by George L. O’Brien
edited by Geoffrey Erikson
The tax-supported “public school”system is in trouble. There are chronic problems with discipline, mounting violence, declining test scores, and administrative costs spiraling out of control. Government schools continue to graduate functional illiterates, and US public school students’ math skills are now among the worst in the industrialized world.
How bad is it? The US has 27 million illiterates as well as 40 to 50 million people who can barely read at the fourth-grade level. The US is also among the worst industrialized countries in the areas of math and science. More than half of all 18-year-olds cannot find Britain or France on a map.
The defenders of the government schools claim the problem is a lack of money. However, in real terms, spending on education has actually risen over the last 40 years. The US ranks near the top in the world in per student spending – more than either the Germans or the Japanese. The cost per student in government schools is nearly twice that of a typical private school, yet the results are distinctly inferior.
There is so much dissatisfaction with government schools that many parents are paying to send their children to private schools. This is after having already paid for government schools through their taxes. It is a ringing testimony to the failure of one of this country’s most ambitious social experiments.
The public schools movement began in the 1830’s, led by Horace Mann. Supposedly, the goal was to ensure that every child would have access to an education. However, from the beginning there was another agenda, and that was to control what was being taught so as to create so-called model citizens. Public schools meant taking control of education from the parents and placing it in the hands of social engineers and the government.
Was there ever a popular outcry for government schools? The answer is no. Basically, the demand for government schools came from élites in response to two perceived threats to their notion of society: 1) the rise of thecommon peoplewho were becoming politically active; and 2) the influx of immigrants.
These political and intellectual élites promoted what was then considered an un-American value system in the government schools: Blind obedience to authority; conformity; equating patriotism to loyalty to government; externally imposing ranking of people in a military-like hierarchy; and perpetuating the myth that knowledge is a scarce commodity to be obtained only from an élite educational priesthood.
Many parents resisted these attempts by government bureaucrats to impose alien values on their children. Most ethnic groups also came to resent the way the élites tried to undermine and usurp their parental authority – the most obvious example being the Catholics who felt the need for their own schools.
Fortunately, the full impact of the government schooling system was mitigated by the decentralism of the 19th Century. Virtually every school had its own autonomous school board. These local school boards had the power to hire and fire teachers at will – based on their own judgments.
However, after the turn of the century, during the Progressive Era, there began a concerted attempt to destroy the system of local control through the unified schools movement. It took 50 years before most of the country was subjected to unified schools, which may be why the real decline was delayed until after World War II. The idea behind unified schools was that they would be able to offer a wider variety of courses because of economies of scale. However, the real goal seems to have been to remove control of the schools from the parents and place it in the hands of the professionalsin the school bureaucracies.
At the same time, there began the movement to require teachers to attend specialized teachers’ collegesand the dictating of mandatory state certification. The criteria for hiring was now graduation certificates from teachers’ colleges, rather than demonstrated skill in teaching. In many states, local school boards were actually forbidden from conducting their own testing of teachers.
Once the parents lost control of the schools, the schools quickly became laboratories for social engineering experiments. Educational fads such as progressive education were imposed on the helpless children in vain attempts to use behaviorist psychology to remodel children into some vision of “proper” citizens. Everything from sex education, to politically-correct textbooks, to forced bussing, all became methods of molding children into some ideal image. The legacy of Horace Mann would be the tyranny of government control and bureaucratic manipulation.
Centralization took another giant step in the 1950’s as funding of schools began to be moved to the state governments. The primary result of this was an explosive growth in the size and power of the school bureaucracies. According to Steve Buckstein of the Cascade Policy Institute, the Portland, Oregon schools district has 600 employees in its central office, or roughly one central office employee for every 92 students. By comparison, the Portland-area Catholic school system with 11,500 students has only five central office employees, for a ratio of about one central office employee for every 2,300 students. The government-run schools have 25 times as many people in their central office.
Ending the linkage between parents and the schools also removed all barriers to the takeover of the schools by the teachers’ unions: the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. These unions have made it virtually impossible to fire incompetent teachers. They have forbidden wage differentials for outstanding teachers or higher pay to attract teachers in subjects where there is a scarcity, such as math and science. In addition, since the administrators are also members of the unions, it has became virtually impossible to reduce the size of the bureaucracy. The state school bureaucracies have transformed areas such as curriculum into a political battlefield. State textbook selection has led to fierce struggles between various special-interest groups. Choosing history and social science texts is an area of constant conflict. In the area of biology, small groups of evangelical Christians have forced the “dumbing down” of science textbooks, while the denizens of political correctness have made history and social science texts nearly worthless.
Government control of schools has had a disastrous effect on racial minorities such as blacks. Brown v. Board of Education outlawed segregation in public schools, however, in place of parental control a new set of controls and forced bussing was substituted, which without question failed. It ignored the unique problems of each child and was detrimental to the education of all. Not surprisingly, in recent years it has been racial minorities who have led the fight to overturn these rulings. In cities such as Chicago, it has caused many African-American parents to put their children into private and Catholic schools.
Another failed social experiment had to do with IQ tests and special “tracking.” As John Taylor Gatto (New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991)put it: David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are age 13, you can’t tell which one learned first – the five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I will label Rachel ‘learning disabled’ and slow David down a bit too. I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won’t outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, “special education.” After a few months she’ll be locked into her place.
Stereotyping of students using standardized tests can create enormous problems when dealing with racial minorities.
Other experiments have included using psycho-active drugs to counter “hyperactivity in children” without the permission or even the knowledge of the parents. What is especially ironic is that studies now indicate that many hyperactive children are likely to grow up to be successful entrepreneurs.
A related problem includes the inability to expel disruptive or undisciplined students, because the state pays for warm bodies rather than educational results. It is not a coincidence that crime is a big problem in many inner-city government schools, but not a problem in the non-government schools.
Educationists and their unions have resisted parents’ desires for choice with everything they can muster. Tactics include using the state to decide what constitutes a school, imposing expensive rules and regulations on non-government schools, and using truancy laws to harass home-schoolers.
The central struggle, of course, is money. As long as the government schools take so much money from parents in taxes, it is hard for parents to afford to send their children to non-government schools. Attempts to change this through tax credits and vouchers have resulted in vicious counter-attacks from the NEA among others. As Gatto put it: School has become too vital a jobs project, contract giver, and protector of the social order to allow itself to be “reformed.” It has political allies to protect its marches.
Education choice involves returning control of education to the parents rather than the bureaucracies. History has shown that the system of centralizing control has resulted in poor results and a massive waste of resources.
The battle cry for choice in education is central to bringing about a free society. Government schools are not simply another “black hole” for tax dollars, but an institution which does actual harm to our children.
The only way the US will get quality education will be when control is returned to the parents who can have a real choice, versus the sterile monopoly of the government schools. Creative projects such as the Arizona School Trust, a private foundation which provides scholarships for low-income students, will chip away at the basic legitimacy of government schools.
George L. O’Brien is a prolific libertarian writer, policy analyst, lecturer and political strategist.
This pamphlet was originally published in 1993 and revised in December 1997. It is part of ISIL‘s educational pamphlet series. Click here for the full index of pamphlets online.


Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Musical Analogy to Math?
I'm not very advanced in my mathematical studies. I enjoy watching the "Numberphile" channel Youtube, but I often find the concepts don't stick. One of the concepts that doesn't even seem to make contact is the idea of imagining the topology of objects in space that has more than three dimensions.
But now - bear with my ignorance - I'm thinking I might have the corner of something between my very confused fingertips. And it's basically an analogy from music to spatial dimensions.
Click to enlarge the illustration, if you like. I'm putting all the figures into one image, to save myself time and effort, but I'm going to talk about each image separately.
Consider Fig. 1. Suppose that this note, the D just one step above Middle C, represents a dimensionless dot on a one-dimensional line extending forever in both directions.
To keep it company, add the notes F-sharp and A (Figs. 1a and 1b), but only as separate dots on the same conceptual line - the line, say, of musical pitches extending upward and downward from the origin (say, Middle C), clear out of the range of human hearing. You could say the integer units on that line represent the tones of the equally-tempered 12-tone scale, repeating through a succession of octaves, like a Base-12 grid that has a heavier line at every 12th unit.
Moving on to a two-dimensional plane, suppose you plotted points D, F-sharp, and A on a graph with any arbitrary origin point (Middle C would do). In this instance, the points needn't be integer units or lie on a single line. When you transpose those notes up a half-step, as in Figures 2, 2a, and 2b, the new notes E-flat, G, and B-flat are interrelated in a way similar to the relationship between D, F-sharp, and A. The process of transposing the three notes, as a group, would be analogous to using three-dimensional math (with complex numbers, involving the "imaginary unit") to rotate a group of three points on a plane while preserving the angles between them.
But there is more you can do on a two-dimensional plane than plot a bunch of dimensionless dots and rotate them. I'm not yet up to delving into all the possibilities, but a blatantly obvious one is to draw line segments of various lengths, connecting pairs of dots on the plane. Likewise, when two notes sound together, consecutively or simultaneously, they form an interval. For example, D and F-sharp (Fig. 3) form the interval of a major third; D and A (Fig. 3a) form a perfect fifth; and F-sharp and A (Fig. 3b) form a minor third.
As with the single points, complex-number math can rotate line segments, individually or as a group, on the plane while preserving their lengths and the angles between them. Likewise, a set of musical intervals can be transposed, or as it were rotated, into similar intervals in a different key, like transposing the D/F-sharp/A intervals in Figs. 3, 3a, and 3b to the E-flat/G/B-flat intervals in Figs. 4, 4a, and 4b.
Another operation those Numberphile videos taught me you can do with a two-dimensional figure on a plane is to draw a plane inversion of the figure - and inversion, like rotation, can be done in higher-dimensional spaces too. I'm really straying into dangerous waters here, way over my head, but as I understand it, one can discover the reciprocal of a number (like turning a fraction upside down) by plotting a point and/or a circle around it in relation to the origin and radius of an arbitrary reference circle, then graphing an inversion of that point and/or circle's position and/or size, via a bunch of conditions that don't seem too far-fetched when someone who knows what he's talking about explains them.
After that no doubt compelling description, I am sure you'll agree this procedure bears some analogy to the process of transforming the musical intervals in Figs. 3, 3a, and 3b to their inversions in Fig. 5, 5a, and 5b. In the latter series of intervals, we find the D on top of the F-sharp instead of under it, changing a major third into a minor sixth; the D above rather than below the A, changing a perfect fifth into a perfect fourth; and the F-sharp above rather than below the A, changing the minor third into a major sixth. It is as if, in my imaginary universe governed by very shaky analogies, the reciprocal forms of the previous intervals were plotted in reference to an invisible, or rather inaudible, circle of musical inversion. Gads, that's terrible. Or maybe, if you catch what I'm throwing, it's brilliant.
Nah, it's probably just terrible.
But wait, I'm not done yet! There's still Fig. 6 to consider. When I first started cooking up this series of analogies, I was thinking of relating three-dimensional figures to the musical triad - a three-tone chord that, by a little note-shuffling, sort of like reducing fractions to their simplest form, can be distilled down to an interval of a third (like D to F-sharp) on top of another third (F-sharp to A), or a third (F-sharp) and a fifth (A) above the root tone (D). But now, it occurs to me the triad could also, and perhaps more aptly, illustrate the idea of a closed shape in the two-dimensional plane. Then again, when I moved from one dimension to two, I re-positioned the three notes as points on a plane, not on a straight line. So, perhaps I can be excused for using the same musical example two different ways.
So, yeah, in the 2-D plane, you can do the same operations with a closed figure as you could do with one or more line segments. I didn't bother to illustrate the rotation principle by transposing the D-major triad (Fig. 6) into an E-flat-major triad, but based on what I did with Figs. 3 and 4, I trust your imagination can get you there. You could do the same thing with Figs. 6a and 6b, the first and second inversions of the D-major triad - and inversion really is the musical term that applies here; I'm not just letting the planar-inversion analogy get away from me here. Each of these triad inversions could also be "rotated" into E-flat-major, or whatever key you want, sort of like using quaternion numbers (like complex numbers, only more so) to rotate a 3-D figure in space. 6a and 6b are still D major, even though a different tone in the original triad has been stuck at the bottom of the pile; but they have been transformed enough to give them a distinct sound.
Nevertheless, I think the triad could also be useful in an analogy to 3-D space, with a three-dimensional figure (sphere or otherwise) being transformed in some way, perhaps quite a dramatic way, when subjected to spherical inversion. But where I really wanted to go with this comes in Fig. 7, where I attempt to extend the analogy into a higher-dimensional space (in this case, 4-D space). If you accept a triad as comparable to a 3-D figure, where do you go from there? To start with the simplest possible answer, you could go to Fig. 7, which combines sequentially or, Fig. 7a, simultaneously, three similar triads - in this case, three major triads, D major, F-sharp major, and A major. It's as if you took the D-major triad from Fig. 6, rotated it to reveal a similar major triad rooted on each tone of the D-major chord, then brought all three major triads together into one figure - analogous to a tesseract or a 4-D supersphere.
Attempts to visualize 4-D figures using geometric imagery can never be quite precise, somewhat like the limitations of a 2-D picture representing a 3-D figure. But with music, it is possible to hear three different triads, each rooted on a different tone of the first triad, all at once. If you play them all together, but in such a way that you can hear each triad as a distinct identity within the superchord - say, by playing each triad in a separate register - you can actually hear it as a chord of chords. You can, to drive the analogy home, make the 4-D figure pop out of 3-D space - just as certain optical illusions can make a 3-D figure seem to pop out of a 2-D illustration.
Fig. 7b suggests one further level of sophistication. By musical analogy, we have already generated an optical illusion of a tesseract or supersphere, as it were, a very basic 3-D figure that seems to pop out into 4-D. But why stop at a supersphere? Why not go for another order of strangeness, and have each rotated sphere that pops out of the surface of the original sphere, be not only a rotation but also an inversion? Why not, indeed, include two different inversions - ah, but here the analogy is stretched past the breaking point, since I don't think math allows for more than one reciprocal of a given number. Music does, which is why I guess music beats math. It actually makes it possible, just conceivable, to "visualize" (in your mind's ear) a superfigure that has 3-D figures rotated three different ways, each a distinct inversion of the other two, and that pop out of each other.
In higher dimensions still, I guess you could be building musical tesseracts on each of the tones of all three chords in Figure 7b, rotated into the additional triads rooted on A-sharp (B-flat) and E, not to mention the other notes in those triads. And since your chord has more than three tones in it, you can also invert it in more distinct ways - sort of like how a four-note chord (like a dominant seventh chord, D/F-sharp/A/C) has three inversions, including the one with the 7th at the bottom; and a 9th chord has four inversions; etc. You could get super-crazy in your exploration of higher dimensions in harmony, though to our 3-D ears the resulting tone clusters may soon stop sound as if anything new had been added.
But in case I haven't sufficiently beaten up on math at the expense of music, I should point out that I've only touched on one aspect of musical complexity in the above analogies. Nowhere have I mentioned rhythm, melodic shape, tonal design, formal/dramatic structure, contrapuntal texture, number and type of movements, tone color, dynamics, lyrics, etc, etc. Counterpoint itself forks into such layers of complexity as number of voices, free imitation vs. canon vs. fugue, inversion and retrograde, augmentation and diminution, etc. One of those Numberphile videos shows evidence that origami (the traditional Japanese art of paper folding) is capable of doing harder math than Euclidean geometry (that stuff with a compass and a straight-edge). Perhaps it shouldn't be amazing that a soft subject like music rivals higher-dimensional topology for sheer complexity. Maybe this makes it good news that the Voyager Golden Record, now traveling through interstellar space, includes music by Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and Stravinsky, among others in addition to greetings in 55 languages and a bunch of mathematical and scientific diagrams. If mankind's bright future ever depends on one thing on the Voyager spacecraft making an impression on E.T., my money is on the Brandenburg Concerto.
At least, saying so helps me feel good about being way better at music than at math. Fish out.


How To Treat Gingivitis
Gingivitis, which is also referred to as bleeding gums, is an inflammation inside the mouth of a person that usually affects the tissues surrounding the gums and teeth. There are a number of possible causes behind every bleeding gums issue, and one of the most common is the absence of proper oral hygiene.
There are lots of symptoms associated with it, which would include bad breath, pain in the gums, and bleeding after brushing. This gum problem should be treated as soon as possible, since it can lead to a more serious condition, which can also mean the loss of teeth and such.
The good news is that, there are certain steps that one can take in order to treat it effectively. Such steps can be taken at home, with the use of practical remedies to take care of gingivitis.
Assuming that you already have gingivitis, one of the things that you need to focus on is to practice good oral hygiene. However, since you already suffer from bleeding gums, then you should be careful in brushing your teeth.
Check the kind of toothbrush that you are using, for it is possible that you may have to purchase something that is gentler. This will reduce the incidence of the bleeding gums, and it will also ensure that wearing the enamel off your teeth would not be fast.
After brushing your teeth every after meal, go to your kitchen and mix a good amount of baking soda to a glass of warm water. Use this mixture to massage your gums with, in order to hasten its recovery. This should be done at least three times a day, so that you will be able to see improvements on your gums in just a short period of time.
Good oral hygiene is not the only requisite in order to treat or prevent gingivitis. You can also ensure that you get enough calcium, since your teeth needs it to be in top shape.
One of the best ways to do this is to make sure that your multivitamin supplement is loaded with calcium, as well as phosphorus. Aside from that, you should also make sure that you absorb enough sunlight vitamin each day, since your body needs it, in order to effectively absorb and make use of calcium.
If you have gingivitis and you are a smoker, then your bleeding gum condition is a sign that you should quit your habit very soon. This is because smoking can rub your body off important nutrients, which will make you susceptible not just to gingivitis, but also to other infections as well. Besides, nicotine will also make your teeth brittle, aside from weakening your gums.
By following the tips mentioned on top, you will be able to see your gums getting better soon. If you are worried though, do not hesitate to visit your dentist for it.


The full form of GST is Goods and Services Tax, it is an indirect tax. In Hindi – Goods and Services Tax is if we understand what it means, it is paid on buying such goods and using services. What is the full form of GST.
What is GST
Earlier in our country, different taxes had to be paid for many different things. Due to which people had to face a lot of trouble, earlier the central government had to pay separate tax and the state government had to pay separate tax. Like excise duty and entry fee had to be paid to the state for sending the product to any state.
In view of this problem, the central government removed all the taxes and instead started the system of paying tax only once. What we call Goods and Services Tax (GST) was established on 1 July 2017.
In this article you learned what is GST and GST full form. We hope that this information will prove useful to you.


“Alien Probe or Galactic Driftwood?” asked Scientific American in December 2017. ‘Oumuamua was the first object ever detected to have come from out of our Solar System, travelling far too quickly to succumb to the Sun’s gravitational pull. Astronomers had spotted our interstellar visitor less than two months earlier, already on its way out of the Solar System, and were scrambling to decipher its secrets before it sped out of sight. Was it a comet or an asteroid – or maybe an extraterrestrial spacecraft?
The Scientific American article was referring to Breakthrough Listen, a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project who had announced their plan to probe the mysterious object for radio signals which could hint at alien life. Disappointingly for alien hunters, they came up empty-handed.
Learn more about the mysteries of the Universe on the Science Focus Podcast:
- The most mysterious objects in the Universe – Colin Stuart
- What asteroids can tell us about our Solar System – Natalie Starkey
- Is there anybody out there? – Mike Garrett
Now, a year and a half later, the final nail has been driven into the ‘alien hypothesis’ coffin with a paper titled ‘The natural history of ‘Oumuamua’. “For all of the available observations that were made, the best answer that we have is that it was a natural object,” says Dr Michele Bannister, one of the paper’s authors.
And yet, the idea that aliens could be traversing our Solar System was tenacious, mostly because ‘Oumuamua was completely unlike anything we had seen before. For one thing, its brightness varied by a factor of ten, like a slow-motion twinkle. This suggests it could be a cigar-shaped object, ten times longer than it is wide, reflecting more or less light as it tumbles end over end.
That’s the familiar image of ‘Oumuamua, but in fact, we don’t know for sure what it looks like. Even the most powerful of our telescopes couldn’t resolve its shape beyond a point of brightness. The same glimmer could easily be produced by a pancake shape. Either way, no comet or asteroid in the Solar System has such an extreme ratio of length to width.
Over the short time it was within sight of our telescopes, astronomers around the world grappled with ‘Oumuamua’s identity. It looked like an asteroid. It showed no signs of cometary ‘outgassing’, the visible tail of evaporating gas as the Sun melted its ice. But then, remarkably, it accelerated out of the Solar System, faster than could be accounted for by gravity. Various means of providing this acceleration were floated, including a collision with another object and a combination of magnetism and solar winds, but the most outlandish theory was, once again, that it was an alien spacecraft.
In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Dr Shmuel Bialy and Professor Abraham Loeb, at Harvard University, laid out their logic to suggest that ‘Oumuamua could have been a solar sail. Just as the wind filling a ship’s sail is made up of a huge number of air molecules, the tiny impact of each photon of starlight bouncing off a large, thin solar sail could theoretically add up to enough force to power a spacecraft.
Read more about space exploration:
However, there is a key problem with this theory: the tumbling motion that revealed its extreme shape in the first place. To work effectively as a solar sail, a broad surface needs to be pointing at the Sun. “That hypothesis does not fit with the evidence,” says Bannister, though the reason for its unusual acceleration is still unclear.
So, if ‘Oumuamua is not an alien spacecraft, what is it?
When taking into account all the evidence, Bannister says that it becomes clear that it is a planetesimal: “This is a little building block of a planet that started its life around another star and has travelled to us,” she says.
Even if it is an entirely natural phenomenon, the chance to study the first ever object from outside the Solar System is exciting in its own right. “In many ways, this was the gravitational waves moment for people who study how solar systems form and evolve,” says Bannister.
Even better, we could explore the Solar System’s next visitor in much more detail after the launch of the European Space Agency’s Comet Interceptor mission in 2028. Launched without a particular target in mind, Comet Interceptor will park itself far out from Earth, waiting to chase an interesting comet or interstellar object.
“The next time ‘Oumuamua comes, we might be able to have a spacecraft waiting to go visit it,” says Bannister. “I’m really, really excited by that. It’s going to be so much fun.”


The Faith and Our Ancestors Game is an icebreaker activity with a genealogy twist. Players ask each other questions about how they think their ancestors lived.
Turn Back the Clock Theme
Here is what the old program helps said about this theme: “Turn Back the Clock and see what the world was like in the past. Learn about an era of your choice with songs, games, and transportation from the time that you choose. Whether it is the Space Age, the Wild West, rock-n-roll, or the Ice Age, each time period had something special about it. Construct a pack time machine to help introduce the den’s era skits or demonstrations at the blue and gold banquet. Whatever you choose, find the best in your time period and share it with others. The boys can work on the Heritages belt loop and pin this month.”
“When I Was Young” can be used as one of the gathering activities for any meeting centered around a history theme or a photography or cinema theme. This also works well for a Blue and Gold banquet.
This is an icebreaker game. It would also work well with any activity relating to personal history or storytelling. I think it could also be worked into a discussion about honesty.
If you are doing something related to forestry, you can make these tree shaped snacks to go with the theme. Or make them for something related to family trees.
Cub Scouts can make this simple neckerchief on their own. Use it as a gathering activity with the Turn Back the Clock theme.
The core value for the month of February is Resourcefulness. A February supplemental meeting plan theme called Turn Back the Clock has recently been posted to the BSA website. This plan assumes that your February Pack meeting will be your annual Pack Blue and Gold banquet.
Helping Scouts look back at their family heritage fits in with February’s Turn Back the Time program theme. Scouts can download this family tree template to write in their family back to their great grandparents.
The My Story Mystery Game is a great way to get to know some “history” about a group of individuals. It makes a great icebreaker. It can also serve as an introduction to a discussion about oral history and storytelling.
The idea is to make a den time capsule which they add to from time to time – maybe every year at Blue and Gold time and after summer camp or when they earn their rank or do something special. Then, when they cross over to Boy Scouts, they open the time capsule and see […]


Sazae-do is a construction equally spectacular outside as it is on the inside. Its unusual appearance is due to the fact that there are no floors inside, just a double-helix staircase, an architecture unique in Japan.
The building was designed more than 200 yeas ago by the priest Ikudou, who inspired by an English book decided to use the double-helix staircase to create a temple that will be the equivalent of a pilgrimage to 33 Kannon temples. The visitors were climbing the staircase, reaching the top and descending on a unique, one-way path, while passing by each of the 33 statues. The building is perfectly preserved and can be visited inside, just the statues were removed some time after the Meiji Restoration.
Yesterday’s Japan Photo:


- Supreme Court has sought the Election Commission’s view on a petition demanding an audit of the source code, which is considered the brain of the EVMs.
- Source code is the list of instructions that cause the computer to display screens, record votes, tally votes, and perform all other functions both visible and invisible. For example, when the voter presses the VOTE button, that action triggers a list of instructions for the machine to follow internally.
- The petition demanded that a public independent body, other than the manufacturers of the machine, must examine the software and ensure that a hash function (a technical term which means a lock to the software) is maintained for each machine’s source code. By doing so, the petitioner claimed that if the software of the machine has been tampered with, the hash function will change automatically providing proof that the machine has been tampered with.
- EVMs are electronic voting machines which enable the voter with a button for each choice. It is attached by a cable to an electronic ballot box.It comprises of two units – control unit and balloting unit.The control unit is with the Election Commission selected polling officer while the Balloting Unit is in the voting section into which the voter enters to cast their vote.
- The VVPAT, or Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail, is an EVM-connected verification printer device.It allows voters to verify if their vote has been cast correctly by leaving a paper trail of the vote cast.
2 min read


No one knows for certain when the use of children's Ramadan lanterns began, but it is a very old Egyptian tradition. Indeed, lanterns and lamps of various kinds, of many hues and degrees of brightness, and even both real and imaginary, have always been special to Egypt. For centuries before the coming of electricity, Cairo itself was noted for its spectacular use of lanterns to illuminate the city, especially during the holy month of Ramadan.
Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim lunar year, is a time of fasting, blessings and prayers. It also commemorates the revelation of the first verses of the Qur'an to the Prophet Muhammad.
As a way of giving thanks to God during this holy month, and as a way of unifying the worldwide community of believers, Muslims - with special exceptions for the sick, nursing mothers, pregnant women and travelers - spend the daylight hours fasting. The hours of the night, until dawn, are marked by prayers, ceremonial meals and celebration of the day's spiritual victory over human desires. After sunset, streets and squares all over the Muslim world are thronged with people out buying food after the long day's fast, or visiting friends, or preparing for sahur, the last meal of the night, which will be taken before dawn. It is then that young Cairenes, allowed to stay up late because of Ramadan, traditionally gather in groups of three or four to go out among the crowds, swinging their glowing lanterns and chanting their ancient song of Ramadan - just as children in other lands go caroling - hoping to receive in return a few nuts or sweets for their vocal efforts.
Passed on by children from generation to generation, the traditional song, in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, accompanies the swinging of the lanterns in the little ones' hands. It goes like this:
Wahawi, ya wahawi
You have gone, O Sha'ban,
You have come, O Ramadan,
The daughter of the Sultan
is wearing her caftan,
For God the forgiver
Give us this season's gift.
Some believe that the children's lantern song comes all the way from Pharaonic times, like the ancient Egyptian song called O-Faleh in the Pharaonic tongue and al-Bahr Sa'id in Arabic (meaning "The River Has Risen"). In the days before the Aswan Dam was built, that song was sung by groups out in small boats on the night the Nile reached the peak of its annual flood. Certainly, the lantern song is very old, and very Egyptian.
The opening lines - "Wahawi ya, wahawi iyyahah" - have no known meaning. "You have gone, O Sha'ban" refers to the month that comes before Ramadan in the Muslims' lunar hijri calendar, and "the daughter of the Sultan is wearing her caftan" means she is dressed in the garment worn when going out, maybe to the mosque. "Give us this season's gift" refers to the small presents children receive from family and friends at the time of the 'Id or holiday that follows the month of fasting.
In the days leading up to Ramadan, children become more insistent about having a lantern; many can hardly wait to start swinging and singing - for what child, from its earliest years, is not attracted by a glowing, magical lantern? Yet Cairo children may be the most "lantern-struck" of all: Recent research by Dr. Marsin Mahdi of Harvard University indicates that Scheherezade's 'Alaa' al-Din (Aladdin) of the magic lamp may well have been a Cairo boy.
One week before Ramadan begins, part of Ahmad Maher Street, for most of the year a humble thoroughfare in the old medieval quarter of Cairo, is transformed. Usually home to tinsmiths, marble-cutters and makers of mousetraps, for one glorious month it becomes "The Street of the Lanterns."
To get there, you turn off Port Said Street in front of the Museum of Islamic Art, into Ahmad Maher Street, pass the central police headquarters and walk for 10 minutes or so toward the great 11th-century city gate, Bab Zuwaylah - a stone's throw from the famous Tentmaker's Bazaar (See Aramco World, November-December 1986).
Just outside the massive medieval gate, you will find the facades of dozens of small shops festooned with thousands upon thousands of Ramadan lanterns, small, medium and big ones, suspended from crossbars or strung up on poles, waiting to delight the hearts of young Muslim Cairenes.
The lantern-makers themselves are very humble people, often working in small rooms, in corners, in alcoves or simply under corrugated iron shelters. The work of producing the tens of thousands of lanterns required to meet demand during the season usually begins about nine months before Ramadan. Sometimes entire families spend their lives, from generation to generation, working in the various aspects of the lantern business - like Said Hanefy Diab, Salama Hanefy Diab and Sayed Hanefy Diab, shown on these pages.
Mahmoud el Said, now 25 years old, has been making lanterns since he was 10. In his small dark room within the shadow of Bab Zuwaylah, he sits cross-legged day after day in front of a constantly burning blue flame with Wagih, his 15-year old assistant, at his side.
All day long Mahmoud wields his soldering iron like a medieval magician's wand, back and forth, deftly creating lantern after lantern. Each fragile lantern-frame is made from thin strips of tin usually cut from old tin cans.
Pieces of hand-colored glass are then inserted into the frame and finally, when a lighted candle is placed inside, the lantern glows with translucent beauty - at least for the few weeks of Ramadan, for they are not meant to last longer.
Each day, in every shop and workshop, dozens of lamps of different designs are made and then carefully stored away in wooden crates, or strung from floor to ceiling, in readiness for the season. Most of them are no more than about 25 centimeters (10 inches) high, but others can be enormous constructions as much as 150 centimeters tall (almost five feet), like Mahmoud's "Bride of the Nile," destined to shine in a five-star hotel.
Only the lantern-makers know all the designs, manufacturing secrets and, above all, the names of their magical lanterns. New designs are sometimes created to commemorate special events: A special lantern named "Farouk," after the late Egyptian king, was created many years ago when he was a boy. One of Mahmoud's smallest is called Musa, or "Moses"; a much bigger one is Shaqqat Battikhah Kabirah ("A Big Piece of Watermelon"), bigger still is Najmat al-Bahr ("The Star of the Sea"), which waits in his shop to glow in the night and gladden the heart of some child, once the holy month arrives.
These odd and endearing names you will never know unless you ask; they are a part of childhood fantasy, echoes of the magical lanterns in the children's own stories, like the tale about the old man who polished his lantern until the good 'Afrakush appeared.
Until the end of the last century, there were very practical uses for lamps and lanterns in Cairo, often prescribed by laws going back, some say, to the very first Pharaonic towns, or niwits.
A niwit was usually created by laying out a single main street running due north and south and then a single cross-street, from east to west, all set within a circle of protecting walls. Al-Qahira (Cairo) itself, the original private palace-city of the founding Fatimid rulers of Egypt, was laid out in this way: a single street surrounded by a ring of protecting walls. To this day, the old north-south main street still exists, twisting and turning through the medieval city, just as it has for a thousand years.
The Qasabah, the city center or Main Street, of al-Qahira came to be known as al-Tariq al-Sultani, or the Sultan's Way. The street led, as it still does, from the main entrance gates on the northern side, right across the city to the opposite southern entrance of Bab Zuwaylah - where most of the lantern-makers are found.
Al-Tariq al-Sultani later became known as al-Shari' al-Sultani, and remained the main street of the city. Over the centuries, individual houses and harahs, or multi-family compounds of homes, were built in the area. These settlements were joined to al-Shari' al-Sultani by small side streets, each with its own protecting gate, and some of these ancient stone-arched gateways still exist on the Qasabah.
Security along the Main Street was the responsibility of the wali, or governor, of the city and his shurtah (police). There were actually three walis: one for Misr, the Arabic name for Egypt, which was probably used to refer to the old parts of the city built before Fatimid Cairo; one for al-Qahira, the Fatimid palace-city; and a special wali for the all-important Citadel, the city within the city, founded by Saladin in 1176, that overlooks Cairo. The famous ninth-century mosque of Ibn Tulun, built in the open desert in the days before "Cairo" was ever thought of, became the dividing line between Misr and al-Qahira, and indeed, between Upper and Lower Egypt: Everything south of Ibn Tulun became known as Upper Egypt and everything north of it became Lower Egypt.
Each harah settlement came under a shaykh al-harah, a kind of mayor responsible not only for security and religious matters but also for closing the harah gate at sunset, opening it again at dawn and lighting the lantern which, by law, was required to hang over each harah gate. Likewise, each big house in the harah was required to burn a lantern at night above its entrance and each harah resident had to carry afanus, a folding lantern something like a small concertina, while out walking at night.
A special suq, or bazaar, near the old Fatimid mosque of al-Aqmar, supplied the vast quantities of tapers, candles and oil required for the thousands of lanterns used to illuminate gateways, house entrances, and other outdoor sites, and the greater thousands of lamps that lit interiors throughout the city: shops, houses and the immense brass chandeliers in hundreds of city mosques. In many of these palatial mosques there were thousands of softly burning, decorated glass-and-enamel lamps, created by master craftsmen, for which 14th- and 15th-century Cairo became famous.
European travelers arriving in Cairo were always amazed at the sight of so many lamps: "No king in all of Christendom could pay out of his revenue for all the oil which in this city is burned in the lamps," one wrote.
The "noble month" of Ramadan produced the most spectacular nightly illuminations of the year. As the sun went down and the minarets and domes were silhouetted against the sky, a new magic possessed the city as thousands of lanterns were hoisted up to the tops of the minarets. "We were struck," a visitor reported, "by the sight of towers sparkling with light, each of them lit with numerous lamps at three levels."
Indeed, many visitors thought Cairo more alluring and splendid after nightfall than by day:
The multitude of lamps burning in the towers made the city seem inflame.... From the topmost pinnacle of each minaret of all the mosques rods were thrust out and from these hung lamps, cunningly devised with a cover on top lest the wind should put out the light.... High above every mosque as many as twenty, forty, even sixty lamps were burning....
The European travelers, writing home so enthusiastically about the illuminations they saw in Cairo, were for the most part unaware that the lanterns they saw hanging from the minarets held a special meaning for all the Muslim inhabitants of the city, a metaphorical meaning conveyed in this moving verse of the Qur'an's 24th surah, or chapter, called Nur - The Light:
God is the light of the heavens and the earth. The
parable of His light is as if there were a niche and
within it a lamp: The lamp enclosed in glass: The
glass as it were a brilliant star: Lit from a blessed
tree, an olive neither of the East nor of the West,
whose oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce
touched it: Light upon light! God doth guide who
He will to His light: God doth set parables for men:
And God doth know all things.
Also unknown to most Europeans was the fact that the lanterns, hoisted to the tops of the minarets at sunset, signalled to Muslim Cairenes that the last rays of the sun had just disappeared below the horizon, thus releasing them from their daylight fast and allowing them to participate in the fast-breaking meal.
The Ramadan lanterns continued to burn in the night sky, carefully calculated to last until "the raf of the lanterns." The word raf, in Arabic, means removal or lifting, and "the removal of the lanterns," after sahur, the last meal before daybreak, signaled imsak, or the end of the night's feasting and the resumption of the Ramadan fast. In the course of a thousand years, some things in Cairo have not changed. Though the glowing mosque lanterns of Ramadan have been replaced by greenish fluorescent tubes which are no longer raised and lowered, the old term raf still persists - though if you ask why, or what it means, hardly anyone knows.
Today, the firing of a cannon from the heights of the Citadel - heard instantaneously throughout the country on radio and television - is the signal releasing Muslims from their fast at the very moment of sunset, and reimposing the fast at the moment of daybreak. The boom of the cannon is still called midfa' al-raf, an old Cairene term meaning literally "the cannon of the removal," an echo of "the raf of the lanterns" in centuries past. In Egypt, the past is always present.
As for the Ramadan traditions of times gone by, there are still signs for all to see: From the tops of some medieval minarets protrude a few wooden rods - some intact, some broken - once used to hold glittering arrays of Ramadan lanterns. On some minarets can be found gaunt wooden frames and pulleys, developed in later centuries for easier hoisting and lowering of the lanterns.
In today's season of Ramadan, for the very young and for the crowds thronging the shops in the Street of the Lanterns at Bab Zuwaylah and throughout the city, it is still business as usual. The little ones' lantern-swinging and singing may be hampered these days - perhaps made a bit more precarious - by the constant streams of fast, noisy traffic and the press of people in a city whose population is now some 13 million. But children never forget, and in the safety of the humblest and the grandest homes in Cairo, the little ones continue to swing their lanterns and beg for an 'Id gift from anyone who will listen to their ancient song:
Wahawi ya wahawi
Ruht ya Sha'ban
Gayt ya Ramadan
Filmmaker John Feeney, who has lived in Cairo for a quarter century, is a long-time contributor toAramco World. He wishes to thank Laila Ibrahim, renowned authority on Mamluk Egypt, for her help with this article.


from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A genus of fossil chimæras or selachian fishes of the order Holocephali, having a depressed or elongated trunk, the head produced in a long, slender snout on which there is a prehensile spine in the males, tapering tail, and calcified vertebral rings. Specimens of S. polyspondyla occur as nearly complete skeletons in the Lower Lias of Lyme-Regis, England.
Sorry, no etymologies found.
She unearthed a plesiosaurus in 1823, a pterodactyl in 1828 and a squaloraja (a transition fish, between sharks and rays) in 1829.


First of all, an expert glassblower blows clear glass into a paper-thin shape of colored glass and then rotates this in the air to make the overall form. The result is a two-layer structure with colored glass on the outside and clear glass on the inside. By cutting patterns into the outside surface with different kinds of whetstones, a vivid contrast is created between the colored glass and the transparent glass.
In 1985 Edo Kiriko was designated a Traditional Craft Industry by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
To qualify as a Traditional Craft Industry, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government stipulates that the main process of manufacture must require the expert manual skills, the history of the techniques used must date back at least a century, and the craft must use traditional materials.
Edo Kiriko of working process


Reading for Understanding : Published in Partnership with WestEd
"A breath of fresh air! After reminding us that any teacher who puts a book in front of a student is a reading teacher, the authors give us a teacher-tested reading course for middle and high school students. They avoid the baloney in the present reading debates by paying attention to actual students. What they propose is an apprenticeship in using a tool kit for problem solving in reading. The tool kit itself is a combination of cognitive and social dimensions embedded in subjects. And, lo and behold, they can point to actual results."--Miles Myers, former executive director, National Council of Teachers of English
"Reading for Understanding should be in the hands of teachers, principals, superintAndents, curriculum coordinators, school board members, state educational leaders, university professors, and teachers in training. Engaging, to the point, and grounded in research, this book shares current work in progress, possible stumbling blocks, ideas to overcome them, and specific strategies with detailed examples. Most middle and high school teachers have little or no 'teaching reading' training. It is not too late and this book is a great start."--Judy Cunningham, principal, South Lake Middle School, Irvine, California
Easy to follow and filled with examples of student work and classroom lessons, Reading for Understanding offers a successful approach to helping students improve their literacy across all subject areas. It shows how to create classroom "reading apprenticeships" to help students build reading comprehension skills and relate what they read to a larger knowledge base. It also discusses the strategies and support systems needed to implement and evaluate reading apprenticeship programs throughout the school. The authors describe a program in which an entire freshman class in one urban high school increased its average reading scores by more than two years. Piloted in San Francisco, the groundbreaking Academic Literacy program proved that it was not too late for teachers and students to work together in boosting literacy, engagement, and achievement.
|Lengua y Literatura||General|
|Educación||Teaching Methods & Materials|


Arkansas is requiring that every high school offer classes in coding and we're all for it
Can we talk about how awesome the world is getting at trying to make coding more accessible to students? A few years ago it might have been a stretch for high schoolers to get into a computer science class, but now that Arkansas is the first state to legally require high school students to offer a coding class, it looks like the education system is taking a step in the right direction. The classes will debut as early as this August, and the requirement covers all public and charter schools in the state.
The program, which cost $5 million to launch, is expected to inspire other states to follow suit. President Obama has been very vocal about his goals to making coding classes available to students nationwide.
“What is true is… that our lead will erode if we don’t make some good choices now,” said President Obama to Re/code’s Kara Swisher in February. “We’ve got to have our kids in math and science, and it can’t just be a handful of kids. It’s got to be everybody. Everybody’s got to learn how to code early.”
For Arkansas schools that can’t manage to spare the extra space for the class, the classes will be taught online. “By passing this bill, Arkansas will become a national leader in computer-science education,” said governor Asa Hutchinson, whose campaign focused heavily on computer education.
With so much emphasis on jobs in the tech industry, a bill like this can’t come soon enough. A recent projection shows jobs in IT steadily rising to a growth of 22% by the year 2020, so learning to code makes students more hirable out of school than ever. A program like this would be essential to making those opportunities more accessible to women and minorities in the tech industry, who are already underutilized in the field due to lack of educational resources.
At present only one out of ten schools in the nation offers computer science courses, so here’s hoping that this is one big step in the direction of inspiring other states to follow suit.
(Image from here.)


They are selling air at WalMart. No, I am not kidding. Look at these pictures.
Actually, they are selling cans of oxygen. According to the label, the gas in these cans is 95% oxygen with 5% other inert gases. The idea, it seems, is to breathe a hit of oxygen and it will relieve fatigue, give you strength and endurance, and make you feel better. I have no idea whether this would actually work. I do know that it is not really a good idea to breathe pure oxygen.
Oxygen is actually a toxin. I know that we need oxygen for our metabolism, but the property that makes oxygen so useful in digestion also makes it dangerous. Oxygen is a highly reactive element. Oxygen atoms eagerly take electrons from other atoms and readily form compound. When this happens quickly we call it fire. Oxidation that occurs more slowly, we call rusting or corrosion. Excessive levels of oxygen in the body can do a lot of damage.
Oxygen toxicity is a condition resulting from the harmful effects of breathing molecular oxygen (O2) at elevated partial pressures. It is also known as oxygen toxicity syndrome, oxygen intoxication, and oxygen poisoning. Historically, the central nervous system condition was called the Paul Bert effect, and the pulmonary condition the Lorrain Smith effect, after the researchers who pioneered its discovery and description in the late 19th century. Severe cases can result in cell damage and death, with effects most often seen in the central nervous system, lungs and eyes. Oxygen toxicity is a concern for scuba divers, those on high concentrations of supplemental oxygen (particularly premature babies), and those undergoing hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
The result of breathing elevated concentrations of oxygen is hyperoxia, an excess of oxygen in body tissues. The body is affected in different ways depending on the type of exposure. Central nervous system toxicity is caused by short exposure to high concentrations of oxygen at greater than atmospheric pressure. Pulmonary and ocular toxicity result from longer exposure to elevated oxygen levels at normal pressure. Symptoms may include disorientation, breathing problems, and vision changes such as myopia. Prolonged or very high oxygen concentrations can cause oxidative damage to cell membranes, the collapse of the alveoli in the lungs, retinal detachment, and seizures. Oxygen toxicity is managed by reducing the exposure to elevated oxygen levels. Studies show that, in the long term, a robust recovery from most types of oxygen toxicity is possible.
Protocols for avoidance of hyperoxia exist in fields where oxygen is breathed at higher-than-normal partial pressures, including underwater diving using compressed breathing gases, hyperbaric medicine, neonatal care and human spaceflight. These protocols have resulted in the increasing rarity of seizures due to oxygen toxicity, with pulmonary and ocular damage being mainly confined to the problems of managing premature infants.
I don’t suppose the oxygen in those cans would do any damage, unless someone kept holding one up to his face and breathed in hit after hit, but I don’t imagine anyone foolish enough to spend $10 for a can of air is doing themselves any good.


BOMBAY 1914-1918 MEMORIAL, MUMBAI
|Total identified casualties||2204 Find these records|
|Casualties from||First World War|
The names of the dead are recorded on eight panels in the memorial hall of the Indian Sailors' Home, and the memorial may be visited by obtaining the key from the Secretary of the Indian Sailors' Home. The main road leading to the Port Area is P.D. Mello Road which runs to the "Gateway of India". The entrance to the Sailors Home is on Thana Street.
THE BOMBAY MEMORIALS. The three Memorials of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth, Plymouth and Chatham and the Memorial of the Merchant Navy at Tower Hill record the names of those European sailors who met their death in combatant service, or at the hands of the enemy, and whose graves are not known. There remain, however, the sailors of Asiatic or African birth who took the same risks and met the same fate, and for these men two other Memorials at two great Eastern ports have been erected. The names of the Chinese sailors are erected at Hong Kong; the Indian, Adenese and East African sailors are commemorated at Bombay, and with them are associated those Indian dead of the Royal Indian Marine who fell in the Great War and whose graves are in Eastern waters. The Bombay 1914-1918 Memorial commemorates more than 2,000 sailors who died in the First World War and have no other grave than the sea. A tablet erected in Bombay (St. Thomas) Cathedral records the names of Officers and Warrant Officers of the Royal Indian Marine who fell in the War, this also forms a Memorial to the five who have no known grave and whose names are given separately under the heading of the Bombay (St. Thomas) Cathedral Memorial.


IoT Ready Radiation Dosimeters for Faster, More Efficient and Effective Sterilization
An Innovation with far-reaching implications to overcome public health challenges
In the past few months, our lives have been upended on a global level by the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been a test for us globally, on both personal and business levels, to overcome and adapt our behavior to combat this virus. This pandemic has heavily stressed the supply chains and the manufacturing of medical supplies such as PPE (personal protection equipment) and food products. It has also surfaced few areas that can be improved.
COVID-19 pandemic has created an increased need for development and manufacturing of solutions dedicated to testing as well as sterilization against viruses and other germs. Sterilization, which is the process to eliminate or destroy organic or living organisms such as fungi, bacteria, germs and viruses, is relevant and material for many products in the medical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food industries. It is one of the final steps used before shipping the products to the market in order to make sure they are ready to be used and consumed after they are put on the shelves. Irradiation, which is basically blasting products with electromagnetic waves such UV, Gamma and X-Ray, is the most common sterilization processes used in this industry. It is projected to grow to $13B by 2024 due to its safety (yes safety), versatility, and reliability. Don’t worry, your food will not become radioactive from this process.
A key device used in this process is a radiation dosimeter that measures the doses of radiation delivered. Dosimeters have many uses throughout the irradiation sterilization process but mainly to make sure the products have been exposed to the correct amount of radiation to kill the harmful germs or viruses. Commonly available dosimeters use a process that is based on physical changes to the materials such as poly-methylmethacrylate (PMMA) that changes its light absorption due to radiation exposure, or chemical changes such as alanine amino acid which releases free radicals at levels that are proportional to the radiation exposure levels. These two types of dosimeters require additional manual lab testing and measurement using either Spectrophotometer or EPR Spectrometer to read and verify the doses. Another product used to verify radiation exposure level is a label or a tag that changes its color due to the exposure.
Compared to these methods, CMOS based radiation sensors and detectors represent a true technology disruption for this market due to their many advantages including flexibility, data retention, multiple-use, ultra-small size, instantaneous reading and verification of the doses, and seamless integration into IoT and artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
This innovation is based on Floating-Gate (FG) transistors that are sensitive to radiation exposure. Each transistor (or an array of transistors) is charged to a specific voltage level and being discharged by the radiation in an amount proportional to the radiation dose absorbed.
Tower Semiconductor’s advanced non-imaging sensor technology provides unique solutions serving these specific needs. Our Floating-gate transistors are based on single-poly Non-Volatile-Memory (NVM) technology that provides various advantages including ultra-low power, high-temperature operation for readout and monitoring, long stability of charge retention, and high accuracy.
Below is a comparison between this innovative CMOS-based radiation sensor and the common dosimeters used for this industry. It is clear that the FG dosimeters are superior and represent the next generation that offers faster sterilization process setup and dose mapping, readout, verification, multiple exposures, and digital traceability.
This technology also enables a significant improvement on the efficiency and speed of re-sterilization processes meeting the demands for PPE supplies; simply put, wash out the used or expired PPE and other products from germs and reuse them. Similarly, CMOS sensors can also be used in other applications such as radiation monitor badges for medical personnel or in UV disinfection to kill viruses and germs in hospitals, rooms, and cabins.
Tower Semiconductor’s distinctive, best-in-class sensors platforms allow the manufacturing of multiple types of sensors including temperature, gas, humidity, magnetic, UV, and radiation sensors. These platforms, based on extensive research and development activity, offer many advantages in various monitoring applications in the industrial, medical, automotive, and consumer markets and are well suited to support the fast-growing IoT sensor fusion in harsh environment.
Senior Sales Director, Sensors BU
AJ ElJallad joined Tower Semiconductor in 2019 and is responsible for the CMOS-Image-Sensors sales and business development in North America and WW responsibility for business development of the Non-Imaging-Sensors. He has more than 21 years of experience working in the semiconductor industry in a variety of executive disciplines including sales and business development, corporate marketing, product design, applications engineering, and corporate strategy.


Strawberries are jam-packed (no pun intended) with wholesome nutrients. A serving of whole strawberries is generally considered to be one cup (see here for strawberry conversions). A cup of fresh strawberries will vary by weight depending on the size and specific variety of strawberry that is consumed. Also, strawberry nutrition can be affected by the quality of the soil and care given to the plants as they produced. In general, however, the following table will provide an accurate representation of the vitamins, minerals, and other components within a serving of strawberries. These strawberry nutrition facts will help you realize just how beneficial strawberries are in one’s diet!
Strawberry Nutrition Facts
This table contains the nutritional value of a strawberry serving, based on the standard cup-sized serving. While famous for their Vitamin C, strawberries contain a variety of beneficial compounds that will truly “do a body good.” The table is also sortable by clicking the column headings.
|Category||Nutrient||Units||1 cup (144 g) of whole strawberries|
|Vitamin||Vitamin C (ascorbic acid)||mg||82|
|Vitamin||Vitamin A (IU)||IU||39|
|Vitamin||Vitamin A (RE)||µg RE||4.3|
|Vitamin||Vitamin E||mg ATE||0.20|
|Amino Acid||Aspartic acid||g||0.20|
|Amino Acid||Glutamic acid||g||0.13|
|Lipid||Fatty acids (saturated)||g||0.03|
|Lipid||Fatty acids (monounsaturated)||g||0.075|
|Lipid||Fatty acids (polyunsaturated)||g||0.27|
|Proximate||Fat (total lipids)||g||0.53|
|Proximate||Carbohydrate (by difference)||g||10.1|
|Proximate||Fiber (total dietary)||g||3.3|
Strawberries Nutrition Info
While the main strawberry nutrition facts are contained in the table above, there are many other ways to skin the proverbial cat when it comes to finding strawberries nutrition facts. There is an entire section on Strawberry Plants .org devoted to the health benefits of strawberries here: Strawberries & Health. Also, for a more complete breakdown of the various chemicals and molecules contained within both the strawberry plant and strawberries, see Compounds in Strawberry Plants and Medicinal Uses of Strawberry Plants.
[ nutrition strawberry ]


Spanking and scolding have remained a traditional approach to disciplining children even in the 21st century, with 80% of parents still thinking that this form of discipline is completely acceptable and even beneficial for the child.
This perception has led scientists to delve deeper into the effects these forms of ‘punishments’ have on the child’s development, and what they discovered was something every parent should be aware of.
There are people who may say that spanking has not ‘ruined’ their lives in any way, but this doesn’t exclude the possibility that some might not turn out so lucky
So, why is this practice condemned? Here are some reasons:-
1. It’s simply not effective
Alan Kazdin, Ph.D. and Sterling Professor of Psychology and Child Psychiatry at Yale University, explains that the yet undeveloped brain of the child doesn’t possess the punishment/reward mechanism that the mature brain operates with.
With this in mind, the idea that spanking will condition them out of a certain behaviour is an incomplete one. While physical punishment does have a short-term effect, as it is normal that children are scared of being hit, the result doesn’t last in the long run.
Basically, spanking is a horrible thing that doesn’t work.
Also, regardless of how people choose to perceive them- spanking/scolding or any kind of physical punishment won’t correct misbehaviour but will rather cause children to act out more.
2. Negative consequences:-
A study which has looked at 5 decades of research involving over 1,60,000 children has pointed that the psychological impacts of spanking are the same as those of physical abuse.
It was observed that children who are subjected to this kind of discipline were found to exhibit developmental delays, language delays and scolding was associated with socio-adaptive delay, meaning the cognitive functioning is severely affected.
Also, not only does spanking not affect obedience, it contributes to “increased anti-social behaviour, aggression, mental health problems and cognitive difficulties.”
3. Perpetuating a cycle of Violence.
Usually, the disciplinary punishment cycle goes down from generation to generation, with adults who were spanked thinking that spanking is normal.
After interviewing over 100 families with children aged 3-7, the researchers concluded that children who are subjected to physical punishment are more likely to exhibit physical violence as a means to resolving conflicts with peers.
Spanking and scolding are forms of physical and emotional violence respectively– regardless of how people choose to perceive them – and that they won’t correct misbehaviour but will rather cause children to act out more.
So, while anecdotal evidence and personal opinion will voice that spanking is necessary and harmless, people should consider that research-based evidence states the opposite.
This article has been compiled by Mary Wright and first appeared in the “Power of Silence”
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No other poet captivated and scandalised his contemporaries more than Lord Byron. His intelligence, his wealth, his beauty and his unconventional attitude towards life caught the attention of all those around him. His reckless and daredevil traits and his heroic death characterised his way of life. His poetry, which uses language and description that rouse the thoughts and emotions outside normal experiences, express the Romantic era, a movement which originated in Europe at the end of the 18th century. He was one of the best-known philhellenes who participated actively in the Greek War of Independence against the Ottomans Empire, eventually losing his life in Messolonghi on April 19, 1824.
George Gordon Noel Byron was born with a clubbed right foot in London on January 22, 1788. He became the sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale when his great uncle died in 1798. He inherited Newstead Abbey, the family seat in Nottinghamshire. He enjoyed this new role and was proud of his coat of arms, which consisted of a mermaid and chestnut horses over the motto Crede Byron (Trust Byron).
Byron spent his early years in Aberdeen, and was educated at Harrow School and Cambridge University. Between 1809 and 1811 he toured various Mediterranean countries including Greece where he visited the monuments of the ancient Greek civilization. He immediately fell in love with the country. He also met Ali Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Ioannina. He then went on to Turkey noting the differences in the culture. When he returned to Athens, he stayed at the Capuchin Monastery by the Choragin Monument of Lysicrates in Plaka. He wrote the poem The Curse of Minerva in which he attacks his compatriot Lord Elgin for pillaging the Parthenon sculptures. He also visited the Temple of Poseidon in Sounio. His name can still be seen on one of the columns. His travels through Greece made him aware of the contrast between the glory and might of ancient Greece and its present situation under Ottoman rule. On his return to England he published his works in 1812, which included Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a narrative poem describing his feelings and his experiences during his travels. He become famous overnight. He stated: If I am a poet, the air of Greece has made me one.
His poetry was only one aspect of his versatile and manifold activities. He became active in politics, played cricket (despite being handicapped), he was an exceptional swimmer, a marksman, a swordsman and a boxer. He enjoyed the company of women as well as other men. He was full of action and wanted to be part of the action. He stated that the purpose of poetry is to complete life and not just to comment on it. If the poem does not make a person feel alive when we are reading it, then it is not worth the paper it is written on.
Soon after his return to England he married Annabella Milbanke, a well-educated woman on 2nd January 1815. She bore him a daughter, Ada. However, the marriage did not last long and a year later they were separated. The scandal that followed and the ever-increasing debts forced Byron to leave England. He travelled through Europe and settled in Italy. In the meantime, the Greek War of Independence against Ottoman rule had begun in March 1821.
In 1823, while living in Genoa, Byron agreed to actively support the Greek struggle for independence. He travelled to the island of Kefalonia, which was under British rule at that time, and spent over 4,000 pounds to refit a Greek fleet. He was able to reach Messolonghi in January 1824. He joined forces with Alexandros Mavrokordatos, a Greek politician, giving him money for the needs of the revolution. He also helped in concluding the first revolutionary loan between the Greek fighters and British philhellenes, as he was a member of the London Philhellenic Committee.
He formed a group of 30 philhellene officers and 200 men for an attack on Lepanto or Nafpaktos as it is known today. However, the attack did not take place and soon after Byron fell ill. Blood-letting worsened his condition. He caught a violent cold with a high fever that eventually led to his death on 19 April 1824. His death brought sorrow not only among the Greek freedom fighters who considered him as one of their heroes, but in England as well. It must be noted that the township of Messolonghi had undergone two sieges before the third and final siege. The first siege was from October 1822 until December 1822; the second from 20 September to 20 November 1823; the final siege between 15 April 1825 and 10 April 1826 when the Ottomans returned with a stronger force and naval support cutting off food and ammunition supplies to the men, women and children that were defending the township. This led to the heroic attempt to exit the town. Out of the 7,000 people that tried to escape, only 1,000 made it safely. All those that were left in the township were either slaughtered or taken as prisoners to be sold as slaves. The defeat of the Greeks and the barbarity of the Ottoman forces led the Great Powers of England, France and Russia to take an active part in the Greek cause.
It can therefore be said that the death of Lord Byron did not go in vain. He died heroically for the freedom of a country that was not his own. He lived his life to the fullest and also died as a poet writing his last, but most significant poem on the day of his 36th birthday, 22 January 1824. The name of the poem is: On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year.
Lord Byron is revered as a hero in Greece. The Byron House is the centre for the Messolonghi Byron Society, dedicated to Lord Byron’s life and poetry. In the Garden of Heroes in Messolonghi, a statue of the poet is above the place where his heart is buried. According to his will, his heart was buried in Messolonghi and his body taken to England and buried at the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire. King George I of Greece placed a marble slab over his grave. Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace, was buried beside him. Since 2008, Greece has honoured Byron’s participation in the Greek War of Independence by declaring 19th April as ‘Byron Day’. Greek communities around the world honour this day with special events and poetry competitions. Dionysios Solomos, Greece’s national poet who wrote the Greek National Anthem, composed an ode in Byron’s memory.
Ode on the Death of Lord Byron
Dionysios Solomos (1798-1857)
For a moment, Liberty,
Let the war, the bloodshed rest;
Hither come and silently
Over Byron’s body weep.


When Will Baby Start Grabbing?
Babies are actually born with an innate ability to grasp things. In the beginning, this means baby will love tightly grabbing your finger when he can or holding onto his binky for dear life. But it’s not until the first three or four months that your little one will begin to develop a better sense of perception and be able to actually control his reflexes. (This is also when he’ll start to want to grab onto everything.) These days, dropping his toys and picking them back up will provide loads of entertainment, and learning the concept of cause and effect will be a big part of playtime. Encourage baby by playing along and offering him toys that will help develop this skill (think: fun rattles and squeezable toys).
Why do babies grab fingers?
If you touch your finger to a baby’s open palm, in most cases his or her hand will almost instantly curl around your finger very tightly! That reaction is called the grasp reflex.Everyone has reflexes—automatic nerve actions that the body makes without being directed by the brain. Has the doctor ever tapped your knee with a little rubber hammer, and did your leg kick without your telling it to? That’s a reflex, and it happened without you thinking about it.
Babies are born with some special reflexes, including the grasp reflex. The suck reflex is another one. We see it when a baby takes a pacifier. Babies typically lose the grasp reflex at about three months of age, and they lose the suck reflex at about four months. But those original reflexes may help the babies later on when they are learning to feed themselves. Source: highlightskids.com


October 28, 2019
Help Your Students Make a Difference in the Lives of Those Around Them...
Register Your Team for the REACH Challenge Before the November 1 Deadline!
REACH Challenge is an impactful Adaptive & Assistive Technology design-thinking project for middle school, high school, and college students, showcasing ITEEA’s mission that “Technology and Engineering Bring STEM to Life.”
With an Educator’s Toolkit, filled with lesson plans and activities, this innovative challenge shows students how they can use their STEM skills to make a difference in the lives of those around them.
After forming a team, students have an opportunity to REACH a member of their community who has a challenge to overcome. Focusing on the empathy and user-centered design portions of the engineering design process, students will work with their User-Expert (UE) “client” to identify a specific challenge, and design and create a viable adaptive or assistive technological solution to this problem. Following registration, teams can submit their projects through the ITEEA website. Teams who complete the challenge and submit their projects are then eligible to earn recognition and funding to support their STEM program.
“I tell my students that they don’t have to wait until they are ‘grown ups’ to change the world,” said Gavin Wood, an award-winning STEM educator and visionary behind the REACH Challenge. “Why wait? Let’s develop 21st-century high-tech skills and use them to make people's lives better...right now. I see the light bulbs turn on in my students’ minds once they realize this. Now, with the launch of REACH Challenge, we have the potential to inspire students and teachers to make an impact on their communities all over the world.”
Interested teams can learn more and register today at www.iteea.org/REACH. The site includes additional resources such as an overview video and a sample student-created video.
ITEEA is the professional organization for technology, innovation, design, and engineering educators. Its mission is to promote technological and engineering literacy for all by supporting the teaching of technology and engineering and promoting the professionalism of those engaged in these pursuits. ITEEA strengthens the profession through leadership, professional development, membership services, publications, and classroom activities.
WATCH A FULL-LENGTH PRESENTATION ABOUT ITEEA'S REACH CHALLENGE
Meet Isaac and hear from the student team that developed a specialized device for him to be more independent in his home.
For more information about ITEEA’s REACH Challenge, contact ITEEA by phone: (703) 860-2100, email: email@example.com, or visit the website at www.iteea.org/REACH.
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Information about Oriental Medicine and Acupuncture
What is Oriental Medicine?
Oriental medicine is a comprehensive system of health care with a continuous clinical history of over 5000 years. Oriental medicine includes acupuncture, Oriental herbology and bodywork, dietary therapy and exercise based on traditional Oriental medicine principles. These therapies work with the natural vital energy inherent within all living things to promote the body’s ability to heal itself. This system of health care is used extensively by one-quarter of the world’s population residing in Asia and is rapidly growing in popularity in the West. Traditional Oriental medicine uses as intricate system of pulse and tongue diagnosis, palpation of points and meridians, medical history and other signs and symptoms to create a composite Oriental medical diagnosis. A treatment plan is then formulated to induce the body to balanced state of health.
How does Acupuncture work?
Acupuncture is practiced based on an energetic model rather than the biochemical model of Western medicine. Ancient Asian physicians recognized a vital energy Qi(pronounced chee). In developing an understanding of the prevention and cure of disease, these healing practitioners discovered that this energy flows along specific pathways called “meridians”. Each pathway is associated with a particular physiological system and internal organ. Disease is considered to arise due to a deficiency or imbalance of energy in the meridians and their associated physiological systems. Acupuncture points are specific locations along the meridians. Each point has a predictable effect upon the vital energy passing through it. Modern science has been able to measure the electrical charges at these points, thus corroborating the locations of the meridians mapped by the ancients.
What Can I Expect?
Many conditions may be alleviated very rapidly by acupuncture and Oriental medicine. However, some conditions, if left to develop for many years, may require slow and steady treatment. As in any form of healing, the patient’s attitude, diet, determination and lifestyle will affect the outcome of the treatment. Patients are encouraged to actively participate in their healing process. There are cases where Western medicine can be effective as well. In such cases, your acupuncturist will recommend you contact a Western medical doctor. Acupuncture and Oriental medicine should be seen as complementary to Western medicine.
Is Acupuncture Safe?
In the hands of a comprehensively trained acupuncturist, your safety is assured. Acupuncture needles are sterile and are either disposed or autoclaved between treatments. If you have a preference, you should discuss the type of needles to be used with your practitioner.
Is Acupuncture Painful?
Acupuncture bears no resemblance to the feeling of receiving an injection, since the main sources of pain from injections are the larger diameter of the needle, the hollowness of the needle, and the medication being forced into the tissue by pressure. Acupuncture needles are very fine and flexible; a needle’s diameter is roughly the same as a human hair’s. In most cases, your practitioner will also recommend herbs and/or dietary and lifestyle changes.
What does Acupuncture treat?
The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes Acupuncture and traditional Oriental medicine’s ability to treat over 43 common disorders including:
• Our specialties: Diabetes Mellitus, Hepatitis, and Nephritis
• Gastrointestinal Disorders, such as food allergies, peptic ulcer, chronic diarrhea, constipation, indigestion, gastrointestinal weakness, anorexia and gastritis
• Urogenital Disorders, including stress incontinence, urinary tract infections, and sexual dysfunction
• Gynecological Disorders, such as irregular, heavy, or painful menstruation, infertility in woman and men, and premenstrual syndrome (PMS)
• Respiratory Disorders, such as emphysema, sinusitis, asthma, allergies and bronchitis
• Disorders of the Bones, Muscles, Joints and Nervous System, such as arthritis, migraine headaches, neuralgia, insomnia, dizziness and low back, neck and shoulder pain.
• Circulatory Disorders, such as hypertension, angina pectoris, arterioscleroses and anemia
• Emotional and Psychological Disorders, including depression and anxiety
• Addictions, such as alcohol, nicotine and drugs
• Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders
• Supportive therapy for other chronic and painful debilitating disorders


Moses was in trouble. The children of Israel were without water and in danger of literally dying of thirst (see Exodus, Chap. 17, in the Bible). They blamed Moses for leading them to a place that didn’t have the resources to sustain them. It seemed that their escape from Egypt was all for naught. Even though the Red Sea had been parted for them; even though they had been fed with manna in the wilderness, they were convinced by what they saw around them that without water, they would surely die. And so, it seemed natural to blame the man who had led them there! The narrative goes on to describe how Moses, after turning to God in this great hour of need, was led to Mt. Horeb, where he was directed to strike the rock with his rod, and water came out of the rock – enough water to take care of all their needs.
It would seem that we could use Moses today to provide water to end the droughts that cause the same fear the children of Israel felt in the wilderness so long ago. But is it Moses we need, or is it some measure of the absolute faith and understanding Moses had in God, the source of all good, who supplies all our needs, always? Moses knew he could trust God in every circumstance, no matter how desperate things might look to mortal eyes. And what Moses knew was able to bless everyone around him.
Many of us right now are asking God to bring rain to drought-stricken areas in the United States, looking for divine intervention to solve the problem. My study of Christian Science has for me brought prayer to a higher level, revealing more than what the material senses can observe.
In her book “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, wrote: “God is not influenced by man. The ‘divine ear’ is not an auditory nerve. It is the all-hearing and all-knowing Mind, to whom each need of man is always known and by whom it will be supplied” (p. 7). Moses clearly understood this spiritual fact, and proved it when he was confronted with the apparent lack of water in the wilderness. His absolute faith that God was always supplying the need manifested itself in His ability to find water right where everyone else could see only rocks.
From the standpoint of Christian Science, the drought many are experiencing right now is just one example of a collective human belief that either God’s presence or care for His children can be restricted in certain places at certain times, or else that God is unwilling or unable to do anything about the extreme needs affecting large numbers of people. The answer lies in a clearer recognition of the unchanging, ever-present, all-powerful love God is perpetually imparting, which is constantly available to all of us.
Jesus spoke of the need to gain a clearer sense of God’s kingdom and what it includes in his Sermon on the Mount. He said: “Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? ... for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:31-33).
The only real need we ever have is to understand more clearly the spiritual fact of God’s allness, which includes the wonderful truth that His supply of everything good is always at hand, always available. These words of Isaiah the prophet offer a wonderful promise: “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water” (41:17, 18).
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