While we talk about Top 10 poorest countries in the World, the first thing comes up in our mind is whether poverty means having no or less money or something else. This point makes sense, but when we talk about the developing country, things changed. A country called poor when people of that country have less facilitated with the necessities. How and what a country is spending on public from total earning of the country defines the poverty ratio. We can calculate the debt rate through GDP per capita. Some countries are paying a tiny amount on general healthcare and people gross development policies. In such countries, people are suffering from hunger and diseases. A developing country is where fundamental and ethical values are the least concern than starvation. Here we are Discussing Top 10 Poorest Countries in the World That Have Lowest GPD Rate.
10. Eritrea – GDP Per Capita – $16,329
A small country Eritrea is one of the poorest countries in the World ranking. GDP growth is said to improve from 3.0, 4.0, and 4.3 percent to be 7.3 and 6.8 percent in 2015 and 2016. And in next three years, it will develop more. Eritrea separated from Ethiopia in 1991, which is also a developing country of Africa. Since 1991 Eritrea and Ethiopia are facing conflicts with each other, which is the main reason for instability in the countries.
Farming small plots of land is their primary source of living. Though literacy rate is increasing still just 57% women above the age of 15 can read. The cities much developed, but decadence can still seen in remote areas. Per month salary of, National Servant’s is Increased to $2000 Nakfa, Graduates to $3500 Nakfa while a Minister’s is approximately 4000 Nakfa, their national currency.
9. Madagascar – GDP Per Capita – $1,477
Madagascar is a huge African, Island country, but relatively a small population. As a small population has a less workforce, so they cannot make much income for their country. Madagascar’s 21.6% or about 12,553,000 ha area covered with forest, according to FAO. The main occupations of Malagasy people are agriculture, food processing, and the mining sector is now appealing people. Government official’s corruption under French-backed dictator Didier Ratsiraka’s rule, forced Madagascar to face the devastating economic crisis. The poor country was completely bankrupted on 1979 until 2016. A total income of an average person in Madagascar is $1.
The stock exchange rates for US Dollar to Madagascar Ariary is 3260.85. They have a lack of infrastructure more likely paved roads. That is why the sources of income are minuscule. A U.K established charity ‘Money for Madagascar’ is working to provide and fund to development projects for the betterment of necessities. Such as providing food and education to adults and children of Madagascar. Madagascar is the World’s 10th poorest country.
8. Guinea – GDP Per Capita – $1,388
Guinea is a poor West African country. Frequent ups and downs in the political system and repeatedly economic shocks have made the country one of the poorest countries in the World. 40% of the population of Guinea is living under the poverty line. Guineans are poor though the country is rich in resources of oil, gas, gold and fertile land that produces fresh food. A search shows that 600,000 children of PNG (Papua New Guinea) are not going to school. Guineans are lacking access to education and basic healthcare services. The people of rural Guinea have their lands, where they hunt, gather, cultivate and harvest produce. They don’t consider themselves as poor.
They can buy food, clothing, shelter after selling surplus, they got from their gardens. GDP (real gross domestic product) growth is projected to average 5% over 2016-2018 which is an active development. People of Guinea are living on less than $1 or $2 per day. Franc is their local currency which is 9038.00 to $1.
7. Mozambique – GDP Per Capita – $1,208
Southern African nation, Mozambique is rated as one of the poorest countries according to its GDP per capita. The reasons for Mozambique poverty lies in its history. Mozambique achieved freedom in the 20th century from Portugal. Since then it was a European colony or more likely their slaves. On the Human Development Index, inequality and life expectancy, ranking of Mozambique is 165 out of 169. The main obstacles to development are Civil War aftermath, external debt. Workforce dependence on agriculture while of Mozambique’s land of less than 7% is arable. They are lacking social and quality health services access.
6. Niger – GDP Per Capita – $1069
Since they achieved freedom from France in 1960, Niger is facing upheaval in the political system. Niger, due to it is an encroaching desert, fertile land and agriculture threatened. Literacy rates are lowest in the World and very less access to health care services. Diseases are widespread. Niger, with more than 140 million population, is a large country. Insurgency is breaking the backbone of the country, which has experienced in different areas of the country. Farming of sorghum, maize, millet, cassava, yams, plantains and grass weaving, carpentry, fishing, blacksmith, Bronze and Metal Casting, cloth weaving and Palm wine tapping are the predominant occupations of Niger people. $1.25 per day is 29% of average Nigerian’s income.
5. Burundi – GDP Per Capita – $951
The Republic of Burundi is East-central African, small country. The poverty rate of Burundi is 66.9%. Burundi is one of the devastating and poorest countries in the World by IMF. They have faced decades of civil war and continuously facing regional conflicts till today. The 38th lowest state Per GDP figure of $2.33 billion and 5th poorest as per GDP per capita. The profession of people is agriculture, including coffee and sugar production, and cobalt and copper mining.
4. Liberia – GDP Per Capita – $934
Liberia is the poorest African country during 4th lowest economy of the World. Liberian people relying on 70% of agriculture and 8% of the industry. Liberia is an oldest African country which became familiar in 1990 due to civil war and rebellion strikes within its neighboring country Sierra Leone. This civil war destroyed infrastructure and economy of the country. Liberia is a rich country in natural living resources but poor because of instability. The climate of the country is favorable to agriculture.
But necessary facilities of healthcare and education etc to commoners are very less. Most of the people are living under the poverty line. 111.7 children, out of 1,000 children born, die during the first year of birth.
3. Malawi – GDP Per Capita – $819
Home of more than one million orphan children, Malawi is severely suffering from HIV Aids. A nation who has never faced a civil war in their history. Then why are they still standing in the list of the poorest countries in the World? Most of the people are earning less than a dollar per day, lacking medical attention.
They are relying on subsidies by Government every year for agriculture, fuel, health, etc. Immense reasons of poverty is having too many babies per year for such a small economic facilitated country. Some HIV tackle programs started in 2004 by their then president. Still, it is still a mourning country, because of an extremely painful life standard for people.
2. Democratic Republic of Congo – GDP Per Capita – $753
The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the World’s richest country in natural resources. They are having just 7% of unemployment rate, nonetheless the Incidence of poverty of Congo is 71.3%. Corruption, colonialism, slavery and Civil war in which people are rambling in, since World War II, has turned the country the second poorest country in the world. Due to this war millions of people die cause of starvation, diseases, and several million women raped.
Government revenue and assets went dramatically reduced and external debts increased. DRC has gold, diamond mines, which are owned by the foreigner. This nation has years of history of atrocities by immigrant masters. The importance of life in DRC is worthless. Due to these circumstances, the average lifespan of an ordinary person in Congo is just 37 years.
1. The Central African Republic – GDP Per Capita – $639
Rich in natural resources like diamonds, gold, oil, and uranium, yet CAR is the World’s poorest country. Since the Central African Republic achieved independence from France in 1960, they are facing instability. C.A.R was plugged in when rebellions seized the Christian majority country. That conflict destroyed most of the national assets. 70% of the nation is living in remote areas. They are having almost zero facilities. Most of the people of C.A.R are living under the line of poverty. Forestry, agriculture, fishery, and mining are the central occupations of C.A.R’s people. People live with US$1.25 per day.
What Are Top 10 Poorest Countries As Compared to GDP
|1||Central African Republic||$639|
|2||Democratic Republic of Congo||$753|
Africa as it is the largest continent by Population and area in the World, it is also the largest continent of the World because of poverty ratio in it. Sadly these top 10 poorest countries belong to Africa. None country wishes ever to be a part of this list. Africa is the home of rare species of animals and plants. It is also the home of the most unique type of people, who are still fighting for the betterment of their nation.


April is National Autism Awareness Month. One of the biggest goals of autism research is to determine its cause, and one of the best ways to achieve that is to rule out the things that do not cause it. So, let's acknowledge this month by listing all the things that do not cause autism.
Vaccines. A substantial proportion of people refuse to accept the reality that vaccines do not cause autism. This was never controversial in the scientific community. After the fraud Andrew Wakefield published his sham "study" linking vaccines to autism, the New England Journal of Medicine published the results of an absolutely enormous study (including more than 537,000 children) that thoroughly refuted Wakefield. Since then, the evidence has grown even stronger, concluding once and for all that vaccines are not a cause of autism.
Child Car Safety Seats. At least one lunatic believes that strapping a child into a car safety seat increases the risk of autism. How so? Chemicals. To prove his case, he shows that as the usage of car safety seats has increased over the years, so have cases of autism. QED. There's only one problem: A lot of things have increased over the years, such as sales of organic food. Possibly organic carrots cause autism, too?
Parenting style. Some people make great parents, while others stink at it. But parenting style itself won't cause autism, as was once elaborated by the "Refrigerator Mom" hypothesis. Instead, parenting style can ameliorate or exacerbate the symptoms of autism.
So, What Does Cause Autism?
For absolute certain, genetics plays a role in autism. As many as 1,000 genes may be involved. According to a paper in the Annual Review of Public Health, the genetic contribution to autism ranges from 50% to 95%. The tricky thing, however, is that each gene likely plays only a minimal role. A small tweak here, another small tweak there. We will never discover "the autism gene," which makes research incredibly difficult.
Adding another layer of complexity is the role of environmental factors and gene-environment interactions. It is entirely plausible that some environmental exposure X, if in the context of a developing fetus with genetic factor Y, creates an interaction in which autism is more likely to develop.
What sort of environmental exposures are associated with autism? Just like cancer, the research is all over the place, which is a bad sign. If epidemiologists can link just about anything to autism, then we aren't really any closer to finding the biggest causes. All of the following, with varying levels of evidentiary support and taken from the aforementioned paper in Annual Review, have been blamed for autism:
Endocrine disruptors (which, themselves, have been blamed implausibly for everything from cancer to obesity)
While factors like parental age make sense, it is difficult to believe that some of these other factors plays a substantial role in the development of autism. Both organic and conventional pesticides, for instance, are used at safe levels in the U.S. Similarly, the U.S. has some of the cleanest air in the world.
Therefore, if these factors play any role in autism, it is likely to be at the margins, especially compared to the earlier figure that autism appears to be 50% to 95% genetic. Be skeptical of claims to the contrary.


De middeleeuwse architectuur van de Cisterciënzerinnen in de Lage Landen
In the Low Countries and more particularly in the county of Flanders, the duchy of Brabant and the principality of Liège no less than eighty-five Cistercian nunneries were founded during the Middle Ages. A general history of this movement still needs to be written. The traditional historiography mainly focused on the foundation process of the nunneries, on their patrons and on how the early communities were integrated into the Cistercian order or became beguinages.
Apart from the monographs on abbeys and some regional studies, there has also been interest in the spiritual work and life of the Cistercian saints who lived in the Low Countries in the thirteenth century: Beatrice of Nazareth, Ida of Léau, Alice of Schaarbeek, Ida of Louvain, Ida of Nivelles, Julienne of Cornillon, etc.
More recent is the interest of scholars in the fifteenth century reform movements that embraced not only the Cistercian nunneries but a large part of the monastic life in the Burgundian Low Countries. A reassertion of the (spiritual) life of women in the Middle Ages, notably by gender-studies, has also aroused interest in nuns and nunneries.
Our aim here is to make more concrete the architectural environment of the medieval Cistercian nuns in the Low Countries, by collecting the scarce remains, organising them typologically and trying to define the evolution from the early thirteenth to the mid sixteenth century.


By Petr Myska ● June 2013
In most of my previous texts on birds of Banderas Bay I tended toward introducing species, which are resident to the area, or even endemic – found nowhere else, but on Mexican Pacific Coast.
Although this impressive long-legged, heron-like bird is reported in our area in summer, fall and winter months (Cupul Magaña, 2000), most of my personal records are from winter – precisely months of January and February. Apparently a resident to the Mexican Pacific Coast, this species breeds in Mexico only locally (Howell & Webb, 1995).Overall distribution range of the species is huge – Wood Storks can be found from Southern USA to Northern Argentina.
Being a highly colonial species, a Wood Stork is rarely found alone. Most frequently, one can enjoy observing a number of these birds either foraging or perching in a tight group. Even completely inexperienced birder will not find it difficult to identify a stork. Its overall body color is white, only flight feathers, tail, head and legs are black. Striking heavy head and thick bill distinguish storks from any heron or other long-legged wading bird in the region. Storks with their 1.5m wingspan also belong to the largest birds around here.
Should you spot a high-flying formation of large, predominantly white birds with outstretched long necks, you are looking at storks. You will have a better chance of finding them by visiting some of the coastal wetlands in the bay area though. Early morning is possibly the best time. If you approach unseen, you might be rewarded by a sight of a group of storks stalking in shallow water with their bills continuously submerged systematically searching for prey.
Storks feed mostly on fish, amphibians and reptiles, but invertebrates are also consumed. Nest built of twigs and sticks is constructed by both parents. Both parents also cooperate in incubation of (usually) 3 eggs. After approximately one month semi-altricial* young birds hatch and are cared for by the parents for another 2 months.
Wood Storks are protected by Mexican Law (NOM-059-ECOL- 2001) but their populations have suffered considerably due to habitat destruction. Coastal lagoons and mangrove swamps in our area –favorite feeding grounds to storks – are of paramount importance not only to them, but to dozens upon dozens of other fauna species.
* SEMI-ALTRICAL: The young have a very limited mobility immobile, but their bodies are covered by down-like feathers (they do not hatch naked).
- Read more from Birds of Puerto Vallarta Column
- Back to PVMirror Home Page


A new study has found that children score lower in cognitive tests if they are on a high-sugar diet or their mothers consumed too much sweet during pregnancy.
A new Harvard University study found children whose mothers ate large amounts of processed foods and drank sugary sodas during pregnancy scored lower on tests relating to learning, memory, problem-solving and verbal skills.
Similarly, children who had similar dietary habits, usually passed down from their parents, were found to be less intelligent.
On the other hand, mums and children on high-fruit diet scored significantly better.
On the flip side, when mothers and children ate diets that were high in fruit, which contains so-called healthy sugars, scores were significantly improved.
This study is one of the first to draw a link between the substance and early brain development.
According to the American Heart Association, one should not consume more than 10 teaspoons of sugar each day.
However, average daily consumption usually rakes up 350 calories.
Health officials have been warning Americans to cut their sugar intake for the last three decades, but research shows that consumption habits haven’t changed much.
High-sugar diets have been linked to a host of health issues including obesity, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
Notably, the study, published this week in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, suggests that the harmful effects of a high-sugar diet begin before a child is even born.
The findings revealed that moms who consumed more than 50 grams of sugar daily had children with lower cognitive scores when it came to memory and problem-solving ability than moms who ate a more natural diet.
Drinking sugar-sweetened sodas in particular during pregnancy was linked to poorer scores for both verbal knowledge and nonverbal skills.
Also, children who drank sugary sodas were found to have poorer verbal intelligence at age seven, whereas children whose ate more fruits were found to have better cognitive scores in several areas, especially when it came to vocabulary.
Fruit-consumption was also associated with improved visual motor abilities in early childhood and verbal intelligence in mid-childhood.
Interestingly, fruit juice was not found to have the same benefits as whole fruit, which may suggest that the benefit was from phytochemicals, the researchers said.


The U.S. Senate is giving its approval to a bill that ensures an aging pipeline will be able to continue operating as it passes through Glacier National Park.
The pipeline was first built by Montana Power in 1962 to provide natural gas from east of the Continental Divide to the Flathead Valley.
The line passes through a portion of the park and was initially constructed under a special use permit. However, in 1990 the Park Service decided it didn’t have the authority to issue new permits for the gas line.
That threatened the operation of the 118-mile line and gas supplied to 25,000 customers in the Kalispell area.
But under the provision of the bill co-sponsored by Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester, the Park Service is given the authority to issue a permit to Northwestern Energy so it can provide regular maintenance on the pipeline.
“This bill cuts through red tape to keep Kalispell homes heated while protecting one of the most beautiful places on Earth,” Tester said. “Responsible maintenance of the pipeline will prevent accidents and help keep Glacier National Park the ‘Crown of the Continent.'”


Scientists have observed that electromagnetic radiation has a dual “personality.” Besides acting like waves, it acts like a stream of particles (called “photons”) that have no mass. The photons with the highest energy correspond to the shortest wavelengths.
What is a particle of electromagnetic radiation?
In the particle model of EM radiation, a wave consists of discrete packets of energy, or quanta, called photons. The frequency of the wave is proportional to the magnitude of the particle’s energy. … As a photon is absorbed by an atom, it excites an electron, elevating it to a higher energy level.
What is the radiation of electromagnetic waves called?
In physics, electromagnetic radiation (EMR) consists of waves of the electromagnetic (EM) field, propagating through space, carrying electromagnetic radiant energy. It includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared, (visible) light, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays.
Why is it called electromagnetic radiation?
Radio waves, microwaves, visible light, and x rays are all examples of electromagnetic waves that differ from each other in wavelength. … These waves are also called “electromagnetic radiation” because they radiate from the electrically charged particles.
What is a particle of electromagnetic radiation with no mass?
photon (94) a particle of electromagnetic radiation having zero mass and carrying a quantum of energy.
What is electromagnetic radiation in simple words?
In layman’s terms electromagnetic radiation is light that travels by oscillating in waves at a constant speed carrying energy. … In layman’s terms, light travels by oscillating in waves at a constant speed carrying energy – interactions with objects vary depending on the energy these waves carry.
What are the different types of electromagnetic radiation?
The electromagnetic spectrum includes, from longest wavelength to shortest: radio waves, microwaves, infrared, optical, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma-rays.
What are the types of radiation?
There are four major types of radiation: alpha, beta, neutrons, and electromagnetic waves such as gamma rays. They differ in mass, energy and how deeply they penetrate people and objects.
Where is electromagnetic radiation found?
Examples of EM radiation include radio waves and microwaves, as well as infrared, ultraviolet, gamma, and x-rays. Some sources of EM radiation include sources in the cosmos (e.g., the sun and stars), radioactive elements, and manufactured devices.
What is the process of electromagnetic radiation?
EM radiation is created when an atomic particle, such as an electron, is accelerated by an electric field, causing it to move. The movement produces oscillating electric and magnetic fields, which travel at right angles to each other in a bundle of light energy called a photon.
What does em stand for in physics?
Electromagnetic (EM) waves are transverse waves. Their vibrations or oscillations are changes in electrical and magnetic fields at right angles to the direction of wave travel. All electromagnetic waves: transfer energy as radiation from the source of the waves to an absorber.
Is a photon a particle?
Considered among the subatomic particles, photons are bosons, having no electric charge or rest mass and one unit of spin; they are field particles that are thought to be the carriers of the electromagnetic field.
Is light a particle or a wave?
Light Is Also a Particle!
Einstein believed light is a particle (photon) and the flow of photons is a wave. The main point of Einstein’s light quantum theory is that light’s energy is related to its oscillation frequency.
Which is a particle of electromagnetic radiation with no mass that carries a quantum of energy it is excited from the?
Chemistry: Chapter 5
|a particle of electromagnetic radiation with no mass that carries a quantum of energy||photon|
|the set of frequencies of the electromagnetic waves emitted by atoms of the element||atomic emission spectrum|


May 18, 2012 3 Comments
Here’s another visual effect that you can easily create in WPF and Blend, using a gradient.
Let’s say that you want to draw a ring or donut-shaped object that looks 3D. You can start by using the Ellipse shape to draw a circle.
Next, set the Fill property of the Ellipse to use a radial gradient. Define five gradient stops, as shown, and use the gradient tool to position them as shown.
For the hole in the middle of the donut, you can use an opacity mask. Use a paint program to create an opaque circle that is the same size as the circle, but with a smaller transparent circle in its center. (Trick: Run your app and screen capture what you have so far, then tweak it in a paint program). Finally, set this image as the OpacityMask of the Ellipse.
<Ellipse.OpacityMask> <ImageBrush ImageSource="Images\Mask.png"/> </Ellipse.OpacityMask>


Working children: a social history of children's work in New South Wales, 1860-1916
thesisposted on 2022-03-28, 02:44 authored by Maree Kathleen Murray
In the 1860s work performed by children was reflected the wider labour market. Children undertook paid employment in formal situations and work of a more casual nature on city streets. They also performed unpaid work at households and farmsites. Children working at the homesite contributed to home based production and service, and also, through domestic duties, to the daily reproduction of labour. Children's participation in the workforce was significant in the three main sectors of the economy. Small-scale farming, most commonly on selections, made significant use of children's labour. Selection, and its appropriation of children's labour power, continued throughout the entire period. The colony's infant industrialisation utilised cheap, child labour in its development from craft-based to more intensive, larger-scale industry. Children's labour power was usually of financial import to their households and usually allocated with regard to age and gender. In times of intensive demand or financial difficulty, the need for children's labour could lessen gender strictures. Demand for children's labour power was, at times, in conflict with the expanding liberal state, which was extending its training and supervision of future citizens through primary education. Mass education was generally accepted, although many families used schools on a casual basis so that children could alternate work and schoolwork. The 1880 Public Instruction Act pragmatically reflected common practice by making some schooling compulsory. -- By 1916 patterns of children's work participation which held for much of the twentieth century were set. Children were virtually excluded, through attitudinal and legislative change, from the paid main-stream workforce. Their effective, and permanent, removal from the urban, industrial workforce had been closely controlled. Their use as casual labour, was circumscribed by adherence to daily, all-day compulsory schooling. Children's work on city streets was limited and regulated. Their work at the home site and in the rural sector continued, now fitted around demanding schooling requirements. -- Pressure on the state, from organised labour and other concerned interests, to remove children from employment in factories and streets had intensified from the 1890s. These demands were echoed by educational authorities, who, since the beginning of the period, had called for strict adherence to their full-time ideal model of school. The state, reflecting and consolidating attitudinal change, responded in an incremental fashion with increasing regulation and control. State action included the 1916 Education Act which could enforce adherence to the ideal school model. The withdrawal of children from mainstream labour was accompanied by an increasingly widespread, accepted and entrenched ideology of protected, nurturant and dependant childhood.


The report — A Rewarding Challenge: How the Multiplicity of Languages Could Strengthen Europe — according to the press release "makes proposals on how languages can foster intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding, establishing a clear link between linguistic diversity and European integration." There are some introductory comments on the question of identity (a matter on which Maalouf has previously written eloquently about) and a discussion of the general implications of what it is to live in community of 23 official languages, with the basic conclusion that everyone ought to learn another language. Simple.
I rather favour this bit, as it gives the example of Joseph Conrad, whose linguistic mix (albeit in different proportions) I happen to share:
For the people of Europe, old and young alike, intensive and in-depth knowledge of a language and all the culture that it transmits is a major factor of fulfilment.
In a civilisation in which communication is becoming so important and in which there is an increasing amount of free time, to add to one's existence this exploration of another linguistic and cultural universe can only bring enormous professional, intellectual and emotional satisfactions.
Moreover, mastering a personal adoptive language and familiarising oneself with the universe of its speakers should be conducive to a more outward-looking attitude to the world and others, and strengthen the sense of belonging to Europe ; not at the expense of belonging to one's country or culture of origin, but in addition to it,
particularly as, in his or her relations with the speakers of the personal adoptive language, a European citizen would naturally tend to extend to them knowledge of their own country and their own culture.
For those Europeans whose mother tongue has a dominant place in the world, and we think immediately of the British, acquiring a personal adoptive language is probably even more vital than for others, given that the temptation to remain ensconced in
monolingualism is probably much stronger than elsewhere. Without a special effort to promote, from the very earliest age, the intensive learning of an additional language, the advantage which English speakers today have would rapidly become eroded, and the globalisation of their mother tongue would have an adverse effect on their competitiveness at both individual and collective levels. This paradoxical pattern of events was stressed in no uncertain terms in a recent study commissioned by the British Council.
It might perhaps be worth stressing here that some Europeans should obviously choose English as their personal adoptive language, following the example of Joseph Conrad who was of Polish mother tongue, had French as a language of international communication, and became one of the greatest writers of the English language. It is important for English to retain and consolidate the eminent place it holds as a language of culture rather than being straitjacketed in the role of instrument of global communication, a flattering but detractive role, and one which is potentially a factor of impoverishment.
How many languages do you know? What is (would be) your personal adoptive language?


November 6, 2018 by Ron Stull - 7 Minute Read
Welcome to Part 2 of our "Pushing the Limits" series, where we delve into a question we hear often at CUI, "What if I operate my power supply outside of a certain specification range?" In Part 1 we covered the input voltage specification. Now in Part 2 we will look at output current and the problems that can occur when exceeding the output current specification.
The rated output current is one of the most important specs when selecting a power supply. It plays a large part in determining the size and cost of the unit, which leads designers to choose power supplies that have just enough current to meet their requirements. In these cases, it is tempting for a designer to select a power supply that addresses the "normal" operating current in order to save on cost and size, while assuming that it can handle the peak currents for a short time. This same line of thinking goes for the minimum current limit as well. However, exceeding either maximum or minimum current specs can lead to several issues including degradation of performance, protected shutdown, or even component failure.
Efficiency, regulation, and electromagnetic emissions (EMI) are some of the most important specifications affected when operating a power supply outside of its rated output current.
As the output current goes up, so does the output power. If the efficiency were fixed across load, the additional current would lead to a linear increase in power dissipation within the supply. This added power loss causes an increase in component temperature rise which can lead to thermal failure. In practice it is unlikely that the efficiency will remain constant and, as shown in the graph below, it is common for a power supply to reach peak efficiency before maximum load, resulting in efficiency that decreases past its rated current. This leads to an exponential increase in power dissipation with respect to load increases, causing the maximum temperature to drop much faster than if the efficiency were constant. In addition to the thermal concerns, the dropping efficiency could cause the power supply and/or system to fail efficiency regulations. As the graph further shows, when operating the power supply 20% beyond the rated load of 200 W, the efficiency drops a full percentage point below its 91% specification. This results in a 30% increase in power dissipation.
Load regulation is another problematic spec when operating outside the rated output current. The load regulation tells the user the maximum amount that the output voltage can be expected to change as the load changes between no load and full load. The graph below shows an example of the load regulation of a 200 W ac-dc power supply. This particular power supply has an output voltage that drops with increased current. However, this is not always the case as some power supplies will see the output voltage increase with load. Either way, operating outside of the specified current range may cause the output voltage to move outside of its load regulation specification, leading to problems in applications that cannot accept voltages outside of this range.
Applications with tight input ranges often take advantage of external voltage sense connections, which will regulate the output voltage at the load rather than at the output of the power supply. With external sensing, a drop in output voltage that would normally occur between the power supply and load is compensated by increasing the output voltage of the supply. As a result, there is often a specification for the maximum voltage that can be compensated for in order to prevent damage to the power supply due to an increased voltage.
In power supplies with a minimum current rating, operating below this limit may also cause the unit to operate outside of its regulation specification. These power supplies are often small, less expensive units with simple control schemes that are not designed to handle the issues that occur at light loads. A minimum current can also be specified in multiple output power supplies, which is needed to regulate the secondary outputs within their specified limits.
A final, less obvious issue related to output current is increased EMI. Switching power supplies are electrically noisy devices and a lot of board space is devoted to filter components to help them meet regulatory requirements; usually just enough to pass the required testing. Even when operating within the specified load range, issues still arise when used with certain loads. In general, the magnitude of EMI is expected to increase with load and operating beyond the maximum load can push EMI above the failure threshold. This is further compounded if the filter becomes less effective at higher loads. Increased currents and/or temperatures in these components can also alter their values and change the filter's response.
The specification related issues described above all assume that the power supply will allow the user to operate above the maximum output current. However, most power supplies are equipped with some form of over current protection that prevents the load from exceeding a certain current threshold.
Some power supplies have a well-defined threshold closer to the rated output beyond which the over current protection kicks in. Users that attempt to size their power supply for nominal current and let peak current needs exceed the current rating may also see the output shut down due to this protection.
Other protection schemes have wider tolerances that allow the load to significantly exceed the maximum rated output. Threshold differences between individual supplies can cause issues if the protection is enabled in some supplies but not in others. If the output does not shut down, the supply will operate above its maximum current resulting in spec related issues or failure.
In addition, more complex power supplies offer protection against current falling below the minimum rating while others will disable operation completely under these conditions. Power supplies that cannot reliably regulate themselves at light loads will lead to excessive voltage on the output which could also trigger a protection.
While the previous issues will not always cause a failure or damage to power supply components, many components will experience extra voltage and/or current stress as a result of the increased load current, putting them at greater risk.
With increased output current comes similar increases in component currents throughout the power train. Components such as MOSFETs, diodes, resistors, and even copper traces will see increased power dissipation and heat because of the increased current. Diodes and other components with a fixed voltage, will observe a linear increase in power dissipation, while MOSFETs and components with resistive elements will show an exponential rise in power dissipation with respect to load increases. In both cases this will lead to increased temperature rise, reduced reliability, and increased risk of failure.
Magnetic components such as chokes and transformers, while experiencing increased conduction losses like the previous components, may also encounter increased core loss and be pushed into saturation, producing further losses and heat generation. Saturated magnetics could also cause the power supply to cease functioning or generate increased currents in other components, such as the MOSFETs and diodes. For example, in a buck converter, the ripple current is directly related to the inductance. When the inductance starts dropping the peak currents in the MOSFET and diode will increase as a result.
In addition to discrete magnetic components, there are also parasitic inductances, such as the leakage inductance of the transformer. These parasitic components cause voltage spikes when the switch changes state and the magnitude of this spike increases with load. In the case of the transformer leakage, the voltage spike is applied across the MOSFET and may cause it to fail if too large. Other components, like those that sense voltages and currents, will sense these voltage spikes which will result in the controller receiving incorrect voltage and current information – leading to poor performance or failure.
Power, size and cost are all important factors when choosing a power supply. Unfortunately improving one often inversely affects the others, with more power typically meaning a larger and/or more expensive power supply. Even so, users will often try to force all three factors opening themselves up to potential problems. The output current is one such area that affects just about every component in the power supply. Some effects are obvious while others are easily overlooked and cause immediate or long-term issues. Before operating outside of the output current rating of a power supply the user should consult with the power supply manufacturer to understand the risks of doing so or to seek out an alternative solution.
Have comments regarding this post or topics that you would like to see us cover in the future?
Send us an email at firstname.lastname@example.org


A session is a cycle of action.
Unless it is started, continued and ended properly the preclear is put in continuous session. If it is not given a proper cycle of action it does not result in any control of the preclear.
Rudiments are not something it is nice to do. Rudiments are something that must be done.
A great deal of the value of auditing lies in the mechanics of the session itself. If you wish to demonstrate this for yourself all you have to do is try short sessioning. This consists of starting, continuing for a few minutes, a session, and ending the session. It has good gain qualities for a pc who has poor concentration. It does not matter what is run. What matters is that direct control of thought results in setting an example that thought can be controlled.
A session without proper rudiments is a session without control. A session without control gets no gains of any note.
After working with this for years I believe a nearly foolproof method of handling the rudiments has been developed.
The parts of modern rudiments are as follows:
(Note the end rudiments are changed in order from HCO Bulletin of February 25, 1960.)
Goals are set at the beginning of the session in order to make the preclear postulate session occurrence. If the pc says nothing about goals or even says nothing will happen, probably nothing will happen of any note in the session. Goals are taken up first in a session before environment, auditor or problems because these may entail auditing if they are not right, and the moment you start to audit the last three then you are running a session without setting goals and may run the entire session of the auditor or the present time problem and muff it because no goal was ever set. The auditor who does not set up goals immediately following the start of a session may wind up without getting a chance to set goals.
There is a lot to know about goals. There have been processes entirely devoted to goals. A great many more processes could be developed about goals. However the value of these tools or processes does not compare to just getting a goal or three set for the session itself. If you run into difficulties about goals there are two processes which can be used, and perhaps other old processes might also be worked on the subject.
The basic reason we give stress to goals is to keep the auditor from making one of the greatest fundamental errors he can make: The auditor is processing in one direction and the pc wants to go in another. This creates a basic disagreement between auditor and pc which prevents auditing from getting anywhere and results squarely in ARC breaks and upsets. Where these are frequent this mistake must be supposed to exist and must be cleared up.
There are only three things a pc can do in a session so far as results are concerned: he can get better, he can stay the same, he can get worse. Therefore there are only three basic types of goals: improvement goal, no-change goal, deterioration goal. All this derives from survive and succumb as the two opposite poles.
The auditor may be seeking improvement while all the pc wants to do is succumb. The auditor may be trying to keep the pc from getting worse and the pc wants only to get better. The auditor (but let’s hope not) may be working unconsciously or otherwise on a particular pc to make him or her worse and the pc is trying to get better. Of course in the last case O/W is indicated for the auditor on this type of pc. Fortunately the last type is rare.
The commonest disagreement on goals comes about on the first mentioned. The auditor wants improvement and the pc wants deterioration. Some auditor trying wildly to make a pc better gets a failure only because he has never closely observed the pc’s goals and hasn’t got this straight with the pc.
If goals go wrong the simplest process to clear the pc on direction is a problem process. This might sound odd, but it is quite true. The fastest goals process is a general problems process. This occurs because the pc in looking over problems falls into realizing what his actual desires are. The quickie version of this process handles solutions in this fashion:
The auditor looks over the preclear and sees that the pc has some obvious disability. He asks the pc if the pc has any disability and steers it into getting the pc to bring this one to light. This would be something like a bad foot or cough. One selects a mass terminal for this disability, such as chest for the cough (whatever the pc says it is), and runs the following command, “What problem would a bad foot be a solution to?” Using this on one or more disabilities and running it a while (until pc is in pt on it) shows the pc at once that at least as far as a foot is concerned he has been trying to succumb.
This is a very ordinary occurrence since factually any chronic psychosomatic is an effort to succumb. Remember that the doors are all locked from within by the pc himself.
If pc is still reluctant and upset about goals or isn’t getting better faster because of the solutions process above, run some consequences in this fashion: “What would you be likely to do if you didn’t have a bad foot?” This makes the pc look at it some more, and some responsibility run on what he has said he might do will clear the thing away.
The general process that uncovers most of this is “Tell me a problem”; when pc has, “What part of that problem could you be responsible for?” When pc has, the auditor says again, “Tell me a problem,” etc, etc, etc, on a repetitive basis.
Now remember that we weren’t trying to make his foot well. That may or may not happen with any rapidity. What we are trying to get the pc to look at is that his goal alignment is not an improvement but a deterioration.
The old process of worse than, minus the invent part, also accomplishes the same end: “Think of something worse than a bad foot.” This on a repetitive basis will turn up all sorts of horrible consequences to not having a bad foot. Of course having a victim with his face kicked in before one and the police sirens sounding is worse than having a bad foot by the pc’s rationale.
Because people hold in and cripple themselves mentally and physically to keep from doing things they know are wrong, goals, more frequently than you would like to find, are in the direction of getting worse. Until you untangle this one as an auditor you may not be able to make any lasting progress with a pc.
Factually a pc in bad condition is more likely to have succumb goals than survive goals.
When handling rudiments, get the pc to set a goal, any goal or even two or three goals he really thinks he can make in the session. But if after two or three sessions it is apparent that he is not achieving his goals as set by him in the session, despite care to handle them by the auditor with processing, it should be suspected that the pc is technically an “opposite vector” case and has private goals quite the reverse to getting better. When one has uncovered this fact as the auditor, without evaluation, he had better get it uncovered to the pc.
There are no auditing failures. There are only errors in auditing. Chief amongst these errors is failure to take up and straighten out the pc’s goals. That is the first amongst the rudiments and last in the end rudiments so it must be pretty important. Don’t discount its value, and handle it with the attention it deserves.
Once upon a time or two I have asked some auditor auditing me what his goals for the session were. It produced some interesting randomity. But a pc is under no orders but the auditor’s and it isn’t something that is needed in the session. Also I have just up and told the pc what I would like to get done in the session and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, and I found that what the pc wanted to get done and what the pc said he or she wanted to get done were more important.
Unless the pc postulates his recovery, it won’t last even if you make him recover in spite of himself or herself. The way to make the pc postulate it is by handling goals as above. The pc is often very startled by what he finds out about his actual intentions.
I have stopped being startled by what pcs do. I find that when they don’t recover very fast they don’t want to and I start working over their goals no matter what else seems to be the matter.
The CCHs work better if rudiments are used, but sometimes that’s impossible due to state of the pc. Take up goals with such a pc at the first available chance however and make your work easier.
Life is a series of attained goals. Auditing requires at least the setting of goals and their attainment.


Unit 5: Health
Day Two: Food preferences and healthful eating
- Students will be able to read a story about teenagers going to a restaurant, ordering food and discussing the health values of the foods ordered.
- Students will be able to discuss food preferences.
- Students will be able to discuss which kinds of foods are healthy, which should be part of a daily diet and which should be eaten only on occasion or even avoided.
Setting the Stage (1-2 minutes)
The teacher has prepared a visual -- a set of pictures, drawings or Powerpoint slides -- that show the faces of three young people. The students decide on names for these youngsters and where these youngsters live.
Input (20 minutes)
The teacher tells the students that they will be reading a story about these three youngsters and their excursion to a restaurant.
The teacher asks the students to volunteer various predictions:
- To what kind of restaurant will the youngsters go?
- What types of food and drink will they order?
- What will they talk about?
- How much will the food cost?
First, the students read the story silently. Then, the teacher divides the class into groups of three. Each student takes the role of one of the three youngsters in the story and the group practices Readers' Theater.
The text of the story (translated into the target language (TL) with specific details added by the teacher):
Youngster #1 calls Youngster #2 on the telephone and they talk about meeting at a local restaurant. They set a time. #2 suggests that they invite #3. #1 says this is a good idea. #2 calls #3 on the telephone and extends the invitation to join and provides all the information about when and where. #3 accepts.
The three youngsters meet in front of the restaurant. They greet one another and then read the menu which is posted near the front entrance of the restaurant. They discuss various choices. #1 says that he/she doesn't drink coffee, even though the coffee from (teacher can insert the name of a country that speaks the TL) is really an excellent coffee. #2 states that he/she doesn't drink coffee either because of his/her concern for good health. #2 states that he/she prefers fresh fruit juices to maintain good health. The three youngsters enter the restaurant.
Once seated, the waiter brings a menu and the three discuss their choices. They order (dishes of the countries that speak the TL), foods that are good for health. They discuss the types of sports they participate in and the types of activities they do for good health: fitness exercises, lifting weights, jogging, walking their dog, doing yard work, playing soccer, swimming, and hiking.
The waiter returns to their table with the bill and the three youngsters discuss how much money they each have. One of the youngsters realizes that he/she has forgotten his/her wallet. The three discuss how they will pay the bill, since they don't have quite enough money. Another customer in the restaurant overhears their conversation and offers to give them enough money to help them pay. The three youngsters tell the customer how thankful they are and accept the offer. They pay their bill and leave the restaurant. Outside the restaurant, the three youngsters discuss various possibilities for continuing their evening together: go to a soccer match, go to the movies, or visit another friend. They decide to go to the local discotheque and dance, saying that dancing is very good for their health.
Guided Practice (10 minutes)
Students, in their trios, collaborate to complete a Pyramid of the Story graphic organizer.
Independent Practice (20 minutes)
Students will create a crossword puzzle, ten words down and ten words across, using words from the today's theme. They are to write and number the words IN PENCIL in the crossword puzzle grid provided by the teacher. The words are to intersect from top to bottom or left to right. No diagonals and no backwards (right to left or bottom to top) words.
The students will write the clues for these words on the back of their puzzle grid, using the TL to provide the clues. These clues can be definitions, fill-in-the-blanks, synonyms, etc.
« Previous lesson
Next lesson »
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
- You may use and modify the material for any non-commercial purpose.
- You must credit the UCLA Language Materials Project as the source.
- If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.


Helmeted Hornbills are ‘on the verge of Extinction’
A helmeted hornbill takes to the sky. Photo Credit: Christian Goers via Rainforest Trust
Helmeted hornbills – time to brace yourself – may be on the way to extinction in the wild. They are near-extinct in Indonesian Sumatra and may soon face a similar fate in Malaysian Borneo as well.
Unceasing demand for their casques, as their helmet-like appendages are known, has been driving the birds dangerously close to the point of no return in Sumatra, a team of researchers has warned in a study, “Trade in the Helmeted Hornbill Rhinoplax vigil: the ‘ivory hornbill’,” published in the journal Bird Conservation International.
“Between March 2012 and August 2014,” they write, “a minimum 2,170 heads and/or casques were seized from the illegal trade in Indonesia and China in identifiable enforcement actions. Seizures were made from poachers, smugglers, processing facilities and retailers (both physical shops and online traders).” At this rate, the birds will go extinct in the wild within a few years. “Efforts are therefore urgently needed to end this illegal trade, which is controlled by organised crime [syndicates] with interests in other wildlife products,” the scientists add.
They recommend increasing the penalties for wildlife traffickers and boosting awareness of the plight of the species among potential consumers. They also call for urgent measures to roll back the illegal trade in the critically endangered species by stepping up wildlife patrols and clamping down on the criminal networks behind the trade. Time, they say, is fast running out for the majestic birds.
Poachers continue to target wild helmeted hornbills for their solid lumps of keratin atop their beaks that are as highly prized as elephant ivory in China, where the casques are carved into expensive jewelry and luxury decorations.
Unfortunately for the shy, fruitarian birds, their large size (they can weight 3 kilograms with a wingspan of up to 2 meters), their striking black-and-white plumage, and their conspicuous habits (they frequently issue loud calls to each other in their forest homes) often make them easy targets for poachers. According to the researchers, criminal syndicates routinely commission teams of poachers in Sumatra and Borneo to hunt down the birds.
“The 2015 IUCN Red List assessment notes the species has apparently almost disappeared from habitats where it was previously abundant on Sumatra and cautions that poaching efforts could shift to Malaysia from Indonesia, where illegal capture is now focused,” warns the anti-wildlife trafficking watchdog TRAFFIC.
“If this problem isn’t dealt with very soon, the Helmeted Hornbill may be wiped out in Indonesia and seriously threatened elsewhere,” said Chris Shepherd, the group’s regional director in Southeast Asia. “The health of the rainforests will suffer and the forests will fall silent.”
That, needless to say, would be a tragedy.


Central Tendency doesn’t tell us everything. Dispersion/Deviation/Spread tells us a lot about how a variable is distributed. We are most interested in Standard Deviations (σ) and Variance (σ2)
Once you determine that the variable of interest is normally distributed, ideally by producing a histogram of the scores, the next question to be asked about the normal distribution curve is its dispersion: how spread out are the scores around the mean. Dispersion is a key concept in statistical thinking.
The basic question being asked is how much do the scores deviate around the mean? The more “bunched up” around the mean the better your ability to make accurate predictions.
The key concept for describing normal distributions and making predictions from them is called deviation from the mean. We could just calculate the average distance between each observation and the mean. We must take the absolute value of the distance, otherwise they would just cancel out to zero!
Is it Really that Easy?
- Absolute values are difficult to manipulate algebraically
- Absolute values cause enormous problems for calculus (Discontinuity)
- We need something else…
Variance and Standard Deviation
Instead of taking the absolute value, we square the deviations from the mean. This yields a positive value. This will result in measures we call the Variance and the Standard Deviation
s: Standard Deviation
σ: Standard Deviation
In a normal curve, area corresponding to
o 1 SD will comprise 68% of total area
o 2 SD will comprise 95% of total area
o 3 SD will comprise 99.7% of total area
( The 68- 95-99.7 rule)
Coefficient of Variance
Coefficient of variance measures the spread the spread of data set as a proportion of its mean. It is expressed as percentage. It is ratio of sample standard deviation to sample mean. CV of population is based on expected value and SD of a random variable
CV = standard deviation/mean x 100
Percentiles give variability of the distribution. The p’th percentile of distribution is the value such that p% of observations fall at or below it. Median is the 50th percentile. They are used in calculation of growth charts for nutritional surveillance and monitoring
Quartiles are the values that divide the data into four groups containing equal numbers of observations. They are the 25th and 75th percentiles.
First quartile is the median of observations below the median of the complete data set, third quartile is the median of observations above the median of the complete data set.
The range of a sample /data set is the difference between the largest and smallest observed value of some quantifiable characteristic. It is a simple summary measure, but crude. Like mean it is affected by extreme values
RANGE 2- 9= 7
Interquartile Range (IQR)
It is calculated by taking difference between upper and lower quartiles. IQR is the width of an interval which contains middle 50% of sample. It is smaller than range and less affected by outliers.
Upper quartile=7, lower quartile=4, IQR=3


The Old New Face of Digital Scams
We get used to things moving and changing so fast due to digital technology, that we often don’t notice how we might fall for old-school tricks that have been around for decades. For example, even the earliest days of email were full of scams that sought to get enough information from an unsuspecting user to hack their bank accounts. And that doesn’t even cover how hackers often gather credit card numbers, log in names, and passwords to sell to the highest bidder. These days, this kind of hacking is trivial, so much so that sites on the dark web offer tools (with help desk support) that help hackers launch attacks.
These days, hackers still use emails and fake websites to trick users into turning over their private data through a technique called “phishing”.
And while many of us probably think we are too smart to fall for an obvious scam, phishing attacks are actually quite sophisticated. The FBI claimed in 2017 that phishing scams could cost businesses upwards of 5 billion dollars. Even those seemingly most familiar with the newest technologies–students–are some of the most likely targets for phishing attacks.
The key to avoid being a victim of phishing attacks is to understand what they are, and how to avoid them.
What is phishing?
“Phishing” is a term used to describe social engineer techniques used by hackers to gain the trust of users through official-looking communications, typically through email. These communications will often appear as an official email from an organization, like a school or a bank, and direct the receiver to provide personal data. Sometimes, the email will ask the user for information directly. More subtle phishing attempts will copy branding and official emails from prominent companies. Attackers will simply change links in the emails to direct users to fake websites (also designed to mimic a company brand) where they will ask users for their login information.
Much like its namesake activity, hackers will “fish” for victims in a pool of unsuspecting users. Typically, there are two different approaches to fishing:
- General phishing involves sending out hundreds, or even thousands, of emails to random users. These users typically don’t share much between them demographically, other than they use email. Because of the random nature of these attacks, chances are 95% of the receiving users will not fall for the trick. But, that leaves 5% of thousands that do, and that can mean access to a large volume of bank and credit card accounts (among other possibilities)
- Spear Phishing is a targeted form of phishing. A group of hackers might gain access to a mailing list, say from a university. They then create emails crafted to look like the official communications of that organization, send it to the only people who would have reason to get that kind of communication (students, teachers, and staff) and fool them into turning over access to their accounts. Spear Phishing is less effective for large-volume scamming, but it can produce more targeted results from people with sensitive, business-related data.
Phishing Email Examples
Here is an example of an email crafted for phishing purposes. In it, the sender has taken on the identity of PayPal. The email itself is a close replica of an email the real PayPal might send out, with specific information changed or falsified to get a response from the reader.
Some portions of the email signal that it is a fake right away. Most noticeably, the sender of the email is not actually from a PayPal email address (even though they tried to fake, or “spoof”, the address). But the rest of the email looks pretty authentic. More than that, it raises the concern that the user’s account has been accessed without their authorization. If someone received this email had a PayPal account tied to that email, and they got a notice that someone changed their security questions, it would immediately raise red flags.
What an email like this counts on, is that the reader will panic. That concern leads the reader to glance over the document, and to ignore certain aspects of it that would mark it as falsified. In that case, they may send the hacker the information requested before even thinking about it.
How Do I Avoid Getting Hooked by a Phishing Attack?
Identifying a phishing attack isn’t always easy if you don’t stop to take in all the information. If you follow some basic precautions, however, then you can typically avoid any issues.
- Check the email address of the sender. Individuals phishing for information via email will use different tricks to make themselves look like the company they are mimicking. In the above email example, we saw how someone can spoof an address enough to get by an unsuspecting reader.Before you click anything, check the domain of the email sender. For example, the email address “firstname.lastname@example.org” doesn’t actually come from PayPal. Some companies do host several email domains for different purposes, but when the domain is long, odd-sounding, or only tangentially related to the company it represents itself as, you have good reason to suspect its validity.
- Read every email you receive carefully. Some sure signs that an email is falsified is if it presents itself as a professional communication but contains numerous typographic errors or awkward phrasings. Likewise, pay attention to what the sender is asking you to do. No company is going to request sensitive information via email. So, if an email ever involves providing personal information (typically for “verification purposes”) like your username and password, account numbers, address, or phone number, then it is almost certainly a phishing scam.
- Check the domain of any link in the email. More sophisticated phishing attempts will involve copying in already-existing email template from an organization and changing the source links in the email to malicious websites. Since link text doesn’t have to match an actual URL, phishers can hide the location of the website from readers who don’t read closely. And, with modern URL shorteners like bit.ly, it’s become even easier to hide a URL from you. Any professional organization looking to reach out in official business will rarely, if ever, use a non-domain specific or shortened URL. When you hover your mouse over a link in your browser, however, the browser will show you the full URL somewhere in the window. If that URL is an odd or unencrypted link to a third-party website, then don’t click it.
- Understand how domains work. Some hackers will work hard to make a domain look similar to a major company’s domain, even though they aren’t the same. For example, a hacker group might ask you to follow a link that looks like this: “http://paypal.hrsecurityhelp.com”, This looks somewhat legit at first glance, because there is a “paypal.com” domain. However, this link actually points to the domain “hrsecurityhelp.com” and not PayPal. In domain registries, the phrase directly before the “.com” is the actual domain, and anything before that is a subdomain, and not the other way around. This subtle trick can make a URL seem legitimate, even as it directs users to a third-party site.
- Try to make direct contact with the company in question. If you’ve received an odd email from a company asking for questionable information, nothing will address the issue quicker than reaching out directly via phone. Do not, however, call from any information provided by the email or a questionable site. Point your browser directly to the company’s site (typically the company’s name plus a “.com”.) Company names are usually trademarked and their domains reserved, so it is unlikely that a third-party hacking outfit would own “paypal.com”, for example.
- Never download attachments from anyone but trusted sources. Hackers might use a familiar-looking brand to get you to open attachments in emails. Don’t. It’s just a bad idea and invites all sorts of security issues to your computer, including data theft.
- Don’t rely on https encryption. Common knowledge states that secure, legitimate sites will use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption for browsers exchanging sensitive data. You can tell if a site uses this encryption if the URL starts with a “https:” instead of a “http:”, and your browser shows a lock symbol (or more) near the URL. The idea was that certificates for encryption showed that the owner of the site was exactly who they said they were (and you could check that right in your browser by clicking the lock). However, it is now estimated that nearly one quarter of phishing sites are now using https encryption. Bottom line, if you don’t trust the site, don’t give them information.
Why Phishing Still Works Today
Since phishing is a social engineering attack, it works on the premise that we are busy, distracted, and somewhat undereducated about cyber threats and how they work. Hackers look for ways to pass themselves off as other organizations in the hope that, even if it doesn’t work most of the time, it will work at least some of the time–and it really only has to work some of the time for a hacker to gain access to sensitive information, money, and credit cards.
What’s more, hackers are evolving faster than even tech-savvy students. As universities host student emails, hackers can gain access to emailing list and build highly sophisticated spear-phishing campaigns that will trick students not familiar with email or forgery. These campaigns can include letters that even use a university’s branding and letterhead.
So, don’t fall for the trap. If an email asks for personal information, comes from a shady source, or directs you to a third-party site, just delete it. Keep your information safe and avoid the headaches of being hacked.


January 24 is the International Day of Education, a United Nations General Assembly proclaimed day to celebrate the many ways learning can empower people, preserve the planet, build shared prosperity and foster peace.
We agree all children deserve the chance to soar! All children have the right to a high-quality education, but there are millions of girls and boys who don't complete a full course of primary school.
In the communities where ChildFund works, education is a top priority. It has the greatest potential to take a child and their family out of poverty and into a bright and prosperous future.
Thanks to the support of ChildFund New Zealand donors, more than 10,000 children and youth will go to school this year. However, not all school-aged children are able to attend classes with their peers. According to UNICEF, approximately 1 in 5 school-aged children aren’t in school. That’s millions who don’t have access to the essentials that help children to thrive. Because of this, 617 million children and youth around the world don’t have the basic ability to read, write or do maths! This pushes them, and their families, deeper and deeper into poverty. But, with your support, we can help even more children attend school.
Ways you can help EVEN MORE children access education
For 11-year-old Caleb, going to school is just a dream. Caleb lives in rural Kenya, where his family raises a few dairy cows to earn a small income. Unfortunately, their cows do not provide enough to afford books, uniforms and tuition fees for him and his sister to go to school. As each lonely day passes he's getting further and further behind the other kids. Completing school gives children and youth the opportunity to get a decent job, to give back to their community and to take better care of their family. Donate now.
When a young person drops out of school, they are leaving behind more than just their peers. Often, people who leave school early do not have well-developed literacy or numeracy skills, which limits their ability to get a decent job. This gift will enroll a youth in the Pacific into our Building Blocks programme, providing skills and confidence in basic reading, writing and maths skills.
Classroom and school construction from $85
This gift will help improve access to education for a remote community where ChildFund works. Your donation will help us fund the construction and equipping of new classrooms, and supplying children and teachers with resources and materials for improved learning.


First of all, can we agree that it should be “95” or “ninety-five” but never “ninetyfive”, like WTF.
Distinctly weird hyphenation aside, 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation, is a thoughtful examination of one of those well-celebrated yet mythologized moments in history. Peter Marshall uses the stories surrounding Luther’s apocryphal posting of the 95 theses to examine the character of the Reformation in Luther’s time, his legacy and effects on the Reformation, and the enduring nature of the thesis-posting as a watershed moment in European politics and religion. The intricate differences between and among the Catholic church and various Protestant denominations provide no end of fascination for me (I have lost many an hour to the very detailed Wikipedia articles on these topics—seriously, that stuff is complex). As such, when this book showed up on NetGalley, it immediately caught my eye. Thanks to NetGalley and Oxford University Press for making it available.
Prior to reading this, I had little knowledge of Martin Luther or his 95 theses beyond vague recollections of something in a Grade 12 history class (and even then I think we spent more time on Giordano Bruno). I knew that Luther had played a significant role in the early Reformation, and that he had written his 95 theses, and I had heard the story of him nailing them to the church wall. I was unaware of the larger context, or the way in which this story has been magnified and repeated even though the event itself might not have happened.
Marshall himself takes the stance that Luther almost certainly did not nail his theses to the Wittenberg church(es) on October 31. However, he also pushes back against the idea that the thesis-posting is as unimportant a detail as, say, the apple that didn’t fall on Newton’s head. He argues that the theses may have been posted on church doors at some point in the following month, because—and this I did not know—posting stuff you wanted to argue about on church doors was the Hot New Thing back in Luther’s day, kind of a post-Renaissance version of shouting into the abyss that is Twitter. Marshall concludes from his examination of the story around this story that the mythologizing of the thesis-posting tells us so much about the early Reformation.
This is the kind of history book I do quite enjoy. Rather than simply retelling history to me in a way that claims to be objective, Marshall examines it, as if under a microscope. He pulls it this way and that, asking contradictory what-ifs and then pursuing lines of inquiry to their logical conclusions. He points out where contemporary writers may have been mistaken, or deliberately conflated things. He reminds us that translations are fallible, and especially back in that time, for many people a single translation would be their only way to read and understand a text. As such, those translations might propagate unintentional errors across entire generations. Marshall reminds us that history is not this static thing left here for historians to lecture about; it is a dynamic series of snapshots, some of which lie or are too grainy to make out, and we are constantly re-interpreting it.
Marshall points out that whether or not Luther posted the theses to the church door on October 31 matters. If Luther did this, it was much more an act of deliberate rebellion against the Church than if he simply posted (as in mailed) the theses to his bishop for approval to publish them. Indeed, like everyone else who hasn’t actually read the theses and made a study of what Luther was arguing, I wasn’t aware how Luther began his journey as a reformer from a conciliatory position. At first he’s all, “Well, the pope isn’t that bad; it’s these local corrupt officials who are misusing indulgences!” and it isn’t until years later, after the usual song-and-dance of persecution and excommunication, that Luther actually changes his tune and declares the pope anathema.
At some points, the depth of Marshall’s inquiry goes beyond my tastes as a lay person. I’m increasingly finding this is the case with the university press publications I grab from NetGalley. That’s not a criticism of them, because obviously I’m not the target audience here. But I always like to mention it, in case you are also not in the target audience; you should know what you’re getting into. 1517 is among the more accessible works I’ve read lately in this format. Nevertheless, this book’s topic is very specialized. Although Marshall brings up more points of general history and talks about the Reformation in general during parts of the book, he (rightly) focuses tightly on Luther’s light-cone.
So, if you’re looking for a book specifically about Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the posting of the 95 theses, you came to the right place. If you want a more general history of the Reformation, or a more narrative presentation of the subject matter, you might be disappointed. 1517 is scholarly but not stupefying, informative but not imposing.


At ICADV we reject the notion that domestic violence is inevitable. We believe that domestic violence is a choice and we are committed to getting in front of the problem to change the social conditions that tolerate or encourage these forms of abuse. We believe that because some people (largely male) choose to perpetrate domestic violence, that it is possible for them to choose not to perpetrate. The processes around decision making for any individual are complex and result from a variety of influences from their personal experience and their social environment, but the choice to perpetrate domestic violence begins with the existence of the option to be abusive within our relationships. The option to abuse is expressed in our social environments in many different ways. Preventing violence involves not only working with individuals who perpetrate to make different decisions, but primarily focuses on creating change at the cultural level to make the option of domestic violence less likely or (ultimately) not possible.
What are we preventing?
|Domestic violence programs have used the Duluth power and control wheel to educate about the comprehensive system of behaviors that abusers use to establish control in intimate relationships for three decades. In spite of this, many community interventions around domestic violence are only set up to be responsive to acts of physical violence. We believe that any prevention strategy that addresses physical acts of violence but leaves the victim vulnerable to emotional, economic, psychological or sexual abuse is incomplete. In framing our prevention work, we seek to address the entire range of abusive behaviors that abusers use to gain and maintain power and control.|
What is Primary Prevention?
The Prevention Institute defines prevention as a systematic process that promotes safe and healthy environments and behaviors, reducing the likelihood or frequency of an incident, injury or condition occurring (2007). Primary prevention is the terminology that the public health community uses to describe interventions designed to prevent first time perpetration or victimization. Primary prevention strategy focuses on reducing factors that put an individual at risk for perpetration and by promoting factors that protect an individual from victimization.
Because the application of primary prevention strategy to intimate partner violence is fairly new nationally, there is not yet a significant research base describing best practices in this work. However, principles of effective prevention have been identified in other public health initiatives. Successful prevention initiatives incorporate as many of these strategies as they reasonably can. The Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance (2009) has adapted this list for intimate partner and sexual violence:
- Develop prevention strategies that promote protective factors.
- Develop prevention strategies that strive to be comprehensive.
- Develop prevention strategies that are concentrated, and can be sustained and expanded over time.
- Develop prevention strategies that use varied teaching methods to address multiple learning processes.
- Develop prevention programs based on purposeful, logical rationale.
- Develop prevention strategies that are developmentally appropriate.
- Develop prevention strategies in collaboration with a representative cross-section of community members to incorporate diverse cultural beliefs, practices, and community norms.
- Develop prevention strategies that include a systematic method to determine program effectiveness and promote continuous quality improvement.
To be effective, prevention efforts must be as comprehensive as the elements of culture that support domestic violence. A campaign that pursues a single strategy in isolation probably won’t be effective in changing a perpetrator’s behavior and therefore, doesn’t constitute effective primary prevention. For more information about determining prevention strategy, see the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault’s strategy selection workbook at: http://www.taasa.org/prevention/pdfs/StrategySelectionWorkbook.pdf
How is this different from the prevention work that we have done in the past?
Past prevention efforts have mostly focused on raising awareness among the general public about domestic violence and providing potential victims with information about how they might reduce their risk of being victimized. Traditionally, prevention efforts have been delivered to targeted groups within the broader population; programs have been designed for those groups perceived to be at increased risk for perpetration or victimization. In addition, programs have been implemented to try to intervene early with perpetrators to prevent repeat episodes of abusive behavior.
All of these prevention strategies take place in a context where perpetration is present. Better described as risk reduction, these strategies are designed to teach individuals how to avoid or manage their experience of violence and abuse. If displayed on a timeline, primary prevention would take place earlier than the customary prevention strategies described above.
Primary Secondary Tertiary
| “Prior To”
Primary prevention includes initiatives that precede perpetration or victimization that seek to enhance protective factors and modify or eliminate risk factors.
| “In the Thick”
Secondary prevention includes initiatives designed to intervene in the context of violence. E.g., shelter, arrest, medical care.
Tertiary prevention includes services designed to provide therapeutic support for survivors or rehabilitation for perpetrators: Batter intervention programs, probation, counseling programs and support groups.
Rather than trying to help individuals navigate a context of perpetration, primary prevention strategies give us the opportunity to truly get in front of the problem by changing the social conditions that enable domestic violence.
Why enhance strategy?
Current strategies for responding to domestic violence are insufficient to change the problem.
- Though providing supportive services for victims and mandating rehabilitative interventions for perpetrators are essential components of a community’s response to domestic violence, these strategies have not resulted in a reduction of rates of domestic violence in the United States over the past thirty years.
- Risk reduction strategies may or may not be effective in protecting an individual, but they do not prevent abusers from using violence, thus potentially relocating, but not preventing violence.
- Awareness raising activities alone have not been shown to change abusive behaviors.
Advocacy for broader social change is where the movement began.
Domestic violence programs have served communities in Indiana since the 1970s. The goal of these programs has been to provide excellent supportive services to victims while working to render those services unnecessary by eliminating domestic violence. Early, grassroots domestic violence advocates worked to bring attention to the inequities between people (in the case of domestic violence, most typically inequity based on gender) understood to enable abuse in intimate relationships. Insufficient funding for domestic violence work has necessarily narrowed the scope of that work over time to a focus on services for victims. In a context where shelter staffs work at capacity just to keep the doors open and meet the needs of victims, the social change goal was pushed to the margins of the movement. The Delta project administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention seeks to restore balance to the mission by providing funding for prevention without compromising support for the healing interventions that programs provide for survivors.
Who should be involved in Primary Prevention?
Everyone. Primary prevention seeks to promote healthy relationships with a universal audience. In the past, awareness raising campaigns were targeted at individuals thought to be at increased risk for perpetration or victimization. Because we live in a culture where differences based on sex, race, class, orientation, ability and other traits traditionally used as a basis for discrimination, inequality between groups supports the privilege of some and the marginalization of others. This does not mean that all of those in traditionally privileged groups will perpetrate violence or that all of those in marginalized groups will be victims of violence. What it does mean is that domestic violence is a problem for all of us, and each of us has opportunities to work for prevention. Communicating effectively with diverse groups and communities will require a range of messages and messengers, but we should seek to engage all of us in the conversation.


Martial arts are based on core values that dominate the practices and teachings. One cornerstone of most martial arts programs involves teaching and learning respect for yourself and those around you. While the sport is about self-defense, it also embodies certain characteristics such as confidence, control, focus, and respect. There are many reasons why martial arts teaches respect, including learning the value of self and others. As such, respect and martial arts go hand-in-hand.
The Belief of Respect
To respect others, you must first understand what it is. In short, respect is showing positive feelings and attitudes towards yourself and others, and always taking others into consideration. There is a deep sense of this for everyone in a martial arts program.
In martial arts, teaching respect is one of the core tenets all students must learn and perform both on and off the mat. That means bowing to instructors and opponents at competitions, as well as treating every person with decency and kindness. In this sense, respect and martial arts are synonymous with each other.
The Admiration of Leaders
Students are taught to bow to their instructors at the beginning and end of class as a sign of acknowledging their leadership and skill. This is important because students learn to recognize that people in higher positions deserve deference for their work to reach that position. Just as one would respect an elder, martial arts students do the same to their teachers.
This is ingrained in students from day one. Learning this in the classroom leads to appreciating others, and yourself, out in the world whether that is at school, home, or work, which is why martial arts teaches respect.
The Bond of Camaraderie
There is also a strong sense of respect towards other students and opponents. No matter how intense a competition or training session may be, valuing the people around you is key to a safe and healthy environment. This is shown through obeying the rules, not performing any illegal strikes and bowing or shaking hands. Through these actions, students learn that no matter their skill level or situation, people and themselves deserve to be treated justly.
Read the full article HERE.


Finding a proper sleep aid can be difficult and, without the right monitoring and supervision, potentially risky for health concerns. While there are more natural sleeping aids, such as melatonin supplements, there are prescription sleep aids, such as Lunesta, Sonata, Halcion, Ambien, or Klonopin, and even over-the-counter medications, such as Advil PM, aspirin, diphenhydramine, or Motrin PM.
These medications are often used to help with insomnia, anxiety, and depression. Though meant to be short-term answers, many people can become dependent on them and become addicted, eventually leading to withdrawal when the person stops using them.
Overdosing on medication of any kind is never a good idea, but how much lethal potential do sleeping pills have and what risks come with taking them?
Overdosing on Sleeping Pills
As it turns out, there is such a thing as too much of anything—even something as healthy as water. Can sleeping pills cause death when overdosed? The subject is complicated.
Overdosing on sleeping pills to the point of death is certainly possible, but it is not very common. Today, many prescribed sleeping pills are safer, but can still be lethal at incredibly high doses. Most people who die through an overdose of sleeping pills are typically by accident, while some may very-well overdose sleeping pills as a form of suicide.
In most cases of sleeping pill overdose, sleeping pills will be mixed with other drugs. The most common substance used with sleeping pills is alcohol. Some combine them for suicide attempts, while others use them together to try to fall asleep easier. This combination intensifies many of the effects found in these medications, making it all the more deadly.
Side Effects of Sleeping Pills
Sleeping pills can create a number of side effects, such as the obvious sense of drowsiness; however, an overdose can cause other unexpected effects.
These include clumsiness, abdominal pain, loss of appetite, constipation, extreme lethargy, and breathing problems. Once again when combined with alcohol, however, the effects become much more dangerous.
Drowsiness becomes more intense, along with slowed heart rate and breathing, impaired motor skills, memory loss, low blood pressure, unusual behavior similar to drunkenness, and, in the worst-case scenario, death.
Not all sleeping pills may result in death in overdose. Instead, these overdoses can cause potential brain damage or even permanent physical impairment or damage.
Addiction to Sleeping Pills
Sleeping pills have strong addiction potential and are prescribed with limited use for this reason. They are for combating intense insomnia, and using them regularly can cause a person to develop a dependence on them.
This dependence can not only make it even harder to sleep but may drive people to take longer dosages. Additionally, an addict of sleeping medication can experience withdrawal symptoms, such as shakiness, anxiety, increased heart rate and blood pressure, hallucinations, agitation, and even seizures.
In most cases, sleeping aids prescriptions are for severe sleeping disorders. However, there are several natural remedies for these problems. Less caffeine, meditation, attending therapy, warm baths before bed, regular exercise, and practicing bedtime routines are all good options.
In the case of a serious addiction, it is best to seek recovery and therapy programs. By entering detox and developing healthy habits, you can avoid addiction in the future.
If you or a loved one is struggling with addiction to sleeping aids, contact a local Treatment & Rehab alternative in Tennessee. You might be interested in Discovery Place’s own treatment center alternatives, such as our 30 Day Residential Addiction Recovery Program or our Long Term Recovery Program in Burns, Tennessee. Call us for a free consultation at 1-800-725-0922.


The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is utilizing new robotic instruments to help monitor and manage harmful algal blooms (HABs) or red tides in New England. The first instrument has been in use since last month, and a second will be deployed later this spring. - 13, May 2013
The new robotic sensors used by WHOI will allow researchers to make weekly real-time forecasts of the algal blooms in the Gulf of Maine more accurate. WHOI forecasts are sent to 150 fisheries, coastal managers, and federal agencies such as the EPA and NOAA. Researchers plan to add “current status” updates to the Northeast PSP website, as well.
According to Don Anderson, WHOI senior scientist and principal investigator of the project, “This deployment is a critical step towards our long-term dream of having a network of instruments moored along the coast of the Gulf of Maine, routinely providing data on the distribution and abundance of HAB cells and toxins. The technology will greatly enhance management capabilities and protection of public health in the region.”
The two robotic sensors, Environmental Sample Processors (ESPs), detect and estimate the population of two algal species that cause red tides and may also produce fatal toxins. The toxicity of the algal blooms can vary and influence the amount of toxins in shellfish. Monitoring the toxicity levels in shellfish and other species can help prevent the spread of the toxin to other marine species and humans that may consume the shellfish.
“The ESPs are not a replacement for state-run programs that monitor naturally occurring marine toxins in shellfish. Instead, they will provide valuable data on the phytoplankton cells and associated toxins in coastal waters giving managers a more complete picture of the magnitude and distribution of HAB events,” says Kohl Kanwit, director of the Bureau of Public Health for the Maine Department of Marine Resources.


Jena-Optronik is developing a new generation of METimage cameras for weather satellites. The development order has been awarded by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). METimage will play a central role in supplying images for weather forecasting and meteorological data.
In the development an innovative approach will be chosen with support from the German Aerospace Center: the telescope rotates as it takes its readings, enabling it to capture an exceptionally large image from horizon to horizon.
Back in 2003 Jena-Optronik developed and patent registered the proposed concept. Over recent years the project has been developed further with the support of the Deutscher Wetterdienst (Germany's National Meteorological Service), the Federal Ministry for Transport, Building and Urban Affairs and the German Aerospace Center.
METimage is to be used on the next generation of low-flying weather satellites, the Post-EUMETSAT Polar System (EPS). It will be far superior to the current system in terms of resolution and image width as it can photograph a strip nearly 3000 kilometers wide with a resolution of 500 meters and better. The instrument currently in orbit offers a resolution of 1100 meters. The marked improvement in the quality of the images will provide for six-day weather forecasts in advance, significantly longer than at present.
It accomplishes the user requirements for measurements of physical parameters in the atmosphere, of the sea surface and of the land surface to assess meteorologically relevant states.
Optische Sensoren der Jena-Optronik befähigen Satelliten, stabil und wie vorgesehen auf Kurs zu bleiben. Seit vielen Jahrzehnten ermöglichen und unterstützen wir ebenso spektakuläre wie erfolgreiche Weltraummissionen. Mit unseren international ausgezeichneten Produkten gehören wir zu den weltweit führenden Zuliefern der Raumfahrtindustrie.
Believe in (y)our potentials: Unterstützen Sie unser Team.


A larger waist circumference is associated with a higher risk of heart failure (HF) among older men and women, according to a seven-year study published online April 7 in the journal Circulation: Heart Failure. Of the 36,873 people aged 48 to 83 who had first-time heart failure events, 34 percent of the women and 46 percent of the men were overweight and another approximately 10 percent in each group were considered obese. What made the findings especially interesting was that researchers found waist size increased the risk of HF even when body mass index (BMI) measurements fell within the normal range. BMI is a formula based on the ratio between height and weight. BMI levels considered obese, along with waist circumference and hip-to-waist ratios, have all shown to be linked to higher rates of heart failure in earlier studies.