The front page of the Sept. 26 Daily Commercial stated, "Experts: climate change could mean stronger hurricanes." However, if you read the complete article it also says, “It's difficult to pinpoint any effects of climate change as very direct contributors to the size and scope of those two storms and scientists have only about 30 years of high-quality data on hurricanes to try to make a judgement about those effects.” The headline does not reflect what the article really says.
Fact: The earth's population in 1900 was around 1.5 billion people, yet the worst hurricane to strike the U.S. was in that year in Galveston, Texas, killing approximately 12,000. The car was not mass produced until 1908 and could not contribute to global warming, but later storms are just as strong as the Galveston one. How does anyone blame global warming on increasing the strength of storms?
Here's some history on later storms from The Weather Channel:
The 1928 Okeechobee storm killed about 3,000.
The 1935 Labor Day storm in the Key's killed nearly 700.
The 1938 storm in New England killed almost 600, just to name a few.
Many want to include global warming as a possible cause of stronger hurricanes, but the data is not there. The earth's population is nearing 7.6 billion, and we still have strong storms. Less people are killed because of the current level of observation and warning systems, but they are just as powerful as the Galveston storm. As the article said, they don't have enough quality data to make a judgment.
As someone who tracked hurricanes from 1953-55 while in the Navy's hurricane research project, I'll withhold judgment until we have more data. Go to the Tavares Historical Museum and view how we did our research. It's open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday to Saturday, and see for yourself.
Alvin F. Berry, Leesburg


Following up on this post on the translation of Guru Nanak’s poem in the color of hope (Click here for translation), following is info from Wikipedia on the six orthodox systems:
Several Indian intellectual traditions were codified during the medieval period into a standard list of six orthodox systems or ṣaḍdarśanas, all of which cite Vedic authority as their source.Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimāṃsā and Vedanta are classified as āstika schools:
Nyāyá, the school of logic
Vaiśeṣika, the atomist school
Sāṃkhya, the enumeration school
Yoga, the school of Patañjali (which assumes the metaphysics of Sāṃkhya)
Mimāṃsā, the tradition of Vedic exegesis
Vedanta or Uttara Mimāṃsā, the Upaniṣadic tradition.
These are often coupled into three groups for both historical and conceptual reasons: Nyāyá-Vaiśeṣika, Sāṃkhya-Yoga, and Mimāṃsā-Vedanta.


What is the purpose of a potato chip? What is its function? What defines a potato chip?
For the answer, we can turn to the wisdom of ancient Greek philosophers, and Aristotle in particular:
He argued that everything has a goal, which is its reason to exist. Many things and animals have something in common – but what defines them is what they have which is intrinsic and unique to themselves. For example: both birds and fish eat food, but a fish cannot fly and nor can a bird swim. Therefore, the function unique to a bird is to fly – so, a happy bird is one that can fly (so don't go putting birds in tiny cages
So, what about a potato chip? Well, it's clear, the purpose of a potato chip is to be a tasty snack.
First, it has to be somewhat filling (but not too much, it's a snack, remember): as an Irishman, I will of course need my occasional does of potatoes, so potato chips do the job well
What is the other function of a potato chip? It is to delight your five senses: touch, sight, sound, smell and taste:
: a potato chip should be light, with a delicate dusting of salt and flavourful goodness that adheres slightly to the fingers, providing extra delight when you lick it off (or let your dog lick it off, **after** you've done eating)
: a potato chip should gently recall the frying process, with crispy edges and an appetising colour.
: an undervalued aspect of a potato chip is its crunchiness – as you eat, you ears should be filled with crunching. If there's no noise, then it's gone soft and gross...
: as you open the packet, and bring a potato chip to your mouth, your taste buds should get an enticing foretaste of what is about to enter your mouth
And, last but not at all least...
You can choose from many types of tastes, and each person has their preference
the taste of the potato chip is the ultimate reward to the Aristotelian seeking the good life. Applying reason to the case in hand, he (or she) will recognise the telos
, the ultimate goal and justification of the potato chip as being in the taste. Is it a simple Salt and Pepper, or a complex and profound Curry Cha Cha
Whatever it is, don't compromise on the quality of a potato chip!
Don't every compromise on the quality of anything – because by always understanding the essence of things, and aiming for the highest goals, we are able to bring philosophy to our daily life, and walk with the ancients
(This blog post was composed for a contest organised by Nuffnang and Mister Potato - check out the links for more information.)


This was a lightning talk presented at the ALPS December 2013 meeting. I didn’t actually have any slides for this talk, simply showing the two sites along with the backpack while talking.
Morning everyone. I’m sure you’re wondering why I have a dinosaur companion. Remember elementary school when you had show and tell? Well, really, that’s what this presentation is about: telling you about something that I’ve been keeping an eye on for over a year now, and showing you the latest iteration of something I see a lot of application for in libraries and higher education.
By the way, this dinosaur was the Mozilla mascot. I’ve brought him with me today, because Mozilla instigated and organized the efforts behind this: the Web Literacy Standard.
What is it?
Shall I simply read out what it says right here?
The Web Literacy Standard is a map of competencies and skills that Mozilla and our community of stakeholders believe are important to pay attention to when getting better at reading, writing and participating on the web.
The exploring competencies are particularly relevant to libraries, such as the “search” competency:
Locating information, people and resources via the web.
The first point here says:
Using keywords, search operators, and keyboard shortcuts to make web searches more efficient.
While this might refer to using search engines, such as Google, I would say this would easily apply to searching databases, a catalogue, or a discovery layer.
How can we use it?
So we have this standard. Where does this lead us? I think the most obvious one is for assessment.
For example, we have students that come into instructional workshops. What do we want students to learn? The standard can give us guidance specifically by looking at the competencies listed. Most likely we want to pick a couple from ‘Search’ and ‘Credibility’.
While we might differ on exactly how we assess whether students have learned these skills, we can hopefully agree that these are the skills and competencies we’re trying to assess.
I won’t belabour this point, because anyone familiar with instruction and assessment will hopefully be able to see how the standard applies in helping to create assessment tools, such as questionnaires, or rubrics.
Why this one?
What is likely of more interest is why should we use this standard?
- open, public,
- community-led, and
At the Mozilla Festival this year, faculty members from various schools showed interest and began brainstorming about how they might use it in their courses. I say that it’s collaborative, because you can provide feedback at any time and contribute, meaning everyone can get involved.
While based on many existing ideas, the web literacy standard is also unique in pulling together much of what you might find under information or digital literacy into a single standard focused on the web environment, which is where students do a vast majority of their research, as well as spend a lot of time in general.
If you weren’t using a literacy standard already, then I would encourage you to start here. If you already had something in place, then I encourage you to see how your existing instructional material might align with the web literacy standard.
Into Open Badges
Mozilla didn’t stop there of course. In a separate, but related effort, there’s also the open badges system, where you can create and issue badges linked to any of the competencies.
The metadata of each badge includes:
- badge name
- criteria (link to)
- evidence (link to)
- date issued
- competency from standard (link to)
- tags (keywords)
The badge can then be used as proof of an acquired skill. A student can also collect badges from many places and then display them on a website or any other place online by managing their badges in their badges backpack.
In the near future, part of the plan is the ability to search for other people in a community who have earned a specific badge. For example, a student might search for other students who have acquired a badge related to advanced research skills to ask for help, building a community where students can seek out peers for help in specific areas.
The badges system will also allow pathways so that you can make badges that build on one other. They’re in the process of prototyping how the pathways might work, and if you’re interested, you can even join the conversation!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this show and tell. Too often we work in silos, so I highly encourage you to get involved in the web literacy standard, open badges or both; or simply make use of them, because you’ll be joining a community that goes beyond just one library, one faculty, or one school; you’ll be joining the world.


Causes and Risk Factors for Multiple Myeloma
The underlying cause for multiple myeloma is unknown; however, research has shown that the disease begins as a change (mutation) in genetic material called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) within plasma cells. This genetic material contains instructions that determine and control cell growth, division, and function.
Genes that increase cell growth and division are called oncogenes and genes that reduce cell growth and division or result in cell death are called tumor suppressor genes. In some cases, abnormalities in genetic material "switch on" cancer-promoting oncogenes and "switch off" cancer-preventing tumor suppressor genes, increasing the risk for multiple myeloma and other types of cancer.
Multiple myeloma cells also may contain abnormalities in DNA components called chromosomes. Each normal, healthy cell contains 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs. Translocation is a genetic error in which parts of two chromosomes are exchanged. When this error occurs near an oncogene, it can trigger abnormal cell growth and division and cause cancer.
In another chromosomal abnormality found in some myeloma cells, parts of chromosome 13 are missing. This genetic error increases the risk for multiple myeloma that is highly aggressive and difficult to treat. Patients with multiple myeloma also may have other bone marrow cell abnormalities that increase plasma cell growth and division.
Several risk factors for multiple myeloma have been identified. Some of these factors cannot be changed or avoided (called non-modifiable risk factors) and others can be avoided in some cases (called modifiable factors risk factors). Recent studies indicate that a combination of risk factors probably contributes to the development of multiple myeloma.
Multiple myeloma risk factors include the following:
- African American race
- Age (e.g., over the age of 65)
- Exposure to radiation (e.g., from x-rays, handling radioactive materials, or living near or working in nuclear energy production facilities)
- Family history of multiple myeloma (e.g., having a close relative, such as a sibling or parent, with the disease)
- Male gender
- Monoclonal gammopathy of unknown significance (MGUS)
Certain medical conditions and environmental or occupational exposures (e.g., to chemicals or viruses) may increase the risk for multiple myeloma, but the role of these factors is not completely understood. Some studies have shown that people with chronic infections (e.g., hepatitis C, HIV/AIDS) or autoimmune disorders (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis) are at higher risk for developing multiple myeloma. Environmental factors, including job-related exposure to metal, rubber, wood, paint, solvents, leather, fertilizers, pesticides, or petroleum products also may increase the multiple myeloma risk.
Monoclonal gammopathy of unknown significance (MGUS) is a condition characterized by the presence of M proteins in the blood without other evidence of multiple myeloma. MGUS usually does not cause symptoms; however, people with the condition are at higher risk for developing multiple myeloma, leukemia, and other disorders (e.g., connective tissue disorders, chronic skin diseases, neurological disorders) over time. People who have MGUS undergo regular blood tests to monitor the condition.


Secret Autonomous Railroad Pilot Car Testing? Code Name: "Google Pop Car"For more than two decades, automobile manufacturers have offered radar systems that activate when a driver shifts the transmission into reverse gear. More recently, backup cameras made the leap from large recreational vehicles to many standard sized automobiles. Although an audible beep from a radar sensor is more effective at getting a driver’s attention, federal law now mandates that by 2018, all light vehicles sold in the U.S. shall include a backup camera.
Recently, automobile manufacturers have developed and deployed “adaptive cruise control”, which will slow a vehicle if it approaches too quickly upon another vehicle. If you purchase a new vehicle today, you can add various crash prevention systems, including “lane departure control”, “collision avoidance braking”, “blind spot warnings”, "adaptive headlights" and more. If you add up all of these features and options, you are well on your way to owning a “self-driving car”, as Google likes to call their autonomous driving vehicle (AV).
Until the 1980s, cup holders were relatively unknown in American cars. Until then, few people ate, drank or made telephone calls while driving. With the advent of “cellular radio”, the “car phone” became popular. With the fast food revolution, so too came cup holders, in-vehicle dining and a host of other distractions. Cordless electric shavers brought personal grooming to the average commuter. Lighted makeup mirrors tempted other commuters to touch up their makeup while driving. When heavy traffic slowed vehicles to a crawl, it became common for drivers to read a book or newspaper during their commute.
By the early 2000s, drivers had even more distractions to deal with. With the release of the first Apple iPhone in 2007, smart phones became ubiquitous, if not at all smart. They offered such features as GPS route guidance and text messaging, along with mobile telephone connectivity. Since then, automotive manufacturers raced to integrate evermore communications and entertainment functions into their vehicles. For instance, many new passenger vehicles offer both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay as options. With the deployment of all these integrated applications, drivers today have more opportunities for inattentive driving than ever before.
Still, it is important to separate the beneficial features in current automobiles from the frivolous, foolish and purely distracting. To me, crash prevention systems are all for the better. Even so, I do not wish to cede control of my vehicle to a self-driving, autonomous computer system. I have driven automobiles for over fifty years. Call me old fashioned, but I plan to drive and control of my own vehicles until I can no longer qualify for a driver’s license.
According to the L.A. Times, Google, Tesla, Toyota and the other corporations have spent billions of dollars developing their own autonomous vehicles. What these companies forgot to do is to ask if we, the driving public want such a vehicle. My guess is that most drivers would prefer to control their own vehicle, rather than sitting passively while their Google Pop Car drives them to work or play. If most of us do not want Google’s self-driving car, toward what useful purpose could the company turn that investment?
To answer that question, Google need look no farther than three miles from their Googleplex headquarters in Mountain View, California. There, adjacent to the Central Expressway is the Mountain View Station, which serves both Caltrain and Amtrak passenger trains. Developed mainly as a freight railroad in the 1880s, the current passenger rail line stretches from Gilroy to its northern terminus in San Francisco. With the ongoing technology boom in the Bay Area, Caltrain operates ninety-two weekday trains along those tracks.
Today, millions of people work and commute back and forth along the San Francisco Peninsula. Some travel on or parallel to the rail lines, while others cross one of the forty grade-level crossings along that rail line. Since 2005, there have been one hundred fifteen Caltrain-related fatalities registered on that busy rail line. Although a few were accidents, the majority of fatalities were determined to be suicides.
According to the San Francisco Examiner, between August and October 2015, there were eight vehicle collisions with trains, four of which were in Burlingame and three of which were at the same intersection. “Running ninety-two trains per day on a corridor with more than forty roadway crossings presents a unique set of challenges,” Caltrain executive director Jim Hartnett said in a statement. “Those challenges have become more difficult with increased traffic congestion and more drivers, cyclists and pedestrians crossing our tracks on a daily basis.”
In addition to vehicle collisions, many of the fatalities occurred when pedestrians walked into the path of an approaching train. Were these pedestrians “texting while walking”, distracted by their smart phones or did they die in preplanned encounters with diesel locomotives? Although that is unclear, many victims appear to hide and then jump on to the tracks when it is too late to avoid a collision. If architects and planners had the luxury of creating a sealed right of way, like the BART system built in the 1970s, they would do it. With more than one hundred years of history, there is no way to seal off the peninsular rail corridor from either vehicle or pedestrian traffic.
Each time a Caltrain passenger train collides with a motorist or pedestrian, the entire commuter system on the San Francisco Peninsula is negatively affected. Meanwhile, the autonomous vehicle group at Google has an opportunity to help save lives, speed commuter rail service and increase revenue in the process. To do this Google should adapt their various autonomous vehicle sensors to a railroad “pilot car”. If Google starts now, it could quickly develop and deploy what I call the “Google Pop Car” on the Caltrain route. Here is how it would work.
The Google Pop Car would be a lightweight, electrically driven autonomous rail car. It would have sensors and cameras capable of spotting both vehicles and pedestrians on or near the railroad tracks. As a “pilot car”, it would lead the way for each Caltrain passenger train, staying far enough ahead to be the eyes and ears for its following train. In an emergency, the Google Pop Car could remotely activate the Positive Train Control (PTC) system, thus halting the train prior to a collision.
As the Google Pop Car approaches a dangerous grade crossing or detects an errant pedestrian, it could activate its safety lights and train horn. If a Google Pop Car warns a distracted pedestrian or potential suicide victim, they might have time to reconsider their actions. Additionally, the Google Pop Car could stream both video and still pictures to the cab of the following locomotive. Utilizing face recognition software, police agencies could later identify potential perpetrators or simple risk-takers, thus allowing intervention or apprehension.
In my scenario, the Google Pop Car would race ahead to the next grade crossing. Upon approach, it would activate its rotating lights and sound its horn. Once the Google Pop Car had secures the crossing, it could depart, always staying ahead of its assigned passenger train. With proper coordination, the passenger train could maintain a steady speed, while ensuring the safety of both pedestrians and vehicular traffic. In the unlikely event of a collision, a lightweight Google Pop Car, with crash absorbing bumpers would cause minimal damage or destruction.
After thorough testing of the Google Pop Car on the Caltrain line, other rail passenger agencies could adopt the technology. Had Google Pop Car technology been available to Metrolink in Southern California it could have saved many lives. Metrolink experienced eleven fatalities in its 2005 Glendale collision, twenty-five fatalities in its 2008 Chatsworth collision and the death of Senior Engineer Glenn Steele in its February 2015 Oxnard collision.
In the Oxnard collision, the “pilot”, a plow-like anti-derailment blade detached from the Metrolink Hyundai Rotem Cab Car. In September 2015, after realizing that its cab cars were unsafe, the Metrolink board met in a closed (possibly illegal) session to discuss its limited options. Almost immediately, Metrolink announced a decision to lease forty “heavy iron” Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) freight locomotives. Rather than exploring new safety technologies such as the Google Pop Car, Metrolink will rely on outmoded, conventional thinking. In coming months, inefficient, high-pollution BNSF freight locomotives will head-up all Metrolink passenger trains. In an “overkill” scenario designed to eradicate errant pedestrians and vehicles, Metrolink will rely on the tonnage of BNSF locomotives.
Essentially all of the technology to produce, test and implement an autonomous railroad pilot car exists today. What is lacking in urban passenger rail systems such as Caltrain and Metrolink is a willingness to embrace the new technologies available for collision avoidance. Moribund and ossified thinking by politically controlled passenger rail agencies guarantees that California will continue to lead the nation in deadly rail collisions along its passenger rail corridors.


By: Chioma Umeha
Gastroparesis – literally “paralyzed stomach” – is a serious condition manifested by delayed emptying of stomach contents into the small intestine after a meal. There is no cure for gastroparesis, but treatment can speed gastric emptying and relieve gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea and vomiting. Gastroparesis most often occurs in people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, but diabetes isn’t the only cause of gastroparesis. Other possible causes are: post viral syndromes; anorexia nervosa; surgery on the stomach or vagus nerve and medications that slow contractions in the intestine, particularly anti-cholinergics and narcotics.
Others are: smooth muscle disorders, such as amyloidosis and scleroderma; nervous system diseases, including abdominal migraine and Parkinson’s disease and metabolic disorders, including hypothyroidism. Symptoms of gastroparesis: The symptoms of gastroparesis include; feelings of fullness too soon after you start eating, bloating, heartburn, upset stomach, nausea and vomiting. These symptoms may be constant or may flare up from time to time with periods of relief in between.
Some patients have no overt symptoms of gastroparesis and, in people with diabetes; the only sign may be difficulty controlling blood glucose. If the gastroparesis remains untreated, it can lead to additional complications, including malnutrition, dehydration and electrolyte imbalances. Treatment of gastroparesis is often two-fold. First, health care providers aim to improve gastric emptying and control symptoms. Second, they treat the underlying disease causing gastroparesis, if present.
People with gastroparesis are advised to eat a diet low in fat and fibre. Also, eating six small meals a day, rather than three large ones, may allow the stomach to empty its contents more easily. Some people may benefit from replacing some solid meals with liquid meals, which pass through the stomach more easily. A number of medications are somewhat effective in promoting gastric emptying and relieving the nausea and vomiting of gastroparesis.
These include metoclopramide (Reglan, Metozolv ODT) erythromycin (ERY-C and other brands), cisapride (available in the United States only through a restricted program with the manufacturer because of rare but dangerous side effects) and domperidone (not available in the United States). Doctors may also recommend use of a device called Enterra, which provides intermittent or continuous stimulation to the stomach’s muscles via electrodes implanted under the skin that covers the stomach. The treatment can improve symptoms but has little effect on gastric emptying.
This story was published in Daily Newswatch on May 4, 2013.


In short, PARCC is a battery of common standardized assessments for English Language Arts/Literacy and Math. At the middle school level, the English PARCC assessment will focus specifically upon literary analysis, research simulation and narrative writing. Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education created an overview of PARCC titled, "10 Things Parents Should Know About PARCC". Take a look as it may offer some additional background information.
At JGMS we will have two waves of PARCC testing, one occurring in March/April and then another battery of assessments in May. These testing windows are determined by the state with the Performance Based Assessment (PBA) during the first wave and the End of Year (EOY) Assessment last. Fortunately, PARCC has released a series of practice tests for student use and many of our middle school students are well prepared. Please note our middle school students will take the PARCC in an online environment using either a laptop, iPad or desktop computer.
Below are a series of practice tests for math and English Language Arts & Literacy for the performance based assessments, which our students are currently taking this month. More information, and other types of PARCC practice tests, can be found online here.
PARCC Performance Based Practice Tests:
6th Grade Math: Performance Based Assessment
6th Grade ELA/Literacy: Performance Based Assessment
7th Grade Math: Performance Based Assessment
7th Grade ELA/Literacy: Performance Based Assessment
8th Grade Math: Performance Based Assessment
8th Grade ELA/Literacy: Performance Based Assessment


Have you already my post about ‘ What is UX? What are UX Research and Design? ‘? Or maybe you know what is User Experience, so you read first this overview of ‘ Methods of UX Research ‘. This third post complete notes I took during the MOOC ‘ Introduction to User Experience ‘ delivered by the edX platform. We focus there on the methods to produce a plan or a prototype of what will be the final product or outcome.
There is also a quiz with 10 questions to assess your knowledge about this topic.
1) What is UX Design?
Design is not the final product, not the income, but it is a plan for producing that product or that outcome. And it is a plan for arranging elements and those elements will depend on the type of product it is.
A design is a plan for arranging elements to accomplish a purpose. So, there is a purpose that this design is supposed to accomplish and it is supposed to help the users, or the consumers of the design to accomplish.
And ultimately, a design is mostly about how it works and the functionality, and not just about how it looks. Of course, it also includes what it looks like and what it feels like.
What is design?
Design is solving problems.
Quote from Bryan Lawson:
“Design is as much a matter of finding problems as it is soling them”
(How Designers Think)
It is also about articulating problems in such a way that you can understand what the form and the criteria of a solution ought to be.
The Design Process
- understand the problem
- generate possible solutions
- analyze solutions and select the most promising
- embody solution: to build some kind of a prototype that can be used for really understanding how this solution should work. And that can also be used for assessing whether or not we are moving along the right track
- assess (find new problems): one’s that you missed the first time around (important requirements or constraints)
- … and repeat!
What is special about UX Design?
Experiences are interactive:
- action-response rules
- action: command options
- response: information presentation
- complex system behavior (focus on usability)
Context is critical: understanding how and when and why people are using and interacting with our systems:
- other interactions
- other activities
- what other people are involved
The UX Design Process
- Understand the problem –> Study users: tasks and context
- Generate possible solutions –> Sketch, storyboard, wireframe
- Analyze and select –> Apply UX criteria
- Embody solutions –> Build prototype
- Assess (and find new problems) –> Apply UX Research methods (like users testing)
- … and repeat! –> … and repeat!
A prototype is…
A representation of a design, made before the final solution exists.
Why do we prototype in UX?
- reification: to make something real or make something concrete so that we can test ideas and figure out if they are going to work.
- reflection: we can reflect on whether (prototypes) are meeting the design goals that we have, or whether they are taking us in a different direction.
- communication: we can bring other stakeholders into the conversation to figure out if the design idea is going to work.
- assessment: it facilitates performing user tests or getting feedback from users.
Prototypes have many forms
A “representation of a design” can mean a:
- verbal description
- navigation / flow diagram
- physical model
- formal specification
In UX we are talking about a representation of the system as it will be experienced by end users. And we typically produce prototypes at multiple levels of fidelity, from low fidelity to middle fidelity, to high fidelity prototypes as the design process progresses.
=> Low-fidelity prototypes ignore things like graphics, like the colors and fonts that are going to be used. They don’t involve any programming.
They’re often made on paper so that they can be created cheaply and thrown away when they’re not needed anymore. And they don’t use real data as a result.
=> These prototypes would address all of the concerns that lo-fi prototypes address like functionality and task flow, but start to also look at concerns like the layout, how specifically are all of the different fields and controls going to be laid out.
They might start to address some of the issues of interactivity, so how it actually feels to interact with the system, and how you navigate from one part of the system to another.
=> Then, towards the end of the design process, when we are pretty sure we have the basic idea of the design right, we would produce high fidelity prototypes, which would tackle some of these concerns that we have a thrust in the meeting low fidelity prototype like graphic design, some more interaction details like maybe animations. And more realistic data that would map what users would actually be interacting with.
Still a high fidelity prototype is not the final product. It would probably not involve the backend programming that would be required. And it might not have complete functional coverage, it would be focused on the task that that particular prototype is supposed to accomplish. Whether that’s to support a user test, to support communication with stakeholders and so forth.
Economic principle of prototyping
The best prototype is the one that, in the simplest and most efficient way, makes the possibilities of a design idea visible and measureable.
(Lim, Stolterman, and Tenenberg)
So early in the process, you are concerned with functionality and task coverage and you are less concerned with the details of how it is going to look and feel. Later in the process, after you have established the basic functionality, you are going to be more concerned about those issues. And that is why we progress through different levels of fidelity as we prototype.
The main reason that we do this is we want to avoid premature commitment which is:
- investing resources (time, money) in a dead end
- waste money and effort
- exhaust project resources/timeline, stuck with a bad design
- cognitive and emotional commitments hard to undo
Lo-fi prototyping maximizes the number of times you get to refine your design before you commit to code.
Lo-fi prototyping uses lightweight materials that are quick, cheap, and easy to change.
What happens before prototyping?
- current needs
- establish guidelines and constraints
- personas, scenarios, user stories, requirements
What happens after prototyping?
1) new assessment
3) more prototyping
and so on… (iteration)


The Apostles: Titus
Titus was a companion to Paul and mentioned in the Epistle of Titus.
Titus is believed to have been Greek, and a Gentile, from Antioch. The name Titus means pleasing.
He served as Paul’s secretary and interpreter and may have even been converted by Paul. Early Church tradition states when Paul came to the Island of Crete to preach, he ordained a disciple, Titus, as Bishop of Crete. This was because Paul was needed elsewhere and he left Titus to finish what he started.
Paul sent Titus from Ephesus to Corinth to deliver the “Severe Letter” to the church there. 2 Corinthians 7:8 mentions the letter although it is now lost.
He then went on and met Paul in Macedonia, and later returned to Corinth with what we now know as 2 Corinthians.
Titus is considered a “troubleshooter, peacemaker, administrator, and missionary.”
Titus is the patron saint of the United States Army Chaplain Corps.


Abandoned Uranium Mines Plague Navajo Nation
Mining companies left behind a legacy of poisoned wells and contaminated earth
The mesas of Monument Valley rise deep red on the horizon. We are in Diné Bikéyah, land of the Navajo.
“This is John Wayne country,” trained Navajo guide Gregory Holiday repeats his lines for an enchanted group of tourists. The view opens boundless to the sacred land of the Diné people, but for visitors it is presented as the iconic west of cowboys and Americana.
Photo by Sonia Luokkala
The sun sets and the last traveler boards the bus to leave Navajo Nation and head back to Flagstaff and into US-governed territory. With the bus’ departure, Gregory’s role as the light-hearted Indian guide ends. We take a gravel road to his home in the village of Oljato. During the jolty ride the rehearsed stories of Wild West heroes shift to memories of deceased loved ones.
“My daughter loved to ride her motorbike in the desert,” he says.
Two years ago Gregory’s daughter died of lung cancer. Her child, Gregory’s granddaughter, was a victim of Navajo neuropathy, a rare condition named after the only population in which it occurs. For those suffering from the disease, limbs begin to tingle, then lose all sense of touch, and eventually appear curled as claws. Ultimately, the victim dies of liver failure. One study put the average age of death at 10. First described in medical literature in 1976, there is no cure.
In the 1940s, surveyors discovered significant uranium deposits throughout the once worthless desert landscape of the reservation. Between 1944 and 1986, as the US government aimed to cut off all dependence on imported uranium, nearly 4 million tons of ore were extracted to fuel the Cold War nuclear arm’s race. With the end of the war, the mining companies moved out. They were not required to clean up their mess and left behind the legacy of their extraction efforts, including mining waste and abandoned mines.
The incidence of Navajo neuropathy is five times higher on the western side of the Navajo reservation than on the eastern side. Some researchers believe this discrepancy is linked to the land: On the western side, the mines were mostly tunnels, whereas in the west they were primarily open pits. After the uranium companies left, the unfilled pits started to fill with water. Some, as deep as 130 feet, eventually formed into small lakes. Unsuspecting Navajos and their livestock use the contaminated water for drinking.
A 1990 study of Navajo neuropathy ruled out water contamination as a possible cause of the disease. However, that study has since been cast into doubt. In 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported that the study “did not fully consider the role of uranium mining.” Interviewed for the LA Times story, Steve Helgerson, lead scientist for the study, said his team had ruled out water contamination because families impacted by Navajo neuropathy were supplied by multiple water sources. He said the team did not explore whether these multiple sources shared common contaminants.
As the Los Angeles Times also reported, in 1986, Thomas Payne an environmental health officer for Indian Health Services, along with a National Park Service ranger, took water samples at 48 sites surrounding Cameron, AZ, a town in Navajo Nation. These samples revealed uranium levels in wells as high as 139 picocuries per liter. In abandoned pits, the levels were as high as 4,024 pinocuries. The EPA limit for safe drinking water is 20 picocuries per liter. At the time of his study, Helgerson was not aware of these results.
No further studies have been conducted on the possible links between the environment and Navajo neuropathy. The source of the illness remains formally unknown, although similar symptoms were seen in the children of Chernobyl and in the victims of Minamata disease in Japan, both caused by environmental factors.
Conditions in Holiday’s hometown, Oljato, resemble those of a third world country. Residents have limited access to clean water and live in houses constructed of uranium-contaminated gravel.
Six abandoned uranium mines that still emit dangerous gamma rays surround the village. In 2014, the EPA scanned almost 500 mines across Navajo Nation for radiation; the majority measured levels at least 10-times greater than background radiation levels, some as high as 25-times background radiation. Many of the highest radiating mines were found to be located within a quarter-mile of inhabited structure.
Gregory draws a deep breath through an oxygen mask attached to a tank standing beside his couch. A few years ago he also was diagnosed with a now common occurrence in Navajo Nation, lung cancer.
In the 1950’s, cancer rates in the Navajo population were so low that the people were thought to be immune to it. An article titled “Cancer immunity in the Navajo” was published in a medical journal in 1959. A decade into the mining era, cancer rates had more than doubled. According to a report by the Navajo Epidemiology Center, by 2004, cancer had become the leading cause of illness and death for the Navajo, a generally nonsmoking population.
“Everything here makes us and the animals sick," Gregory said.
In his youth, Gregory was one of thousands of Navajo men lured to work in the uranium mines and mills. For him, as well as many others, employment as a miner or millworker was his first contact with the US wage economy. At the time, the miners were grateful.
But the Navajo saw little of the huge profits from uranium. Copies of miners’ pay stubs show payments of minimum wage or less: wages varied from an hourly $0.81 to $1.00.
Moreover, in 2011, journalist Judy Pasternak reported in her book Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed that the miners suffered radiation exposure four times that of the Japanese targeted by nuclear bombs during World War II. Navajo language had no word for radiation and few Navajo people spoke English before the mining began. Officials knew uranium exposure posed serious health risks but made no effort to educate their workers. Protective clothing, masks or ventilation were never provided. Miners returned to their families daily with clothes covered in the yellow dust of uranium.
“Others working with me died a long time ago” Gregory says.
The table is set with traditional Navajo soup made from Gregory’s family’s sheep. His is a story not heard by the 400,000 annual tourists crossing Monument Valley off their bucket list just 10 minutes out of town.
Today, more than 1,200 uranium mines lay abandoned within the borders of Navajo Nation. Some are barred with rubble, but most are left exposed.
The task of cleanup is daunting. EPA coordinator Lillie Lane told me the cost to clean just two mines is estimated to be $131 million. Navajo Nation EPA is currently researching and identifying the mining companies responsible for the waste. The paper trail is long, but under the Superfund Act, these companies can be held accountable for the cost.
“It is going to take 100 years,” said Lillie Lane, referring to the task of tracking down the responsible parties.
Last week, those working to clean up the mining waste received a boost from the federal government: The Justice Department announced that the US will place $13.2 million in a trust to pay for the evaluation of 16 abandoned uranium mines on Navajo land. The contribution is part of a settlement agreement with the Navajo Nation.
In the meantime, fragile communities continue to live amid the poisoned wells and contaminated earth, and the uranium riddled sagebrush flats are home for the next generation of Navajo children. That is, at least until those responsible are held to account and the landscape is restored to what it once was, before profits were prioritized above the land and its people.


Infant Jesus of Prague (Pražské jezulátko in Czech) is a famous statue of infant Jesus located in the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Malá Strana, Prague. It´s history started in the 17th century when a statue of the Infant Jesus was brought into Bohemia and eventually was given to the Discalced Carmelites in Prague. Since then, the statue has remained in Prague and has drawn many devotees worldwide to go and honor the Holy Child. Many graces, blessings, favors and miraculous healings have been received by many who petitioned before the Infant Jesus.
The exact origin of the Infant Jesus statue was not truly known, but historical sources point to a small 28cm high sculpture of the Holy Child with a bird in his right hand carved in around the year 1340. Many other Infant Jesus sculptures were also carved by famous masters throughout Europe in the Middle Ages.
Today, thousands of pilgrims pay homage to the Infant of Prague each year. The tradition of the Infant Jesus procession and the coronation continues to this day. On May 27,1995, a solemn procession of the Infant Jesus took place in the streets of Prague with Cardinal Sin of Manila (Philippines) and Cardinal Vlk of Prague leading the procession. This ceremony was the closing highlight of the annual Feast of the Infant Jesus in Prague.
As the devotion to the Infant Jesus spreads throughout the world, many parishes now offer Holy Mass and novenas to honor the Holy Child of God and many prayer groups have been formed.
contined at source URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_Jesus_of_Prague


Four of the children are from Hardin County, and one is from Oldham. All went to a hospital to be treated for complications of E. coli, which attacked their red blood cells and affected their kidneys. The Lincoln Trail District Health Department said tests of milk from the suspected dairy and distributors were negative for E. coli, a bacterium common to the intestinal tracts of mammals.
“Pasteurization is the process of heating a liquid such as milk to a high enough temperature to destroy disease-causing microorganisms,” Berkshire explains. “It also increases the shelf life of milk by destroying spoilage microorganisms and enzymes.”
The state Department for Public Health said, “DPH is stressing the dangers of unpasteurized milk after learning all the affected children had consumed it and because it is a known source of E. coli bacteria, as well as numerous other pathogens that can lead to illness.”
Selling raw milk is illegal in Kentucky, but is available through a “herd share,” which allows members to buy an interest in a cow that allows them to take the milk home. “Northern Kentucky U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican, introduced two bills earlier this year he characterized as ‘milk freedom legislation’ and would strip the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of its authority to police raw milk sales,” Berkshire writes. Supporters of raw milk say it helps people resist disease and promotes better growth, stronger teeth and better behavior.
However, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a study over a decade that found “the risk of outbreaks caused by raw milk is at least 150 times greater than the risk of outbreaks caused by pasteurized milk,” Berkshire reports.
Kentucky law requires milk must be pasteurized, and officials encourage buyers to check labels to make sure it is, and throw it out if pasteurization cannot be confirmed. “Even negative tests do not guarantee that raw milk is safe to drink,” the CDC says on its “Raw Milk Questions and Answers” webpage. “People have become very sick from drinking raw milk that came from farms that regularly tested their milk for bacteria and whose owners were sure that their milk was safe.” (Read more)


This was an Allied part of the cover plan for the 'Torch' landing in French North-West Africa (October/November 1942).
It was appreciated that the assembly of so many ships, quantity of stores and numbers of men in Gibraltar could not be concealed from the Axis powers, who had agents in Algeciras in neutral Spain across the bay from Gibraltar, so the 'story' promulgated by the 'Gibraltar Cover Plan' was that these forces were being grouped in readiness for a major amphibious expedition to relieve Malta.
It had initially been considered that the notional objective of the cover plan should be Dakar in French West Africa, with the landing craft then continuing round the Cape of Good Hope and this into the Indian Ocean to reach the Middle East, but it was then decided that this might persuade both the Germans and the Vichy French to create reaction forces which could then pose a danger to 'Torch', and that as soon as the convoys from the UK turned toward the east and thus the Strait of Gibraltar it would be clear that Dakar was not the objective. A cover 'target' in the Mediterranean was therefore preferable as this would allow the 'story' to be maintained to the last minute, and thus Malta became the object.
Major David Strangeways was assigned to Colonel John Bevan, head of the London Controlling Section, and despatched to Gibraltar, Malta, and the Middle East to brief the appropriate authorities. Strangeways departed London on 19 August, and in his luggage was an autographed copy of the latest book by Denis Wheatley, another deception officer, as a present for a British diplomat with a note from Wheatley with an 'indiscreet' note containing false information, it being hoped that this luggage was checked by Axis agents in Gibraltar or Cairo. Strangeways briefed the governor of Gibraltar and remained until a time early in September to assist the governor in getting the 'story' well established.
The governor was enthusiastic, and broadcast to all the troops at Gibraltar that 'the Rock' was becoming a transit base for the relief of Malta. The governor also travelled to Malta by air to 'co-ordinate' arrangements. Many maps of Malta were sent to Gibraltar. The 'story' was generally believed by the troops and also by the civilians of Gibraltar until the end of October, by which time they were coming to believe that this was a cover story and the real goal of the preparations was Dakar.


The Problem of the Mind and Body
‘the problem of giving an account of how minds, or mental processes, are related to the bodily states and processes' -Oxford Companion To Philosophy.
The problem is about how the immaterial mind which does not occupy space interacts with the physical body.
Orginally the theory was fathered by Descartes and is known as Cartesian Dualism. Descartes believed that the mind and body connected through the penal gland, which was a part of the brain that was thought to have no purpose.
However, we now know that this is not the case, and because of such there are a number of other theories which are used to explain how the connection occurs and is possible.
‘What I ordinarily call me, according to Descartes, is actually two things; on one hand, an immaterial […]soul[…]and, on the other, a body.’ –Bernard Williams in Philosophy: Basic Readings
This is the idea that both aspect of the mind and body exist, and beneath this there are a number of theories expaining the relationship between the two.
Parallelism- The idea that both the mind and body exist, and that they are parallel to each other. However, they are unable to affect one another, for which the below suggestions for the connection are given. -Leibniz
-> Occasionalism- Derived from Parallelism, this is the idea that the mind and body can affect one another only when God allows them to, who bridges the connection between them. -Malebranche
-> Pre-Established Harmony- Again is derived from parallelism, and is the idea that our mind and body were pre-programmed to connect before we came into existence. -Leibniz
Epiphenomenalism- The idea that has sometimes been considered as monistic. Here the mind is a byproduct of the brain, and because of such the body can affect the mind, and because the mind is only a byproduct, it cannot effect the body. -Huxley
The idea that only one of the two entities exist. There is not both.
Materialism- The idea that everything is purely physcal, there is no mental properties that exist.
Behaviourism- All factors of us, including our personality, comes down to chemical processes within the brain. Our behaviour is merely a consequence of such.This is a form of materialism.
'Ghost In The Machine'- Created by Gilber Ryle, this is the idea he put forward that presented the idea of an immaterial mind as something to be ridiculed. In this, he placed the idea that in the case of dualism, the mind is the apparent 'ghost' that runs the controlled 'machine'. As Ryle is a materialist, it is clear that he does not believe the idea of this, and instead is an opposer of him.
Idealism- This is the form of mental monism, and states that everything is purely mental, there is nothing that is physical. In this, everything that appears to be physical is merely an illusion.
Life After Death
Life after death is something that relates highly to the concept of the mind and body. The reason for this is that the mind can be considered as the soul, and because of such the mind and body problem allows there to be a connection between the soul and body.
Immortality of the Soul- This is the idea that after we die, our soul continues on in the afterlife in heaven or hell as the form of us. This is a Christian theory, and allows simply for the soul to be thought to be our essence of which is connected to the body.
Rebirth- Idea that we are constantly reborn into other bodies until we reach perfection and are able to become one with the universe. This is a Buddhist theory, and the name of the apparant 'soul' form here is the Atman. This can be considered as both Dualistic and Monistic as there is not specifically a soul, and therefore not a mind.
Reincarnation- The idea that our Atman is born into a different body in our next life, of which the quality is dependant on that of our current life. This is a Hindu belief and is Dualistic as it is necessary for the Atman, their form of soul, to exist.
Life After Death II
Ressurection-This is a purely monistic theory, and is that after we die, God spiritually renews our body to bring us back to life. This is the original Christian concept, and means that we do not need a soul.
'Replica Theory'- Invented by John Hick, this is the thought experiment that suggests that when we die, we are in a way recreated on another plane whihc is an exact form of us. This is different from a normal replica as it is not merely a copy. By having a 'replica' it is a continuation of our life after we have died, meaning that we are recreated with all of the same problems that we had when we died.
This is a problem in relation to the mind and body theory, and presents the factor of what exactly makes us who we are, and how what part of us seperates us from others.
Body Criterion- This is the idea that everything we are comes down to our underlying and unchanging physical structure. Examples of this is our DNA, fingerprints and retina scans.
Mental Criterion- This is the idea that everything is purely mental, our own personal identity is our personalities which come down to our mental experiences. This is, therefore, a Dualist conecept, but can also be taken as an idealist one.
Mind Criterion- This si the idea that everything we are comes down to our memories and our previous experiences as they are different from everyone.
The meaning of the term Qualia is consciousness.
Relating to the factor of the mind and body problem. It is the discussion of how far we can think of consciousness.
We believe that we are conscious, however, we are unable to know whether others are conscious, we are only able to suggest others consciousness through shared experiences, such as that that we know if we step on a piece of lego, it will hurt.
There is also the fact that we only believe ourselves to be conscious, yet we are known to percieve things differently to other people. Something we may see as red others may see as a dark orange.


Guacamole Day: The Best Guac Recipe Ever and the Benefits of Avocados
7 minute read
A side dish for many, guacamole is finally getting its turn in the center of the table as we celebrate National Guacamole Day.
While the date of this celebration is September 16th, it is one of the most widely consumed foods in the United States in the middle of the winter and during the Super Bowl. A time of year when avocados aren’t even in season.
History of Guacamole
Guacamole originated before the 16th century, but at that time it was simply mashed avocados. In fact, the name comes from the Nahuatl word Ähuacamolli, which translates to the avocado sauce.
As mentioned, the original guacamole was simply mashed avocados, but the recipe grew to include some ingredients that were common to the area, such as tomatoes and onions. As Europeans arrived in the Americas, the recipe was altered a bit, and garlic and lime became staple ingredients.
Much like today, guacamole was very popular because of the flavor and the high nutritional value. The Aztecs even believed guacamole was an aphrodisiac, which boosted its popularity even higher.
While the other ingredients have their place, it’s really the avocados that make guacamole the healthy treat that it is.
Health Benefits of Avocados
Avocados are classified as a fruit because they contain a seed, but they’re unlike most common fruits. They’re primarily a carbohydrate but high in healthy fats. While the avocado has a lot of health benefits, it’s important to keep this fat content in mind.
Avocados Are Nutritious
Avocados are loaded with nutrients. They contain vitamin K, folate, vitamin C, potassium, vitamin B5, vitamin B6, and vitamin E. It also contains small amounts of magnesium, manganese, copper, iron, zinc, phosphorus, and vitamin A, thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin.
While, on average, a Hass avocado has about 160 calories, it also has 2 grams of protein, 15 grams of healthy fats, 9 grams of carbohydrates, with 7 of those being healthy fiber. There is no cholesterol or sodium in avocados, and they’re low in unhealthy saturated fats.
Heart-Healthy Monounsaturated Fatty Acids
While you want to limit your avocado consumption due to the fats they contain, there is some good to be found in those fats.
A whopping 77 percent of the calories in an avocado come from the fat, but the majority of that fat is oleic acid. This is the same monounsaturated fatty acid that’s in olive oil, and it’s why these fats are classified as healthy.
Oleic acid has been studied quite extensively, and it’s been directly associated with reduced inflammation, a major cause of disease and illness. That said, it’s the connection between oleic acid and cancer that’s most exciting.
| Related: 9 Signs of Hidden Inflammation + Treatment Tips |
A scholarly article reviewed many studies on oleic acid and cancer and determined that oleic acid, like that found in avocados, plays a role in activating intracellular pathways that prevent tumor development.
Full of Fiber
An avocado is roughly 25 percent soluble fiber and 75 percent insoluble fiber. Both soluble and insoluble fiber are great for your body and have health benefits.
Soluble fiber attracts water and slows digestion. It’s believed that this type of fiber is what makes you feel full for a longer period of time, and it appears to lower your risk of developing coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and some gastrointestinal diseases.
Insoluble fiber adds bulk to your stool, helping it pass through the body with fewer problems in the digestive tract. It can also help with weight loss.
Avocados Lower Cholesterol and Triglycerides
Heart disease is the most common cause of death in the world. High cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, and some inflammatory markers can help predict potential heart problems. The good news is that avocados can help.
♦ They reduce total cholesterol levels significantly
♦ Blood triglycerides can be reduced up to 20 percent
♦ LDL cholesterol is reduced by 22 percent
♦ HDL cholesterol is elevated up to 11 percent
Do all of these health benefits have you craving guacamole? If so, you’re in luck. The following recipe is the best guacamole recipe ever. What makes it even better is that it’s a very basic recipe that’s easy to make, and it takes full advantage of the health benefits of avocados, but on top of that, it can be easily altered to suit your tastes.
3 ripe avocados
1 lime, juiced
1/2 of a small onion, diced
2 Roma tomatoes, deseeded and diced
1 jalapeno, deseeded and diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
3-4 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1. Scoop the flesh out of the avocados and put in a medium-sized bowl. Add the lime juice and mash with a fork to desired texture. Dice the onion and add it to the mixture.
2. Slice your Roma tomatoes in half, lengthwise and use your finger to scoop out the seeds. Removing the seeds helps prevent your guacamole from having too much liquid and soupy consistency. Then dice the tomatoes and add to the mix.
3. Deseed your jalapeno, dice it, and add it to the guacamole. Use a garlic press to mince your garlic cloves and add them. Chop the fresh cilantro and add it to the bowl with the salt.
4. To store any leftover guacamole, place it in a bowl with an airtight lid. Use a spatula to smooth the top of the guacamole until it’s roughly level. Add cool water to the top to cover the surface. Cover with the lid and refrigerate.
5. This should prevent oxidation of the avocado and will keep it fresher. Simply pour the water off when you want to eat it again.
The Bottom Line
While celebrating guacamole gives you another reason to enjoy this delicious side dish, it’s really the health benefits of the avocado that transform this tasty treat from an appetizer to a scene-stealing superstar.
Avocados have long been noted for their health benefits. Loaded with nutrients, healthy fats, and fiber, and avocado fuels your body with things it needs to thrive while fighting cancer and heart disease along the way.
If you want to boost your health in a natural way, try adding more avocados and guacamole to your meal repertoire.


One of the stories that I will be using in this week's space and astronomy news will be the largest lunar impact ever recorded by NASA.Here's the video from NASA Television on YouTube: ScienceCasts: Bright Explosion on the Moon.
NASA researchers who monitor the Moon for meteoroid impacts have detected the brightest explosion in the history of their program.More stories over the jump.
NASA Television on YouTube: Kepler Update on This Week @NASA
This week, the Kepler science team announced the spacecraft was in a Thruster-Controlled Safe Mode. The root cause was undetermined but the proximate cause appears to be an attitude error caused by a malfunction in Kepler's reaction wheel 4, one of the telescope's pointing mechanisms. The team has since put the telescope in what's known as a Point Rest State, to minimize fuel usage while the investigation continues. Though no decisions have been made about the fate of the mission, the team notes that even if data collection were to end, Kepler has collected substantial quantities of data that should yield a string of scientific discoveries for years to come. Also, Living Off Earth, Future of Human Space Exploration, Garver briefed on Future Technologies, J-2X prepared for gimbal tests, Bolden checks out Aero Tech, Dreamchaser's arrival, Hangout with Star Trek cast and more!DarkSyde on Daily Kos has more general space and science news in This week in science: Common census.
NASA Television on YouTube: Expedition 35 Back Home Safely on This Week @NASA
The Expedition 35 crew safely returned from the International Space Station with a parachute-assisted landing of its Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan on May 14, local time. Commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency, Soyuz Commander Roman Romanenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency and NASA Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn capped off 146-days in space full of activity -- for Marshburn -- some of it just hours before the crew departed. On May 11, he and fellow NASA Astronaut Chris Cassidy completed a 5-hour, 30-minute spacewalk to replace a faulty coolant pump on the station's P6 truss and during a NASA TV in-flight event on May 7, Marshburn discussed the work being done on the International Space Station with members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Science and Space. Also, Next ISS Crew Focused on Launch, Humans 2 Mars, 40th Anniversary of Skylab, Curiosity Rover Update, Landsat's Vegas Time-Lapse, Fruit Flies Improving Flight, Student Launch Projects and more!Jen Hayden on Daily Kos has another take on Expedition 35's commander in Astronaut Chris Hadfield covers Bowie's 'Space Oddity' in space (VIDEO).
Nature (UK): Magnetar found at giant black hole
Magnetized neutron star could test Einstein’s theory.
Eugenie Samuel Reich
14 May 2013
Dale Frail couldn’t resist the prospect of watching a black hole swallow its prey. Frail, who is in charge of the Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes near Socorro in New Mexico, had seen a report last month about a long-lived X-ray flare emanating from the centre of the Milky Way, home to a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Astronomers were speculating that the flare might be a sign that a gas cloud they had been tracking had begun its death spiral into the black hole.Time Magazine: Trouble in Deep Space: Wheel Malfunction Threatens Kepler Telescope’s Future
Frail was sceptical. The cloud’s death was not expected until between September this year and March 2014. But Frail did not want to risk missing the action. Within hours of seeing the report, he had trained the VLA’s radio dishes on the scene, only to find nothing remarkable. Frail was puzzled. If the flare wasn’t the arrival of the gas cloud, what was it?
An answer soon came from other telescopes watching the drama at the centre of the Galaxy: the flare was coming from a magnetar, a highly magnetized kind of pulsar, or rotating neutron star. Its position near Sgr A* makes it a precious find. The magnetar’s regular radio pulses could be used to measure the warping of space-time near the monster black hole and to test predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
By Michael D. Lemonick
May 16, 2013
At this time last year, the scientists working on Kepler, NASA’s fantastically successful planet-hunting space telescope, were ecstatic. The probe, launched in 2009, had originally been given just three and a half years’ worth of funding, but in April, 2012, the space agency decided to extend the mission by another 3.5 years. With nearly 3,000 candidate planets in the bag already, astronomers were anticipating a boatload of even more exciting discoveries.Troubadour on Daily Kos gets the honor of the final story with Getting to Know Your Solar System (33): Dione.
Not so much anymore. Last Sunday, the spacecraft’s aim began to drift, sending Kepler into “safe mode” while engineers tried to figure out why. The potentially fatal diagnosis: one of the probe’s reaction wheels, crucial for holding Kepler on target, had stopped working. And if the telescope can’t stay on target, the mission is effectively over. “Unfortunately,” said John Grunsfeld, the scientist- astronaut who helped refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope during a 2009 spacewalk, during a NASA press conference, “Kepler is not in a place where I can go up and repair it.”
That doesn’t mean engineers are quite ready to give up.


The Madrigal family’s story is one of diaspora, loss, and intergenerational trauma. Abuela, the family matriarch, was displaced from her home and experienced the loss of her husband, which left her traumatised and unable to deviate from inflexible standards. Her trauma was passed down to her children and then to her grandchildren, who also felt the pressure to conform to these rigid expectations. The film emphasises the influence of parental pressure on children and how it can significantly impact their behaviour and choices.
Transactional analysis (TA) views individuals as autonomous, which means that no external influence can force them to make decisions. In 1972, Eric Berne, the founder of TA, wrote about injunctions, while the Gouldings identified 12 core injunctions in 1976 that were related to negative early decisions made by people. Injunctions are pre-verbal messages that individuals receive from their parents, and it appears that Abuela may have sent some to Luisa.
When examining Luisa’s mother, Julieta, we can see that she is a caring individual who possesses the unique ability to heal through her cooking. Julieta’s nurturing qualities may have arisen because she was responsible for parenting her own mother, Abuela, and made a conscious decision to live her life based on the “driver to please” others. Julieta’s need to please her mother was a survival mechanism that kept her secure. But this behaviour may have impacted Luisa negatively. Julieta’s compulsion to please may have caused her to lose her sense of self and overlook Luisa’s needs. As a result, Luisa may have internalised the message that she needed to work tirelessly, as people who strive to please others often do. This message may have led to her workaholic tendencies, as she may have had to work hard to gain her mother’s approval and affection. This is a theme that Luisa touches upon in her song, Surface Pressure, where she contemplates whether shaking off the crushing weight of expectations would allow her to experience joy, relaxation, or simple pleasures.
Isabel, the oldest sister, exemplifies the consequences of striving for perfection. She may have internalised the message “don’t be you” from her mother, Julieta. As the eldest child of Julieta, who was herself the oldest of triplets, and Agustin, Isabel may have felt the burden of taking care of her younger sisters while trying to gain the love and attention of her emotionally unavailable mother. Perhaps Julieta had an idealised image of her child as beautiful and creative and only reacted positively to the aspects of her actual child that matched that image while ignoring the rest.
Isabel’s passivity is evident in her decision to marry the “perfect” man, even though she later realises that it is not what she truly desires. Although Isabel has the potential to thrive, her life remains unfulfilled due to her be the “perfect driver”, which drives her to seek acceptance. Isabel’s endless hunger for perfection is a manifestation of the message she internalised from her mother: “You ought to be better.” This creates an insatiable appetite for the unattainable, and she becomes the “hungry ghost”, always craving, always gorging, but never filled, leading to a sad and ironic twist in her life.
Mirabel fails to meet her grandmother’s expectations as she does not possess the gift that runs in the family. Her mother and grandmother’s disappointment has soured the milk that Mirabel has drunk, and Abuela projects her own sense of disappointment onto Mirabel. Mirabel, in turn, adopts magical thinking and passivity, demonstrated in her song “Waiting for a Miracle.” Passive behaviour is a manifestation of discounting, which minimises the significance of a person or situation and serves as a form of denial. All the sisters fear making mistakes and being mistakes, and Mirabel fails to recognise that her gifted sisters are also struggling with overadaptation, another form of passivity. As the facade of the perfect and magical Casita cracks and falls away, each woman’s individual mask adopted to cope with their shared suffering also falls away. Abuela clings to the ultimate symbol of precarity, the open flame.
In order for a person to truly come alive, they must release their grip on life and let it be free to be itself. Possessiveness can act as a stranglehold on one’s own life and prevent them from experiencing it to the fullest extent. This idea is reminiscent of an essay by Alan Watts.
Mirabel, akin to the legendary Fool, represents chaos and creativity. Most significantly, she is always present in the moment, a theme that is relevant to Encanto. Mirabel acts as a catalyst for the Madrigal family’s healing process. She represents the Adult Ego State, which brings their script to consciousness.
Upon my first viewing, the song “All of You” resonated with me deeply. Although the gift in Encanto operates as a metaphor for protecting the family lineage and future, I initially connected it with talent. I thought about the children I work with, many of whom discount their creative abilities, discrediting themselves with the phrase “I can’t draw!”
In What Else Can I Do? Isabel joyfully discovers that her gift is spontaneity and that embracing imperfection contains limitless potential. This made me think about the pressures of modern life and social media. Children are exposed to the kaleidoscopic display of extraordinary feats from savants around the world on YouTube. The weight of wanting to be gifted and accepted can be crushing. Sadly, being normal is no longer normal. As the line “You’re the real gift, kid” was sung, I hoped that children would hear this and internalise the message. Hopefully, the isolated character’s words would reach out to them in their isolation, telling them gently, “You’re enough. You’re OK.”
Mark James Hammond is a psychotherapeutic counsellor from Gateshead in England, who watches Disney movies with his daughter.
The articles we publish on Psychreg are here to educate and inform. They’re not meant to take the place of expert advice. So if you’re looking for professional help, don’t delay or ignore it because of what you’ve read here. Check our full disclaimer.


Poultry chickens: characteristics, care and feeding
Of all the meat breeds of chickens that are known today in the world, brama is among the most popular. Admittedly, this species is worthy of such attention. All about poultry pomfret, including information about bird care and the features of its breeding, in the review below.
There are several varieties of pomfret that differ in their appearance and direction of use (in addition to excellent meat qualities, some representatives of the breed are grown as decorative and even fighting).
Divide the brahm also in color. This criterion allows you to select at least four separate lines. However, the Americans, who are considered perhaps the most ardent admirers of the breed, prefer to breed grouse pomfret. All Brahms, regardless of color, are massive, large and beautiful hens with dense plumage and proud posture.
Did you know? In English, the name of the breed is written as “brahma” and comes from the Brahmaputra River, which is the left tributary of the Ganges (moreover, it is one of the largest waterways of South Asia).
Indeed, the bream breed, like many other most successful breeds of chickens, owes its origin to the Chinese and Indians.However, the American breeders nevertheless gave the final look to the modern breed, adding to the source material - the Asian leggy chicken - the blood of the Cochin, Chittagong and fighting Malay:
|Head||Proportional, with a wide forehead.|
The ears are small, elongated.
|Crest||Small but dense and fleshy. Three row. The teeth are not clearly expressed, the shape of the comb resembles a pea pod.|
|Beak||Powerful and short, bright yellow.|
|Eyes||Set deep and hidden under overhanging eyebrows, which gives the impression of a heavy and somewhat frown "sullen".|
|Neck||Medium in size, gracefully curved, with a characteristic fold in front. The roosters are covered with thick plumage, similar to a lion's mane. With back and tail creates a curved line in the form of a lyre.|
|Chest||Wide, with a high landing, stands forward.|
|Stomach||Dense, wide, powerful, rounded.|
|Wings||Large and strong, rounded in shape.|
|Tail||Lush and short. Sticks up in the shape of a fan.|
|Paws||Long and strong. Covered with a thick plumage similar to bloomers, especially dense from the back. A characteristic feature is that the middle finger does not stand out among the others in length.|
|Plumage and color||The feathers are very thick, soft, but at the same time durable. Fit tightly to the skin. In layers, plumage throughout the body is colorful, pastel tones with a beautiful golden tint and a quaint partridge pattern (in the upper part of the body the general tone is darker, in the lower it is lighter). In roosters, the back is bright red, the lower part of the body, the tail and legs are contrast black, with a greenish sheen.|
Did you know? Interestingly, at the stage of the formation of the breed, its productive indicators were much more impressive. So, roosters gained weight up to seven kilograms, and the sexual maturity of the laying hens came at the age of five months. However, over time, in breeding work, there was a distinct bias towards the decorative qualities of pomfret, as a result of which the size and precocity of the bird suffered a little.
The massive dimensions of the brama determine its nature. The wildness and increased activity of this breed are not characteristic: both the rooster and the laying hen are usually leisurely and sedate, as though they are full of feelings of importance and awareness of their own irresistibility.Despite the blood of fighting cocks flowing in the veins of the brama, the breed did not inherit the aggressiveness of its ancestors.Brahms are quite friendly, easily make contact and are tamed, thanks to which, as a parallel direction of their use, it is first of all necessary to call decorative (although on the usual home yard these phlegmatic and stately creatures look like a real decoration).
Advantages and disadvantages
- The undoubted advantages of partridge "Americans" include the following features:
- large sizes, making the breed suitable for use in the meat direction;
- general unpretentiousness to the content and feed;
- high resistance to cold (thanks to the magnificent plumage, the bird will not freeze even with significant minus readings of the thermometer and can be kept in unheated rooms without stopping egg production);
- strong immunity and excellent vitality (in adult birds, mortality does not exceed 10%, in young animals it is about 30%);
- good adaptability to the proposed conditions;
- suitability for keeping in a limited space without walking;
- bright decorative qualities;
- calm and accommodating character.
- Among the shortcomings of the breed are usually distinguished:
- relatively low rates of egg production and rather late maturation;
- prolonged period of egg production (during the first year, the breed gives very small eggs, not suitable for incubation);
- very slow weight gain (applies to young animals);
- increased susceptibility to infection by skin and feather parasites (a kind of payment for too thick plumage);
- the need to be kept separate from other breeds to maintain baseline;
- the need for an incubator for eggs or for a layer of lighter breed for hatching (heavy chickens with all their high maternal qualities simply press their own eggs, thereby causing considerable losses to the farmer);
- the high price of breeding birds and the difficulty of their acquisition.
Important! Traditionally, bram (including partridge) is bred only in small farms and on private farmsteads. These birds are not suitable for large-scale industrial livestock breeding, since highly profitable production is based on a shorter cycle of young growth.
Maintenance and care
Care for partridge brahma is not particularly difficult, however, the determining factor that must be taken into account by the farmer is the large size of this bird.But her meek and calm disposition, on the contrary, can significantly save both on the size of the house and on the device of some additional equipment necessary for the maintenance of more active and lightweight “options”.
Despite the phlegm and heaviness, Brahms do not tolerate the content in the cells and require a full house.
The following requirements are imposed on him:
- sizes. The standard calculation of the size of the house for sedentary meat breeds of chickens involves placing on one square meter from two to four birds. Thus, for a herd of 20 partridge brams, it is necessary to allocate a room with an area of 5-10 square meters;
- flooring. The most environmentally friendly and at the same time warm material remains wooden boards;
- temperature condition. Chickens feel best in the range from + 23 ° C to + 25 ° C, however in winter they can easily withstand lower rates. If there is good thermal insulation, special heating for the house can be omitted;
- lighting at least twelve to fourteen hours a day. For this, large windows should be provided in the room, and in winter - additional lighting should be provided (for each square meter of area, 4 to 6 watts of light will be required);
- dryness. The lavish plumage makes the partridge grouse particularly vulnerable to various parasites, which breed in large numbers in a humid environment;
- ventilation. Air stagnation is another factor contributing to the development of pathogenic microorganisms. However, circulation must be ensured in such a way that the inhabitants of the house are not exposed to drafts;
- litter. The floor can be lined with hay, peat, straw or sawdust, which should be changed regularly to avoid the development of pathogenic microflora in them. The wooden floor can not be paved in the summer (this will save money and simplify the cleaning process). However, in winter, the litter plays a heating role, so you can not do without it (and in an unheated house, the layer of such insulation should be about 12 cm).
- on three sides of the house, nests (three to five per hen) and perches. The height of their location for large chickens should be at least 40 and a maximum of 50 cm from the floor. The width of the perch should allow the bird to comfortably accommodate. This requires at least 30 cm.
In addition to nests and perches, in the room where the brahma is kept, there must be special bathtubs for dry bathing. They need to be filled with a mixture of fine sand and ash or ash (1: 1 ratio). This will help protect the luxurious plumage of chickens from parasites.
Partridge pomfret, like other heavy meat hens, can be kept without free walking, however, if there is such an opportunity, it must be used.
The benefits of patio equipment for walking are mutual, and here's why:
- the chicken enjoys walking; as a result, the productive qualities of the bird increase, its immunity strengthens;
- the farmer has the opportunity to seriously save on feeds, since a significant part of his diet will be obtained by the chicken on its own (moreover, it is not only about green feeds, but also about the protein component - various kinds of worms, bugs and other small animals).
There is one more plus. It is noted that the meat of chickens allowed to free-range is much tastier than that of birds that spend their whole lives indoors. Since brahma is a meat-based chicken, this argument is of paramount importance.
Did you know? Many farmers are well aware that the place where the hens graze very quickly takes the form of “scorched earth”. This circumstance often forces the owners to deny their feathered herd the right to walk. Meanwhile, the problem has a different, elegant and witty solution: in the territory where there was a courtyard for walking chickens, the most beautiful English lawns are obtained. It’s enough to just plant lawn grass on such a site, and others have already taken care of removing weeds with roots and seeds.
It is very easy to organize walking for the partridge pomme, as a heavy and slow bird has its own characteristics:
- does not require a large walking area;
- not able to fly even through a low fence.
In summer, Brahms can walk outdoors all day. In winter, walking time should be limited, but they should not be completely stopped (in any case, if the air temperature outside the house has not dropped below -10 ° C).
Feeding troughs and drinking bowls
Pouring food onto the floor of the house, as some homeowners still do, is generally an unsuccessful idea. In this case, chickens peck their own droppings with food, which significantly increases the risk of infectious diseases (such as, for example, coccidiosis).
In addition, the host will be forced to throw out most of the feed along with the change of litter, which makes the maintenance of an already not too cost-effective brama too expensive.
Important! Stimulating a lazy and inactive mob to active movements by the need to search for food is much more correct by arranging a courtyard for walking than by using the entire chicken coop as a feeder.
It is precisely because of hygiene requirements that feeders and drinking bowls in the chicken coop do not just have to be provided. It is also important that, using them, the birds are deprived of the opportunity to climb into the tank.
To do this, the equipment is installed at a height corresponding approximately to the level of the chest of an adult bird. As the material for the feeder, you can use:
- plastic pipes;
- plywood boxes;
- plastic containers;
- improvised items (buckets, plastic bottles).
Important! According to generally accepted sanitary standards, each adult chicken requires at least 10 cm of its own space in front of the feeder.
As for drinking bowls, experts recommend not saving and purchasing ready-made nipple-type devices. Then the water in the birds will always be clean and fresh (a similar design can be made with your own hands).
Herd replacement planned
The peak egg production in partridge pommes occurs in the second and third years of the laying hen's life.
Then the average annual number of eggs decreases quite noticeably, and subsequently, although the ability to lay the chicken can keep up to ten years, an average of no more than four dozen pieces per year.
Of course, such indicators (three eggs a month) cannot satisfy the needs of even the smallest farms, especially since the cost of feeding the brom is very significant. For this reason, the chicken herd is usually completely renewed once every three years.Roosters show approximately the same age indicators of maximum productivity, so the rule about the frequency of replacement also applies to them.
Did you know? About four thousand eggs are laid in the body of the chicken from birth, while a person has more than a million.
If breeding is not planned, then the cock in the herd is not needed. The presence of a male does not directly affect egg production, although, according to the observations of many owners, under the protection of a rooster, laying hens still feel much more comfortable. However, since this is a meat breed, as a rule, its content still involves the generation of offspring.
The optimal ratio of males and females in a chicken parent flock is this: one rooster per ten layers.
What to feed
Large bramas require more abundant feeding, which significantly increases the cost of their maintenance. In addition, the diet of these chickens also has some differences, without which the declared productivity indicators cannot be counted on.
It is necessary to feed an adult herd in a balanced manner, however, the basis of the diet - about 14% - should be high-calorie protein foods. Dry food should be alternated with wet (it is better to give it in the middle of the day), but in general, hens should receive such components:
- grain mixtures (preferably crushed);
- combined feed;
- various mixers using waste from the host table;
- soybean meal;
- green food (in winter - in dried form);
- fresh vegetables and fruits (beets, cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, pumpkin, apples);
- fodder yeast;
- fish or meat and bone meal;
- feeding - fish oil, eggshell, chalk, limestone or small shells (source of calcium);
- other vitamin and mineral supplements.
Important! Boiled potatoes should not be given to chickens; intestinal upsets occur in birds from this product.
It is also necessary to remember that heavy and lazy shamas have a tendency to gain weight and obesity, therefore it is necessary to strictly monitor that the birds do not overeat and move as much as possible.
The herd kept indoors should be fed three times a day, always at the same time. Water in direct access to birds should be constant.It is important to ensure that it is not too cold (in winter, the contents of the drinkers should be heated).
Chicken prawn chickens need to be fed more often than an adult herd. The first ten days of life, the bird is given food every two hours with an eight-hour break at night. Further, until the chickens reach the age of one and a half months, the number of feeds during the day is reduced to five to six times (every three hours).And even after that, up to six months, the chicks should eat at least four times a day.
As for the diet itself, here it is possible to use several options.
- high quality starter feeds;
- crushed grain mixtures (wheat and corn in a ratio of 2: 1);
- Self-made “salad” from boiled egg, wheat and corn groats and grass mountaineer.
Important! Young adults can be transferred to an adult diet no earlier than six months. A month before this, the amount of protein food should be reduced in order to prevent too quick a set of muscle mass, which is still difficult to hold on to a fragile skeleton.
Regardless of the chosen form of feeding, young birds need to be given only fresh food, and new additives (feed, sprouted grain, vegetables, vitamins) should be introduced into the diet gradually.
It should be borne in mind that the winter diet should be approximately 10-15% larger than the summer diet, since the bird incurs additional energy costs due to the need to maintain its own body temperature in a cold room.
Partridge brews are chickens, the main feature of which could be called true Asian sluggishness, and this quality is manifested not only in character. This cannot but upset the farmers (meaning weight gain and starting the egg production process).But to compensate for such inconveniences, the bramas look very impressive, and the high meat productivity and unpretentiousness of the living conditions make them the invariable inhabitants of a huge number of small household plots.


What does semantic annotation mean
What is Semantic Annotation? Semantic annotation is the process of labeling documents with related concepts. These documents are enriched with metadata: references linking content to concepts, described in a knowledge graph. This makes unstructured content easier to find, interpret and reuse.
Semantic annotation or tagging is the process of attaching metadata to text documents or other unstructured content, concepts related to it (for example, people, places, organizations, products, or topics). Unlike classic text annotations for reader reference, semantic annotations can also be consumed by machines. Semantically tagged documents are easier to find, interpret, compose, and reuse.
How semantic annotation works
Semantic annotation enriches content with machine-processable information by associating background information with extracted concepts. These concepts, found in a document or another piece of content, are clearly defined and interrelated both inside and outside the content. It turns content into a better manageable data source.
A typical semantic enrichment process includes five steps: text recognition, text analysis, concept extraction, relation extraction, indexing and storage in the semantic graph database;
1. Text recognition
Step 1: We remove boilerplate from unstructured text content.
Text is extracted from non-text sources such as PDF files, videos, documents, audio recordings, etc.
2. Text Analysis
Step 2: We perform a standard set of natural language processing operations on the content – such as sentence splitting, part-of-speech tagging, and named entity recognition.
Algorithms break down sentences and identify concepts such as people, things, places, events, numbers, and more.
3. Concept extraction
Step 3: We classify and disambiguate the identified entities.
All identified concepts are categorized, meaning they are defined as people, organizations, numbers, etc. Next, they are disambiguated, that is, they are unambiguously identified against the domain-specific knowledge base. For example, Rome is classified as a city and further disambiguates that Rome, Italy, is not Rome, Iowa.
This is the most important stage of semantic annotation. It recognizes chunks of text and transforms them into machine-processable and understandable chunks of data by linking them to the wider context of existing data.
4. Relationship extraction
Step 4: We also determine the relationship between known entities and newly recognized entities.
The relations between the extracted concepts are identified and further correlated with relevant external or internal domain knowledge.
5. Index and store in semantic graph database
Step 5: Finally, the extracted knowledge (represented as a graph) is stored in our semantic database
All mentions of people, things, etc., as well as their relationships, are identified and enriched with machine-readable data, then indexed and stored in a semantic graph database for further reference and use.
Semantic Annotation Process
The result of the semantic annotation process is metadata that describes a document by referring to concepts and entities mentioned in or related to the text. These references link content to formal descriptions of these concepts in the Knowledge Graph. Typically, such metadata is represented as a set of tags or annotations that enrich a document or a specific fragment thereof with conceptual identifiers.
Semantic metadata can be stored in knowledge graphs instead of being embedded in documents. A modeling approach that supports extensive analysis is to store annotations as individual objects that refer to documents, which are also nodes in the graph. In this way, documents and annotations become first-class citizens of the knowledge graph, which can be indexed and queried alongside other types of data: ontologies, schemas, references, and master data.
Create intelligent content with a machine-processable edge
Think of semantic annotations as a highly structured digital edge (annotations made in the margins of a book or other document), usually invisible in the human-readable portion of the content. These notes are written in a machine-interpretable data-form language and serve computers to perform operations such as classification, linking, reasoning, searching, and filtering.
Examples of semantic annotation
For example, semantically labeling selected concepts in the sentence “Aristotle, the author of politics, founded the Academy” means identifying Aristotle as a person and politics as Written works of political philosophy and further index, classify and link identified concepts in the semantic graph database, also known as triples. In this case, Aristotle can be linked to his date of birth, his teachers, his writings, etc. Politics can be linked to its subject matter, date of creation, etc. Given semantic metadata about the above sentence and its links to other (external or internal) forms of knowledge, the algorithm will be able to automatically:
Find out who taught Alexander the Great;
Answer which of Plato’s students established the Academy;
Retrieve a list of political thinkers who lived between 380 BC and 310 BC;
Presents a list of Greek philosophers, including Aristotle.
Semantic annotation application field
What semantic annotation brings is intelligent data fragments that contain highly structured and informative annotations for machine reference. Solutions that include semantic annotation are widely used in risk analysis, content recommendation, content discovery, detection of compliance, and more.
Semantically annotated content opens up cost-effective opportunities to:
Search for content other than keywords;
Content aggregation beyond manual filtering;
Relational discovery beyond human research.
Semantic annotations make it easy to:
Find relevant information in piles of documents with the help of an errand machine;
extract knowledge from different sources;
Provide personalized content based on machine understandable context;
Automatically interconnect content.
Want to learn more about semantic annotation and its practical applications?


"Yoga helps create a safe space for students and teachers. By empowering an individual to feel balanced and strong within his or her own body, yoga enhances resilience. Through these practices many young people develop the capacity to reflect before acting, limiting impulsivity. Yoga promotes cooperation and creative thinking, improving learning readiness.
Yoga is self-rewarding in many ways. Most postures get easier with practice; the poses and breathing help many students feel more relaxed after just a few moments. The lessons provide teachers with tools for modeling compassionate interaction among students. Doing yoga makes the teacher feel better, too, and this spills over into the classroom experience for all.” - Louise Goldberg, “Classroom Yoga Breaks: Brief Exercises to Create Calm”
This book is an essential resource for any classroom teacher, absolutely packed with simple, powerful exercises and activities. It’s written in plain, accessible language, and addresses multiple related topics such as how yoga complements mindfulness training, physical education, and social emotional learning. Louise talks about the neuroscience behind why it’s effective (in a way we non-scientists can easily understand), and even gets into yoga as an antidote to bullying.
And Louise is just about the kindest, sweetest person you could ever hope to meet. Go get it!


One of the advantages of working in this microsoft program is that it offers you a lots of tools and functions that allow you to create professional spreadsheets in a very easy and fast way. Usually when working on these spreadsheets it is necessary to insert different elements to them.
Among the most common elements that are frequently inserted are the rows, cells and columns, the latter being one of the most used elements. All this will allow you edit and create your fully customized Excel files.
In accordance with this, here we are going to explain what are the steps you should take into account when wanting insert a column to your worksheet. To do this, you will need to follow each of the steps that we are going to teach you below in detail.
What should we keep in mind before adding a column in Excel?
At the moment of wanting add a column to your spreadsheet you must bear in mind that If you have other information added there, this could be affected. Especially what are the formulas and functions. The best thing to do in these cases is insert these elements at the beginning, that is, when no other has been added yet information to the sheet. This will prevent your information may undergo changes or simply get out of order.
Steps to insert a column into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet quick and easy
Taking into account all of the above, the following will be teach you how to insert a column in your excel worksheet. Keep in mind that this procedure is quite simple and quick to do.
To do this, follow the steps that we will indicate below:
- The first thing you should do is enter Microsoft Excel.
- There you go to set all data that are necessary in spreadsheet.
- In the case you want add a column you must keep in mind that it is always it will be added to the left side of the box you have selected. In the example that we show you below you can see the months of January to June, but between April and June it is necessary may. In this case you must add a column to complete that month.
- To do this, select the checkbox “June” and right click with the mouse, there select the option of “Insert”.
- A box will appear with four options in this case select “Insert a whole column” and click “To accept”.
- As can be seen in the following picture It has been inserted a new column to the left side of the selected box, in this case you can already create the column of “May” in excel spreadsheet.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments, we will answer you as soon as possible, and it will surely be of great help to more members of the community. Thank you! 😉