Teachers and school districts are being charged and challenged to shift the way science has typically been presented in a classroom. We as a museum, have to be cognizant of these processes so we can ensure that our programs are modeling the best practices in education. After all, we are a partner in this work. From the top down, our exhibits, events, programs and opportunities onsite and off must have a commitment to drive inquiry in the most relevant of ways. Together with science educators, we empower kids to see themselves as science-capable, as doers of science, rather than simply only learners of science.
On the heels of two exceptional collaborative events, the EcoTarium has a lot to be proud of as a collaborator with science educators. During the week of October 21, MA STEM Week was organized by the Executive Office of Education and the STEM Advisory Council in partnership with the state’s nine Regional STEM Networks. The annual statewide effort aims to boost the interest, awareness, and ability for all learners to envision themselves in STEM education and employment opportunities. The EcoTarium hosted a variety of STEM-centric activities and drop-in programs for guests throughout the designated week (and many others). Our education team also joined the WPI STEM Education Center, to lead free professional development training for more than 40 preK-8 teachers, librarians and community-based educators from the Central MA region. The focus of this workshop was to design a model in relation to science and engineering practices. Using the EcoTarium’s natural history collections as a way to evaluate how models change over time, and the importance of updating models with current information, attendees were challenged to create their own models using a real world example (i.e. the Loon and the current challenge of habitat loss due to climate change). Takeaways from the workshop included not only a wonderful opportunity to develop new, unique modeling activities to introduce into curriculum, but the valuable experience of sharing resources and finding common ground among our community of educators devoted to the same mission.
Recently, the science education standards were updated and adopted by the Commonwealth of MA. (Next Generation Science) Three distinct dimensions were identified as key to learning science. Last month, we were thrilled and honored to have hosted the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) for a two-day workshop that attracted more than 50 science teachers representing a diverse set of states, to learn how to develop a deep understanding of science and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts: the three distinct dimensions of the framework for K-12 science education. Ted Willard, assistant executive director of science standards for NSTA, presented a comprehensive workshop on how to incorporate phenomenon-based teaching and learning methods that aim to create motivating, unforgettable learning experiences for students.
It was so powerful to evaluate our programs from the perspective of the museum as a learner-centered space, and to realize that we have done a great job at identifying the core ideas and implement them. Particularly looking at the concept of sound as a phenomena, the workshop was well-matched with EcoTarium programs that we offer onsite and on the road like Making Waves: Sound and Light and our components in the City Science exhibit. The workshop was very school-focused work, so to have held the training in our science museum, truly demonstrated the intersection of our role as educators out of the classroom. Essentially, our whole community serves as an ever-changing model, ripe with opportunities to teach, engage and learn.


Empire State Building
Opened on this day in 1931, construction of the Empire State Building represented a towering achievement during the era of the Great Depression. The world's tallest building when it was completed, the 102 story (1,250 ft.) Empire State Building was constructed in an astoundingly short period of time... averaging 4 1/2 stories per week, with construction of the entire building in a little over a year. Today the Empire State Building remains a classic symbol of the ideal American skyscraper and a dominating presence on the New York skyline.
:: more information about Empire State Building
Buildings and Structures | Skyscrapers


Washington — The sweltering year of 1988 first put global warming in the headlines and ended up as the hottest year on record. But on Tuesday, it was pushed out of the top 20 warmest by 2013.
Last year tied for the fourth hottest and 1988 fell to 21st.
The average world temperature was 58.12 degrees Fahrenheit, tying with 2003 for the fourth warmest since 1880, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday.
At the same time, NASA, which calculates records in a different manner, ranked last year as the seventh warmest on record, with an average temperature of 58.3 degrees. The difference is related to how the two agencies calculate temperatures in the Arctic and other remote places and is based on differences that are in the hundredths of a degree, scientists said.
Both agencies said nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred in the 21st century. The hottest year was 2010, according to NOAA.
The reports were released as a big snowstorm was hitting the U.S. East Coast.
"There are times such as today when we can have snow even in a globally warmed world," said Gavin Schmidt, deputy director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York. "But the long-term trends are not going to disappear. ... Quite frankly people have a very short memory when it comes to climate and weather."
Those longer trends show the world has seen "fairly dramatic warming" since the 1960s with "a smaller rate of warming over the last decade or so," said Thomas Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. In the past 50 years, the world average temperature has increased by nearly 1.4 degrees, according to NOAA data.
Unlike 2012, much of the worst heat and biggest climate disasters last year were outside the U.S. Parts of central Asia, central Africa and Australia had record warmth. Only a few places, including the central U.S., were cooler than normal last year.
In a related story, a group of business leaders, energy experts and former government leaders believes that the Obama administration could tackle climate change by taking measures that do not require congressional approval, according to a report released Tuesday.
The 207-page report contained about 200 recommendations on how President Barack Obama can use executive authority to advance the climate change action plan he announced in June. It was released by former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, who briefed U.S. cabinet officials and senior policy staff focused on energy and climate policy last week.
The recommendations focus on five areas: doubling energy efficiency; financing renewable energy; producing natural gas more responsibly; developing alternative fuels and vehicles; and helping utilities adapt to the country's changed energy landscape.
Reuters contributed to this report.


- Inquisitive - wondering & questioning, exploring & investigating, challenging assumptions
- Persistent - tolerating uncertainty, sticking with difficulty, daring to be different
- Collaborative - cooperating appropriately, giving & receiving feedback, sharing the product
- Disciplined - reflecting critically, developing techniques, crafting & improving
- Imaginative - playing with possibilities, making connections, using intuition
We will use statements about the imagination and what it means to be imaginative and ask students to decide how much the statements reflect their learning habits of mind:
Being imaginative means trying things our. It means combining ideas from different places. It means being able to carry on even when you can't fully explain your reasoning.Whenever I have had explicit discussions with students about a particular skill or attribute prior to a learning activity I have always found it to be more successful. I hope and expect that this term's work will benefit from being framed by this exploration of the imagination and that we will have a great deal to discuss and share in terms of how this skills/ability/aptitude can be tracked over a period of time.
If this is 'very much like me' then I can show that I can keep my mind open to ideas and that I don't narrow down too quickly. I can show that I look for links between facts and ideas. I use my own intuitions to come up with ideas. I can do these things without being prompted. I am confident about doing these things.
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In spite of the developments in microbiological methods, blood cultures remain the cornerstone for the diagnosis of bacteraemia. Classically, minimum of two bottles are collected on a routine basis: an aerobic bottle, allowing preferential growth of aerobic and facultative anaerobic microorganisms, and an anaerobic bottle, providing suitable environment for strict anaerobic bacteria. Recent reports have documented a decrease in anaerobic bacteraemias and have questioned the need for routine anaerobic blood cultures. Bacteraemia due to anaerobic organisms occurs in 0.5–12% of blood cultures worldwide; however, recent studies from Europe and the USA presented inconsistent data regarding the prevalence of anaerobic bacteraemias between 1993 and 2006.The aims of this retrospective survey were to determine the prevalence of bacteraemias due to anaerobic bacteria and evaluate the importance of anaerobic blood cultures in a university hospital in Szeged, Hungary. We examined the occurrence of bacteraemias due to anaerobic bacteria during a 5-year period, from January 2005 to 2009, in order to identify current trends of anaerobic bacteraemias in our university.
Authors:Ahmet Akça, Meriban Karadoğan, Demir Kürşat Yildiz, Funda Çorapçioğlu, and Yonca Anik
, Zuckerman T , Goralnik L , Ben-Arieh Y , Rowe JM , Yigla M : Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma presenting as an endobronchial tumor: report of eight cases and literature review . Am J Hematol 83 ( 5 ), 416 – 419 ( 2008 )
1 Introduction Extensive literature shows that both the level and composition of public expenditures and revenues have implications for economic development. There are two main strands of the literature. The discussion on the short-term impacts of
Authors:Sergio Vasquez Ciriaco, Jaime Aron García Espinoza, and Elena Enselmini Garcia Pedro
liver, bones, and lungs [ 3 ].
This is one of the few cases reported in the literature with metastatic activity related to the contralateral kidney. The focus is on the clinical picture, diagnostic imaging, immunohistochemical characteristics
Authors:Mark D. Griffiths, Zsolt Demetrovics, and Paweł A. Atroszko
Addiction Risk Test ( Robinson, 1996 ). A comprehensive literature review by Sussman, Lisha, and Griffiths ( 2011 ) using US data provided a tentative estimation of the prevalence of work addiction among Americans at 10%. Some estimates are as high as 15
Authors:E. Kovács, D. Pilecky, Z. Szakál-Tóth, A. Fekete-Győr, V.A. Gyarmathy, L. Gellér, B. Hauser, J. Gál, B. Merkely, and E. Zima
elderly population, based on a local database and a systemic review of the literature. Materials and methods We screened 254 patients who underwent a successful CPR after OHCA or in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) and were admitted to the ICU of Semmelweis
. In J. Andor, B. Hollósy, T. Laczkó and P. Péter (eds.) When grammar minds language and literature. Festschrift for Prof. Béla Korponay on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Debrecen: Institute of English and American Studies, University of Debrecen


Reading The Small Print On The Snellen Chart
To test the clarity of ones vision, experts usually use something known as a Snellen chart and youve probably seen it at your local eye doctors office. This chart is the most commonly used method of measuring how well you can see at what distance. Snellen charts are named after the Dutch ophthalmologist Hermann Snellen who developed the chart in 1862. Scientists now use a variation of this chart, designed by Ian Bailey and Jan Lovie.
The traditional Snellen chart is printed with eleven lines of block letters. The first line has one very large letter, which may be one of several letters, for example E, H, or N. All the rows that follow have increasing numbers of letters that decrease in size. A person taking the test covers one eye (or the doctor covers one eye), and then reads aloud the letters of each row, beginning at the top. The smallest row that can be read accurately indicates the visual acuity in that eye.
The symbols on the chart are formally known as "optotypes" (standard symbols for testing vision). In the case of the traditional Snellen chart, the optotypes appear as block letters, and are intended to be seen and read as letters. They are not, however, letters from any ordinary typographer's font. They have a particular, simple geometry whereby the thickness of the lines equals the thickness of the white spaces between lines and the thickness of the gap in the letter "C." In addition, the height and width of the optotype is five times the thickness of the line. Only the letters C, D, E, F, L, N, O, P, T, and Z are used in the traditional Snellen chart.
The smaller letters on the chart are designed to give an accurate measure of how good your vision is. If you notice the big letter this is an excellent sign, because it implies that your overall eye vision is nice and healthy. But the smaller letters are what are used to give an even more accurate picture of how well your eyes are. If you wish to read well in addition to see signs from a far distance then you will need to be in a position to read small letters.
The largest letter on an eye chart often represents an acuity of 20/200 (6/60), the value that is considered "legally blind." Some individuals with moderate myopia may not be able to read the large E without glasses, but have no problem reading the 20/20 line (line which is supposed to represent a persons perfect visual ability without eyeglasses at a distance of 20 feet) with glasses. In contrast, people who are legally blind have a visual acuity of 20/200 (6/60) or less when using the best prescription eyeglasses.
When you are exploring the Snellen chart you should not strain your eyes to determine the letters. If you need to strain your eyes to see the letters then chances are how well you see may not be just like you may like it to be.
If you can see all of the letters on the Snellen chart clearly then you can leave your doctors office without any problems BUT if you have to struggle to see any of the letters, then youll probably end up needing prescription glasses which are made very specifically according to your latest eyeglasses prescription. With these prescription lenses fitted into fashionable eyeglasses frames, you will not only be able to see clearly, but will also be adding a new fashion accessory to your already trendy style.


Mavis Batey was a British student of 19, midway through her university course in German Romanticism, when she was recruited for a top-secret assignment during World War II.
“This is going to be an interesting job, Mata Hari, seducing Prussian officers,” she recalled thinking years later. “But I don’t think either my legs or my German were good enough because they sent me to the Government Code and Cipher School.”
In May 1940, Mrs. Batey — then the unmarried Mavis Lever — joined the team of code breakers at Bletchley Park, the British cryptography headquarters. Trained in the enemy’s language and endowed with a facility for words, she became a key contributor to a wartime project that remained classified for decades.
But by the time of her death on Nov. 12 at 92, Mrs. Batey was regarded in England as a national heroine. Working with Alfred Dillwyn “Dilly” Knox and other celebrated code breakers, she learned to decipher what she called the “utter gibberish” of encrypted German communications.
Like many of her colleagues, Mrs. Batey worked on a “need-to-know” basis and did not understand at the time the significance of her efforts. In recent years, with the release of British wartime records, it was revealed that her code-breaking helped the Allies cripple the Italian navy in 1941 and assisted the 1944 Normandy invasion.
Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime prime minister, was said to have called the Bletchley Park code breakers his “geese that laid the golden eggs but never cackled.” Fueled by what Mrs. Batey described as “ersatz coffee,” they toiled in secrecy to decipher the encoded messages spat out by the Axis powers’ Enigma machines.
Mrs. Batey recalled reporting for duty at Bletchley Park, a Victorian estate about 50 miles north of London, and being “thrown in at the deep end.”
“No one knew how the blessed thing worked,” she once told an interviewer, referring to the Enigma, which resembled a typewriter and scrambled messages with confounding complexity.
Knox, by her description, was an “eccentric genius” so consumed by his work that on at least one occasion, he stuffed his pipe with bits of sandwich rather than smoking tobacco.
“He would ask, ‘Which way does the clock go round?’ ” Mrs. Batey recalled in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. “If you were stupid enough to answer ‘clockwise,’ he would always answer, ‘Not if you’re the clock!’ That summed it up: You had to be prepared to think in a different way.”
Mrs. Batey’s first major contribution came in March 1941, when she helped decipher Italian naval communications revealing an impending attack on British ships ferrying supplies from Egypt to Greece. One message declared the arrival of “day X minus 3.”
“Why they had to say that I can’t imagine,” Mrs. Batey later said, according to the Telegraph. “It seems rather daft, but they did.”
She was the cryptographer on duty to decode a subsequent message explaining in excruciating detail the Italian battle plans. The information was passed to Adm. Andrew Cunningham, the commander of Britain’s Mediterranean fleet, who was then in Alexandria, Egypt.
Shortly before the attack, the admiral arranged to be spotted by a consul of the German-allied Japanese government. Cunningham, who knew that the consul enjoyed golf, showed up with his clubs and a valise, leaving the Japanese to believe that a weekend of leisure awaited him.
Instead of golfing, Cunningham led the British in a preemptive attack on the Italian navy. That encounter, the Battle of Cape Matapan, was a decisive victory for the British and effectively devastated the Italian fleet for the rest of the war.
The code breakers, Mrs. Batey recalled, shared two bottles of wine in celebration.
Mrs. Batey also helped crack the even more complex Enigma codes employed by the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service. Some decoders were trained in mathematics and approached cryptography from a technical perspective. Mrs. Batey worked differently.
“I used the psychological approach,” she told the Telegraph. “To test the day’s settings, the Germans sometimes used their girlfriends’ names and dirty words; it was a great shame when they were stopped, as we enjoyed the dirty words.”
By penetrating Abwehr communications, Mrs. Batey and her colleagues helped confirm the success of the XX, or Double-Cross, an anti-espionage operation in which captured Nazi spies were used to transmit false information to the Axis.
The deceptive tactics were used throughout the war — most notably to fool Germans into believing that the D-Day invasion would take place not in Normandy, but at the Pas-de-Calais. Bletchley Park decoders confirmed that the ruse had worked and that the Allies could count on the relative security of their plan.
Mrs. Batey steadfastly emphasized the heroism of others, including Polish code breakers who had made significant contributions, and the “chaps” who stormed the beaches of Normandy.
“When my local paper came to interview me,” she once told the London Independent, she told the reporter: ‘I don’t want to see a headline saying ‘Bognor Regis Woman Won the War.’ ”
Mavis Lilian Lever was born in Dulwich, in south London, on May 5, 1921. (She later lived in the community of Bognor Regis.) Her father was a postal worker, and her mother was a seamstress.
During the war, she was studying at the University College London when she was approached for linguistic intelligence work.
“I think what clinched it for me,” she later told the London Daily Mail, “was that during my assessment they told me they had been puzzling over what the letters STGOCH stood for. While they wondered if there might possibly be a saint called Goch, I had the idea that the answer might be Santiago, Chile, which it was.”
Among her first assignments, according to the Telegraph, was poring over personal ads in the Times of London in search of secret German messages. On the basis of her performance, she was dispatched to Knox’s team at Bletchley Park. Her exploits later helped inspire the 2001 film “Enigma” starring Kate Winslet.
Mrs. Batey died at her home in West Sussex, England, according to the Bletchley Park Trust. The cause was not immediately available.
After the war, Mrs. Batey began a second career as a landscape preservationist. She was regarded as the doyenne of English garden historians and wrote books on horticulture.
Her literary output was not limited to that subject, however, and included “Jane Austen and the English Landscape” (1996), “The World of Alice,” about Lewis Carroll’s heroine (1998) and “Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas” (2009).
At Bletchley Park, Mavis Lever met a mathematician, Keith Batey, whom she married in 1942 and who died in 2010. They had two daughters and a son, Elizabeth, Deborah and Christopher, all of whom survive.
The children grew up knowing nothing of their parents’ wartime employment, Mrs. Batey recalled, although “they were rather suspicious that we could always beat everybody at Scrabble.”


Did you know that the United States has been using military working dogs since the Revolutionary War? They were first used as equipment pack animals but throughout the years have offered their services as drug and explosives detectors, messengers, sentries, and scouts.
During the time of World War II thousands of families in America offered their dogs for enlistment in the US military – the K-9 Corps – once it became known that the armed forces of the United States needed dogs.
Service dogs are used today in Iraq, Afghanistan and in any area of the US military where needed. The breeds most commonly used are Shepherds and Labradors although Dobermans were also once a preferred breed trained for war.
A Famous Dog Loses His Medal
One of the most famous military working dogs was Chips, a Shepherd mix from Pleasantville, NY, offered by his family to serve during WWII. Chips was trained to be a sentry dog and was assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division unit – he served in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany. Chips was incredibly brave – one can read story after story about his heroic efforts, and his most memorable act of valor occurred one day on a beach in Sicily. As he and his handler were crossing the beach, an enemy machine gun crew hidden in a pillbox attacked them. Chips broke free from his handler and dove into the pillbox and attacked the enemy gunmen, forcing them to surrender. For his military service, Chips was awarded the Silver Star for valor and a Purple Heart for his wounds. However, both awards were later revoked. Thankfully, in 1990, Disney made a movie called “Chips the War Dog” which was based on the life of this courageous dog and it enabled the world to recognize him as a hero despite the fact that his two medals had been taken away.
Now you’re probably wondering why they revoked the medals after such a heroic act?
Well, Chips’ bravery and awards had caught the attention of the press and unfortunately also the attention of the Commander of the Order of the Purple Heart. He complained to President Roosevelt and the War Department that by honoring Chips – a dog – they were demeaning all service men that had also been awarded a Purple Heart. Chips lost his metals but was given an honorable discharge and returned to his family in New York. But the story doesn’t end there…it has an ugly twist. Not for Chips, but for many of the other military dogs that have since served their country. You see, the “Chips” incident and subsequent debates about “dogs” receiving metals led to the decision that dogs did not have the right to be recognized for their bravery and heroic actions – yes it’s really true – and even worse – the military could now refer to these wonderful beings as “equipment”. If that isn’t bad enough… When the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam, the serving military dogs that were now classified as “equipment” were simply left behind! It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Over 4,000 service dogs were left in Vietnam. Many handlers tried their best to bring them back home but the military orders were firm – a big “NO”. Only about 200 made it back- and no one really knows what happened to the 4000 that were left there. Many were euthanized or handed over to the South Vietnamese Army. Many of these wonderful, loyal, dedicated animals that risked their lives for our country and our service men did not get to come home. But there is a great organization today working on behalf of these animals.
The United States War Dogs Association
In our research we found that the main organization working on behalf of service dogs is the United States War Dogs Association. A description of our canine heroes from their website: “It has been estimated that these courageous canine heroes saved over 10,000 lives during the conflict in Vietnam”. Today all branches of our Armed Forces are utilizing Military Patrol Dogs specializing in Drug and Bomb/Explosive detection. There are approximately 600-700 of these canines in the Middle East in such places as Kuwait, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. They are being used to patrol Air Bases, Military Compounds, Ammunition Depots and Military Check Points. They are guarding and protecting our Military Personnel as they were trained to do, with Courage, Loyalty and Honor. “ Personally, we wish they had chosen another name – other than “war dogs” to describe the organization and the animals that serve… In fact, the correct term for these animals is Military Working Dogs and not war dogs. Many call them the “soldier you don’t know.
Here are some of the activities of the association:
- Service dogs now receive verbal accolades and recognition for their services and there are associations such as the U.S. War Dog Association that in 2006 had a beautiful sculpture of a military dog and handler completed in New Jersey. However, the association had to raise most of the funds for this on its own.
- The U.S. War Dogs Association continues to work on other ways to honor these service animals. For example it petitioned the US Postal Service to have a commemorative stamp for military working dogs.
- This association helps find loving homes for retired military and police dogs and the military does have a retirement program for their canines.
- Military dogs can now be allowed to retire early and be adopted by their handlers following an injury.
- This organization works tirelessly to send care packages to the military working service dogs and their handlers overseas.
This year, in honor of Memorial Day (also known as “Decoration Day”) and for Chips and all the other unrecognized canine heroes, BARF World will make a charitable donation to the United States War Dogs Association. We decided to do this in lieu of another discount coupon to you and we hope you agree. Let’s be clear – while we don’t support war, we believe in the humane work that this organization does for these animals and their handlers and the necessity to recognize their heroism. If you’re interested in learning more about their activities, please visit Operation Military Care K-9 at: http://uswardogs.org/id40.html
Happy Memorial Day!
From all of the BARF World team, Lily, Rob, Amber, Christopher and Jose.
P.S. What do you think? Should dogs, in fact any animal, be allowed to receive a medal and recognition of the highest honor for their service and valor?
P.P.S. We are looking into writing an updated book about “Heroic Dogs” and their acts of bravery. Would you like to participate? If you happen to know of exceptionally heroic dogs, whether it is a service dog or your own pet, we would love to hear your stories.


Search engines are an extremely powerful way of promoting your website online. Consider them your silent Public Relations firm, quietly working in the background. Many studies have shown that between 40% and 80% of users found what they were looking for by using the search engine feature of the Internet.
According to Search Engine Watch (http://www.searchenginewatch.com) – 625 million searches are performed every day!
The great thing about search engines is they bring targeted traffic to your website. These people are already motivated to make a purchase from you- because they searched you out.
With the right website optimisation, the search engines can always deliver your site to your audiences.
Crawler-Based Search Engines
Crawler-based search engines use automated software programs to survey and categorise web pages. The programs used by the search engines to access your web pages are called ‘spiders’, ‘crawlers’, ‘robots’ or ‘bots’.
A spider will find a web page, download it and analyse the information presented on the web page. This is a seamless process. The web page will then be added to the search engine’s database. Then when a user performs a search, the search engine will check its database of web pages for the key words the user searched on to present a list of link results.
The results (list of suggested links to go to), are listed on pages by order of which is ‘closest’ (as defined by the ‘bots’), to what the user wants to find online.
Crawler-based search engines are constantly searching the Internet for new web pages and updating their database of information with these new or altered pages.
Examples of crawler-based search engines are:
- Google (www.google.com)
- Ask Jeeves (www.ask.com)
A ‘directory’ uses human editors who decide what category the site belongs to; they place websites within specific categories in the ‘directories’ database. The human editors comprehensively check the website and rank it, based on the information they find, using a pre-defined set of rules.
There are two major directories at the time of writing:
- Yahoo Directory (www.yahoo.com)
- Open Directory (www.dmoz.org)
Note: Since late 2002 Yahoo has provided search results using crawler-based technology as well as its own directory.
Hybrid Search Engines
Hybrid search engines use a combination of both crawler-based results and directory results. More and more search engines these days are moving to a hybrid-based model. Examples of hybrid search engines are:
- Yahoo (www.yahoo.com)
- Google (www.google.com)
Meta Search Engines
Meta search engines take the results from all the other search engines results, and combine them into one large listing. Examples of Meta search engines include:
- Metacrawler (www.metacrawler.com)
- Dogpile (www.dogpile.com)
Specialty Search Engines
Specialty search engines have been developed to cater for the demands of niche areas. There are many specialty search engines, including:
- Froogle (www.froogle.com)
- Yahoo Shopping (www.shopping.yahoo.com)
- BizRate (www.bizrate.com)
- PriceGrabber (www.pricegrabber.com)
- PriceSpy (www.pricespy.co.nz)
- Local Search
- NZPages (www.nzpages.co.nz)
- SearchNZ (www.searchnz.co.nz)
- NZS (www.nzs.com)
- Domain Name Search
- iServe (www.iserve.co.nz)
- Freeparking (www.freeparking.co.nz)
- Freeware & Shareware Software Search
- Tucows (www.tucows.com)
- CNET Download.com (www.download.com)


Vice Admiral Hans Hendricksz Bouwer, sailing with the fleet under Admiral Wolfert Harmensz first mentioned the solitaire Pezophaps solitaria of Rodrigues in 1601. Due to Rodrigues’s isolation, the island was generally ignored until the arrival of Francois Leguat and his Huguenot followers in 1691. After 2 years on Rodrigues, Leguat and his surviving comrades constructed a boat from local timber and made the journey to Mauritius, some 674 km to the west. The survivors were then imprisoned on Mauritius by the Dutch commander Roelof Diodati, before finally reaching Batavia (present day Jakarta) from where they returned to Europe. Leguat, now based in London, wrote his memoirs in 1708 and as a result of his account, the first and most complete description of the solitaire was made known. Although Leguat readily ate the solitaire, he wrote about the species with great admiration:
“Of all the Birds in the Island the most remarkable is that which goes by the name of the solitary, because it is very seldom seen in company, tho’ there are abundance of them. The Feathers of the Males are of a brown grey Colour: the Feet and Beak are like a Turkey’s, but a little more crooked. They have scarce any Tail, but their Hind-part covered with Feathers is roundish, like the Crupper of a horse; they are taller than Turkeys. Their Neck is straight, and a little longer in proportion than a Turkey’s when it lifts up his Head. Its Eye is Black and lively, and its Head without Comb or Cop. They never fly, their Wings are too little to support the Weight of their Bodies; they serve only to beat themselves, and flutter when they call one another. They will whirl about for twenty or thirty times together on the same side, during the space of four or five minutes. The motion of their Wings makes then a noise very like that of a Rattle; and one may hear it two hundred Paces off. The Bone of their Wing grows greater towards the Extremity, and forms a little round Mass under the Feathers, as big as a Musket Ball. That and its Beak are the chief Defence of this Bird. ‘Tis very hard to catch it in the Woods, but easie in open Places, because we run faster than they, and sometimes we approach them without much Trouble. From March to September they are extremely fat, and taste admirably well, especially while they are young, some of the Males weigh forty-five Pounds.
“The Femals are wonderfully beautiful, some fair, some brown; I call them fair, because they are the colour of fair Hair. They have a sort of Peak, like a Widow’s upon their Breasts [Beaks], which is of a dun colour. No one Feather is straggling from the other all over their Bodies, they being very careful to adjust themselves, and make them all even with their Beaks. The Feathers on their Thighs are round like Shells at the end, and being there very thick, have an agreeable effect. They have two Risings on their Craws [crop]’ and the Feathers are whiter than the rest, which livelily represents the fine neck of a Beautiful Woman. They walk with so much Stateliness and good Grace, that one cannot help admiring them and loving them; by which means their fine Mein often saves their Lives.”
“Tho’ these Birds will sometimes very familiarly come up near enough to one, when we do not run after them, yet they will never grow Tame. As soon as they are caught they shed Tears without Crying, and refuse all sustenance till they die.
“We find in the Gizzards of both Male and Female, a brown Stone, of the bigness of a Hen’s Egg, ‘tis somewhat rough, flat on one side and round on the other, heavy and hard. We believe this Stone was there when they were hatched, for let them be never so young, you meet with it always. They never have but one of ‘em, and besides, the Passage from the Craw to the Gizard is so narrow, that a like Mass of half Bigness cou’d not pass. It serv’d to whet our Knives better than any other Stone Whatsoever. When these Birds build their Nests, they choose a clean Place, gather together some Palm-Leaves for that purpose, and heap them up a foot and a half high from the Ground, on which they sit. They never lay but one Egg, which is much bigger than that of a Goose. The Male and Female both cover it in their turns, and the young is not hatch’d till at seven Weeks’ end : All the while they are sitting upon it, or are bringing up their young one, which is not able to provide itself in several Months, they will not suffer any other Bird of their Species to come within two hundred Yards round of the Place; But what is very singular, is, the Males will never drive away the Females, only when he perceives one he makes a noise with his Wings to call to the Female, and she drives the unwelcome Stranger away, not leaving it till ‘tis without her Bounds. The Female do’s the same as to the Males, whom she leaves to the Male, and he drives them away. We have observ’d this several Times, and I affirm it to be true.
“The Combats between them on this occasion last sometimes pretty long, because the Stranger only turns about, and do’s not fly directly from the Nest. However, the others do not forsake it till they have quite driven it out of their Limits. After these Birds have rais’d their young One, and left it to itself, they are always together, which the other Birds are not, and tho’ they happen to mingle with other Birds of the same Species, these two Companions never disunite. We have often remark’d, that some Days after the young leaves the Nest, a Company of thirty or forty brings another young one to it, and the now fledg’d Bird, with its Father and Mother joyning with the Band, march to some bye Place. We frequently follow’d them, and found that afterwards the old ones went each their way alone, or in Couples, and left the two young ones together, which we call’d a Marriage.
“This Particularity has something in it which looks a little Fabulous, nevertheless, what I say is sincere Truth, and what I have more than once observ’d with Care and Pleasure ”
(Leguat 1708 pp71-74).
This thought provoking description by Leguat of the solitaire is extremely important for a number of reasons. Leguat is the only person to record the ecology of any member of the large flightless pigeons including dodo of the Mascarenes, he also mentions the diet as being palm fruit, and inadvertently became the first person to describe territorial behaviour in birds.
The solitaire was also mentioned by second mate, Julien Tafforet, while he and four other men were marooned on Rodrigues in 1725-6 for 8 months. Tafforet also noted that they were still common and added to Leguat’s description by stating that solitaires were adorned with a frontlet of black feathers like velvet and would bite hard if approached too closely. Cossigny tried to procure a solitaire in 1755 and he clearly stated that they were exceedingly rare by this time. Pingre, in 1761, was told that they still existed in secluded places, although he never personally saw one. The speed with which the solitaire disappeared can be correlated with the increased tortoise trade between Rodrigues and Mauritius/Réunion from 1730 – 1750. The tortoise hunters burnt off the vegetation and surely would have captured solitaires at every opportunity for food. Cats and pigs had also been introduced by this time and may have been serious predators of eggs and chicks. Inevitably, probably by the late 1760s the solitaires had become extinct, as the discovery of the first bone material in 1786 did not evoke any reference to a living bird.
Recent DNA analysis has confirmed the monophyletic origins of the dodo and solitaire and suggested they have a sister group relationship to Coloenas nicobarica. If correct, the ancestor of this S.E. Asian species presumably must have made its way to the Mascarenes via island hopping during glacial low sea level stands, when islands and island groups were much larger and in greater number above sea level than at present. The separation of the Coloenas dodo/solitaire stock has been set as the Eocene (74.5 Ma) and the dodo/solitaire separation at 15 Ma. These dates appear entirely unsupported and do not correspond to the geological, geographical or ecological evidence.


Francavilla, Francesca and Lyon, Scott (2002) Children's work in Côte d'Ivoire: an overview. UCW Working Papers. Working Paper. Understanding Children’s Work Project, Rome, Italy.Full text not available from this repository.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that in developing countries alone there are some 250 million children between the ages of five and 14 years who work. For 120 million of them, work is a full-time activity. Although child work occurs in all parts of the world, it is in Africa where a child is most likely to be involved in work and where child work is growing most rapidly. ILO estimates that the 80 million African child workers today could surge to 100 million by 2015. This paper looks at African child work in the context of Côte d'Ivoire. It aims at providing a brief overview of the various dimensions of the child work phenomenon in the country - its extent and nature, its causes and consequences, and national legislation and policies adopted to address it.
|Item Type:||Monograph (Working Paper)|
|Subjects:||University of Westminster > Architecture and the Built Environment > Policy Studies Institute (PSI) (No longer in use)|
|Depositing User:||Miss Nina Watts|
|Date Deposited:||29 Jun 2010 10:19|
|Last Modified:||29 Jun 2010 10:19|
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