personalized prescription hormone diet plans, a diet workbook which details the intricacies of the company’s diet plans, a recipe book featuring over 50 healthy, delicious and easy to prepare meal ideas, as well as Diet Doc’s 100% pure prescription hormone. This powerful combination turns the body into a fat burning machine by instructing the hypothalamus to target and release old, stored fat that has been trapped in the cells of the body. These fat stores are than burned as the body’s primary source of energy, thus most do not suffer from hunger or energy loss, despite a lower caloric intake. Patients who follow the prescription hormone diet plan are reporting the rapid and noticeable loss of pounds and inches, typically from the most difficult to lose areas, such as the belly, underarms, hips and thighs with no side effects.
The professionals at Diet Doc urge all parents to take the first step toward a future of better health and positive influence for children by losing excess weight naturally, safely and rapidly. The consultation is free and confidential.
Diet Doc Contact Information:
San Diego, CA | <urn:uuid:dba291c1-59b7-4938-92f3-6ed21e93ec7c> | 489 | 23 |
Massive Graphs Pose Big ProblemsApril 22, 1999
Faced with data sets that strain the limits of computation---long-distance billing data for one phone company amounts to an estimated 20 terabytes a year---telecommunications researchers need new theories for handling massive graphs.There are certain kinds of mathematical problems where too much information can be detrimental to the mathematician, confusing him more than helping him. ---Henry Sutton (a.k.a. David Slavitt), The Exhibitionist
Psychologists have shown that the human brain is ill-equipped to handle large amounts of information. We have trouble caching more than seven numbers at a time, and our main memory is notoriously ponderous. Even the things we know "by heart" are stored in peculiar ways: Just try timing yourself as you say the alphabet backward.
Computers, of course, do better. The evolutionary forces that produced them favored the fast and accurate retention of data and the ability to zip information around. The small numbers we use to comprehend computer capabilities are exponents, staking out orders of magnitude. In prefix form, they've progressed from kilo- through mega- to giga-, with tera- now coming into play (and peta- just over the horizon).
But past a point, even computers choke on too much information. Joan Feigenbaum, a computer scientist at AT&T Labs-Research, has seen it happen. The telecommunications industry, whose raison d'Ítre is the transfer of information, generates huge amounts of data in tracking its own operations. Efforts to analyze this data set are stymied by its sheer size. Forget about NP-difficulty: Even algorithms that run in polynomial time are brought to their knees when the input won't all fit in RAM.
In an invited presentation, "Massive Graphs: Algorithms, Applications, and Open Problems," at the 1999 SIAM Annual Meeting in Atlanta next month, Feigenbaum will explain some of the challenges posed by data sets that strain the limits of computation. In addition to reporting recent progress made by, among others, her AT&T Labs colleagues James Abello, Adam Buchsbaum, Raffaele Giancarlo, Panos Pardalos | <urn:uuid:b73fd41d-5f12-41cc-9a3b-4ed986e8ba00> | 512 | 0 |
Massive Graphs Pose Big ProblemsApril 22, 199 [...] , Mauricio Recende, and Jeff Westbrook, she will consider the many open problems that remain.
Dial "M" for "Massive"He had long ago concluded that he possessed only one small and finite brain, and he had fixed a habit of determining most carefully with what he would fill it. ---Annie Dillard, The Living
Every day, AT&T handles approximately 300 million long-distance calls. The phone company's billing records typically display four numbers: the originating phone number, the terminating phone number, the time of the call, and its duration. The billing data associated with all these phone calls amount to an estimated 20 terabytes a year.
Most of us could keep our business records for a thousand years on the 2-gigabyte hard drive in our PCs. AT&T needs the equivalent of 10,000 hard drives for a single year.
If all a phone company wanted to do was to send out bills and collect its money, it would be a relatively simple matter of distributing the data to bill-collecting computers and then finding enough magnetic tape to store the records for a few years. But the forces of economic competition, in symbiosis with scientific curiosity, have produced the desire to do more. Telecommunications researchers would like to understand exactly how the networks are being used. Such knowledge could enable the long-distance carriers to optimize their operations; with the resulting additional profits, they might then offer lower rates in order to attract more customers.
There's quite a lot of "folklore" about network usage, Feigenbaum points out, but scientifically "very little is known." For example, it's often observed that, compared with other carriers, AT&T has lots of noncommercial customers who make very few phone calls. Other guesstimates concern the prevalence of pockets of phone numbers that traffic extensively among themselves, and patterns in the 50 x 50 matrix of phone calls from, say, Maine to Montana.
"The folklore has never been tested, because the data sets are huge, the computations are hard, and the data are company-proprietary," Feigenbaum says.
Conceptually, the phone-record | <urn:uuid:b73fd41d-5f12-41cc-9a3b-4ed986e8ba00> | 512 | 23 |
Massive Graphs Pose Big ProblemsApril 22, 199 [...] database can be viewed as a gigantic, directed multigraph. The nodes are telephone numbers, and the directed edges, drawn as arrows connecting nodes, represent phone calls. The graph is a multigraph because one number might call another several times in the given time period. The edges are weight-ed by the time and duration of the corresponding calls.
One immediate problem is simply the display of such massive graphs. The graceful spiderweb you see in a phone-company advertisement becomes a dense, black blur if you try to draw the entire graph at once. It stands to reason: To flash a terabyte of data on a 1000 x 1000 screen, you need to cram a megabyte of data into each pixel. Something's got to give, and researchers haven't yet figured out what's essential and what's superfluous.
It gets even worse when you want the computer to tell you something about a massive graph, such as the size of quasi-cliques (subgraphs in which a fixed, minimum fraction of all possible edges actually occur). Algorithms for analyzing graphs are well developed in classical computer science, Feigenbaum says. But whether they're polynomial-time or not, the existing algorithms assume that all the input data fit in main memory, and for massive graphs, that assumption isn't valid. (Today's massive graphs may fit in tomorrow's RAM, of course, but by then the data sets of interest will presumably be even larger.) And when you don't have the entire graph at your fingertips, she says, "this whole algorithmic paradigm breaks down."
I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's.
---William Blake, Jerusalem
What's needed are new theories for handling these massive graphs, Feigenbaum says. Among the ingredients called for are "external memory" algorithms, whose complexity is measured in terms of the number of disk accesses, and "streaming" algorithms, which hang onto the database baby while tossing out the bath-water. Probabilistic models that simulate the typicality and evolution of telephone or Internet traffic are also needed; the current theory of random graphs, bifurcated as it is between complete amorphousness | <urn:uuid:b73fd41d-5f12-41cc-9a3b-4ed986e8ba00> | 512 | 23 |
Massive Graphs Pose Big ProblemsApril 22, 199 [...] and rigid latticity, is inappropriate for the nebulously structured nature of telecommunications. Finally, there's the delicate question of providing researchers with real data they can use to test their theories and algorithms while protecting the privacy of the phone companies' customers. Cryptographic protocols may help.
The scope of the challenge has widened further with the arrival of the latest wrinkle in telecommunications: Internet traffic. In fact, Feigenbaum says, the massive graph metaphor may not be the right mathematical abstraction for the way Internet communications are conducted. It's a little like the segue from classical physics to quantum mechanics: Old-fashioned intuitions can be costly.
The packet-switching approach of Internet traffic is distinctly different from the dedicated-line paradigm of long-distance phone calls. In particular, no one keeps records of Internet traffic-mainly because there's no billing! Even if there were, an IP address is not the same thing as a phone number, Feigenbaum points out, so it's not clear what the nodes of an Internet graph would be. Finally, keeping track of Internet traffic would make the phone companies' current record-keeping tasks look puny by comparison: A single gateway router can generate more than 10 gigabytes of summary data per day.
One niche where graph theory still holds water, as it were, is the hyperlinked landscape of the Web. The Web "digraph" currently has about half a billion nodes (i.e., pages), with approximately 20 million being added every month. The number of directed edges emerging from each node varies widely, but an average of 10 links per page is a good guess. One advantage for researchers is that raw data regarding the Web are, almost by definition, publicly available. The distinct drawback is that there's no single site where it's all stored; if you want to know how Web sites are interconnected, you've pretty much got to go surfing.
The coming years will likely witness a contest between advances in theory and algorithms and the continued growth of massive data sets. For an industry as fiercely competitive as telecommunications, that's only fitting.
Barry A. Cipra is a mathematician and writer based | <urn:uuid:b73fd41d-5f12-41cc-9a3b-4ed986e8ba00> | 512 | 23 |
Sacrificed to the Energy Revolution Biogas Boom Threatens Future of Germany's Shepherds
Corn used for biofuel is taking over vast stretches of traditional grazing land in Germany. The change is transforming the landscape, driving shepherds out of business and threatening the dike system crucial for preventing floods.
"I know all my girls," says Jenny Kniestedt, "and when I drive up in my car, they know that mama has arrived."
The 31-year-old Berlin native cares for 350 ewes on a dike where the Löcknitz River flows into the Elbe River, near Dömitz in the northeastern German region of Mecklenburg. Kniestedt, a trained shepherd with short black hair and a tattoo on her upper arm, pushes her charges into a sorting pen, where they'll receive an injection against external parasites in their "wool-covered butt cheeks," followed by the oral administration of a drug against tapeworms.
She walks with her "dike-mowers," Pomeranian and Blackhead Persian sheep, all the way to the neighboring states of Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg. There is plenty to do along the way. She trims their hooves, helps them give birth and holds the animals in place for sheering. "I do everything," says Kniestedt, in a heavy Berlin accent, "and I do it with heart and soul."
Her boss, 48-year-old head shepherd Maik Gersonde, from the nearby town of Schlesin, is glad to have her. "Whatever Jenny does, she gives it 100 percent," he says. Gersonde has also trained and hired another young woman. A shepherd in the nearby town of Preten, in Lower Saxony, also has two shepherdesses working for him. Nowadays, more women than men apply for slots in the three-year training program.
But the growth in female shepherds belies the generally dismal situation for shepherds in Germany. In the last five years, the number of full-time shepherds has declined by a fifth, to a total of 2,000. By keeping the grass dense and compacting the soil, their 2.5 million | <urn:uuid:c46aff01-8ccd-4e50-9425-91370c0e5844> | 512 | 0 |
Sacrificed to the Energy Revolution Biogas Boom Threatens Future of Germany's [...] sheep still protect dikes along the coast and rivers. They also preserve cultural landscapes, like the Lüneburg Heath and the Swabian Jura, from scrub encroachment, and they maintain waysides, open spaces, hillsides and hard-to-reach elevated areas. "But many herds are already gone because the shepherds had to give up," Gersonde says.
Stefan Völl, managing director of the Union of German Sheep Farming Associations, says the profession, one of the oldest in the world, is "on the verge of extinction." The future of shepherds, he says, is being threatened by growing bureaucracy and falling prices for lamb meat and wool. But the biggest culprit is Germany's energy revolution, which is seeing it abandon nuclear energy by 2022 while making a massive push to get a larger percentage of its power from renewable resources, such as natural gas produced from crops.
'An Insatiable Demand for Land'
The biogas boom is transforming meadows, fields and even the most barren pieces of land -- in other words, the places where sheep have always grazed -- into vast stretches of corn. As a result, shepherds, who rarely own land, are having trouble finding pastures to lease. They also have to walk greater distances to find pastures, and their already modest average monthly income of 1,200 ($1,500) is declining even further. "If this continues, the caretakers of the nation's landscapes won't be around much longer."
Attracted by the subsidies provided under Germany's Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), which seemingly makes it possible to rake in money in environmentally correct ways, investors are now offering to lease land from farmers at twice the rate they paid only a few years ago.
In the meadows of the Elbe River Valley, leasing a hectare (2.5 acres) of pastureland costs up to 800 a year. In areas where biogas production is especially concentrated, such as Bavaria, investors have even paid up to 1,000 a hectare, says Günther Czerkus, spokes | <urn:uuid:c46aff01-8ccd-4e50-9425-91370c0e5844> | 512 | 23 |
Sacrificed to the Energy Revolution Biogas Boom Threatens Future of Germany's [...] man of the Committee of Professional Shepherds, who keeps his sheep in the Eifel Mountains of western Germany. "There is an insatiable demand for land," he says.
The EEG subsidies even encourage biogas producers to drive shepherds out of their last refuges, Germany's conservation areas. Producers are paid a higher-than-normal feed-in tariff -- a fixed price for the electricity they feed into the grid --for what they harvest there to compensate for the fact it has a lower energy yield in biogas plants.
Enormous fields of crops slotted for use as renewable energy are now taking over other nature paradises, such as the "Elbe River Landscape," a massive UNESCO biosphere reserve that covers parts of the Elbe River running through five German states.
Companies, such as Ruhe Agrar GmbH near the town of Preten, have established entire agricultural cooperatives. Biogas producer Envitec recently built a 2.6-megawatt plant there. Germany's Federal Environment Agency (UBA) has also approved plans to build an even larger plant in nearby Dersenow, across the border in the stage of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Once the plant is up and running, more than 100,000 metric tons of corn and fermented organic material will be trucked back and forth each year -- right in the middle of the biosphere reserve.
More corn means less grass, and sheep have a hard time digesting what is left over from the corn harvest. "They would get a protein shock," Gersonde says. "We would have to get the sheep used to the corn leftovers first." But even then, the fields would be plowed under after a week and sprayed with liquid manure.
Day after day, in thunderstorms, heavy rains or the hot July sun, Kniestedt keeps moving a few hundred meters along the Löcknitz River. Her female Border Collies are constantly running off to "punish snackers." The herding dogs grab the renegades by the leg without injuring them.
When Gersonde learned his profession, the region was still part | <urn:uuid:c46aff01-8ccd-4e50-9425-91370c0e5844> | 512 | 23 |
Sacrificed to the Energy Revolution Biogas Boom Threatens Future of Germany's [...] of East Germany. "Sheepherding was of a high quality there, and shepherds were respected people," he says. Next week, Gersonde will be wearing "the full uniform," consisting of long, blue felt coat and high boots, at the state sheepherding competition. "People are always happy to see shepherds," he says, "but that doesn't do us any good."
As a precaution, he has purchased 400 hectares of land, both as pasture and to grow organic feed grain for winter feeding. He sells his lamb in Hamburg. "But if I didn't have the dikes," says Gersonde, "nothing would work anymore."
Flood protection, to which his seven herds contribute from April to October, is also an important source of income. The cloven-hoofed sheep compress the soil with their "golden steps." When they graze, their teeth slice through blades of grass just above the roots, causing them to spread out and form dense turf. During dike inspections, the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW), police and county engineers monitor the sheep to make sure they are doing their job.
But now the energy revolution is even depriving shepherds of the dikes. In Wesel, near the western city of Duisburg, the local dike-management organization recently started having the city's first two dikes mowed for biogas plants.
But shepherd association spokesman Czerkus believes that people will soon realize how valuable the sheep are. When the heavy mowing machines claw up the turf and tear holes into the surface, he says, it will destroy the dikes. "And then," Czerkus predicts, "Duisburg will be under water."
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan | <urn:uuid:c46aff01-8ccd-4e50-9425-91370c0e5844> | 423 | 23 |
It’s Outcome Based Education.
What’s Outcome Based Education you ask?
Outcome-based education (OBE) is an educational theory that bases each part of an educational system around goals (outcomes). By the end of the educational experience, each student should have achieved the goal. There is no single specified style of teaching or assessment in OBE; instead, classes, opportunities, and assessments should all help students achieve the specified outcomes. The role of the faculty adapts into instructor, trainer, facilitator, and/or mentor based on the outcomes targeted.
Outcome-based methods have been adopted in education systems around the world, at multiple levels. Australia and South Africa adopted OBE policies in the early 1990s but have since been phased out. The United States has had a OBE program in place since 1994 that has been adapted over the years. In 2005, Hong Kong adopted an outcome-based approach for its universities. Malaysia implemented OBE in all of their public schools systems in 2008. The European Union has proposed an education shift to focus on outcomes, across the EU. In an international effort to accept OBE, The Washington Accord was created in 1989; it is an agreement to accept undergraduate engineering degrees that were obtained using OBE methods. As of 2017, the full signatories are Australia, Canada, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, China and the United States.
Today we bring you an article from The Crucial Voice of the People. The author is Alyssa Collins (pen name). Stop by and take a look at other articles they have written.
At one point in time, many of us saw Common Core as the Trojan Horse sent to destroy public education. But buried deep within its belly is CBE — Competency-Based Education. It is outcome-based education reform by another name —in another form. Just the same, it stinks of decay and ruin. No, the stench is worse.
Read on as my guest, a parent, explains the problems with standards-based assessments and the fallacy behind the label “competency-based education.” The following Facebook comment was spurred by an article about standards | <urn:uuid:69b0c582-a4d6-460d-8c4e-c7e87d80ebaf> | 512 | 0 |
It’s Outcome Based Education.
What’s Outcome Based Education you ask?
[...] -based grading.
In the real world, subjective assessment varies from person to person, group to group. Book and movie critics, for instance, vary widely as do reviews of plays and performances. Conversely, the correct answers to calculus and physics problems are the same regardless of the “assessor.”
For subjective subjects, a simple grading rubric for assignments used for the past 100 years or more allows the student to understand the keys to success for that assignment and to meet stated requirements. This is an important skill to master; in business one boss’s idea of success may not be consistent with another, and learning to flex your focus or style to please the assessor is a vital life skill.
The Standards-Based Grading article ignores this reality and instead hammers home the need for generic, uniform common core curriculum and regulated, dictated grading so as to strive for identical educational experiences.
Does this not take away the creative and unique ways individual educators can inspire and challenge and mold students according to their own God-given gifts for teaching?
Can we all not remember that special teacher in our schooling that changed us or “turned us on” to a topic that eventually brought us into a career path?
CBE (Competency-Based Education/Standards-Based) reduces the teacher to a sidelined coach, while the message is delivered by the standardized computer message or electronic text.
Since the days of Greek philosophers the concept of students being instructed and led through thought-provoking discussion to debate and challenge each other has been a successful model. Now suddenly, whether 100 or 2,800 years old this method is no longer valid? Because of iPads and Chromebooks? They are just tools, like wrenches or shovels or chisels or paint brushes; used to make a masterpiece.
The educational masterpiece itself is created by tapping the potential of students for creation of beautiful self-expression and thoughtful debate. Educators who groove on passing knowledge to students are crucial to the process. The educator/lecturer should never be just a sidelined coach that allows the computer to do the instruction.
God help us if we buy into this philosophy.
Further, | <urn:uuid:69b0c582-a4d6-460d-8c4e-c7e87d80ebaf> | 512 | 23 |
It’s Outcome Based Education.
What’s Outcome Based Education you ask?
[...] God help us if we think rote memorization of fundamental math facts and spelling words are not needed and deny they are essential building blocks in the formative grades for advanced skill set proficiency in the latter grades. Writing an essay on a piece of literature requires actually being able to write (penmanship) and to create sentences with appropriate structure and grammar, and to be able to spell words as they flow from the mind quickly.
And, none of the dangers pediatricians are warning of today with regard to limiting device time because of negative impacts on neural network development are mentioned in the Standards-Based Grading article.
Parents: please read and educate yourselves on CBE. It is designed to make students “worker bees” that generation by generation are dumbed down, dependent on the Federal government and unable or unwilling to challenge the “Powers that Be.”
Let’s not forget Jefferson, Franklin and the Founding Fathers were able to gain independence from the England and halt imperial expansion with firepower yes, but overwhelmingly with the Power of the Pen.
Truly free people must have free thinkers, not cookie cutter worker bees that just want enough jingle for a pack of smokes and a Red Bull. The elitists would be happy to write-off most of our kids in this way …
Will you stand by and let them?
Or do you believe in the American dream as I do? That any child, from any home no matter how humble, no matter your skin color or your parental educational level or marital status …. ANY child can use the public education system to the fullest extent – extra credit if necessary – to be ANYTHING they want to be. And if they do, and if they make good choices, in three generations their entire family line can be pulled from poverty and be self-actualized. TRUTH: as long as we fight these ambitious, young, deceitful politicians that seek to suppress your child’s potential.
Are you going to let them do that to your child???? Your grandchildren? Our nation’s next generation?
Stay tuned folks, get informed, participate and show up to make your thoughts known. Let’s engage in thoughtful, respectful exchange of ideas, organize, and do something to CH | <urn:uuid:69b0c582-a4d6-460d-8c4e-c7e87d80ebaf> | 512 | 23 |
This year marks the 10th anniversary
of the landmark Supreme Court
decision to uphold the Child Internet
Protection Act (CIPA) law. Despite
considerable efforts by the people
responsible for enforcing CIPA
(E-Rate/USAC and the FCC), there remains
confusion among those required to interpret or
The concern is understandable. School
communities are worried that if they are not
compliant with the CIPA law, they may lose much
needed e-rate dollars. But the reality is, CIPA is
not a “filtering law.” If understood
properly, it can help guide an
articulated policy of Internet
safety and digital education in
The overarching law that governs what and how we filter--and what is at stake if we do not--can be broken down into three major components:
1. The Child Internet Protection Act of 2000, which deals primarily with blocking specific categories of Internet-accessed images;
2. The Neighborhood Child Internet Protection Act of 2001, which calls on school districts and their communities to develop an Internet safety policy around Web content and online communication, and;
3. The Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act of 2008, which amended the Internet safety policy to include “educating minors about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking Websites and in chat rooms and cyber-bullying awareness and response.”
Collectively, these three Acts comprise the law we commonly refer to as CIPA. Taken together, they spell out the requirements for school districts that wish to receive federal funds through the E-Rate program.
CIPA Fact 1: A
Filter is required
In order to comply with CIPA on
the most basic level, the school
district must employ a device or
software—not human supervision
or educational efforts alone—to
block three specific things:
■ Child pornography
■ Obscene images
■ Visual depictions that are
harmful to minors
The FCC defines the
term “technology protection
measures” as a filtering device
or software. The law is clear that “technology
protection measures” must be applied to all
Internet- | <urn:uuid:b3e912f8-5e2e-4807-8b8b-e35d1a6d8784> | 512 | 0 |
This year marks the 10th anniversary
of the landmark Supreme Court
decision to [...] connected computers on the school
network regardless of who uses the computer.
CIPA Fact 2: Public Input is
What is filtered or permitted should be a
reflection of the values of your school district
and community. CIPA requires public notice
of a meeting during which the school district
will officially consider or adopt your Internet
safety plan. Your plan must address the following
■ Online access to inappropriate matter
and content that is harmful to minors
■ Unethical or illegal use of the Internet
(e.g., hacking or identity fraud)
■ Safety of minors using electronic
communication (e.g., chat, IM, or email)
When discussing this agenda alongside the broader goals and initiatives of your schools, discuss how to maximize the district’s technology investment rather than limiting it. For example, how can 21st century tools like social media be used safely in your district?
CIPA Fact 3: CIPA requires
Internet Safety Education
A good source for administrators looking
for straightforward ways to comply
with the education mandates of CIPA is
CommonSenseMedia.org. Their free, step-by-
step toolkit creates the framework, as well
as practical guides and lessons for teachers, to
implement the Internet safety requirements.
Rather than burden one department each year (though the lessons are linked to ELA Common Core State Standards), the benchmark model fits nicely within a wellness curriculum with its focus on healthy online relationships. Bringing in guidance counselors to help deliver the ready-made content can lead to better conversations around how student’s digital footprint effects her college and career prospects. If available, social workers are a natural fit for the cyber-bullying exercises. A team approach underscores that this topic is of school wide importance and not just the purview of the tech department.
CIPA Fact 4: Monitoring of
Internet Use is required
CIPA states clearly that monitoring does not mean “tracking of Internet usage by any identifiable minor or adult user.” Increasingly school districts are embracing the “Trust but Verify” model. Students are expected to comply with the Acceptable Use portion of the CIPA required Internet Safety Policy, and adults respond | <urn:uuid:b3e912f8-5e2e-4807-8b8b-e35d1a6d8784> | 512 | 23 |
This year marks the 10th anniversary
of the landmark Supreme Court
decision to [...] to activity that they find in violation of the AUP.
While not required, software can facilitate this process for school administrators and IT staff. With the explosion of 1:1 and BYOD, there is valuable data that can be mined to bolster community support for your technology initiatives. Imagine sharing the thousands of hours students are logging on Khan Academy or other education sites? Students instinctively move away from adult infiltrated social media or communication tool. Want to know what the next Twitter will be? Look over your Web traffic logs, and use that data to inform your CIPA required Internet safety programs.
Monitoring Student Communication
Even when faced with the tangible benefits of tools like Google Apps for Education, it is natural for tech directors and principals to worry about more monitoring and scale back on tools with open communication and collaboration features. Instead, consider entrusting parents with their children’s password as a way to ease the burden from IT. For peace of mind and legal recourse, email archiving and indexing services are available. Commercial products like Gaggle can more proactively monitor and report on student communication with safety and education in mind.
We cannot let the monumental task of monitoring derail the legitimate need for our students to be active collaborators, creators, and communicators online. Whether it is by a software solution, or staff and parent supervision, the monitoring requirement of CIPA is achievable if we share the load.
Finding a Solution
A common criticism of filtering packages is that vendors don’t reveal their block lists or determination methods, allowing an outside entity to define your community standards. Schools do not need to abdicate local control, however, and should try and find a filter that meets basic CIPA compliance out of the box, but also has granular control so that the filter can reflect community standards.
Relying too heavily on the IT department to manage block lists often creates response time delays and will lead users to avoid using the school network or devices and resort to slower but unfiltered options such as smartphones or mobile hotspots. It is legal for filters to have teacher-created “safe zones” or for teachers to temporarily override the filter for students when a site is inadvertently blocked. This empowers teachers to provide just-in-time | <urn:uuid:b3e912f8-5e2e-4807-8b8b-e35d1a6d8784> | 512 | 23 |
This year marks the 10th anniversary
of the landmark Supreme Court
decision to [...] access to learning, as well as saves time and effort from the IT staff.
Beware of Overblocking
In an effort to guarantee CIPA compliance, some schools turn on all filtering categories. Overblocking, not underblocking, is what leads to legal challenges to your Internet Safety Policy, usually on First Amendment grounds. Be certain you understand what each filter category means and contains. While almost no content filter vendor could reasonably be expected to hand you their block lists, any worth considering should be comfortable discussing the general approach they employ, and the types of sites that will be filtered based on their sub categories. Filters have come a long way since the inception of CIPA, and it is fair that schools expect more nuance, control, and transparency from their solutions.
Particular attention should be paid to what some filters determine as “lifestyle” groups, which can block constitutionally protected information for some of our most at-risk students who are seeking legitimate information, support and community online. It is important to customize your “blocked” splash-screen to remove any implied stigma a student feels while attempting to access a blocked site. Give students options to request an override in a safe and anonymous fashion. Use the splash-screen as an opportunity to educate people about CIPA, and as a conversation starter--not a dead end.
The $20,000 Question: Will CIPA Require
for 1:1 Programs?
The FCC recently ended the
public comment period on
this extremely thorny topic.
School leaders must pay careful
attention to the anticipated 2014
announcement of their ruling,
as providing home filtering will
present considerable financial
and technical challenges. Making
home filtering a success will
require parent and student buy-in—otherwise
they will opt-out, circumvent, or abandon the
valuable tools the districts are providing them.
Yes, Federal e-rate money comes with strings
and requirements attached, in the form of CIPA
compliance. Yet when you break down the law
into what is absolutely required of schools,
the law can serve as a catalyst for some of our
basic goals: namely, keeping our students safe
when they | <urn:uuid:b3e912f8-5e2e-4807-8b8b-e35d1a6d8784> | 512 | 23 |
London, July 16 (ANI): In a breakthrough study, scientists from University of Minnesota in St Paul have developed a new material that can repel hot water.
The new discovery could help protect vulnerable members of the population such as elderly, children, physically impaired people from hot-water burns.
Scientists have long been working on producing water-repelling materials inspired by natural surfaces, such as lotus leaves.
These leaves have waxy hydrophobic – water hating – coating and a spiky surface texture that helps to trap small pockets of air beneath water droplets.
During the study, Yuyang Liu along with colleagues from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, reviewed studies suggesting carbon nanotubes are powerfully hydrophobic in their search for a material that can repel hot water as well as cold, and found that they seem indifferent to temperature.
To further improve resistance to hot water, the team added carbon nanotubes to Teflon – a substance commonly used as a non-stick coating on cookware.
The researchers later dipped a cotton fabric into the mix.
They found that the material is able to repel hot water, milk, coffee and tea at 75 degree Celsius – a sufficient temperature to cause scalding – without problems.
Moreover, the hot droplets retain a near spherical shape and roll off the material.
However, Liu insists that Teflon coating alone is not so effective. He said that carbon nanotubes create a dimpled surface texture on a nanoscopic scale – small enough to trap air even under drops of hot liquid and prevent droplet impalement on the surface.
Philippe Brunet at the Mechanics Laboratory of Lille, France, thinks the work is promising.
“It has been claimed that a dense carpet of nanowires, coated with ad-hoc chemistry, should have a very high robustness to impalement but he doesn’t think anyone has tested such materials against hot water before,” New Scientist quoted him as saying.
The study appears in Journal of Materials Chemistry. (ANI) | <urn:uuid:631a7866-f747-45dc-ac11-4f65f337e798> | 466 | 0 |