As we once were The wartime emergency medical service and the future NHS
When Mr Chamberlain announced on September 3rd 1939 that this country was at war with Germany, the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) swung into action. This organisation, which was to influence the future structure of the NHS, did not come ‘out of the blue’ but was the result of considerable hard work, cooperation and negotiation between ministries, local authorities, organisations and the military, starting many years earlier.
Initial ideas about the impact of war on London surfaced in 1926 when a casualty scheme for the City revealed a woeful shortage of ambulances. Furthermore, their designs differed and not all could take standard stretchers. By 1928, the general concept, based on the First World War experiences, was to establish casualty-clearing hospitals in target areas with base hospitals in the country. Casualties resulting from air raids on London would require 36,000 beds.
Further planning followed the passing of the Air Raid Precautions Act in 1937. Much discussion ensued regarding which authority was responsible for what. The 1938 Munich Crisis brought matters to a head and the Ministry of Health took responsibility for hospitals, first aid services and ambulances. The armed services had their own hospitals but with access to civilian facilities. The Ministry realised it had no idea of the number of beds available in the country. The subsequent survey revealed the good news that there were 500,000 hospital beds, of which 130,000 were in mental hospitals. The bad news was that not all were in good structural shape: two-thirds were built before 1891 and nearly a quarter before 1861. Many lacked diagnostic facilities, pathology, radiology and operating theatres while catering and heating required urgent attention. At one London hospital, the legs of the cots in the maternity department stood in tins of oil to discourage the cockroaches from crawling up!
The Air Ministry anticipated that the Luftwaffe would attempt a ‘knock out’ blow in the first few days of war and estimated that about 100,000 tons of bombs would fall on London in the first fortnight of war! A massive number of civilian and service causalities would result - 25,000 casualties per day for the first ten days of war - thus some 300,000 beds would be required in Great Britain.
The Emergency Medical Service
The Ministry’s aims were:
- To create 300,000 beds in hospitals for civilian casualties and all sick service personnel
- To provide outpatient and hospital treatment in casualty clearing hospitals and in fully equipped base hospitals
- To treat certain types of injuries and disease in fully equipped and staffed special hospitals
- To provide adequate accommodation in hospitals for medical and convalescent cases
Two categories of hospital existed pre-war: independent hospitals and those controlled by the local authority with specialist units such as tuberculosis and maternity hospitals. The standards provided by the municipal hospitals varied widely. Some were so short of nurses that they started washing patients before 4am. For wartime purposes, hospitals were classified into two groups: Class 1 would carry out surgery and treat casualties, while Class 2 hospitals would provide convalescence and medical care.
The Ministry accepted that the current number of beds was inadequate for the anticipated casualties, service personnel and the usual range of civilian illnesses. The total would be increased by:
Sending patients home. On the declaration of a state of emergency, all hospitals, even some mental ones, were to discharge those patients no longer in urgent need of hospital treatment as well as moving patients from larger general hospitals in danger areas to more distant hospitals. These moves would free about 100,000 beds within 24 hours. Hospitals had to make their own arrangements to organise appropriate transport.
Additional beds. An extra 100,000 beds were created by ‘crowding’: putting up extra beds into existing wards. Some private homes were equipped and converted for EMS use.
Building hutted accommodation. This would be on existing hospital sites and would provide an extra 40,000 beds. The wards would be 144 feet long and 24 feet wide with kitchen, sluice room, two bathrooms, four WCs, sister’s duty room, linen room and the main ward. This would be 108 feet long and would provide 36 beds. However, if space between beds was reduced to 5 feet then the available space would accommodate 42 beds. This ‘temporary’ accommodation remained in use for many years, as post war doctors well know.
These measures would, it was calculated, provide an extra 290,000 beds. To support the system, casualty bureaux were set up to collect information about admissions, deaths, discharges etc. By March 1941 over 80% of hospitals were included in the EMS scheme.
This was far from the whole story. Many hospitals required considerable modernisation by installing lifts, improving operating theatres, laundries, kitchens and sanitary facilities. They also needed protection from bomb damage. Ground and upper floors required shielding from blast and splinters, while operating theatres required sandbagging against flying glass. Staff needed bombproof accommodation and, if off duty, access to basements, slit trenches or steel shelters. In the event, many hospitals were bombed. Ten London hospitals were evacuated completely due to bomb damage and a further 7 were closed for repair due to flying bomb damage. In total, enemy action destroyed over 4,400 hospital beds.
Inter-hospital transport was needed to move patients quickly away from the centre of attack. For short journeys, the Ministry arranged the conversion of 300 Green Line buses into ambulances with 8-10 stretchers. Outside London, other bus companies converted 500 buses. For longer distances, 340 train brake vans were converted into ambulance trains with 36 stretchers per van.
The Ministry divided the country into regions and appointed one of its medical officers to each. The London region was subdivided into 10 sectors radiating from the centre towards the Home Counties. Each sector had at its apex one or more teaching hospitals, which would triage patients before transferring them to peripheral hospitals. The main teaching hospitals and patients were moved away from the centre: e. g. Guy’s moved to Pembury in Kent.
First Aid Posts. Local authorities provided first aid posts, supervised by the local medical officer of health, and controlled by a local medical practitioner and volunteers. Mobile ambulance parties collected casualties.
Hospital supplies. The government, using the London County Council as agent, purchased large supplies of bedsteads, blankets, mattresses, surgical and hospital equipment, which were stored in regional depots. Hospitals were encouraged to increase and store supplies of drugs and dressings.
Laboratories. The Medical Research Council was made responsible for the organisation of wartime laboratory services. Vaccines and sera were stored in depots in different parts of the country.
Medical personnel. Medical organisations created a register of those volunteering to serve in the armed forces and devised a scheme for a doctor’s practice to be continued by another practitioner. By 1941, over 1,700 doctors were employed full time in the service, with some 560 employed part time and thousands employed on a sessional basis. However, the EMS and the Armed Services were remained short of doctors. In April 1940, all doctors were subject to ‘call up’, medical staff were recruited from the USA and foreign ‘alien’ doctors were registered to work in the UK. The shortage was such that even final year medical students were employed. The Polish School of Medicine in Edinburgh, 1941-1949, was established for Polish medical students who received training from Polish Professors.
Nursing Personnel. Because demand for nurses in 1938 exceeded supply, the Ministry set up a Central Emergency Committee for the nursing profession. It created a register of trained or partially trained nurses who would be available for service in wartime. Large numbers of auxiliary nurses and a special volunteer nursing service would support them.
Operation Pied Piper. The Ministry and the Board of Education were involved in planning the voluntary evacuation of schoolchildren, younger children and expectant mothers from areas considered most ‘at risk’ such as London and the coastal areas of East Anglia and the South Coast.
At the end of the war, the EMS was generally considered a success although mistakes had been made. One was that the sudden emptying of beds in tuberculosis hospitals, which resulted in infected patients returning to the community. Sick civilians paid the price of the success. Mental hospitals became overcrowded. Physically ill patients had to wait for admission, experienced delays in investigations and treatment in spite of empty manned EMS beds.
The number of casualties. Happily, this proved smaller than anticipated but left large numbers of empty staffed beds available throughout the war. As late as March 1944, there were still 40,000 empty staffed EMS beds. Consequently, the Ministry relaxed the rules to allow the admission of sick civilian patients up to 75% of the hospital’s normal capacity.
Displacements. Over 7,600 chronic sick and shelter derelicts, found in public shelters and rest centres in London during the air raid period, were moved to emergency hospitals in the provinces or coastal areas during 10th October–14th November 1940. Similar transfers took place in Southampton, Plymouth, and Cardiff.
Evacuations. Almost 3.75 million people were displaced, with around a third of the entire population experiencing some effects of the evacuation. In the first three days of official evacuation, 1.5 million people were moved; 827,000 children of school age; 524,000 mothers and young children (under 5); 13,000 pregnant women; 7,000 disabled persons and over 103,000 teachers and other 'helpers'. The evacuation procedure partially ceased in September 1944 and ended in June 1945.
Aftermath for the elderly. Elderly and chronic sick patients were evacuated to safer hospitals but were sometimes moved so often that they ended up in institutions akin to workhouses. In 1947, Dr. Sturdee, at the Ministry of Health, reported on the number and condition of elderly patients evacuated from chronic wards of hospitals in dangerous areas to institutions in safer parts of the country.
‘It was something of a shock to find that while the patients were being fed and cared for to the extent of being kept clean and free from bedsores, little or nothing was being done in the way of active treatment or rehabilitation. The common view seemed to be that the patients were ‘chronic sick’, and no treatment would be of any avail. They must therefore be kept in bed until they died, in five, ten or possibly twenty years’ time.’
What was the legacy of the EMS? Notable features included the regional organisations, the relationships between central teaching and peripheral hospitals, and the creation of regional specialist centres, regional blood transfusion and laboratory services. Less well-endowed hospitals benefited from upgrading, opening outpatient departments and the expertise of teaching hospitals. Medical education improved, doctors were able to move more freely between voluntary and municipal hospitals, and medical research stimulated. A wag once said that the Luftwaffe had achieved in months what had defeated politicians and planners for at least two decades!
Dunn Lieut. Col. C. L., The Emergency Medical Services, HMSO, 1952
Elliot Right Hon. W., Medicine and The State. British Medical Journal, 1:911-914, 1945
Ministry of Health, Annual Report of Chief Medical Officer for 1939-1945, HMSO, 1946
Sturdee E. L., Care of the Aged and of the Chronic Sick in Great Britain, Geriatrics, 2: 359-364, 1947
Titmuss R., Problems of Social Policy, HMSO, 1950
 Churchill commented in his usual inimitable manner that: ‘[One] particular night [during the blitz] 180 persons were killed in London as a result of 251 tons of bombs. That is to say, it took one ton of bombs to kill three-quarters of a person’.


A recent report forecasts the market for water flow sensors will be worth $3.1 billion by 2025 due to a heightened focus on water conservation. As sustainability concerns rise, flow sensors are advancing to monitor usage more effectively.
Let us take a look at a comprehensive overview of water flow sensor technologies, examining the diverse categories and applications both commercially and residentially through a detailed analysis of their underlying functions.
What is a Water Flow Sensor?
A water flow sensor is a device used to measure the flow of water through pipes and channels. It works by detecting the movement of water and converting it into an electronic signal indicating the rate of flow.
Water flow sensors are available in diverse sizes to fit various pipe diameters and can measure a wide range of flow rates. They are commonly used in applications like plumbing systems, irrigation networks, water treatment plants and industrial processes where continuous monitoring of water usage is important. Whether detecting leaks, ensuring equitable distribution or maintaining optimal system function, flow sensors provide vital insights into water management and conservation.
How Does a Water Flow Sensor Work?
Next, the question “how does a water flow sensor work?” must have popped in your mind. Let us find out!
The main components of a water flow sensor include a turbine wheel, magnet, and Hall Effect sensor. As water flows through the sensor, it makes contact with the turbine wheel located inside. The flowing water causes the turbine wheel to spin at a rate proportional to the flow velocity.
Attached to the wheel is a magnet that rotates along with it. Nearby is a Hall Effect sensor, which is a solid-state electronic component that detects the presence and strength of a magnetic field.
As the magnet attached to the spinning turbine wheel rotates, it causes a change in the magnetic field around the Hall Effect sensor. The sensor detects these changes and outputs square waves or pulses. The number of pulses is directly related to how many times the magnet passes by the sensor per unit of time. Since the rotation speed of the turbine wheel and magnet is dependent on water flow, the pulse output can be used to calculate the flow rate.
For every full rotation of the turbine wheel, a specific volume of water will pass through the sensor. The sensor records this volume by counting the number of pulses or square waves during that time period.
By measuring the number of pulses over a set time interval, usually one second, the flow rate in units of volume per time, such as litres per minute, can be accurately determined through simple calculations. This basic operating principle allows water flow sensors to provide a digital output corresponding to real-time flow data.
Applications of Water Flow Sensors
Water flow sensor applications extend far beyond basic plumbing and irrigation systems. These intelligent devices play an important role in ensuring efficiency, safety, and sustainability across many sectors.
In water treatment facilities, flow sensors are crucial for maintaining water quality. They allow operators to dose chemicals like chlorine precisely during purification processes. Minor fluctuations in flow can affect disinfection levels, so sensors ensure chemicals are added at the correct rate.
Similarly, flow sensors are vital for industrial processes that rely on water, such as cooling systems and boilers. By monitoring usage, facilities can optimise energy consumption and reduce waste. Environmental monitoring also benefits significantly from flow sensors. Devices placed in rivers and streams provide data that helps with flood prediction and sustainable resource management.
However, the uses of flow sensors go beyond these core applications. In healthcare, they are integrated into technologies like dialysis machines and anaesthesia equipment to regulate fluid delivery. This helps ensure patient safety and treatment effectiveness. Chemical plants rely on flow sensors to maintain the proper flow of reactants and solvents. This is important for preventing accidents and hazardous spills.
Flow sensors also enhance everyday conveniences. Water heater control systems use them to adjust heating based on demand to save energy. Your morning coffee might owe its quality to a flow sensor that precisely measures water for the perfect brew. Even vending machines employ flow sensors to dispense accurate water quantities and enable fair transactions.
From managing basic needs to safeguarding important industries, water flow sensors play a mostly unseen but critical role. With their ability to continuously monitor and precisely measure flows, these intelligent devices quietly underpin applications across many sectors. As technology advances, the possibilities for flow sensors are vast, considering the wide range of processes that rely on controlled water flow. Their contributions to efficiency, safety, and sustainability will surely continue to expand.
Types of Water Flow Sensors
There are several different types of water flow sensors that use various technologies to measure water flow accurately:
Electromagnetic flow sensors:
Electromagnetic flow meters operate using Faraday's Law of Electromagnetic Induction. A magnetic field is applied to the fluid passing through a conduit, generating a voltage proportional to flow velocity. They have no moving parts and can measure the bidirectional flow of most liquids.
Vortex flow meters:
These water flow sensors take advantage of vortex shedding - oscillating vortexes form when fluid flows through a bluff body, and the frequency is determined by flow rate. They are highly accurate, have no moving parts, and can measure liquids, steam, and gases. However, they are limited to certain flow rates and fluid densities.
Ultrasonic flow meters:
These water flow sensor types transmit ultrasonic pulses upstream and downstream to calculate flow velocity based on time of flight differences. They are non-invasive, suitable for large pipes, and can measure many fluid types, including gases. However, they may be impacted by acoustic noise or particles in the fluid.
Turbine flow sensors:
Turbine flow meters have a rotor engaged by flowing fluid that generates an electrical signal proportional to the flow rate. They are inexpensive, easy to install, and have a wide operating range. However, they are less accurate at low flows and cannot handle dirty or high viscosity fluids without wear.
Positive displacement meters:
Positive displacement sensors transport measured volumes of fluid mechanically and are highly precise, even for viscous liquids. However, they have moving parts requiring maintenance.
Coriolis mass flow meters:
These types of water flow sensors use the Coriolis effect induced by vibrating tube walls to measure mass flow rate along with density and temperature directly. They are extremely accurate and unaffected by other fluid properties.
Thermal mass flow sensors:
These flow meters apply heat to the fluid and measure temperature changes to determine mass flow rate with very low-pressure drop and high water flow sensor accuracy. However, they only work for gases and have no moving parts.
Also Read: Exploring Different Types Of Flow Meters
What is the avg water flow sensor price?
The water flow sensor price can vary significantly depending on the specific model and features. On average, homeowners and business owners can expect to pay between Rs. 442.50 to Rs. 1,598.99 for a quality flow meter.
Key factors that influence the final cost include the needed accuracy, type of liquid, desired flow range, materials, installation environment, and hygiene standards. More advanced sensors with wider flow measurement capabilities tend to have higher price points.
What sensor is used to measure liquid flow?
The most common type of sensor used to measure liquid flow is the water flow sensor. These specialised flow meters are designed to precisely monitor and detect the movement of water.
Flow sensors work by measuring the rate of liquid, gas, or solid flowing through a pipe over a period of time. This measurement is crucial for effectively controlling industrial processes and ensuring machinery's optimal performance.
Flow sensors can operate mechanically or electronically using ultrasonic detection. Some common varieties include differential pressure, positive displacement, variable area, magnetic, vortex, and thermal flow meters. The appropriate sensor depends on factors like the fluid's nature, viscosity, required flow rate range, and desired accuracy.
Is a water flow sensor analog or digital?
Water flow sensors can be either analog or digital. Analog sensors function mechanically by linking flow rate to a physical measurement like fluid displacement or pressure drop, while digital sensors convert flow properties into electrical signals using transducers for a digital readout.
Navigating Tomorrow’s Challenges with Water Flow Sensor Solutions
So, in case you’re looking for the best water flow sensors to digitally monitor your water usage, Kritsnam’s Dhaara Smart is a smart choice to consider. As a new-age water meter combining IoT and advanced sensor technologies, the Dhaara allows for easy remote water consumption management from any location. Through its integrated telemetry and battery-powered design, Dhaara Smart provides usage data even during power outages.
Kritsnam is enabling businesses to make informed decisions about water usage and conservation through revolutionary solutions like the Dhaara water budgeting app.
If you have any other questions like how to install flow sensors, water flow sensor maintenance, or other water flow sensor-related topics, please feel free to contact us - we would be happy to help provide more insights.


Explorers also understood the dangers of consuming only lean meat. Vilhjalmur Stefansson wrote as follows:
"The groups that depend on the blubber animals are the most fortunate in the hunting way of life, for they never suffer from fat-hunger. This trouble is worst, so far as North America is concerned, among those forest Indians who depend at times on rabbits, the leanest animal in the North, and who develop the extreme fat-hunger known as rabbit-starvation. Rabbit eaters, if they have no fat from another source—beaver, moose, fish—will develop diarrhea in about a week, with headache, lassitude and vague discomfort. If there are enough rabbits, the people eat till their stomachs are distended; but no matter how much they eat they feel unsatisfied. Some think a man will die sooner if he eats continually of fat-free meat than if he eats nothing, but this is a belief on which sufficient evidence for a decision has not been gathered in the North. Deaths from rabbit-starvation, or from the eating of other skinny meat, are rare; for everyone understands the principle, and any possible preventive steps are naturally taken."
"We were here able to buy some biscuit. I had now been several days without tasting any thing besides meat: I did not at all dislike this new regimen; but I felt as if it would only have agreed with me with hard exercise. I have heard that patients in England, when desired to confine themselves exclusively to an animal diet, even with the hope of life before their eyes, have hardly been able to endure it. Yet the Gaucho in the Pampas, for months together, touches nothing but beef. But they eat, I observe, a very large proportion of fat, which is of a less animalized nature; and they particularly dislike dry meat, such as that of the Agouti. Dr. Richardson, also, has remarked, “that when people have fed for a long time solely upon lean animal food, the desire for fat becomes so insatiable, that they can consume a large quantity of unmixed and even oily fat without nausea:” this appears to me a curious physiological fact. It is, perhaps, from their meat regimen that the Gauchos, like other carnivorous animals, can abstain long from food. I was told that at Tandeel, some troops voluntarily pursued a party of Indians for three days, without eating or drinking."I found a very good description of the symptoms here (article by Jessica Ellis).
"The mechanics behind rabbit starvation are fairly simple. Protein in the body is converted into glucose by the liver, and can be burned as energy. The liver, however, can only safely process a limited amount of protein at a time. If the body receives more protein than it can safely turn into glucose, the resulting strain on the liver and kidneys can cause an increasing buildup of ammonia and amino acids. The liver then flushes these excess byproducts into the bloodstream, causing dangerous and even fatal consequences.
In addition to straining the liver, protein over-consumption also causes various symptoms of malnutrition, including fatigue, nausea, diarrhea, and constant hunger. These symptoms occur because the body is being deprived of necessary nutrition provided only by fat, carbohydrates, and micronutrients such as vitamins. Symptoms will occur regardless of how many calories a person experiencing rabbit starvation eats, since the body is limited in its ability to process energy and nutrition from protein. Thus, a person can be eating an enormous amount of food, yet still experiencing weakness, hunger, and other malnourishment symptoms.
The possibility of rabbit starvation leads many health experts to counsel against some protein-heavy diet regimes. Although the exact upper limit for safe protein consumption is not widely agreed upon, some authorities suggest that protein poisoning becomes a concern if protein comprises more than 35% of daily calorie intake. Some suggest that high-protein diets should be monitored by a doctor or dietician to prevent rabbit starvation from taking hold."


In today’s article, we’re going to take a look at the three popular languages: PHP vs. Ruby vs. Python
We will check how they work, how they differ from each other, who uses them and how popular each language is.
At the end of this article, you will have an idea about which one to learn and which the best option is for each particular task.
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PHP: Most Popular Scripting Language for the Web
PHP (Hypertext PreProcessor) is a server scripting language designed by Rasmus Lerdorf, a powerful tool to create dynamic and interactive websites. It is fast, flexible, widely-used scripting language for everything from a simple blog to the most popular and dynamic websites in the world.
Advantages of PHP
- Free software released under the PHP license
- Easy to learn (Short learning curve)
- Large community of users and developers
- Provides extensive database support
- Offers great number of available extensions and source codes
- Allows execution of code in restricted environments
- Offers native session management and extension API
- A great alternative for competitors like Microsoft’s ASP (Active Server Pages)
- Can be deployed on most web servers
- Works on almost every operating system and platform
Disadvantages of PHP
- Not suitable for making desktop applications
- Error handling is traditionally poor
- Global configuration parameters can change language semantics, complicating deployment and portability
- Objects are CallByValue by default, which is the opposite of most languages and catches lots of programmers off-guard
- Generally considered to be less secured than the other programming languages
Who Uses PHP?
As of January 2013, PHP was installed on more than 240 million websites (39% of those sampled) and 2.1 million web servers.
A PHP script starts with < ?php and ends with ?> The default file extension for PHP files is “.php”. A PHP file usually contains HTML tags, and some PHP scripting code.
<?php // PHP code goes here ?>
Python: General Purpose Programming Language
Python is a widely-used high-level (but it also used in a wide range of non-scripting language) design for programmers to express concepts with fewer lines of code. It was conceived in the late 1980s and was implemented by Guido van Rossum.
Python code resembles the pseudo-code just like all the scripting languages. The elegant design and syntax rules of this programming language make it quite readable even among the multi-programmer development teams. It supports multiple ways of building the structure and elements of computer programs, including object-oriented and functional programming.
Advantages of Python
- Easy and quick to learn
- Runs in multiple systems and platforms
- Readable and organized syntax
- Offers rapid prototyping and dynamic semantics capabilities
- Great community support
- Easily construct applications by testing and importing crucial functions
- Reusability through carefully implementing packages and modules
- Object Oriented Programming-driven
Disadvantages of Python
- It doesn’t really do multi-processor/multi-core work very well
- Smaller pool of Python developers compared to other languages, such as Java
- Absence of a commercial support point, even for an Open Source project (though this situation is changing)
- Database access layer limitations
- Reputed to be slower than languages such as Java
Who uses Python?
- Yahoo Map
- Zope Corporation
- Linux Weekly News
Since 2008, Python has consistently ranked in the top eight most popular programming languages as measured by the TIOBE Programming Community Index. It is the third most popular language whose grammatical syntax is not predominantly based on C, e.g. C++, C#, Objective-C, Java.
Invoking the interpreter without passing a script file as a parameter brings up the following prompt:
$ python Python 2.4.3 (#1, Nov 11 2010, 13:34:43) [GCC 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-48)] on linux2 Type <"help<", <"copyright<", <"credits<" or <"license<" for more information. <><><>
Typing the some text to the right of the Python prompt and press the Enter key will output the text:
<><><>print <"Put some text here!<";
Based on Jobs Tractor which analyzed more than 45,000 developer jobs advertised on Twitter during the past 12 months, the results are the following:
- PHP – 8,238
- Ruby – 2,937
- Python – 1,587
Although PHP still has the higher statistics on this site, remember not to use statistics as the basis for learning or using a programming language.
Ruby: Interpreted, Pure Object-Oriented Programming Language
Ruby (programming language) runs with Ruby on Rails or simply rails, an open source, full-stack web application framework. It is a dynamic, imperative object-oriented programming language developed by Yukihiro Matsumoto in Japan.
It was influenced by Perl, Eiffel and Smalltalk. It a has dynamic type system and automatic memory management.
Advantages of Ruby
- Works on multiple platforms
- Can be embedded into Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
- A Very High-Level Language (VHLL)
- Offers encapsulation of data methods within objects
- Pure OOP (Object-Oriented Programming)
- Super advanced string and text manipulation techniques
- Can easily be connected to DB2, MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase
- Scalable and big programs written in Ruby are easily maintainable
- Has a clean and easy syntax that allows the new developer to learn Ruby very quickly and easily
- Ability to write multi-threaded applications with a simple API
- Offers advanced array class
- Able to write external libraries in Ruby or C
- Allows “reserved word” to be used as an identifier as long as the parser doesn’t perceive an ambiguity
- Better security features
- It has a debugger
- It has flexible syntax
- Powerful string handling
Disadvantages of Ruby
- Learning it can be difficult
- Lacks informational resources
- Slower processing time (CPU time) compared to other programming languages
- Development and updates are slower
Who uses Ruby?
- Google Sketchup
According to the Ruby website, it is ranked among the top 10 on most popular programming languages worldwide (such as the TIOBE index). Much of the growth is attributed to the popularity of software written in Ruby, particularly the Ruby on Rails web framework.
All Ruby files will have the extension “.rb.” Using the Ruby interpreter available in /usr/bin directory, you can run Ruby codes.
#!/usr/bin/ruby -w puts "Put something here";
Time to Ruby dooby do! It can take a lot of time, and be quite boring, to learn a new programming language. A .Net developer will jump up and say why should I even learn it? I am a professional .Net developer and my day job doesn’t give me time (and scope) to learn a new programming language.
But, it isn’t like that. You learn a lot with new programming languages especially when they are a refined version of other optimized ones. Ruby is that sort of language. I agree that the transition from being a noob developer (in a particular programming language) to a pro is arduous but you will appreciate the experience. As of now all that I can do is let you guys know that if you stick around with Ruby, then you won’t be at a loss. Just be positive.
What is Ruby?
Ruby, as I said before, is a refined combination of various programming approaches. Ruby is the perfect mixture of python’s easy to understand flow, Smalltalk’s elegance and Perl’s easy to learn syntax style. Ruby is a high-level object-oriented programming language (as is the case with most of the programming languages these days) which came into existence in mid-1990s in Japan. With time Ruby has started to become more dominant in the U.S. and Europe too.
Ruby is famous for its dynamic type system and automatic memory management. By dynamic type, I mean that most of the type checking in a Ruby program is done during run time which means you don’t have to worry about integer and string types. Ruby will do that for you. We will see more about this in a short example later.
The basic purpose of launching Ruby was to make it easy for humans to interact with machines and understand codes. Yukihiro Matsumoto, the father of Ruby, insists that Ruby was designed for programmer productivity and not for machine optimization.
Often people, especially computer engineers, focus on the machines. They think, “By doing this, the machine will run faster. By doing this, the machine will run more effectively. By doing this, the machine will something something something.”
They are focusing on machines. But in fact, we need to focus on humans, on how humans care about doing programming or operating the application of the machines. We are the masters. They are the slaves. – Yukihiro Matsumoto
What is Rails?
Rails is an extremely productive application framework written in Ruby by David Heinemeier Hansson. It is said that developing a web application on Rails is ten times faster when compared to that of a Java-based web application framework. Rails is open source (of course!) Ruby based framework that can be used for easy (and fast) database integration.
Rails is famous for over-the-top ideas which resulted in shunning conventions and picking up a dynamic programming structure. The basic application code and the updated database will always contain everything that Rails will require to execute a program from start to finish.
A Basic Ruby Program
See how interesting (and easy) things will get after this:
personal = “I don’t love my girlfriend”
I don’t love my girlfriend
Yep! That will actually be it to print an output in console. No initialization, semicolons and main methods.
Now, let us see a quick difference in programming between PHP and Ruby when we have to reverse a string:
Voila! Your string will be reversed in no time. See the difference in effort in both the programming languages. A Ruby based programming language will make it easy for you to write a program. It is more like writing in English than in coded language. It is the future of programming languages.
Advantages of Sticking with Ruby (and Rails)
I know the world of Ruby is big and I haven’t scratched the surface of it but a blog post will prove to be overly small to dive into the world of Ruby. Henceforth, let us directly go through the advantages of Ruby:
- Elegant – As I have pointed out before, this happens to be the strength of Ruby. As a programming language Ruby is super elegant and almost like English. It is this similarity to English that makes it easy for noobs to take on Ruby without being afraid of it.
- Concise and Powerful – Our example above itself explains how concise a Ruby code can be. As short as it can get. Also, Ruby is as powerful as any other language as it is Object Oriented High-Level Programming Language just like other trendy programming languages.
- Never Reinvents the Cycle – Rails (based on Ruby) is one programming interface that will never let you reinvent the cycle. It generates codes that can be reused over and over.
- Built in Testing – Rails is famous for its harness and fixtures which act as supporting codes that will make it easier for programmers to write their test cases. Also, Rails creates simple test stubs that can be extended by programmers.
- Dev, Test and Prod Environments – Rails smartly starts your project in three different environments namely Dev, Test and Prod. All three environments behave a little differently from each other and each complement the original software development life cycle.
You are not done yet. You really aren’t. Hang around with Ruby and keep riding the journey on Rails. Someday you will call yourself a Ruby Pro and who knows, your article might just come in handy for me. Ruby has its disadvantages, and the most obvious of them all is the that it is very new to this game. It is still evolving and has a lot to prove. Still, we know that it is going to go places.
Now, it is in our hands. Either we can wait and let it grow or else jump in and evolve as an expert when there is high demand for Ruby professionals.
If you prefer using proven tools and aren’t that hardcore programmer, read this article about what programming languages to learn.
So Which Is the Best Programming Language to Use and Learn?
The answer you’ll have from the most of the programmers is: “You can do everything with all of them”. All of them are good options. There is no real good or bad answer. It always depends on what you want to accomplish.
If you take a step to learn a programming language, chances are, you will use built-in frameworks to use for your projects. Basically, a web framework makes it easier for you to develop your application. Most sites have a common set of functionality (like handling sessions and data validation), and a framework is something that prevents you from re-writing this each time you create a website.
PHP has several number of developed CMS frameworks available if you already dived in learning it. The most popular PHP CMS are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal with most of them having loads of plugins. You can write new ones easily with a few days of patience and going through the tutorials.
There are others that are quite good too, but using the popular ones increases your probability of finding support quickly or finding that plugin you might need. For Python, there is the Django and CherryPy web framework, which give you quite a good tool kit.
If you go for Ruby, I think you’ll be a bit more limited (since that the language is newer) but its basic framework is Rails. You also need to consider which language offers the best support so that you can find answers quickly in case you encounter problems with your codes.
- PHP is the best language for creating HTML pages
- Python is a general purpose programming language. It can be used to build almost anything from web apps, crawlers, daemons, and desktop GUI applications.
- Ruby is best at creating web application of data entities quickly so that you can focus on the special functionality rather than on the query operations: insert, update and delete.
And that’s it. Hope you gothad an overview of which programming language to learn.
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The Art Genome Project
By Sarah Gottesman
May 20th, 2016
Originally found on Artsy.net
Artists invented the first pigments—a combination of soil, animal fat, burnt charcoal, and chalk—as early as 40,000 years ago, creating a basic palette of five colors: red, yellow, brown, black, and white. Since then, the history of color has been one of perpetual discovery, whether through exploration or scientific advancement. The invention of new pigments accompanied the developments of art history’s greatest movements—from the Renaissance to Impressionism—as artists experimented with colors never before seen in the history of painting.
Found in iron-rich soil and first employed as an artistic material (as far as we know) in prehistoric cave paintings, red ochre is one of the oldest pigments still in use. Centuries later, during the 16th and 17th centuries, the most popular red pigment came from a cochineal insect, a creature that could only be found on prickly-pear cacti in Mexico. These white bugs produced a potent red dye so sought-after by artists and patrons that it quickly became the third greatest import out of the “New World” (after gold and silver), as explains Victoria Finlay in A Brilliant History of Color in Art. Raphael, Rembrandt, and Rubens all used cochineal as a glaze, layering the pigment atop other reds (like red ochre) to increase their intensity. A non-toxic source for red pigment, the cochineal bug is still used to color lipsticks and blush today.
Ever since the Medieval era, painters have depicted the Virgin Mary in a bright blue robe, choosing the color not for its religious symbolism, but rather for its hefty price tag. Mary’s iconic hue—called ultramarine blue—comes from lapis lazuli, a gemstone that for centuries could only be found in a single mountain range in Afghanistan. This precious material achieved global popularity, adorning Egyptian funerary portraits, Iranian Qur’ans, and later the headdress in Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665).
For hundreds of years, the cost of lapis lazuli rivaled even the price of gold. In the 1950s, Yves Klein collaborated with a Parisian paint supplier to invent a synthetic version of ultramarine blue, and this color became the French artist’s signature. Explaining the appeal of this historic hue, Klein said, “Blue has no dimensions. It is beyond dimensions.”
Few artists in history have been known for their use of yellow, though Joseph Mallord William Turner and Vincent van Gogh are the most notable exceptions. Turner so loved the color that contemporary critics mocked the British painter, writing that his images were “afflicted with jaundice,” and that the artist may have a vision disorder. For his sublime and sun-lit seascapes, Turner used the experimental watercolor Indian Yellow—a fluorescent paint derived from the urine of mango-fed cows (a practice banned less than a century later for its cruelty to animals).
For brighter touches, Turner employed the synthetic Chrome Yellow, a lead-based pigment known to cause delirium. Vincent van Gogh also painted his starry nights and sunflowers with this vivid and joyful hue. “Oh yes! He loved yellow, did good Vincent, the painter from Holland, gleams of sunlight warming his soul, which detested fog,” wrote the painter Paul Gauguin of his friend and artistic companion.
While the color green evokes nature and renewal, its pigments have been some of the most poisonous in history. In 1775, the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele invented a deadly hue, Scheele’s Green, a bright green pigment laced with the toxic chemical arsenic. Cheap to produce, Scheele’s Green became a sensation in the Victorian era, even though many suspected the color to be dangerous for artists and patrons alike. The French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s bedroom wallpaper even featured Scheele’s Green, and historians believe the pigment caused the revolutionary’s death in 1821.
By the end of the 19th century, Paris Green—a similar mixture of copper and arsenic—replaced Scheele’s Green as a more durable alternative, enabling Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir to create vivid, emerald landscapes. Used as a rodenticide and an insecticide, Paris Green was still highly toxic, and may have been responsible for Cézanne’s diabetes and Monet’s blindness. Not surprisingly, it was eventually banned in the 1960s.
“I have finally discovered the true color of the atmosphere,” Claude Monet once declared. “It’s violet. Fresh air is violet.” The purple shadows and lavender specks of light that enliven Monet’s haystacks and waterlilies owe much to a little-known American portrait painter named John Goffe Rand. In 1841, Rand grew frustrated with the messy practice of storing paint in a pig’s bladder, which was the prevailing method for preserving pigments at the time, and invented a more practical and portable option: a collapsible paint tube made of tin. This enabled artists like Monet to paint plein air, easily transporting their color to outdoor locations to capture impressions of the environment, and in turn led to the production of nuanced, pre-mixed paint shades in tin tubes, such as Manganese Violet, the first affordable mauve-colored paint that meant artists no longer had to mix red and blue to make purple. The Impressionists—especially Monet—so adored the new hue that critics accused the painters of having “violettomania.”
The darkest pigment found in Old Masters paintings is aptly named “bone black,” and is produced by burning animal bones in an air-free chamber. While the Impressionists avoided black paint—finding areas of darkness to be filled with color—American artists in the ’50s and ’60s returned to black with a vengeance.
Frank Stella, Richard Serra, and Ad Reinhardt all created monochromatic black paintings, stripping the canvas of any subject matter other than the paint itself. Taken together, these painters prove that black is as nuanced a color as any other, capable of many permutations, tones, and textures. Speaking about his practice in 1967, Reinhardt quoted the Japanese painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai, saying, “There is a black which is old and a black which is fresh. Lustrous black and dull black, black in sunlight and black in shadow.”
Of all the pigments—Chrome Yellow, Scheele’s Green, Paris Green—that have been banned over the centuries, the color most missed by painters is likely Lead White. This hue could capture and reflect a gleam of light like no other, though its production was anything but glamorous. The 17th-century Dutch method for manufacturing the pigment involved layering cow and horse manure over lead and vinegar. After three months in a sealed room, these materials would combine to create flakes of pure white.
While scientists in the late 19th century identified lead as poisonous, it wasn’t until 1978 that the United States banned the production of lead white paint. In this era, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Ryman, and Agnes Martin turned to titanium and zinc whites to create monochromatic white paintings, while artists like Dan Flavin bypassed pigments altogether in sculptures that emitted white light directly.


Term used by President Hugo Chávez to describe the political process he has promoted in Venezuela since elected in 1998. The allusion is to the war of continental liberation from the Spanish led by Simón Bolívar in the early nineteenth century. To its critics, the Bolivarian revolution masks Chávez's personal ambitions and an increasingly authoritarian style of government. Those who offer critical support point to the fact that he has still not embarked upon a transformation of domestic modes and patterns of ownership and the Venezuelan elite remains entrenched. To his supporters—in Venezuela and across Latin America—the revolution represents a commitment to popular empowerment and the transformation of conventional politics.
http://www.alternativabolivariana.org/ Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) website (in Spanish).


The number of teens experiencing
Already suffering from embarrassment, these teens worry that they may soon become bald. Fortunately this rarely happens. Most teenage
Excessive shedding or thinning in teens is not normal. It is an indication that the body has gone out of balance. The hair growth cycle thrives on balance. Even a minor imbalance can have major effects on hair growth.
Determining the type and cause of the condition is essential in order to correctly treat the problem and restore proper growth. It is important to distinguish whether the teen is experiencing excessive shedding, thinning, breakage or bald patches, as each condition is distinctive and should be treated accordingly. Some of the more common causes are outlined below.
Birth Control, Vaccinations and Other Medications
Teens often start taking the pill for various reasons including acne, premenstrual cramps, mood swings and pregnancy prevention. Any medication can trigger
Oral acne medications that are retinol based can also cause shedding and other undesirable effects to hair. These medications can cause the body to store too much vitamin A and deplete biotin levels. These nutritional deficiencies can cause hair to fall out excessively. Because this type of medication decreases size of sebaceous glands on the skin and scalp, hair can become weak, brittle, dry and prone to breakage.
Stimulant medication for attention deficit disorder, and other medications used for psychological issues such as anxiety, depression, etc. are known to cause shedding or hair or breakage in some people. It is becoming more common for these types of medications to be prescribed to teens.
There have been reports of
Diet, Nutritional Deficiencies, Eating Disorders
During the teenage years the body demands additional nourishment to support the dramatic changes that are taking place. Unfortunately for many teens the diet is at its worst during this time. Junk food and fast food often replace home cooked nutrient-rich meals. These foods create inflammatory conditions that can hinder the health of the growing teenage body. The hair will not receive any nutrients that are consumed until the rest of the body is nourished first.
Extreme diets that are low in calories and nutrients are often used by teenage girls to lose weight. Nutritional imbalances can be created through typical teenage diets. Poor diet, eating disorders and mal-absorption issues can create imbalances that cause or contribute to
These are just a few of the many possible causes of teenage


NASA has a special treat for us this Halloween: Narrowly escaping the destruction of the planet!
Well, sort of. Through the use of their new computer program called Scout, NASA has determined that a potentially-dangerous asteroid will be breezing past Earth by a mere 310,000 miles. Rejoice! We’re going to be ok!
Scout is part of a new detection system that alerts us when a giant piece of space rock is on its way, hurdling towards Earth at thousands of miles per hour. Think of it like Domino's Pizza Tracker, but for things that could potentially destroy our entire planet and not just your body.
“Objects can come close to the Earth shortly after discovery,” he continued. “The main goal of Scout is to speed up the confirmation process... Our goal right now is to find 90 percent of the 140-meter asteroids and larger.”
Now, what would we do if an asteroid were to hit Earth? Well, scientists are still working on that. In the meantime, here’s a clip from the Ben Affleck’s commentary track for the Criterion Collection DVD of Armageddon, in which mercilessly makes fun of the movie and its director, Michael Bay. More reason to not put “landing a spaceship on an asteroid, drilling a hole in it, and blowing it up” on the list of “Possible Solutions for Asteroid Hitting Earth.”


Gendered Face of Climate Change and Environmental Effects
Both women and men are affected by climate change and environmental degradation. However, existing inequalities, limited access to resources, restricted rights, and the lack of women’s voices in decision-making increases women’s vulnerability to effects of climate change. Poor women in particular, who are dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods will struggle with the impacts of climate change.
Women are not just victims of climate change. They are powerful agents of change, with unique knowledge and skills. The empowerment of women to plan and implement measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change will make all our efforts more effective.
We promote the integration of gender equality perspectives and principles into policies, plans and programmes on sustainable development, climate change and disaster risk reduction.
We advocate for the inclusion of women’s participation in decision making on climate change at all levels.
We recognise women’s contribution as agents of change in mitigation and adaptation to climate change and seek to document and disseminate these good practices.
UN Women in Action
Rural Women and Local Water Resources: Empowering Women as Agents of Change
UN Women and China Irrigation and Drainage Development Center have partnered to design a project to enhance gender equality and women’s vital role in water management in Qingtongxia county of Ningxia province. The ‘Improving Gender Equality in Qingtongxia through Women’s Empowerment in Water Management’ project has provided training and advocacy activities for government officials in Qingtongxia to help them take measures to improve collective capabilities for women’s participation in local water management. The project has also carried out activities to raise local villagers’ understanding of gender equality and of the important role of women in water management so that women are empowered to play a lead role in managing local water resources. The project built on ongoing technology and infrastructure projects in the province to empower women to effectively and sustainably make use of new water management technology. Creative media such as cartoons and community plays were used to illustrate and create recognition of gender equality issues within rural communities.


Ransomware has been around for a long time. The first case originates in the late 80s with something called the AIDS Trojan– a simple floppy disk was sent to the WHO AIDS Conference in 1989. When the software it contained was opened, it demanded either a monthly payment of $189 or a lifetime payment of $378 to decrypt the files it contained. It was an easy attack to circumvent, in the end, and asked very little of the end users. Since then, ransomware has changed a lot- both in its tactics and its scope.
Up until the mid-2010s, ransomware was focused on mostly attacking individuals. Once the attacks on corporations began, however, the damages in money and affected people increased to unimaginable levels. In 2017, the largest attack to date happened in South Korea, when web host Nayana paid 1 million to the hackers who infested their computers with a virus called Erebus. It was clear back then that the landscape around ransomware was only going to get worse. In fact, the South Korean attack was far outdone by the recent Colonial Pipeline hack in May, which originally cost the company 4.4 million USD in bitcoin.
In 2020, we started to see the increase of something called Ransomware 2.0. Previous methods of ransomware have simply locked users out of their systems indefinitely until they pay. This meant that if the victims did not comply, the data was simply lost to them forever, so long as it remained encrypted. Ransomware 2.0 involves the hackers stealing and copying the data first and then encrypting it. Once the hackers have the data, they’re able to threaten to leak it to the public. This is an especially scary concept when applied to corporations, as it has been for the past years. Companies now have extra pressure on them to pay so that their users don’t lose faith in their security and end up hurt from the leaks. It is no longer just a loss of access to data, but a complete loss of privacy for that data. Unfortunately, that leaves end-users, and not the companies themselves, as the real victims of the breach. For instance, in December 2020, a cosmetic surgery group called The Hospital Group had patient data stolen which led to a leak of patient’s personal data, including photographs. In this case, it seems that personal data such as payment information wasn’t collected, but the intent to try and destroy the medical group’s reputation by humiliating and outraging its customer base is clear. Ransomware groups work on the assumption that corporations would often prefer to pay the money than deal with the fallout of data leaks, which can also be extremely costly. However, it is still discouraged to pay these hackers when the attacks happen- after all, if the tactics work, they will continue.
Protecting your data on personal devices is already a difficult task, but trying to control how companies protect your data is impossible. Companies strive to earn trust from their consumers, especially in cases where they commonly handle sensitive information. In retrospect, it seems like a natural evolution of ransomware to move from a lockdown situation to a hostage situation, with you as the unwitting victim. What’s in store for ransomware next? It’s unclear, but as long as Ransomware 2.0 continues to yield results, it may remain static for the next few years.


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Artificial Intelligence An Mit Perspective Understanding Vision, Manipulation
ISBN 0262730596 / 9780262730594 / 0-262-73059-6Find This Book
The broad range of material included in these volumes suggests to the newcomer the nature of the field of artificial intelligence, while those with some background in AI will appreciate the detailed coverage of the work being done at MIT. The results presented are related to the underlying methodology. Each chapter is introduced by a short note outlining the scope of the problem begin taken up or placing it in its historical context. Contents, Volume II: Understanding Vision: Representing and Computing Visual Information; Visual Detection of Light Sources; Representing and Analyzing Surface Orientation; Registering Real Images Using Synthetic Images; Analyzing Curved Surfaces Using Reflectance Map Techniques; Analysis of Scenes from a Moving Viewpoint; Manipulation and Productivity Technology: Force Feedback in Precise Assembly Tasks; A Language for Automatic Mechanical Assembly; Kinematics, Statics, and Dynamics of Two-Dimensional Manipulators; Understanding Manipulator Control by Synthesizing Human Handwriting; Computer Design and Symbol Manipulation: The LISP Machine; Shallow Binding in LISP 1.5 ; Optimizing Allocation and Garbage Collection of Spaces; Compiler Optimization Based on Viewing LAMBDA as RENAME Plus GOTO; Control Structure as Patterns of Passing Messages. [via]


Superhero Origins: Black Panther
The Black Panther first appeared when he, a tribal Chieftain of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, decided to extend an invitation to the Fantastic Four. Told that it would be a great honor complete with a hunt, Mr. Fantastic decided to accept on the grounds that he and his team could use a vacation. Instead, The Black Panther pounced at the chance to prove his skill by hunting the team. Initially introduced as a mysterious villain, he soon revealed his true beginnings and became one of the Avengers, playing a role as a force for good. Join WatchMojo.com as we explore the comic book origin of T’Chilla, otherwise known as The Black Panther.


You have been assigned a topic to research for your annotated bibliography. Below you will find information about the library including where and how to search for research articles. A sample search is provided to give you an idea of what the search page will look like.
If you are having trouble finding what you need please don't hesitate to Ask A Librarian (link on the left).
Do you know how to select the best resources for your project?
Learn more about evaluating for
The Education Research page is the place to find recommended databases for your searches. Below is a sample search in Education Source, the best place to start searching for articles on your education related topic. Follow these steps to run your search:
1. Click the Select a Subject drop-down from the Walden Library Home Page.
2. Choose Education from the options.
3. Now choose Education Source from the list of education databases.
You may have to login with your myWalden email and password.
4. Now you are on a search screen with three Search boxes. Break your topic down into just keywords and type one concept or keyword(s) per box, separating synonyms with the word OR within each box.
In the top search box type: new student orientation
In the middle search box type: college OR university OR higher education
5. Under the search boxes, click inside the check mark boxes for "Full Text" and "Peer Reviewed".
Here's what the search page will look like:
6. Click the Search button.
This is just a sample search. You can enter any of the topics in the first search box (learning communities, developmental education, etc.). Be sure to keep an eye out for synonyms; by adding in synonyms separated by the word OR you can capture different ways of expressing a concept.
Click on any of the Tutorial links below for additional help on specific topics:
If you need more information about the writing aspect of your annotated bibliography, please look at the following resources:


In recent years, discussion about economic concepts like inequality and income mobility has been everywhere. Thrust into the spotlight by the global financial crisis, they have rarely left the front pages thanks to Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century and a series of rolling financial crises in Europe. These days you can’t even enjoy your artisanal quail egg omelet and fair trade coffee without some bearded, tweed wearing, artisanal whiskey distilling, overgrown trust fund baby complaining about how unfair it all is, in between cashing rent checks from his parents.
When it comes to discussions of inequality though, one of the underlying assumptions that few are willing to challenge is that the drivers of inequality largely boil down to nepotism and inherited wealth, while the answer to most inequality based problems comes down to one idea: meritocracy.
What is a Meritocracy?
Meritocracy is a system in which the people who hold power (through democratically elected means or otherwise) are those that are most deserving based on individual merit. In common use, it is usually taken to be slightly broader than that – a world in which money and success are allocated, perfectly, to those who are deemed to deserve it the most.
In an increasingly polarized political system in the US, meritocracy – or ‘the right to rise’ – is often the only thing that politicians on both sides of the aisle seem to agree on. The ideal of meritocracy is so ingrained in the US that Americans are famous for their belief that hard work will be rewarded with untold wealth and success. But this belief is far from unique to the US. In Australia meritocracy has long been considered part of the national identity with politicians of all stripes often talking in jingoistic terms about ‘the fair go’.
For all the talk of meritocracy though, how feasible is it in the real world? What would be some of the major hurdles to implementing a more meritocratic system?
The first question that should arise whenever meritocracy is discussed is how is merit defined? There are 4 basic criteria that most commonly are thought of as contributing to merit:
- Work ethic
For almost all competitions where there are winners and losers – jobs, university positions or other – some combination of these traits will generally be used to decide a winner. To keep things simpler, let’s focus on the job market for now.
The first thing to consider when defining merit for a given job is that to have an accurate measure of merit, the criteria need to be modified for every position. Jobs requiring manual labor place a higher value on work ethic but little value on qualifications. Jobs in tech often place higher value on intelligence, but less on formal qualifications and, depending on the role, large amounts of experience can be seen as detrimental. Most jobs will require applicants to possess experience in one or more specific areas.
For the most part, this customization of criteria for each job is already being done – a job advertisement is essentially a statement of the criteria that merit will be assessed by. But the question is, are those criteria actually the correct ones to identify the best possible person for a given job? I believe the answer to that question is a resounding “no”. Let me explain why.
Let’s look at a common example that anyone who has tried changing sector, industry or country in his or her career will be able to relate to.
Imagine you have been working for around 10-15 years and have spent all of that time in one industry. During that time you have picked up a lot of useful workplace skills, spreadsheets, experience with various applications, writing skills, general how-not-to-piss-everyone-off skills and so on. Now you want a new challenge that will require a lot of the skills you have, but in a different industry. You approach a recruiter, bright eyed and excited by the possibilities, but despite your best efforts to sell your skills as relevant, the recruiter basically discards your experience as worthless and tries to push you towards a low level role or something in your old industry.
This experience is a simple example that reveals an underlying truth – if we were being truly meritorious, there could be no fixed criteria for merit for any job because there is no way to preemptively identify what combination of skills and experience will ultimately prove to be the most valuable.
The possibilities for what combination of skills and experience lead to the best performance in a role are endless. Many successful business owners do not have MBAs. Many of the best investors on Wall Street do not come from finance backgrounds. Some of the best NFL punters are ex-Australian Rules Football players. What people who excel tend to have in common is a combination of skills and experiences that allows them to bring a different perspective to a problem.
Yet, despite history proving time and time again that different perspectives are often vital to important insights, it is a rare employer or recruiter that will take a bet on a candidate with ‘unusual experience’ rather than a candidate who ticks all the boxes. The reason for that is simple – it is safer. Choosing the candidate that ticks the boxes provides cover (“I gave you what you asked for”) and it gives a better guarantee of an acceptable level of performance. The unusual candidate could be fantastic – but they could also be a complete flop who turns out to be way out of their depth.
Unfortunately, this is only the first hurdle for a true meritocracy – if merit is a difficult thing to define, it is an even more difficult thing to measure.
Once we get past the step of deciding what criteria will determine the most deserving applicant, the next step is deciding who best meets those criteria. A quick look at the application process for college admission or a technical job will give you an instant appreciation for the lengths that people will go to try and get an accurate assessment of an applicant’s true merit.
Tests, interviews and essays are probably the most common tools used to assess merit but all can be (and are) gamed by people who understand the system. Material for tests can be rote learned with little to no understanding necessary. Interviews are notorious for being poor predictors of talent, which makes sense when you consider that the most confident people are often delusional. Essays, aside from providing evidence of basic writing skills, are assessed subjectively.
Even if these tools for assessing merit were designed in such a way as to prevent gaming the system, these are still three very narrow tests of ability. As Megan McArdle explains, the experience in China shows that selecting for people who do well on exams gives you… a selection of people who do well on exams.
Assumptions and Prejudice
One interesting side effect of the difficulty in determining merit is it leads to people basing their assessment on completely superficial qualities (at least partially). A good dress sense, physical attractiveness, and being an eloquent speaker are just some examples of relatively superficial qualities people use to assess intelligence and merit. As frustrating as this can be for the unshapely, poorly dressed, mumblers out there, these are all things that can be improved and worked on (at least to some degree). Others are subject to prejudices that cannot be addressed – the impact of race on the ability to get interviews, for example, is well established.
Another concerning trend is the increasing use of someone’s current level of success/wealth as an indicator of merit. That is, if someone is wealthy and/or successful, they must be someone who is highly intelligent and works harder than everyone else. This line of thinking is dangerous for two reasons:
- Too much value is placed on the opinions of wealthy and successful people – particular on topics outside their domain. Anyone who has listened to Clive Palmer or Donald Trump speak should know that is a mistake.
- The implicit assumption made when you believe wealthy and successful people are fully deserving of their place in the world is that anyone who is poor and unsuccessful is also fully deserving of their situation.
Evidence of this thinking is present everywhere to some degree, but seems particularly prevalent in the US, where TV shows like Shark Tank are extremely popular and prominent CEOs are regularly asked for their opinions on public policy issues.
This belief system can largely be explained as the flip side of the optimistic view American’s have of their economic prospects. As this paper from the Brookings Institution highlights, American’s are far more likely to believe hard work and intelligence will be rewarded and yet are second only to the UK in terms of how closely correlated a son’s earnings are to his fathers (i.e. hard work has the least chance of improving your situation). If you truly believe that hard work and intelligence is all you need to be successful, you must also believe that people who are currently experiencing success have those attributes.
Best Person for the Job
Going back to our problems with creating a meritocracy, everything discussed so far has overlooked a key factor in this endless quest to find the most deserving – people are not cogs that can be simply transferred in and out of a machine seamlessly. The person who ‘deserves’ the job on merit (provided we can define it and measure it accurately) is often NOT the best person for the job. The best person for the job is often determined by qualities such as:
- how that person fits in with the team culture,
- their personality type, and
- how they respond to authority (or the lack thereof).
These traits are all key factors in how well someone will perform in a given role and yet none would typically be thought of as meritorious qualities.
This realization is not new. Employers and hiring firms have been pushing the idea of the ‘beer test’ (asking yourself which of the candidates would you most like to go for an after-work beer with) for some time now. But it does beg the question – what would happen if a company simply hired the ‘best’ candidates for each position without considering whether these people will work well together? Would that team be more productive than a team that hired less ‘deserving’ candidates but aimed to build a harmonious work place? The entire body of management knowledge (and every buddy cop movie ever made) would tell us otherwise.
One thing that becomes obvious when you start thinking about how a true meritocracy would actually work is how difficult it would be to implement:
- Many of the criteria we associate with someone being deserving of a role or position are subjective or exclude applicants who would in fact be far superior.
- Our methods of assessment are often deeply flawed, subject to gaming and our own prejudices.
- Selecting the most objectively deserving candidates is not guaranteed to provide the best results anyway.
Yet, despite the reasons above hopefully being enough to give pause the next time someone begins expressing frustration with the current lack of meritocracy, all of these issues are only really logistical problems.
There is a good argument to be made that we can and should try to improve on all of these things – that we should aim to get better at identifying the right people and refine our methods of assessing skills. We should pay more attention to team fit and personalities when selecting the best candidate. It is hard to imagine the world being a worse place if employers were more open minded about what skills might be valuable to their company and sociopaths were less likely to impress during an interview.
However, the next question is how far should we take this. What does a truly meritocratic society look like and is it something we really want? That is the subject of discussion in Part II in this series on meritocracy.
 You can easily replace ‘industry’ in this story with ‘company’, ‘field’ or ‘country’.
 Einstein famously worked at a patent office where his work often exposed him to the transmission of electric signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization of time. Exposure to these topics helped him to arrive at his conclusions about the nature of light and the connection between space and time.
 Steve Jobs often talked about the importance of a calligraphy class he took in shaping what fonts were best used in operating systems.
 Australia’s proclivity to tall poppy syndrome does have some positive side effects


More About Reindeer (or is that a Caribou?)
- Reindeer, whose scientific name is Rangifer tarandus, are semi-domesticated, slightly smaller than their wild cousins, and have a flatter nose.
A reindeer harnessed up for pulling a sled
Caribou swimming Tanana River
Milking reindeer, Point Barrow
Corralled reindeer at Mekoryuk on Nunivak Island
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University of Alaska Anchorage.


In 1924, Edmund Rossiter, a research chemist for the British Cyanides Company Ltd. (later to become British Industrial Plastics), developed a process for the condensation of Thiourea with Formaldehyde, first called beetle. The result of the process was the production of a “water-white” synthetic resin syrup. This was a major breakthrough in the development of plastics as prior to this, the phenolic resins used in the production of Bakelite had been straw coloured or brown. In 1925, processes were developed to turn this “water-white” syrup into white and pale-coloured moulding powders by combining the resin with cellulose pulp. These became known as Beetle moulding powders and were the first white ‘paper filled’ moulding powders to be produced anywhere in the world.
Bandalasta was the name given to a series of mostly mottled plastic wares was produced by the English firm, Brookes and Adams. The purity of the solours and the translucency of the material made for the unsual marbled effects and the appearance of stoney solidity. The following description was adapted from a Bandalasta sales catalogue from about 1927: “The synthetic resin was ground up with a suitable “filler,” and a dye added to produce the required colour. The requisite quantity of this powder was taken, the various colours being carefully weighed and blended by skilled workmen, the quantity being sufficient to fill the mould producing the shape required. The article was then moulded or shaped under a pressure of 2 tons to the square inch in hardened and beautifully polished steel dies, hydraulic machinery giving pressures up to some hundreds of tons being used. Heat was applied during the process that caused the resin to soften and flow. The heat and pressure was maintained for several minutes, when a chemical change took place, the resin hardened, and the article took the shape of the mould. At the end of this time the resulting piece of Bandalasta was removed from the mould and allowed to cool, and subsequent heating could not soften it again. The edges were then trimmed and the surface polished by special machinery and the result was the beautiful Bandalasta article that could not be successfully imitated by any other process.”
Because Leo Hendrk Baekeland brought all the key patents for producing the new resins, the naming “Bakelite” became the common word for all infusible and insoluble plastics.
In: Bandalasta catalogue, “The ideal picnic and dainty table ware”, Brooks & Adams, 1927, p.8.
Viewing by appointment. Location Berlin, Germany.


by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
Let Go of Your Big Fat Enormous Lie
- Draw an outline of the monster that David McPhail has created and photocopy enough for your class.
- Have students write down a lie that they would like to be forgiven for in the stomach of the monster.
- The students can then give the picture to whoever they told the lie to.


Henry Posamentier had success in a study he conducted using seismic geomorphology in the Java Sea while he was with Arco Indonesia.
The study used a combination of seismic reflection attributes, time slices and horizon slices extracted from 3-D seismic volumes to look at alluvial systems in the near surface Late Pleistocene sediments and the deeper Miocene of the southern Java Sea shelf, offshore northwest Java.
The plan view expression of these systems range from low sinuosity to high sinuosity and incised to unincised.
An incised valley develops when a river has cut into its floodplain sufficiently so that even when it is at flood stage, flow doesn't overtop the riverbanks. This leaves the formerly active floodplain abandoned and serving as interfluves. Incised valley systems are most commonly thought to have characterized extensive shelf settings each time a relative sea-level fall has occurred.
Late Pleistocene alluvial systems imaged on the shelf were active during periods of lowered sea level when vast shelf areas were exposed. Only a few of these systems are characterized by incision. The hallmark of an incised valley is the presence of numerous smaller tributary valleys that develop on the abandoned floodplain that feed the trunk valley.
These tributary valleys form in response to drainage of the floodplain and are characterized by longitudinal profiles anchored or adjusted to the level of the channel within the trunk incised valley, according to Posamentier.
Incised valley systems can be filled with a complex array of depositional systems, ranging from open marine to estuarine to fluvial. Incised valleys can be the sites of numerous stratigraphic discontinuities that punctuate the stratigraphic architecture, including:
- Tidal ravinement surfaces.
- Base of channel local erosional surfaces.
- Valley within valley widespread erosional surfaces.
It is not uncommon for incised valleys to be the sites of multiple incision events associated with successive sea-level falls.
Incised valleys have been the subject of numerous studies in recent years, he said. Such systems have been thought to be the most common response to relative sea-level fall.
Studies of incised valleys largely have been based on outcrop, well log and core data. Incised valley recognition has been based largely on the presence of multi-story channel fill, the presence of a significant time break at the channel base or the absence of a transitional facies between the channel/valley fill and the underlying substrate.
However, the most unequivocal evidence for the existence of incised valleys -- the presence of small subordinate tributary valleys to the principal trunk valley -- has rarely been used.
That will change, Posamentier believes, now that 3-D seismic data has been introduced into the process. In past studies coeval incised tributary valleys were not commonly recognized due to the discontinuous nature of most forms of data other than 3-D seismic data.
Posamentier said lowstand unincised alluvial bypass systems have not been well documented. They are difficult to distinguish from high stand alluvial systems -- and in mid- to outer shelf environments, a niche commonly occupied by lowstand depositional elements, their presence has not been anticipated.
At such times, unincised alluvial systems are consequently mistaken for incised valleys.
The shallow Pleistocene section Posamentier studied in the Java Sea is characterized by a variety of alluvial systems that are clearly imaged on 3-D seismic data. The alluvial systems range from high to low sinuosity channels, to braided channels.
In some cases these alluvial systems are clearly associated with small tributary valleys.
"These time slices illustrate the geomorphologic evolution of the Late Pleistocene section under the southern Java Sea shelf," he said.
Several slices showed a prominent channel system that appears to lie within a valley -- which in turn appears to be associated with numerous subordinate tributary valleys.
The tributary valleys are characterized by a dendritic drainage pattern, and in most instances extend only short distances away from the trunk system.
The width of the principal trunk valley is about three to four kilometers in the north widening to five kilometers in the south. A single channel that bifurcates in places and is characterized by low sinuosity dominates the trunk system.
Also, lateral accretion with associated meander scroll bars can be recognized within the incised valley.
This system seems to be fully confined by valley walls. The trunk valley can be mapped across three 3-D seismic volumes for a total distance of 90 kilometers and lies approximately 110 kilometers from the closest shelf-slope break to the south-southwest, resulting in presumed total valley length of at least 200 kilometers.
"We gathered a great deal of details on how this incised valley formed in the near surface Pleistocene that we can export to datasets where the data quality might not be as good," Posamentier said. "We're not prospecting at this level that's just about 100 meters below the seafloor, but with the superior resolution at this level we are learning a great deal.
"Here we have a near modern system that shows us what has been preserved," he continued. "We can then extrapolate what we have learned here to deeper systems where we are prospecting for hydrocarbons.
"Clearly, the higher the resolution of the data the greater detail we can see," he said. "In near surface sections we can detect bed thicknesses of one to two meters. At deeper levers where the data resolution is not as good we might not be able to image anything less than 15 meters."
Down In the Valley
The study also looked at horizon slices through the deeper Miocene shelf section, which is interpreted as constituting an unincised lowstand alluvial bypass system, according to Posamentier.
Conspicuous by their absence are any incised tributary valleys, such as those observed within the Pleistocene section.
"This Miocene alluvial system was emplaced on the exposed seafloor during a rapid sea level fall and flowed towards the southeast as indicated by the truncation of meander scroll bars to the northwest," he said. "The high-sinuosity channel was established first, followed by infilling, abandonment, and eventual establishment of the low-sinuosity channel, which flowed towards the south."
No true incised valleys have been observed on the 3-D seismic data in the Miocene section. This could be a result of inadequate seismic coverage or the shelf in this basin was not fully emerged during the Miocene -- the amplitude of sea-level change was insufficient to expose the shelf relative to the highstand water depth at the outer shelf.
Posamentier said the seismic used in the study was high quality data, so it is likely the shelf was not fully exposed.
In light of the abundance of unincised lowstand alluvial deposits observed in this study, this play type should be relatively common in the rock record. However, review of the literature reveals a virtual absence of documented unincised lowstand alluvial deposits, he said.
"Whether these deposits have been overlooked or misinterpreted is not clear," he said. "In the least, their clear under-representation in the literature should prompt a re-evaluation of previously interpreted incised valley systems on the one hand and a closer look at lowstand deltaic or shoreface systems that seem to lack fluvial feeder channels on the other.
"Unincised lowstand alluvial deposits should be especially common in shallow marine basins with gentle rap margins such as intracratonic basins and shallow foreland basins," he said. "Such basins commonly lack a necessary high-gradient seafloor, such as encountered at the outer shelf or upper slope on passive continental margins, required to induce valley incision."


Mountain ranges are quite spectacular, not only in beauty but also in the way they are made. The rocky mountains in North America for example were formed more than 100 million years ago when two tectonic plates collided and gradually pushed the earth upwards into the magnificent mountain range we see today. Similarly, Everest was made approximately 60 million years ago when the land mass of India moved northward toward the continent of EuroAsia.
The vast size of some of these mountain ranges is incredible. The top 6 longest mountain ranges in the world are:
- Andes- 7,000 km by 500 km
- Southern Great Escarpment- 5,000 km by 300 km
- Rocky Mountains- 4,800 km by 300 km
- Transantarctic Mountains- 3,542 km by 400 km
- Great Dividing Range- 3,059 km by 650 km
- Himalayas- 2,576 km by 350 km
Truly incredible! I’ve put together a collection of 24 beautiful mountain photos. Enjoy!
Credit to respective artists.
Huge shoutout to Tony for the majority of the photos. I hope that you enjoyed this week’s photography roundup! Thanks for stopping by!


Movie’s have made this sea disaster famous, but do you know which International Collision Regulation Rule the Captain of the Titanic, Captain E.J Smith broke?
Departing from Southampton, England on April 10, 1912, bound for New York Titanic’s owners were keen for her to deliver a good show of speed for the voyage. On the 14th of April, at 22.5 knots, near to her top speed of 24 knots iceberg warnings began to come in from other vessels. Iceberg warnings were common at that time of the year and Captain Smith being a prudent and experienced mariner altered course slightly to the southwest. At 11.40pm the lookout in the crow’s nest sounded the alarm, “Iceberg dead ahead”. The helm was put hard to starboard, but not quickly enough. Less than forty seconds after the alarm, the iceberg struck the Titanic a glancing blow, punching a series of holes beneath her waterline.
There is little doubt that pressure for a speedy Atlantic crossing clouded the judgement of a capable Captain. Have you guessed which rule Captain Smith broke?
“Every vessel shall at all times proceed at a safe speed” Rule 6
Proceeding at a safe speed means taking into consideration:
- Visibility (fog, rain, spray)
- Traffic density
- Manoeuvrability and stopping distances of the vessel
- Background lights at night time
- Weather conditions
- State of wind, sea and current
- Depth of water
- Navigation hazards (ice, rock shoals, channel markers, other vessels and any submerged floating objects)
- Limitations of radar
Travelling at a safe speed means that your vessel can be stopped in time to avoid a sudden danger. As the Skipper it is your responsibility to keep a proper lookout at all times and to be continually assessing your speed for safety. Slow down at night and in conditions of poor visibility. Slow down and look before turning.


Noise control fact sheet - Working quiet
A lot of the noise which you are exposed to at work can be reduced by 'working quiet'. Regular maintenance of plant and using a quiet method for a task can reduce the noise you and your co-workers are exposed to. This fact sheet offers some guiding principles and practical ideas on to how to work quietly.
Impact or pressure
Using impacts (short, sharp bursts of energy, e.g., a hammer) to do a job can be very effective, but is very noisy. Sharp impacts cause high peak noise levels, which can sometimes cause instant permanent hearing loss. Sometimes using a steady pressure can bring the same result, with a lot less noise.
- bend metal in a press or a vice instead of hammering; and
- screw type fittings are usually quieter to insert than nails.
Choose quieter tools or machines
Ideally, your workplace should have noise level information (either from the manufacturers or from measurements done in the workplace) for each noisy piece of plant. Using this, you can select the quietest plant for the job.
- an electric power tool may be quieter than a pneumatic one; and
- choose a silenced compressor or power pack.
Reduce noisy work
The risk of noise deafness depends on both the noise level and the time you are exposed, so choose methods which reduce the amount of time spent on noisy work.
- More accurate cutting, bending, welding and fixing means less need for noisy corrective work in hammering and grinding; and
- if two machines produce roughly the same noise, use the faster one.
Reduce noise output
Reduce Impact Velocity
Lowering the velocity of impact can reduce impact noise.
- Lower materials slowly to the ground or floor, using the proper manual handling techniques; and
- reduce the fall height of objects such as tools, offcuts etc. by using a bench, breaking the fall of the object or working close to the ground.
Spread impacts over a longer time
By spreading the impact over a slightly longer time, it is possible to do the same work with less noise.
- use a 'dead blow' hammer (filled with lead shot) or a soft face hammer; and
- place a wood block between the hammer and workpiece.
Many impact noises need never occur!
- use rubber floor mats to cushion noise of falling or rolling objects;
- treat work benches;
- line scrap bins with rubber; and use rubber buffers on truck trays, bin lids, gates etc.
Reduce working forces
Sometimes the system provides more 'grunt' than you need.
- when using nail guns, air hammers, et cetera try to reduce the pressure in the air line (using a regulator) to the minimum needed for the task; and
- avoid overloading machinery so that it "screams".
Damp the noise radiation
Damping the vibration, in the same way as you can damp the ringing of a wine glass by putting your hand on it can reduce the 'ringing' resonance of materials that have been impacted. The module on Building Quiet gives information on damping.
- lay rubber blankets or sand-filled bags on the vibrating workpiece; and
- use materials which radiate less noise than sheet metal, e.g., steel mesh, plastic for scrap bins, guards etc.
Separate the noise from the people
Even if you have to be exposed to your own noise, others in a workplace can avoid unnecessary noise if you are careful where you position your plant.
- try not to work in a corner, or an 'echo-ey' area, as this increases noise;
- work further away from others, even outside;
- use mobile screens or work behind partitions; and
- locate your compressor or power pack further away, outside or behind a screen.
Control access to noisy areas
There are some simple ways of preventing people being in areas where noise is occurring.
- restrict access to noisy areas by cordoning off and/or warning signs, in consultation with the relevant persons on site; and
- arrange to carry out very noisy tasks at times when other employees are not at the workplace.
Why machines get noisier with use
- Here are 9 reasons why machines of all types may get noisier with use.
- Worn or chipped gear teeth - worn or chipped teeth will not mesh properly. The shiny wear marks are often visible on the teeth.
- Worn bearings - bearing wear will show up as vibration and noise, as flat spots or cracks appear in the balls.
- Slackness between worn or loose parts - this appears as rattling noises, squealing from slack drive belts, 'piston slap' in motors, air leaks, etc.
- Poor lubrication - this appears as squeaking noises due to friction or excess impact noise in dry and worn gears or bearings.
- Imbalance in rotating parts - just like your car wheels, any imbalance in a fan impeller or motor shaft will show up as excess vibration.
- Obstruction in airways - a build-up of dirt or a bent/damaged piece of metal in an airway or near a moving part, e.g., a bent fan guard, can cause whistling or other 'air' type noises.
- Blunt blades or cutting faces - blunt or chipped saw teeth, drill bits, router bits etc, usually make the job noisier as well as slower.
- Damaged silencers - silencers for air-driven machines or mufflers for engines may become clogged with dirt, rusted out or damaged, so losing their ability to absorb noise.
- Removal of a noise-reducing attachment - mufflers, silencers, covers, guards, vibration isolators etc., which reduce noise, should never be removed except during maintenance, and then must be replaced.
How wear and tear affects noise output
We can understand how wear and tear affects noise output by looking at the 'bathtub' curve (see graphic in PDF version of this document). This shows what happens to the noise output of a machine over its working life.
Servicing needs to be carried out at Point C, before the wear and tear becomes serious. By doing this, we may not achieve a large noise reduction, as the noise level will drop back to the level at Point A or Point B. But what we will do is to avoid the period of high noise exposure up to Point D.
Not only this, but repairs carried out at Point D are going to be much more expensive.
WorkSafe study on noise output
WorkSafe carried out a study to see how this works in practice. (Reports ENC-6-94 and ENC-7-94 available in the WorkSafe library).
- A total of 11 power tools, including drills, angle grinders, sanders, a circular saw and a planer were tested for noise "before" and "after" routine servicing at a commercial power tool service centre.
- The average noise level 0.5 m away was 93.9 dB(A) 'before' and 92.0 dB(A) 'after'.
- Noise reductions ranged up to 7 dB(A).
- The average reduction was 1.6 dB(A).
- As expected, this average reduction is small in terms of decibels. However, it means that sound energy output before maintenance was 45% higher, showing that wear and tear was clearly on the rise.
- One machine with badly chipped gear teeth. Its noise output had risen to 100 dB(A), mostly because of a dramatic rise in gear noise level (it was not included in the 11 machines tested as it was not able to be repaired and re-measured at the time.)
- The average cost of repairs related to noise reduction was about $50, or about $30 per decibel of noise eliminated. This is cheap noise control, especially when you think of the expensive repairs and the noise you have avoided!
In other studies on specific machines, the Department noted significant noise reductions through careful maintenance work:
- The noise level of a common type of reciprocating compressor was reduced by about 8 dB(A), by adjusting the valve seating to improve the seal and adding "Molyslip" additive to the lubricating oil to reduce roughness in the piston stroke.
- The noise level of a pneumatic knife used in abattoirs was reduced by about 8 dB(A), by improving the balance of the rotor vanes and replacing bearings and a worn collar which allowed parts to rattle.
- The noise level of an electric motor and belt drive for an aluminium docking saw was reduced by 15 dB(A) when free running, by replacing squealing belts and worn motor bearings and drive pulley bearings.
How can I tell when my machine needs servicing?
There are three simple ways you can check whether any of the nine problems above are starting to appear.
Look - can you see signs of wear? Is the machine's performance down? Remember, however, that only qualified people may take an electrical machine apart.
Feel - some of the problems will show up as looseness or increased vibration, which you can learn to recognise by feel, especially in hand-held machines. Again, only touch the machine where you can do so safely.
Listen - your ears are a good fault detector - even with hearing protectors on. Listen for new noises, especially tonal ('whining') sounds, repeated impacts, or high frequency ('screech') sounds. Also, slipping belts will cause a screech at start-up, while a damaged bearing may appear as a 'clunk' during run-down.
Eliminate or reduce noise at the source by using a quieter method for doing the task, using a quieter machine, and doing regular maintenance on plant.
Instead of having to think of these points every time you do a job, work through the most useful ideas in consultation with others in your workplace to come up with a set of procedures for working quiet. Ideally, your workplace should have in place a system for checking and servicing the various machines and power tools and a set of procedures for quiet working methods.
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- Goth can also stand for a member of the Goth subculture
The Goths (Gothic: , Gutans) were an East Germanic tribe. They spoke the Gothic language. Jordanes was a scholar from the 6th century who wrote a summary of a twelve volume work by Cassiodorus about the Goths. Jordanes work is commonly called Getica. The original work by Cassiodorius was lost, Getica is the only surviving contemporary account about the Goths. According to this book they left Scandinavia via Gotland and settled close to the mouth of the Vistula river (in present day Poland). In the 3rd and 4th centuries they settled Scythia, Dacia and parts of Moesia and Asia Minor. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, they fought with the Roman Empire and later adopted Arianism (a form of Christianity).
In the 4th and 5th centuries, they split into the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths. With this move, they established powerful successor-states of the Roman Empire in Italy and on the Iberian peninsula (now Spain & Portugal). Traces of Gothic blood can be found in many people .
- Jordanes, Getica.