The Eastern Front: The German War against the Soviet Union
Nazi Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. They quickly conquered large expanses of Soviet territory. German forces waged a “war of annihilation” against the Soviet Union and its peoples, killing millions of civilians. However, the Soviet armed forces eventually pushed the German military back and finally conquered Berlin in spring 1945. Often referred to as the “eastern front,” the German-Soviet theater of war was the largest and deadliest of World War II.
Adolf Hitler always planned to destroy the Soviet Union and to establish Lebensraum (living space) for the German people in Soviet territory.
Nazi Germany waged a “war of annihilation” against the Soviet Union that aimed to kill tens of millions of civilians. The Nazi “Final Solution” policy began with the systematic murder of Jews behind the eastern front.
Nazi Germany’s fighting and losses on the eastern front made it vulnerable to Allied invasions in Italy and France, leading to its total defeat.
The Soviet Union (USSR)
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formally established as a state in 1922. The Soviet Union—as it is often called—was a communist dictatorship based in Moscow. During World War II, the USSR was ruled by dictator Josef Stalin.
The Soviet Union was the result of the collapse of the Russian Empire and of the Russian Civil War (1917–1922). In February 1917, a popular revolution ousted the Russian tsar. The imperial regime was replaced with a provisional government. This revolution was followed by a coup in October 1917 in which Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Party seized power. In 1918, the Bolshevik Party was renamed the Communist Party. The Bolshevik coup led to a civil war that resulted in Communist control over most of the former Russian Empire. Soviet territory included the countries of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (Belorussia), among others.
The USSR actively sought to foment a world communist revolution in the name of the international working class. There were communist movements in nearly every industrialized country of the world. Many of these movements looked to the Soviet Union, then the only communist state, for leadership. The Communists aimed to eliminate all national, social, and economic distinctions between people. They also sought to abolish religious institutions. Since powerful elites within a society could not be expected to give up control voluntarily, the Communists advocated a violent revolution. After World War I, there were violent communist uprisings in Germany, as well as some other European states. Consequently, the Soviet Union was seen as a grave threat throughout the world, especially by members of established religions and the middle and upper classes, supporters of liberal democracy, capitalists, nationalists, and fascists.
The Soviet Union in the Nazi Worldview
From the founding of the Nazi movement in Germany, the Soviet Union was portrayed as an enemy with which a showdown was inevitable. The Nazi view of the Soviet Union was based on three tenets of Nazi racist ideology.
- Hitler saw the lands of the Soviet Union as the Germans’ destined Lebensraum (“living space”). He believed that Germany had to conquer these lands and populate them with Germans in order for the German “race” to win the constant battle for survival between the races.
- The Nazis maintained that Jews had created Bolshevik communism and were using it to gain world domination. Consequently, they often referred to communism as “Judeo-Bolshevism.” The Nazis viewed conquering the Soviet Union as a necessary step towards destroying Jewish influence in the world.
- The Nazis believed that the Slavs and other ethnic groups in the Soviet Union were racially inferior and by nature enemies of the German “race.”
For the first six years of Nazi rule, Nazi propaganda viciously attacked the Soviet Union. In private, Hitler spoke repeatedly of a future conflict. Nevertheless, in 1939 Nazi Germany embarked on a temporary strategic policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union. This temporary reversal reflected Hitler's tactical decision to secure his eastern flank while Germany destroyed Poland and defeated Britain and France.
German-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941
During the summer of 1939, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union were fighting an undeclared war in Manchuria. In August of that year, Stalin welcomed the German offer of a pact. Like Hitler, Stalin wanted to avoid involvement in a two-front war. In addition, he hoped that war between Germany, Great Britain, and France would weaken all three nations and leave them vulnerable to communist uprisings directed and supported by the Soviet Union.
On August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the German-Soviet Pact. This agreement is also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (named after the two foreign ministers who negotiated it). The pact had two parts, one public and one secret. The public part was a non-aggression pact in which the two countries promised not to attack each other for ten years. And in a secret protocol, the signatories divided eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence and agreed to partition Poland.
The German-Soviet Pact enabled Germany to attack Poland on September 1, 1939, without fear of Soviet intervention. Two days later, Britain and France—having guaranteed to protect Poland’s borders five months earlier—declared war on Germany. These events marked the beginning of World War II.
In accordance with the pact’s secret protocol, the Soviet army occupied and annexed eastern Poland in the autumn of 1939. On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland. After a four-month war, the Soviets annexed Finnish borderlands, particularly near Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In the summer of 1940, they occupied and incorporated the Baltic states and seized the Romanian provinces of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia.
Germany Prepares to Attack
By July 1940, Germany had occupied Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands. It had also defeated France. Hitler decided the time had come to vanquish the Soviet Union, even though Great Britain continued to fight. Hitler and his military leaders believed Germany would swiftly defeat the Soviet Union and would then have an unassailable position on the European continent.
German diplomats worked to secure Germany’s ties in southeastern Europe. Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia all joined Germany and Italy in the Axis alliance in November 1940. On December 18, 1940, Hitler signed Directive 21 (code-named Operation Barbarossa). This was the first operational order for the invasion of the Soviet Union. During the spring of 1941, he initiated his eastern European allies into the invasion plans.
The German Invasion of the Soviet Union
Hitler and his military advisers planned Operation Barbarossa as a Blitzkrieg (lightning war) that would defeat the Soviet Red Army in a matter of weeks. Originally, the invasion was planned to begin in May. It was postponed for a month so that Germany could secure its southern flank by conquering Greece and Yugoslavia.
German forces invaded Soviet-held territories on June 22, 1941, less than two years after the German-Soviet Pact was signed. Operation Barbarossa is considered the largest military operation in the history of warfare. Three army groups, including more than three million German soldiers, were soon joined by more than half a million troops from Germany’s allies (Finland, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, and Croatia). They attacked the Soviet Union across a broad front, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south.
For months, Stalin had refused to heed warnings from Britain and the United States that Germany was about to invade the Soviet Union. Germany thus achieved almost complete tactical surprise and the Soviet armies were initially overwhelmed. Millions of Soviet soldiers were encircled. They were cut off from supplies and reinforcements, and forced to surrender. After just three weeks of fighting, Hitler and his military advisers were confident that complete victory over the Soviet Union was at hand.
War of Annihilation
Hitler and the German military planned the campaign against the Soviet Union as a “war of annihilation” (Vernichtungskrieg) against both the “Judeo-Bolshevik” communist government and Soviet citizens, especially Jews. Leaders of the Wehrmacht (Germany’s armed forces) instructed soldiers to ignore the rules of warfare for protecting civilians and to deal with all enemies “without mercy.”
German planners decided that the German army would live off the land rather than be provisioned from Germany. They recognized that this policy would cause tens of millions of civilian inhabitants to starve to death.
In retaliation for acts of resistance, the Wehrmacht instituted collective punishment of civilians. This frequently involved burning down entire villages and murdering their inhabitants.
Mass Shootings behind the Eastern Front
In preparation for the war of annihilation, officials of the Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres, OKH) and the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA) negotiated arrangements for the deployment of SS Einsatzgruppen to conduct mass shootings of Jews, Communists, and other persons deemed to be dangerous to the establishment of long-term German rule on Soviet territory. Einsatzgruppen were special task forces of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei, Sipo) and the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst-SD). Often referred to as "mobile killing units," they operated immediately behind the front lines. Together with other units of the SS and police, and supported by the Wehrmacht and local auxiliaries, the Einsatzgruppen shot to death well over half a million civilians by the end of 1941. Jewish men, women, and children made up the vast majority of the victims. The systematic mass murder of Jews during the invasion of the Soviet Union marked the beginning of Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution” policy of annihilating the Jews in Europe.
Mass Murder of Soviet POWs
Germany’s annihilation policies included Soviet soldiers who had surrendered. The Wehrmacht enclosed millions of Soviet POWs in make-shift camps with little or no shelter, food, or water. Starvation and epidemics quickly took their toll. The Wehrmacht also turned over hundreds of thousands of Soviet POWs to the SS. The SS executed the Soviet POWs or worked them to death in concentration camps. By February 1942, less than eight months after the start of the invasion, two million Soviet soldiers had died in German captivity.
The Front Stalls
By early September 1941, German forces had reached the gates of Leningrad in the north. They had taken Smolensk in the center and Dnepropetrovsk in the south. German units reached the outskirts of Moscow in early December. But with the onset of winter, the German advances stalled.
After months of campaigning, the German army was exhausted. Having expected a rapid Soviet collapse, German planners had failed to equip their troops for winter warfare. Moreover, the speedy German advance caused the forces to outrun their supply lines, which were vulnerable due to the great distances involved (Moscow is almost 1,000 miles east of Berlin).
In December 1941, the Soviet Union launched a major counterattack against the center of the front, driving the Germans back from Moscow in chaos. The Germans repulsed subsequent Soviet offenses in the northern and southern areas of the front. But it took them nearly two months to stabilize the front east of the city of Smolensk. They then regrouped and planned to go on the offensive again.
The Blitzkrieg campaign failed to achieve its objective. Nevertheless, German leaders were still confident that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. They assumed the country had nearly exhausted its resources. Further, they believed that the Soviet Union’s disgruntled citizens would not be willing to sacrifice their lives for Stalin’s regime. In fact, some people in the territories seized by the Wehrmacht at first welcomed the Germans as liberators.
But during the winter of 1941–1942, the Soviets evacuated factories east and massively increased production of planes, tanks, and other weapons. Great Britain and the United States supported these efforts with shipments of materiel. Meanwhile, German policies of mass murder gave credence to Stalin’s arguments that Soviet citizens’ survival depended upon repelling the German invaders. In addition, Red Army soldiers who retreated were executed by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. Confronted with the prospect of starving to death in a German camp if they surrendered or facing a firing squad if they retreated, Soviet soldiers generally preferred fighting to the death.
The Eastern Front, 1942–44
In the summer of 1942, Germany and its allies launched a massive attack to the south and southeast toward the industrial center of Stalingrad on the Volga River and toward the oil fields of the Caucasus. German military leaders believed seizing the oil fields would cripple the Soviet war effort and ensure that Germany and Italy had sufficient fuel to pursue the offensive on all fronts and at sea. For Hitler, taking the city named for Josef Stalin would be a major psychological, as well as strategic, victory.
By September 1942, Germany had reached the peak of its military success. It dominated Europe from France in the west to the Volga River in the east; from the Arctic Circle in Norway to North Africa. In the three years since it launched World War II, Germany had not experienced a single major military defeat.
Then November brought two major reversals. On November 8, as German forces seemed on the verge of taking Stalingrad, British and American forces landed in North Africa. To confront them, Hitler transferred troops, armaments, and airplanes from the eastern front. On November 19, the Soviet army launched a massive counteroffensive against the German and Romanian forces trying to conquer Stalingrad. In less than a week, Soviet forces had surrounded their enemy, including the entire German Sixth Army. Two more months of fierce combat followed in which both sides took heavy casualties. The surviving German soldiers surrendered between January 31 and February 2, 1943.
The German defeat and the death or capture of a quarter million soldiers at Stalingrad shocked the German public and shook their faith that Germany would win the war. The campaign on the eastern front had massively depleted German manpower and weaponry. In the meantime, the western Allies’ bombing campaign was crippling German efforts to rearm and turning German cities to rubble.
In July 1943, the Germans launched one more major offensive at Kursk, in Russia. The Soviets were well aware of German plans and defeated the German forces in just a few days. At the same time, the western Allies landed in Sicily. Their arrival there forced the Germans to send troops to battle on a new front. From this point, German forces steadily retreated on the eastern front. They never again succeeded in resuming the offensive.
By the end of 1943, Soviet forces had pushed German forces out of most of Ukraine and virtually all of Russia and eastern Belarus (Belorussia). Shortly after the western Allies successfully landed in Normandy, France in June 1944, the Soviets launched another major offensive. In this successful campaign, the Red Army took control of the rest of Belarus (Belorussia) and Ukraine, most of the Baltic states, and eastern Poland. By August 1944, Soviet troops had crossed the German border into East Prussia (a German province located between interwar Poland and Lithuania).
The German Surrender
In January 1945, a new offensive brought Soviet forces to the Oder River, in Germany proper, about 100 miles from Berlin.
In mid-April 1945, the Soviet army launched its final assault on Nazi Germany. It captured Vienna on April 13 and encircled Berlin on April 21. On April 25, Soviet advance patrols met American troops at Torgau on the Elbe River in central Germany, effectively cutting the country in half. After more than a week of heavy fighting in the streets of Berlin, Soviet units neared Hitler's central command bunker. On April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide. Berlin surrendered to Soviet forces on May 2, 1945.
The German armed forces surrendered unconditionally in the west on May 8 and in the east on May 9, 1945. On May 9, the Soviet army entered Prague, the last major city still occupied by German units. The western allies proclaimed May 8, 1945, as Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day).
More people fought and died on Nazi Germany’s eastern front than in all other World War II campaigns combined.
Series: World War II
Critical Thinking Questions
- Investigate the number of civilian and military casualties suffered by the Soviet Union. What percentage of the population are these figures?
- When Allied soldiers landed on the D-Day beaches on June 6, 1944, what was the status of the war on the eastern front? How far had the Soviet army moved westward?


Posted by Madison on Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 8:26pm.
I have to fill in the blanks of this sentence with 5 of the 8 words provided but I am totally lost. I would appreciate any help.
___(1)___ soir, nous ___(2)___ rencontré des amis au restaurant. Nous ___(3)___ avons ___(4)___ le jour précédent. Après un bon diner délicieux, nous les avons raccompagnés jusqu’à chez ___(5)___.
- French help - SraJMcGin, Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 9:48pm
1) Hier soir = last night
2) avons = we found
3) les 4) invités = we invited them
5) eux = up to their houses.
Sra (aka Mme)
- French help - MathMate, Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 9:53pm
Try to get access to an English-French Dictionary and look up the words before attempting the questions. Some of the words may mean different things in context, that is where your teacher's notes come in handy.
I will give you a head-start. Try to fill in the blanks as much as possible and feel free to post back for answer checking.
avons: (we) have
eux: their (place, in this context only)
les: them (in this context only)
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By Loretta Hall
New Mexico’s sky has always been captivating. Not only beautiful to look at, it was historically useful for predicting the changes of seasons for agricultural planning. A thousand years ago or so, observatories were built by the Jornada Mogollon people in the southeastern part of the state and the Ancestral Puebloans in the northwest. Rocks were aligned to track the movement of certain stars, the sun, and the moon. Observation points were marked to note key positions of celestial bodies in relation to natural notches in distant mountain ranges.
During the past century, modern observatories have been built throughout the state to gather information about the nature of objects and energies in outer space. The data gathered by optical and radio-wave telescopes allow scientists to explore distant parts of the universe. The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array west of Magdalena is perhaps the most prominent example. Built in the 1970s and upgraded in 2011, this movable array of huge dish antennas has been used to examine 80 percent of the Earth’s sky.
Looking at the sky from Earth is one thing, but sending spacecraft to explore regions beyond this planet is another. Researchers working in New Mexico have contributed significantly to that effort for nearly a hundred years, beginning in 1930 in Roswell.
Dr. Robert H. Goddard, a physics professor in Massachusetts, had a vision—one might even say an obsession. Inspired by reading books by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, Goddard envisioned the marvelous potential of humans to travel to our moon and other planets. He committed himself to doing everything he could to make that possible. At that time, rockets were powered by solid fuels such as gunpowder or saltpeter. That worked well enough for small rockets used for ceremonies, celebrations, or as war weapons—but Goddard recognized that such fuels were not powerful enough to propel vehicles away from the Earth. He dedicated his life’s work to developing more powerful liquid-fuel rocketry. He began experimenting with rockets fueled by gasoline, using liquid oxygen to support combustion.
By 1929, Goddard’s first few rocket test flights in Massachusetts were impressive enough to frighten people who lived nearby, and the state fire marshal prohibited any future tests. Unwilling to give up his work, Goddard began searching for a new location. He needed a place with expanses of level, wide-open spaces, little vegetation to limit fire potential, sparse population to limit fear and possible injury, generally good weather all year round, and railroad access for bringing in supplies. A relatively high elevation would be helpful too, as it would reduce the amount of fuel needed for each launch. After consulting with weather experts and the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, who had flown over much of the country, Goddard settled on Roswell as the best choice.
Goddard set up operations in Roswell in 1930 and began conducting experiments involving rocket propulsion, flight stability and steering mechanisms, and parachutes. With the help of his wife, Esther, and a few employees, he made dramatic progress with liquid-fuel rocket performance. He launched the first manmade vehicle to travel faster than the speed of sound in 1935, and one of his rockets reached an altitude of nearly 9,000 feet in 1937.
World War II interrupted Goddard’s rocket research, but similar work was being pursued in Europe by then. In particular, Germany’s Nazi regime created a liquid-fuel rocket development program led by Dr. Wernher von Braun. Their premier result was the V-2 missile, which could deliver a ton of explosives to targets up to 200 miles away. The extent to which that missile’s design was derived from Goddard’s inventions is unclear, but when Goddard saw captured parts of a V-2 in 1945, he noted their remarkable similarity to his inventions. This could have resulted from copying his work or simply from simultaneous but independent invention.
By the time Goddard left New Mexico in 1942, the U.S. Army at White Sands Proving Ground (WSPG) was developing its own liquid-fuel rocket, the WAC Corporal. Its designers had consulted with Goddard for advice. The Army missile was intended for scientific research of the upper atmosphere. The 1945 test flights of its solid-fuel booster rockets and then the WAC Corporal itself were the first rocket launches at the White Sands facility.
About a year later, New Mexico hosted the next major advance in rocketry for space exploration. At the end of World War II, von Braun and more than a hundred of his colleagues surrendered to the U.S. Army in Germany. Under Operation Paperclip, they were brought to this country and assigned to White Sands Proving Ground to work with American scientists and engineers in further developing their V-2 missile and other rockets. Three hundred train car loads of German missile components, launch equipment, and research documentation were brought to WSPG.
One result of that collaboration was the world’s first two-stage, liquid-fuel rocket in 1948, known as the Bumper project. Its first stage was a modified V-2, and the second stage was a WAC Corporal. In one test at WSPG, the second stage reached an altitude of 244 miles and a speed of 5,100 miles an hour. In 1950, the Bumper project was transferred to a new launch facility in Florida, and the New Mexico-developed rocket became the first vehicle launched from Cape Canaveral.
Space exploration research in New Mexico reached a new, broader level after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created in 1958, the same year that White Sands Proving Ground was renamed White Sands Missile Range (WSMR). At last, plans were underway to send people into space, as Goddard and von Braun had long dreamed. Projects planned and carried out in New Mexico were keys to the success of that effort.
Suborbital rockets launched at WSMR during the next decade tested the ability of various devices to withstand the forces of rocket launch and reentry, and to operate correctly in microgravity (commonly called weightlessness).
Since 1946, research at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo has centered on biological factors related to spaceflight. In 1953, Dr. John Paul Stapp became head of the Aeromedical Field Laboratory at Holloman, where he conducted much of the research and oversaw the rest. Stapp’s personal interest was in the effects of rapid acceleration and deceleration on the human body. He devised several types of equipment to study this topic using animals and human volunteers. He always tested an experiment on himself before allowing other men to experience it, in order to ensure its safety.
Stapp was the only subject for his most famous human experiments. In 1954, he rode a rocket-propelled sled on Holloman’s high-speed test track in three successively more severe acceleration /deceleration tests. The ultimate run came that December. Stapp was strapped into an unprotected seat on the sled, wearing a standard Air Force flight suit and a helmet with a full visor. His arms, legs, and head were secured. Then nine rocket engines on the back of the sled ignited for five seconds, propelling him to a speed of 632 miles an hour. Just after the rockets shut down, the sled hit a water brake section that brought the sled to a complete stop in one and one-quarter seconds. During that stop, Stapp experienced 25 Gs of sustained deceleration that actually peaked at 46 Gs for a fraction of a second. He sustained broken blood vessels in his eyes, but was back to essentially normal health by the following day.
This daring experiment proved the human body’s ability to withstand far more powerful forces than would be experienced during rocket launch and reentry. (Experience would later show that maximum acceleration forces in manned space flights of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs were about 7 Gs; and the greatest deceleration forces were about 11 Gs.)
In spaceflight, an astronaut would experience not only acceleration and deceleration forces, but also the virtual absence of the force of gravity. Scientists worried that blood would not circulate adequately in that condition, or that an astronaut might not be able to swallow food or drink. Or they might become so disoriented in an environment with no up or down that they would be unable to do their required tasks. To explore these possibilities, airplane pilots at Holloman became proficient in flying a series of steep vertical arcs that produced half a minute of microgravity at each apex. Volunteers riding in the plane’s cargo bay could try eating, drinking, writing, and doing other essential activities.
There was one other important project developed at Holloman called Manhigh. Led by Dr. David Simons under Stapp’s command, it demonstrated the feasibility of constructing a space capsule that could protect an astronaut during an extended stay in the cold, low-pressure, radiation-exposed environment of a space-equivalent altitude. The capsule also required an oxygen regeneration system and communications capabilities. During the most successful of the program’s three manned flights, a 200-foot-diameter, helium-filled balloon carried the capsule to an altitude of more than 100,000 feet (19 miles). Simons stayed at a very high altitude for twenty-three hours of the thirty-two-hour flight. The program’s three flights demonstrated not only the performance of the space capsule but also the ability of a trained person to function effectively in a small, confined space at a great distance from the ground.
Through these and other experiments with animals and humans, researchers in southern New Mexico verified that spaceflight was humanly possible. By 1959, NASA was ready to select its first astronauts, who would fly into near-Earth space in the Mercury program. Using selection criteria expanded from ones used in the Manhigh project and drawing on a pool of potential candidates who were military test pilots, NASA narrowed its choices to thirty-two men. (Women were automatically excluded because they could not be military pilots at that time.) The next step was conducting medical exams to ensure these men were in “excellent physical condition,” which was one of the selection criteria.
NASA chose Dr. William Randolph (Randy) Lovelace II to design and conduct the test regimen at the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque. Lovelace had been developing oxygen equipment for pilots in high-altitude flight since the late 1930s. By 1958, he was chairman of NASA’s Special Advisory Committee on Life Sciences. The Lovelace Clinic had already been conducting secret physical exams for pilots of the ultra-high-altitude U-2 spy planes, and its staff had developed a machine-readable card system that made analyzing the astronaut candidates’ test results very efficient.
Beginning in February 1959, the astronaut candidates came to the Lovelace Clinic in groups of half a dozen, each group being tested for seven and a half consecutive days, with each day’s tests lasting eleven hours or more. Lovelace described the regimen as “one of the toughest medical examinations in history.” Not knowing exactly what physical challenges spaceflight would present to the human body, the doctors examined basically everything they could think of. This process not only revealed the overall health of each candidate, but it also provided baseline measurements that could be compared with post-spaceflight examinations to identify any possible physical effects.
Of the thirty-two candidates examined at the Lovelace Clinic, eighteen passed “with no medical reservation.” After psychological examinations and physical stress tests in Ohio and further interviews, seven men were chosen to be America’s first astronauts.
As NASA moved forward through its Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo manned space programs, crews in New Mexico continued to test new generations of equipment. Seats astronauts would sit in during Apollo launches were evaluated on acceleration/deceleration devices at Holloman Air Force Base. Essential instruments to be used on missions to the moon were subjected to rocket launches, landings, and brief exposures to the space environment at WSMR. Recovery of payloads proved to be a major challenge, as they often landed far from the target location and the impact could bury them in the sand upon landing. In the mid-1960s, specially trained dogs were used to find the payloads, which had been coated with a distinctive scent. This novel approach was highly successful, with a recovery rate of 96 percent.
The Soviet Union sent a cosmonaut on a one-orbit flight before NASA conducted its first two manned suborbital flights, and then sent a second cosmonaut on a seventeen-orbit flight before NASA’s first manned orbital flight. Nevertheless, NASA chose to proceed with an abundance of caution, sending a human surrogate on each type of flight before sending a human. A chimpanzee named Ham took a fifteen-minute suborbital flight in January 1961 before Alan Shepard became America’s first man in space. Another chimpanzee, Enos, flew a two-orbit mission later that year, before John Glenn became the first orbiting astronaut in February 1962. Ham and Enos, along with several other chimpanzees, had been trained at Holloman Air Force Base to endure spaceflight and to perform mental and physical tasks during their flights. In both of the chimps’ flights, malfunctions caused the animals unexpected stress, yet both performed their assigned tasks almost flawlessly. Ham the Astrochimp is buried at the New Mexico Museum of Space History beneath the flagpoles.
In the haste to fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s pledge of sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to the Earth by the end of the 1960s, the three phases of NASA’s first manned space program overlapped. As the Mercury program was validating orbital spacecraft and humans’ ability to function in space, the Gemini program was being planned and prepared. Its missions would also be in Earth’s orbit, but would test equipment and procedures for extravehicular activities (spacewalks) and docking of two orbiting spacecraft. Preparations for the Apollo missions, with larger crews ultimately reaching the moon for landings and lunar orbiting, actually began as early as 1962, the same year as the first Mercury orbital flight. During all that time, Holloman and WSMR played active support roles.
In preparation for the Apollo moon landings, engineers at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque began developing procedures in 1963 for making sure the landing modules did not contaminate the lunar surface with foreign materials. They also helped develop and test radioisotopic heaters that would provide necessary warmth for equipment left there by the first human visitors.
Also in 1963, NASA built its own propulsion systems development station on the edge of the WSMR property outside of Las Cruces. Rocket engines designed for use in the Apollo program were evaluated in static tests at this White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) before being approved for use in actual launches.
After the last Apollo missions in 1972, NASA shifted its crewed space activities to Earth-orbit operations. The space shuttle vehicle was developed to serve first as an orbiting laboratory and then as a transportation vessel to carry astronauts and supplies between the Earth and the International Space Station (ISS). In fact, more than two dozen shuttle missions delivered modules used to construct the ISS in low-Earth orbit.
New Mexico figured prominently in the space shuttle program. WSTF staff tested materials and components that would be used in the shuttle’s propulsion, power, and life-support systems as well as payloads and experiments to be carried on missions by the shuttle and the ISS. The facility even has a team of smell testers that evaluate objects for potential unpleasant odors in the confines of crewed spacecraft or the ISS.
White Sands Space Harbor, a facility operated by WSTF using a pair of runways on WSMR property, became a practice facility for landing shuttles starting in 1976. The shuttles landed as gliders, so the astronauts flying them had only one chance to make a safe landing. This made actual training flights, as well as those done in stationary simulators, crucial. Four Gulfstream II airplanes were modified to fly like a space shuttle would during landing, and the cockpits were outfitted as replicas of shuttle cockpits. Before each shuttle mission, the astronaut assigned to land the craft had to complete 1,000 landings in the training aircraft. Most of these practice sessions were at White Sands, although some were also done at the primary shuttle landing sites of Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Edwards Air Force Base in California.
In addition to being a major training facility, White Sands Space Harbor was the contingency landing site for each space shuttle mission during the program’s duration from 1981 to 2011. If both Kennedy Space Center and Edwards Air Force Base were unavailable as landing sites, White Sands would be used. Although only one shuttle actually landed at White Sands, in 1982, crews and equipment were assembled and ready at the end of every shuttle mission in case they were needed.
During its thirty-year history, the space shuttle program experienced two disasters with the losses of the Challenger during its 1986 launch and the Columbia during its return from space in 2003. After both incidents, scientists and engineers at Sandia National Laboratories helped determine the causes of the catastrophes and develop equipment and procedures for preventing similar events.
So far, humans have explored space in person only as far as the moon. But people in New Mexico have helped explore objects and environments much farther away by means of unmanned space probes. Scientists and engineers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) have played major roles in those endeavors. For example, as early as the mid-1950s, they began trying to develop nuclear power for rocket propulsion in Project Rover. Nuclear power would dramatically reduce the weight of the fuel needed to power the rocket and provide propulsion for a much longer period of time. While it has not yet been feasible to use nuclear power for rocket launch, other applications of nuclear power have proven enormously useful in long-duration, unmanned missions to distant planets, asteroids, and comets.
One nuclear application developed for spacecraft at Los Alamos was radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). These devices can generate electricity to power instruments on the spacecraft and to provide heat in the extreme cold of deep space. RTGs have been used in many space exploration projects including the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes launched in 1977. Both are still gathering and transmitting data, now from interstellar space. RTGs also powered the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions launched in 1972 and 1973 that performed the first flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. RTGs were also used on the New Horizons mission to Pluto in 2015. A replica of the spacecraft is on display inside the Tombaugh Education Center at the New Mexico Museum of Space History.
Both Goddard and von Braun saw the potential for electric propulsion of spacecraft by creating charged ions that would be expelled from the spacecraft to produce thrust. Ion propulsion produces a very small amount of thrust; but operating continuously for a long period of time, it can propel spacecraft to very high velocities. LANL employees have worked on developing ion propulsion systems. During the Deep Space 1 mission, which launched in 1998, LANL-developed instruments and analysis determined that ion propulsion could be used without interfering with operations of the scientific instruments on board.
Robotic explorations of Mars have been the next best thing to going there in person. Dr. Larry Crumpler of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque knows that better than anyone. A planetary geologist, he was a member of the Mars Exploration Rovers team that operated Spirit and Opportunity on the red planet from their landings in 2004 until Opportunity’s last communication in 2018. A rare exact duplicate of one of the rovers is on display at the museum in a realistic Mars-like setting constructed of soil and rocks gathered from parts of New Mexico.
Until relatively recently, American space exploration has been the purview of NASA. New Mexico, however, has been at the forefront of a new generation of commercial space exploration. Just over thirty years ago, in March 1989, a NASA scientific mission first used a commercially built and launched rocket that took off from White Sands Missile Range. Even the payload integration was performed by the contractor, Space Services. From that beginning, New Mexico has been a leader in the development of commercial spaceflight.
The brief descriptions in this article give just a hint of the crucial contributions New Mexico researchers and engineers have made to space exploration for nearly a century. Each of the topics mentioned here can be explored in far greater depth for a better understanding of their details.
But the state’s involvement is even broader than the locations and facilities mentioned here. Staff members at the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo have created a “New Mexico Space Trail” to more fully document important sites throughout the state. A map showing fifty-two historic sites can be downloaded at NMSpaceTrail.org. The sites include ancient astronomy installations, twentieth-century observatories, museums, Apollo astronaut training sites, and other test and launch facilities, as well as all of the places described in this article.
Use the New Mexico Space Trail as a roadmap to further explore New Mexico’s unique, prolific history of space exploration. Some of the sites are not open to the public, but you can visit them virtually through books, articles, and museums. As New Mexico continues its leadership role in space exploration through its growing commercial space industry as well as its ongoing contributions to its traditional partnerships with NASA, it is useful to understand how that leadership position evolved.
Loretta Hall is the author of four space-related books including Out of this World: New Mexico’s Contributions to Space Travel and Miguel & Michelle Visit Spaceport America.


How good, how useful and how appropriate are the individual tasks or items in a psychological test??
When I present psychological tests in training sessions on remedial diagnostics, I can be sure that the first critical comments will be about the quality of the tasks or items: "These tasks are much too difficult for three-year-olds" or "Such tasks are not appropriate for children, the children I know would never take them or only for a short time". I can literally wait for such and similar remarks.
These critics do not know that every single item of a psychological test has been checked for quality in the course of test construction. In a first development step, test designers assemble test tasks or items that they assume both capture the trait or ability being tested and are appropriate for the target population. The resulting collection of tasks or raw test data is conducted on a large number of children, adolescents or adults, the so-called calibration sample. The results and experiences gained here form the basis for the second design step, the item analysis and item selection. For each item the difficulty index, the discriminatory power and the homogeneity are calculated in this context.
The difficulty index indicates the degree of difficulty of a task and is ultimately nothing more than the probability of solving this item. If an item is solved correctly by many subjects from the calibration sample, it is obviously an easy one, and if it is solved correctly by only a few, it is a difficult one. Tasks that are not solved correctly by anyone, or by everyone, are either too easy or too hard and are the first to be removed from the test. Thus, in a psychological test there can never be a task that is too difficult.
With the help of the difficulty index, the items in a psychological test can be arranged with increasing difficulty or louder items of equal difficulty can be selected, depending on what the test author needs for his test.
The discriminatory power provides information about the extent to which the set of solvers remains constant across all items or whether each item measures in terms of the overall result. It is therefore calculated as a correlation (systematic statistical relationship) between the overall result (test score) and the result of each individual item (item score). All subjects who achieve a high overall score on the test must, if possible, also be appropriately successful on each individual task. All items that do not sufficiently meet this requirement are removed from the test.
Homogeneity indicates the degree to which items on a test measure the same trait or characteristic. Homogeneity is calculated by correlating the solutions of each task with the solutions of all other tasks. It is expected that there is a high systematic statistical correlation between the items belonging to a test or to a subtest. If there is such a sufficiently high correlation, take that as evidence that all tasks capture the same characteristic, the same ability.
After the items with insufficient quality were removed from the test, the final version of the psychological test is available, which will now be subjected to a quality check as a whole in a further development step. So the items certainly don’t end up being too hard for three-year-olds if the test is designed for three-year-olds.
This is the 5. Article from the series "Test diagnostics. You can find all articles of the series under this keyword.
Breitenbach, Erwin (2005): Introduction to pedagogical-psychological diagnostics. In: Stephan Ellinger& Roland Stein (Ed.): Basic studies in special education. Oberhausen: Athena Verlag, pp. 114-141.


– Wikipedia topwonders
The Alofaaga Blowholes, also known as the Taga Blowholes, are a natural feature located in the district of Palauli, south west of Salelologa wharf on the island of Savai’i in Samoa. The entrance to the blowholes is in the village of Taga.
In this area, lava flows have created a series of tubes connecting a flat clifftop of lava rock with the ocean below. Waves breaking against the lower end of the tubes send water at high pressure up through the tubes, creating fountains that spray every few seconds. As most of the land in Samoa is under customary ownership, the village charges a small admission for entry to view the blowholes. The area is unfenced and surrounded by wet, slippery rocks which can be dangerous. Falling into one of the blowholes would be almost certainly fatal. A track along the coast can be followed west to the ancient village of Fagaloa.


While these are ideal to use with kids who can write themselves, you can still use them with your little ones – especially the Draw & Write prompts. Simply have them draw a picture according to the prompt and then allow them to dictate what they drew.
These Fire Safety Writing Activities sets included:
- 26 pages of copywork – The Preamble to the Constitution
- 7 Preschool Letters related to Fire Safety
- 7 Early Manuscript words about Fire Safety
- 6 Manuscript phrases about Fire Safety
- 6 Cursive phrases about Fire Safety
- 12 Constitution Day themed Draw & Write prompts
- 6 Manuscript lined pages
- 6 Plain lined pages
- 18 Constitution Day themed Writing Prompts
- 9 Manuscript lined pages
- 9 Plain lined pages
- Extra lined pages for both
Don’t forget to follow us on Pinterest for more great ideas.
No Dragons for Tea: Fire Safety for KidsBig Frank’s Fire Truck (Pictureback(R))Arthur’s Fire Drill (Step 3)The Berenstain Bears: Safe and Sound!Miss Mingo and the Fire DrillStop Drop and RollLet’s Meet a Firefighter
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All Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) share common elements. The details of each agreement, however, are unique to the national context of each partner country, as they are based on national laws and the priorities of national stakeholders.
The outputs of each agreement include:
- A timber legality assurance system
- Frameworks for monitoring and evaluating implementation
- Commitments to improve transparency and other aspects of forest governance
The text of a VPA, which is in two sections, the main text and the annexes, describes these outputs. The main text of a VPA outlines the basic principles and structures, and varies little between VPAs. The annexes vary between VPAs because they provide country-specific detail on issues such as:
- The legal requirements the partner country will monitor and ensure compliance with under the VPA
- The procedures for verifying legality, tracing timber and issuing FLEGT licences
- The documents and data the country will make accessible to the public
Deliberations among stakeholders in a timber-exporting country determine the ambition and content of a VPA. These deliberations help the government of a VPA partner country determine the scope of products a VPA will cover, whether or not to include domestic markets, and the extent of legal and governance reforms.
A VPA that includes legal reforms and domestic market measures provides a strong signal that the partner country's government is prepared to address fundamental governance challenges that result in illegal logging comprehensively.


Glacial melting is sounding the alarm of global warming in Antarctica, one of the world’s most rapidly warming areas over the past fifty years.
Antarctica has experienced air temperature increases of 3°C in the Antarctic Peninsula. Studies show that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is warming at a higher speed than the global ocean as a whole.
Researchers suggest that the situation has reached a critical point where glacial melting will accelerate and become irreversible. Nasa’s study found that Thwaites glacier could probably flow into the sea and generate a fifty centimeters rise in sea level. Other glaciers are in a similar situation.
Global warming is making significant changes to both living and physical environments. The permafrost, which had initially been resilient to warming in the Pole region, is now starting to melt. The measurements confirm that some areas are melting ten times more rapidly than ever before known.
Most recent researches have found that the rate of ice loss from Antarctic glaciers has doubled in the last six years and is now five times faster than in the 1990s, creating a significant reduction in thickness at some sites of up to 100 meters. Satellite data has shown that Antarctica has lost as much sea ice in the last four years as the Arctic lost in the last thirty-four years.
While this change is concerning for various reasons, it holds the potential to affect both animals and humans significantly. We’re starting to feel the effect through the food chain since the changing habitat has already impacted many species of animals that rely on Antarctica’s cold temperatures for survival. Though the full effects are unknown, it is expected to threaten crops, livestock, and aquatic species. These changes can, in turn, affect the availability of food, driving up prices and possibly even making some foods unattainable.
For those that travel around Antarctica for fishing or recreational purposes, the rising ocean will significantly change its weather patterns. Regions and channels known to be safe may become dangerous, a problem that will impact shipping lanes and cause delays. Overall, the two primary changes that we, as humans, will experience are potential food scarcities and higher costs for products obtained overseas.
Antarctica is home to animal colonies, which are now in danger with rising temperatures. The distribution of these colonies has already been affected. We will see a decrease in their numbers over time, and some species may even become extinct. As the sea ice conditions keep altering, the distribution of penguin has changed. Melting of perennial snow and ice covers gave way to increased colonization by plants. A decline in Antarctic krill abundance may be associated with reduced sea ice cover and reduced provision for animals that depend on this species to feed. Massive changes have occurred in the ice cover of the Peninsula. Many glaciers and ice shelves have retreated in recent years, and some have collapsed completely.
Furthermore, many seals and whales are dependent on the sheets of ice for their food and reproductive purposes. They are in danger of not having access to these sheets, which will also decrease their life expectancy. The minke whale and orca are, particularly in jeopardy.
The study suggests that those losses in ice can’t be regained, even if temperatures return to preindustrial levels. The simulations indicate that temperatures would need to drop to at least 1 degree Celsius below preindustrial times for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to regrow to its modern extent.
Global warming in Antarctica is a significant danger, posing a real but sad example of how the rest of the world may be affected. Keeping an open mind and staying informed will help us find ways to contribute individually, as families, and at community levels. Our contribution is more critical than ever; finding local solutions will help with this global crisis. Our responsibility is not only with our planet, the only home we know but with all generations to come.


The Engineering is Elementary team is committed to making our engineering curricula accessible to all students, including English Learners—the fastest growing group of public school students in the United States. We already have Spanish-translated student-facing materials available for our 20 in-school curriculum units, and you'll notice an exciting addition if you check out our two out-of-school time curricula. You can now download Spanish translations of the student notebooks for all 20 Engineering Adventures and Engineering Everywhere units!
Why translate the student notebooks for our out-of-school time curricula into Spanish? The EiE team’s research has shown the power of engineering notebooks in helping students organize their information, scaffold their work, and collaborate and communicate effectively with their peers. And because 77% of English Learners speak Spanish at home, we want to provide those same supports while promoting literacy in their home language.
We’ve also recently revamped our download pages to make the process even easier to navigate. Now, when you’re ready to get started with an Engineering Everywhere unit like It’s About Time: Engineering Timers, you’ll have even more options on our re-designed download screen. There, you’ll be able to download both the Spanish and English versions of the notebooks that your young engineers will use to document their engineering design journey. You’ll also be able to download all of the other resources you’ll need to complete the unit on that same page.
Providing translations of our out-of-school-time notebooks is just one piece of EiE's ongoing commitment to English Learners. We also have Spanish translations of the student-facing resources—storybooks, worksheets, and family letters—available for all 20 in-school EiE units. You can download the Spanish-language family letter from our website on the individual page for each unit. And, if you’re looking for translations of the worksheets or storybooks, give our customer service team a call at 617-589-0230 and they will be able to assist you.
Keep your eye on our newsletter and blog for even more exciting announcements—we're making it even easier for teachers to access more of our Spanish-language resources, and you'll be the first to know! Want to take a peek at our out-of-school time curricula? Click on the buttons below to access free downloads of our Engineering Adventures and Engineering Everywhere units.


By Chris Tournazou, F.J. Lidgey, D.G. Haigh
Analogue IC layout has turn into the basic ebook masking the current-mode method of built-in circuit layout. The technique has sparked a lot curiosity in analogue electronics and is associated with vital advances in built-in circuit know-how -- similar to CMOS VLSI which permits combined analogue and electronic circuits, and high-speed GaAs processing. The publication attracts jointly educational contributions from the world's most outstanding analogue circuit designers. it really is now being republished in paperback because the topic has entered the syllabus of higher point undergraduate classes in electronics and circuit design.Also available:Design of excessive Frequency built-in Analogue Filters - ISBN 0852969767High-frequency Circuit Engineering - ISBN 0852968019The establishment of Engineering and expertise is without doubt one of the world's major specialist societies for the engineering and know-how neighborhood. The IET publishes greater than a hundred new titles each year; a wealthy mixture of books, journals and magazines with a again catalogue of greater than 350 books in 18 diversified topic components together with: -Power & power -Renewable power -Radar, Sonar & Navigation -Electromagnetics -Electrical dimension -History of know-how -Technology administration
Read Online or Download Analogue IC Design: The Current-Mode Approach (EII Circuits and Systems Series) (Eii Circuits and Systems Series) PDF
Best electronics: radio books
It's the first program to nuclear-physics from energy-density sensible approach, for which Professor Walter Kohn bought the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The e-book offers a accomplished extension of the Bohr-Wheeler idea with the current wisdom of nuclear density distribution functionality.
Analogue IC layout has develop into the fundamental booklet overlaying the current-mode method of built-in circuit layout. The strategy has sparked a lot curiosity in analogue electronics and is associated with vital advances in built-in circuit know-how -- equivalent to CMOS VLSI which permits combined analogue and electronic circuits, and high-speed GaAs processing.
- Corrosion induced by low-energy radionuclides: Modeling of Tritium and Its Radiolytic and Decay Products Formed in Nuclear Installations
- ESD in Silicon Integrated Circuits
- Modelling Radioactivity in the Environment
- Hints & Kinks for the Radio Amateur
- A little Smalltalk
- Global RFID: The Value of the EPCglobal Network for Supply Chain Management
Additional info for Analogue IC Design: The Current-Mode Approach (EII Circuits and Systems Series) (Eii Circuits and Systems Series)
Crucially, the simplification afforded by restricting ourselves to considering purely monochromatic waveforms in no way restricts the analysis since any angular 20 Principles of planar near-field antenna measurements frequency may be considered to be a component of a Fourier series or in the limit a Fourier integral, thus enabling this analysis to be applied to arbitrary waveforms. 15) Here, µ is the magnetic permeability of the medium, ε is the permittivity of the medium, that is, the dielectric constant and σ is the specific conductivity.
However, although a distribution of separate charges may be individually in translational equilibrium they may be in motion relative to each other and therefore there will be no inertial frame relative to which all of the charges constituting the distribution are stationary. To take account of this relative motion a second vector B is defined. This vector relates the force that acts on the test charge in the presence of fields at the points in space that the charge instantaneously occupies when it is in motion.
Additionally, however, Chapter 4 will set out an alternative methodology for utilizing this equation that is more convenient when considering most, but not all, problems encountered in the study of planar near-field antenna metrology. However, a methodology that will be instructive and gives insight in to the nature of the EM interaction that is often successfully adopted to evaluate the EM fields produced and subsequently radiated by moving charges is to consider the fields E and B to be the resultants of potentials.


There's a sex bias in evolution, according to an article in PLoS Genetics, and it's demonstrated by the fact that women have been more successful on average in passing their genes on to the next generation. "This is because a few males have fathered children with multiple females, which occurs at the expense of other less successful males", says Dr. Michael Hammer, ARL Division of Biotechnology at the University of Arizona.
The group has found DNA evidence that polygyny, the practice among males of siring children with multiple female partners at the same time or successively, has led to an excess of genetic diversity on the X chromosome relative to the autosomes.
The X chromosome is present in two copies in females and a single copy in males. The autosomes, which are inherited equally by both sexes from each parent, are expected to have more genetic diversity than the X chromosome in a population with an equal number of breeding males and females.
The research team measured levels of neutral polymorphism at 40 independent loci on the X chromosome and autosomes in ninety humans representing six populations, including: Biaka (Central African Republic), Mandenka (Senegal), San (Namibia), French Basque, Han Chinese and Melanesians (Papua New Guinea). The group contrasted alternative explanations for the higher observed levels of X-linked (versus autosomal) diversity.
Background selection, changes in population size and sex-specific migration were all discounted as contributors to the observed patterns of genetic variability. Only the process of polygyny could by itself account for the sex ratio skew and resulting patterns of genomic variation. By this process, fewer unique male genes are being passed into the next generation.
The group's research highlights how unseen, sex-biased forces have shaped genomic patterns of variability. Over the long-term, the findings may provide lessons on the dynamics of beneficial mutations on different chromosomes as they sweep through the population.
The article examines potential demographic and evolutionary forces that have led to higher than expected genetic variation on the X chromosome.
CITATION: Hammer MF, Mendez FL, Cox MP, Woerner AE, Wall JD (2008) Sex-Biased Evolutionary Forces Shape Genomic Patterns of Human Diversity. PLoS Genet 4(9): e1000202. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000202


The design process for a product first requires a clear understanding of the functions and the performance expected of that product. The product may be new, or it may be a revised version of an existing product. We have all observed, for example, how the design and style of radios, toasters, watches, automobiles and washing machines have changed. The market for a product and its anticipated uses must be defined clearly, with the assistance of sales personnel, market analysts, and others in the organization. Product design is a critical activity because it has been estimated that 70 to 80 percent of the cost of product development and manufacture is determined at the initial design stages.
During product design and once a part design is finalized, the production processes must be planned. In process planning, the general characteristics of the part, such as the general part configuration, material, surface finish, and tolerances, and must be determined first. These characteristics will affect part handling, the type of tooling and machines, the sequence of operations, assembly, and rate of production .
What is lean?
Lean Enterprise — A business system for organizing and managing product development, operations, suppliers, and customer relations. Business and other organizations use lean principles, practices, and tools to create precise customer value-goods and services with higher quality and fewer defects-with less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time than the traditional system of mass production.
Many of the key principles were pioneered by Henry Ford, who was the first person to integrate an entire production system, under what he termed "flow production." Following World War II, the Toyota Motor Company adapted Ford's principles as a means of compensating for its challenge of limited human, financial and material resources. The Toyota Production System (or TPS), which evolved from this need, was one of the first managerial systems using lean principles throughout the enterprise to produce a wide variety of products at lower volumes and many fewer defects than competitors.
Leaders today in a wide range of industries, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, healthcare, and other areas are finding ways to apply the principles of lean as a means of producing goods and delivering services that creates value for the customer with the minimum amount of waste and the maximum degree of quality .
 Kalpakjian, S. "Manufacturing Engineering and Technology, Third Edition." Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995.
 "What is Lean?" Lean Enterprise Institute, 2006.


Occupational therapy focuses on the child’s “occupation”, which includes developmental tasks involving their ability to interact with people and objects in their environment. Difficulties in the ability to interact with people and objects in their environment are noted to impact their performance in play, social relationships, learning, and activities of daily living skills. The occupation of childhood is to develop the skills necessary to become functional and independent adults. The areas assessed and treated in occupational therapy include, but are not limited to: Regulation of arousal level in order to attend; Refinement of sensory discrimination and processing; Continual refinement and development of fine motor skills (including handwriting); Age appropriate self care skills; Self concept and Cognitive functions.
The expectations for the level of development through therapy & treatment of any of these skills will vary depending on the age of the child. It is important to remember that all of these skills are developing concurrently. Impairment of one area is likely to stunt development in other areas.
At Lowcountry Therapy Center, play is the media most often used in the occupational therapist's treatment of children. It is highly motivating and a natural media used by all children. Education and involvement of the family is critical to success, and is therefore always a part of the therapy session.
Lowcountry Therapy Center will be offering upcoming camps addressing reading, writing, and handwriting. We look forward to working with you! Call or contact us today with any questions you may have about our therapy & treatment methods.


The “what-is-it” that made its first appearance in Greensboro on or about January 16th has been the subject of a great deal of speculation. What is the thing whose tracks are so much like those of a horse or mule, and travels where horses and mules cannot possibly go? Some of the footprints seemed to show that the hoof making them wore an iron shoe, even to the nails in the shoe. Many of these tracks were observed in Greensboro on the 17th inst., and were viewed carefully by many good-thinking citizens of the community, including Messrs. Joseph B. Orrell, R.D. Clark, William Sipple, Rev. J.H. Beauchamp, and a number of others. Nearly every garden in Greensboro bore marks of the presence of the strange animal. Some people are afraid they will meet it along the road, but many regard the thing as a myth, although none can give any explanation at all of the presence of the tracks. It is said it has but little use for some colored people, and dogs are so afraid of it that they will not go near its tracks. The animal, the writer was told, passed through a porch near town, knocking out the watch-dog, but was so swift in its movements that it could not be seen. It left traces of remarkable speed all about the place.
That the “air-horse” did not confine his operations to Greensboro seems to be proven by a Goldsboro correspondent, who writes: “The 'what-is-it' kept our people guessing for a week or ten days, and some of our timid and nervous ones in of nights. None, however, had the opportunity of making its acquaintance or of meeting it in combat.”
The accompanying drawing was made by Mr. J.V. Hauck, the Philadelphia Bulletin artist, from descriptions given him. The animal, bird or devil is said to be about three feet and a-half high, with a head like a collie dog and a face like a horse. It has a long neck, wings several feet in length, and back and legs like a crane, with horse's or mule's hoofs. It walked on its hind legs and held up two short front ones, with paws on them. Those who saw the creature said it didn't use the front legs at all while they were watching.
For some time after the jabberwock's tracks appeared it is said several well-known citizens did not like to leave the fireside's cheerful glow after the shades of night had fallen. If they were called away late in the afternoon they did not tarry; they wanted to go home – and they went.
One theorist has it that these strange visitors are from the fathomless caverns deep in the earth, and that the upheavals caused by the great earthquake in Southern Europe set them free, and that they are thus, as Shakespeare says, “doomed for a while to walk the night.”
The Centreville Observer last week said: “Rivalling in mystery and wonderment the days when hobgoblins and grotesque figures followed in the wake of giants that were then supposed to abound, is the strange animal which for the past few days has infested the districts of Barclay, Sudlersville and Roberts. Although evident everywhere by its tracks, not a single person has laid eyes upon the creature, human or supernatural, whatever it may be. The tracks first became noticeable after the snow of last week, first in Sudlersville and afterwards in the two other towns. In Sudlersville and Barclay the tracks were mostly in open fields close to woods, althoguh they were seen right in the heart of the former place. Upon coming to a woods the tracks vanish, leaving the impression that the animal might be a gorrilla [sic] or some climbing creature. At Roberts only was the size of the creature anywhere near ascertainable, and then the facts were brought out so vividly and startlingly that the tracks were soon abandoned by curiosity ridden hunters. The tracks came from the woods near Roberts, passed across an open field and under a bunch of brush only about two feet high, without disturbing it in the least, and passed between two trees not more than six inches apart. The prints are almost eight inches apart and are shaped like a hoof, being about 2 ½ inches wide and a little longer. Some have believed that it is the evil one prowling about in their vicinities, but as yet no signs of horns, pitchforks, or other necessary accompaniments have been discovered. Persons of a less superstitious nature think that it is some animal that has escaped from a passing show and spent the winter there.”
Friday, September 23, 2011
The devil went down to Maryland (1909)
From the Denton (Md.) Journal, January 30, 1909:


Focus on productivity
The author is an economics professor at Korea University.
The excessive measures of the government’s income-led growth policy have hit the Korean economy’s weakest link: small businesses. With their low productivity, these companies can barely endure an economic slump, let alone the shock of President Moon Jae-in’s policies. As employment growth has slowed, more businesses are closing, and the income of the lowest earners has actually fallen.
In Korea, the service sector has lower productivity than manufacturing. Labor productivity, or the amount of output per hour, is just 45 in service industries, compared to 100 in manufacturing. The average productivity of the service sector in developed countries is 90.
Even in the same industry and field, productivity varies drastically among businesses. Some are thriving, but a majority can barely survive. Small and medium-sized enterprises with low productivity cannot endure if the government increases the minimum wage by 29 percent in two years and enforces new labor regulations.
When wages rise faster than productivity, companies reduce hiring. Small businesses have to deal with the shock by cutting other costs or raising prices. Government subsidies can only be a temporary measure. Businesses will hire more, and pay more, only when productivity improves. When overall incomes rise as a result, demand will rise, too, and a good economic cycle will begin.
The market economy develops when individuals work hard to enhance productivity, and the market rewards productivity. World-class football players make far more than average players, and all athletes strive to be the best. Poor-performing football clubs make less and thus pay players less. When the government intervenes and sets a minimum salary for all clubs, football clubs will fire players whose performances don’t meet the minimum salary. The government can provide subsidies to maintain their employment, but there won’t be a fundamental solution until there is better performance.
Labor productivity is affected by individual efforts, but more crucial factors are accumulated capital and technological progress. Labor goes hand in hand with capital and technology to produce output. It is hard for an individual born in a country with little capital and low technological competence to be as productive and make as much as those born in Korea or the United States.
If Lionel Messi played football not in Barcelona but in Argentina, his productivity and salary would be much lower. The average annual income of Cambodians is $1,400, equivalent to one month’s salary of a minimum-wage earner in Korea. This income gap is not because of individual efforts and competency but due to differences in capital and technology.
To enhance the Korean economy’s productivity, education and technical training need to be strengthened, and capital and technology accumulation should be accelerated. Public investment in education, child care, social overhead capital, research and development should increase, and regulatory reform and assistance must focus on urging innovative companies to make drastic investments on future growth drivers.
Fields and industries with especially low productivity invest in people and technology. When labor productivity consistently increases, per-capita income will rise, and so will economic growth. Productivity-driven economic growth will bring a good cycle of employment, growth and distribution.
The government has announced a new budget that includes more social security spending to promote income-led growth. It is only fair to provide more unemployment benefits and vocational training to protect the socially vulnerable, but that can only be a temporary measure to fend off the adverse effects of a policy with government money.
Adding public jobs should be limited to fields where an increase is necessary. Expanding fiscal spending without considering more effective policies would add to debt. Social security spending will only grow as the population ages, and when the pension fund begins to dry up, the burden on future generations will grow.
Resources for inter-Korean cooperation and reunification are also needed. While the government will need more money, a tax hike won’t be easy when productivity declines and economic growth slows.
Moon’s income-led growth drive is a policy that prioritizes improved distribution, and that is very important, but growth must accompany it. While some say that people can be happy with equality despite lower income, as seen in the people of Bhutan, the standard of happiness is different. People feel miserable when living standards worsen compared to the past.
Most Koreans wouldn’t be so happy living in Bhutan. If current policies are making the lives of low-income earners, jobless young people and small business owners harder, the direction should be changed, and a new breakthrough should be sought. The administration is listening to the voices of the people.
Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.
JoongAng Ilbo, Aug. 30, Page 35


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Less food, more dengue infections
– by Roli Mahajan
© Glen Morey/picture-alliance/AP Photo
Smoke caused by Australian wildfire in late December.
As temperatures rise and the planet heats up, both flooding and droughts are becoming more common. These and other impacts of the climate crisis will negatively affect the food security of millions of people, which in turn will harm their physical well-being. According to a recent report in The Lancet, one of the world’s premier medical journals, there are other health risks too. For example, a hotter climate will allow infectious diseases to spread faster. The authors warn that climate change is likely to undermine much of the progress made with regard to health gains in the past 50 years.
As several dozen researchers from UN agencies and other institutions point out in The Lancet Countdown 2019 report, air pollution is set to worsen because of climate change. An example is the smog caused by wildfires – as is currently evident in Australia, though this crisis is of course not mentioned in the study which preceded it.
However, air pollution is principally driven by the use of fossil fuels and dirty power sources. According to Nicholas Watts, the lead author, controlling it is probably “the most important thing we should be considering from a public health perspective”. Air pollution has caused 7 million deaths worldwide in 2016, according to the report, and the scenario will only get worse unless the energy sector changes dramatically. Related measures, of course, would also serve to mitigate climate change.
The report states that, unless the world meets the Paris Agreement targets to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius, children born today will experience a world that is more than four degrees warmer by the time they reach the age of 71: “The life of every child born today will be profoundly affected by climate change.”
The number of undernourished people worldwide has been steadily increasing since 2014, according to The Lancet. This trend affects children under five in particular. Consequences include stunting, hampered development and various health complications. Food availability, access and affordability all matter. A hotter climate will lead to poorer harvests, which in turn will cause food price inflation, the scholars warn. Their data show that, over the past three decades, global yield potentials have fallen – by three percent in the case of rice, four percent in the case of maize and six percent in the case of winter wheat.
Moreover, rising sea temperatures, severe weather events and ocean acidification are affecting fisheries. Fish is a source of protein for 3.2 billion people, with people from low and middle-income countries depending on this resource in particular. The researchers reiterate that people’s health suffers if their protein intake is insufficient.
Compounding the problems, warmer temperatures herald an era of infectious diseases. The climate is becoming more hospitable to dengue, a mosquito-borne viral disease. In recorded history, nine of the 10 years in which conditions made dengue transmissions most likely have occurred since the turn of the millennium, according to The Lancet Countdown study. It considers Dengue to be the fastest spreading disease, putting half of the world population at risk.
According to the report, “reduced labour productivity is often the first symptom of the health effects of heat.” It states that, due to higher temperatures, about 30 % more potential work hours were lost in 2018 than in 2000.
The consistent international pattern is that people’s resilience to the impacts of climate change depends on their wealth. The poor are always the most vulnerable. Poornima Prabhakaran of India’s Public Health Foundation, a public-private partnership, expects “few countries to suffer from the health effects of climate change as much as India”. The reasons she indicates are the “huge population, high rates of health-care inequality, poverty and malnutrition”. She notes that diarrhoeal infections are a major cause of child mortality in developing countries, with things set to get worse due to rising temperatures.
Prosperous world regions
The report insists that humanity is burning too much fossil fuel, with global carbon emissions still increasing. It also highlights that China, India and Southeast Asia are using far too much coal, with dire implications for air pollution. However, air pollution also haunts prosperous world regions, as the authors point out. Tiny particulate matter (PM2.5) is the most dangerous pollutant, causing serious cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. The report warns that – should PM2.5 remain at 2016 levels for another century – the average European lifespan will be reduced by almost six months.
Other health issues similarly affect the rich regions of the world. For example, Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean are most vulnerable to heatwaves because societies are ageing and non-communicable diseases are weakening ever more people. At the same time, the report points out that wildfires are becoming more common internationally, with India and China seeing the largest increase.
The report includes some good news. Achievements include:
- China has been reducing its reliance on coal,
- European air-pollution levels have been improving, and
- about half of all nations now have climate-emergency plans.
The authors also appreciate that health-care systems are increasingly being adapted to the new needs. They welcome these trends, but also make it very clear that much more must be done – and fast.
The Lancet Countdown 2019:


N55 ROCKET SYSTEM
N55 ROCKET SYSTEM, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2005
The N55 ROCKET SYSTEM enables persons to communicate their protest in a concrete way. It is a low tech, low cost, highly efficient hybrid rocket propulsion system, fueled by a mixture of polyethylene and laughing gas (N2O).
The N55 ROCKET SYSTEM makes it possible to distribute various things from high altitudes. For example, printed matter or plant seeds could be spread over a vast area.The rocket PROTEST, constructed to protest against large concentrations of power, can carry a payload of 2 kg to an altitude of approximately 5200 m, if launched from an angle of 85 degrees. The fuel will burn for 6 seconds, bringing the rocket to a maximum speed of 475 m/s. The N55 ROCKET SYSTEM has been equipped with a parachute and can be reused when a mission is completed. The ROCKET SYSTEM is part of the N55 SPACE PROGRAMME, which aims at creating space for persons and making space technology accessible and useful in everyday life situations.
Big corporations increasingly decide over and profit on vast dominions of human existence. Formerly common things such as land, water, the air (the rights to pollute) are being monopolised. Food is being polluted by GMOs introduced without any public knowledge. The traditional means of protesting through street manifestations and via formal channels seem inadequate for invoking changes in the present dangerous and undemocratic situation. As people in power fail to live up to their social responsibilities, and let populations down by favouring concentrations of power, the need for new means of expression emerges.
Relatively advanced technology is normally only available to concentrations of power such as governments or corporations, or a few highly specialised individuals. The N55 SPACE PROGRAMME, and the N55 ROCKET SYSTEM, is part of an effort to distribute and give persons in general access to specialised knowledge and technology.
PROTEST with launching pad and launch control box.
The version of PROTEST shown in this manual carries a payload of Superweeds: seeds of naturally occuring and genetically modified (GM) weed plants that if allowed to germinate and crosspollinate, will evolve into a Superweed that will be resistant to current herbicides such as Roundup. To counter the threat of genetic pollution posed by biotech firms, persons are encouraged to equip themselves with superweeds to potentially sabotage commercial GM crop fields. SuperWeeds are distributed by Heath Bunting, www.irational.org/cta/superweed/
Payload: Capsules with superweeds will be released once the rocket reaches its peak
The blasting bolt fixed at the center
of the payload section is controlled by a timer. The blast will cause
the rocket to divide into two parts.
There exist three forms of chemical rocket engines, defined by the form of their propellants: solid, liquid, and hybrid propellants. The first and most simple form uses a mixture of rubbery fuels mixed with crystalline oxidizers and often powdered metals like aluminium are used to increase the energy content. In the solid rocket motor a so-called grain made of this fuel is burned slowly to produce hot gasses under high pressure. The solid rocket is simple, but unfortunately it cannot be stopped once ignited – and the propellants are potential explosives that must be manufactured under rigorous safety precautions. Examples of use are most military missiles, and strap-on boosters like the SRB´s or solid rocket boosters used on the space shuttle.
Liquid propellant rocket engines are typified by high performance, high versatility and a complex design. Unlike solid motors they can be stopped and started many times and can be designed for reuse and multiple starts and stops. A liquid propellant rocket motor may also be throttled during flight. The drawback of liquid rocket propul-sion lies in the complexity of the engine, fuel and oxidizer surplus systems (that may include turbo pumps) and the resulting high cost. Liquid propellants may be corrosive and toxic chemicals, especially if they are to be earth storable. Examples of use are in most spaceboosters e.g. the space shuttles main engines and in most manned rocket applications.
Hybrid rockets are essentially designed to combine the best from both forms of rocket propulsion. The fuel will be a polymer like polyethylene LDPE or hydroxyterminaltedpolybutadien HTPB, and the oxidizer either liquid oxygen, LOX or dinitrogenoxide, N2O (laughing gas). The solid fuel is placed in a combustion chamber. It is machined or cast into a desirable form, most often with one or more longitudinal openings or ports. Combustion takes place in these ports when oxidizer liquids are sprayed over the top of the polymer fuel block. Downstream the fuel, just above the nozzle, the combustion completes and as in any rocket, hot gasses under high pressure is formed. This gas is then expelled through the nozzle where the gas reaches speeds in the 1500 - 3000 m/s range.
What makes a hybrid rocket very interesting is the safe, simple and cheap design. A solid propellant rocket may explode violently if a crack appears in the fuel grain. A liquid engine may explode e.g. during start if fuel and oxidizer liquids are mixed but not ignited until some mass of the mixture has accumulated. This most often starts a cataclysmic destruction of the entire rocket system and its cargo or crew. In conventional rockets these explosions occur when the design fails to control the rate by which propellants are burned and turned into hot high pressure gasses.
In a hybrid rocket the solid fuel and liquid oxidizer cannot be mixed any faster than the solid can be evaporated into combustible gasses. As a result the system is potentially much safer than any of the two first type of rockets. Most important hybrids still can be turned on and off, and even throttled by changing the flow of oxidizer.
In the practical world the liquid oxidizer must still be fed to the combustion chamber. This can be done using pumps or pressurized tanks. The most weight economic method depends on the size of the system and of the material that the tanks and combustion chamber are made from. Today ultra high strength synthetic fibres like glass, kevlar or carbon fibre are commonly available along with epoxy binders, so only in the most extreme size of rockets will the turbopump systems be superior. For low-tech simple systems, ordinary steels or stainless steel are quite suitable and very robust materials.
The oxidizer used for the N55
ROCKET SYSTEM is dinitrogenoxide (N20). It is chosen for availability
and safety. It is purchased in steel cylinders under pressure and can
be fed under pressure to the rockets flight tank. At 20 deg. C the
steam pressure of N20 is some 40 bars, quite adequate for supplying it
to the combustion chamber. All parts of the rocket are made of steel,
copper and fiberglass, are machined using simple machinery and subsequently
The oxidizer tank is the largest and most heavy part of the hybrid motor. Its stores the N20 oxidizer at very high pressure, and must be made with great care, since failure of the tank during filling and pressure rise is the most dangerous process during preparation of the rocket.
The tank is made from mild steel tube. The tube is cut to length, and is fitted with a forward and aft bulkhead. The bulkheads are turned into a section of a sphere to increase strength. This is done using a hydraulic press. Such endcaps can also be purchased, but with a hydraulic jack and a short section of the tank skin it can be made much cheaper.
At the center of both endcaps holes are cut for the main oxidizer valve and for the filling valve. Finally a skirt is welded on both ends to make it possible to connect the tank to the other section of the rocket.
Possible improvements of the tank:
The problem with the tank is the mass of it. Improvements must aim at reducing weight. This can be done in a number of ways. Reducing the very high margins of safety of the present rocket PROTEST is one potentially dangerous way. Instead it would be cheap and simple to give the tank a carbonfibre unidirectional coil simply wrapping it into a coil of carbon fibre to transfer radial forces from the steel to a much stronger fibre material. In a perfect design, only longitudinal forces would be absorbed by the inner steel tank. Relative to PROTEST this could take some 50 % of the weight away. It preserves the simple connections made in welded steel, and would have great effect in a slightly larger rocket.
To make the entire tank from
carbon fibre would reduce 80 95 % of the weight of the tank body,
but valves and connections would be a relatively great weight expense.
In a slightly larger rocket the valve can be radio controlled, and have its actuator onboard. This allows for in-flight premature cut-off restart and throttling.
The N20 oxidizer injector is machined from mild steel. It meters and controls the flow of the oxidizer. The six 1.5 mm oxidizer holes are angled to induce impingement leading to effective atomisation of the oxidizer. The complex two-phase flow of N20 cannot be predicted by standard injector calculations, so test using actual N20 is needed to understand the process. Extensive testing have indicated that a hole of 1 mm ( area 0.78 mm2 ) injects some 0.050 kg N20 pr. sec, and this figure being almost unaffected by the pressure drop. The PROTEST injector has six 1.5 mm holes, and its designed to inject some 0.650 kg of N20 pr sec.
Possible improvements of the injector:
In a slightly larger system a more complex injector can be used to induce better atomisation, possibly surpressing combustion instability and motor vibration.
The ignition of a hybrid motor is simpler than one would expect. In the PROTEST motor a pyrotechnic strand burner is inserted from one side and a pyrotechnic scuip or igniter is inserted from the other.The openings are placed just downstream of the injector above the fuel grain. Prior to launch, at T-5 sec, the pyrotechnic device is activated. Its combustion fills the combustion chamber with reducing gases and decomposing plastic fuel gases. Once the main valve is opened the gases mix, react and release more fuel gases from the plastic fuel and the motor is on.
Improvements of the ignition system:
None. During years of testing the ignition system has never failed.
The fuel for PROTEST is polyethylene. Combustion of this material is clean, efficient and predictable. The gases produced are mainly carbonoxide, carbondioxide and water. The mixture of 02 and fuel gases starts at the top, and as the hot gases flow down the seven ports of the grain more and more fuel is induced to the mix. The length to diameter ratio of the ports determine the fuel to oxidizer mixture ratio. As the ports gradually open the combustion rate reduces, and this compensates to some extent for the change in O/F ratio. Still there are some changes, starting with a relatively fuel rich mixture that gradually goes closer to neutral. However the N20 / HDPE combination is very insensitive to this change, exhaust speed vary some less than 10 % from a mixture ratio of 5 to a mixture ratio of 10 kg N20 / kg fuel.
The fuel grain is placed in the combustion chamber and is sealed to the chamber walls with two o-ring seals. These prevent combustion on the outside of the grain by stopping the flow of N20 here. Close to engine cut off these O-rings are no longer needed, and they partially burn with the rest of the fuel.
Possible improvements to the fuel grain:
PROTEST uses a
grain with seven cylindrical ports. The fuel residue can be reduced using
a more complex configuration, but the gain is limited. Other improvements
could be finding the perfect length to produce gases with non-oxidizing
The combustion chamber is made from the same type of tube as the oxidizer tank. It is not directly exposed to hot gases, but some heat transfer must be expected at the top, and near the nozzle. Because of the large (15 20 bar) injector pressure drop the combustion chamber is not as highly stressed as the tank. The fuel grain is inserted during fabrication and the combustion chamber is welded outside the grain.
Same as the oxidizer tank,
but less important. Secondary would be anything that could make the gasses
produced in the combustion chamber non-oxidizing.
In the De Laval nozzle of the PROTEST, the heat and pressure energy of the combustion products are converted into kinetic energy. In fact the purpose of the whole motor system is to supply the nozzle with hot gasses under high pressure. The nozzle is under very high heat stress, and also exposed to some chemical oxidizing stress. Due to the sometimes oxidizing properties of the medium, nozzles made from graphite and carbon may have very high regression rates. For this reason and for its ability for reuse, the PROTEST nozzle is made from cupper.
Maximum speed: approx. 475
m/s or 2600 km/h
Steel tube Ø 102 mm