Hydrostor, a Canadian company based in Toronto, wants to make CAES (compressed air energy storage) become a solution for every city in the world that has a deep water body around. The same technique had been used before in the energy storage industry by pumping compressed air inside Earth’s crust, but the high number of drawbacks kept it from blooming.
However, Hydrostor‘s CAES system seems to be able to cope with the (main) issue of processing the extra heat generated during compression and putting it back at the time of decompression. They plan to install a system with a storage capacity of 4MWh and 1MW generation capacity in Lake Ontario by the end of 2012, at about 7 kilometers offshore.
The system will replicate the pilot version they built last year. Hydrostor‘s energy storage system practically consists of air-inflated balloons that are descended at high depths below the lake’s surface by using a certain amount of energy and then locked. Then, when that energy is needed by the grid, the locks keeping the balloons are released to go to the surface, thus pulling a system of ropes and pulleys that move an alternator like the one in your car, which generates electricity.
Hydrostor says the efficiency of their CAES reaches 70 percent and the costs added to the KWh billed to the consumer are minimum.


Italian architecture is known as being distinct and iconic throughout Europe and other parts of the world.
Since the earliest days of the Roman Empire to the height of the most influential members of the Italian Renaissance, Italy’s architects have stood out and created some of the world’s most striking buildings and structures.
This article details 10 of the most famous Italian architects and also examines more about each individual architect’s history and their works.
Famous Italian Architects
1. Renzo Piano
One of the most famous Italian architects in history is one who has significantly developed many of the nation’s cities and buildings in recent years.
Renzo Piano is an architect who was born in Genoa, Italy in 1937 to a family of builders and stonemasons. He took an interest in architecture from a very young age and some of his first projects are said to be his greatest works.
He attended the University of Florence and worked under the supervision of his mentor, Giuseppe Ciribini, who is one of the most famous engineers in Italy’s history.
His style of architecture is very distinct from many other designers and builders in the modern era. According to critics, Piano often implements somewhat traditional methods into his works, making them an ideal blend of modern architecture and art, as well as bold representations of more established styles of architecture.
Some of his greatest works include Central Saint Giles in London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
2. Filippo Brunelleschi
Filippo Brunelleschi is recognized as one of the most notable architects from Italian history and he lived and worked during the early stages of the Italian Renaissance.
Born in Florence in 1377, Brunelleschi would show a particular aptitude for the arts from a very young age and he studied under some of the most prominent sculptors and architects at the time of his youth.
His mother was of the famous Spini family, which was one of Florence’s wealthiest and most prominent, which afforded Brunelleschi many opportunities in the professional world.
He became a well-known sculptor during the early part of his life and would later move on to architecture in 1419 when he designed and supervised the construction of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, which was a hospital in Florence.
He is most known for his work in completing the Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore and was also a highly-skilled engineer during his lifetime.
3. Alessandro Mendini
Another one of Italy’s most well-known modern architects, as well as an artist known throughout the world, was Alessandro Mendini.
He was born in Milan 1931 and seemed to pursue a career in design and architecture from an early age, graduating from Politecnico di Milano in 1959 with a degree in architecture.
Many critics who have analyzed the works of Mendini have described them as being quintessentially postmodern, leaning more towards the arts than traditional architectural design movements.
He was known for his sculptures as much as his architectural designs. Mendini designed and created everything from chairs, artwork, sculptures and many other types of work during his career.
Near the end of his career in 2014, he was awarded the European Prize for Architecture by The Chicago Athenaeum. One of his most highly-recognized works of architecture is the Groninger museum in the Netherlands.
4. Ettore Sottsass
Ettore Sottsass was an incredibly-talented artist who was also known for his works as an architect. Today, he is remembered as one of Italy’s most highly-revered architects, having created a number of artistic monuments and artworks in some of Italy’s largest cities.
Sottsass was born in Innsbruck, Hungary in 1917 and learned the finer points of architecture from a very early age as his father was an accomplished designer and architect in his hometown of Austria-Hungary.
Sottsass received an education from Politecnico di Torino in Turin and graduated in 1939 with a degree in architecture. For the first years of his career, he worked alongside his father to restore and rebuild many buildings that were damaged or destroyed in World War II.
Later in his life, he would produce such masterpieces as the Mayer-Schwarz Gallery, located in Beverly Hills, California, as well as many other buildings in and around the world’s most populated cities.
One of the most influential figures in the early Italian Renaissance and a person who experienced as many accolades in architecture as anyone from Italy is known as Michelozzo.
Born in the Republic of Florence in 1396, Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi proved to his parents that he had the desire and skill to become a great architect or sculptor.
He was employed by the Medici family and many of his greatest works came under commission from Cosimo de’ Medici himself.
Michelozzo worked alongside some of the other greats from the early Renaissance era such as Lorenzo Ghiberti and he is said to be one of the most famous sculptors from the Italian Renaissance period outside of Donatello.
His greatest work is usually considered to be the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence.
6. Antonio Sant’Elia
The Futurist movement was a distinct style of architectural design that sprang out of Italy in the early 20th century.
The most influential figure from this movement is Antonio Sant’Elia, another one of the great Italian architects. Sant’Elia was born in Como, Lombardy in 1888 and enjoyed an illustrious academic career and showed incredible promise as a designer of artwork and architecture from a very early age.
Sadly, however, his career would be cut short after he joined the ranks of the Italian army in 1915 and was killed just a year later in the grisly Eighth Battle of the Isonzo, near Gorizia.
7. Filippo Juvarra
There are few architects of note in Italian history from the end of the High Renaissance era until the beginning of the modern era. However, Filippo Juvarra is one designer who is lauded as one of the most accomplished in Italian history.
He was a Sicilian architect who was born in 1678 in Messina, which was a moderately-large city in the Kingdom of Sicily at the time.
His architecture was done in a style that historians and critics point to as being distinctly of the Baroque architectural manner. He spent his youth learning art and design from his family, who worked as goldsmiths in the city where he grew up.
Juvarra would go on to design a number of prominent structures such as castles, public buildings, and one that many consider to be his crowning achievement, the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso.
8. Mario Bellini
One of the great modern masters of design that hails from Italy is Mario Bellini. Known for producing a wide variety of artistic and architectural works, Bellini has received a number of awards throughout his life from some of the most prestigious architectural organizations in the world.
Bellini was born in Milan in 1935 and he attended the Milan Polytechnic – Faculty of Architecture where he graduated in 1959 with a degree in design and began his career as an architect in the 1960s.
He worked as a product designer, as well as a furniture designer in his early career and focused much of his time in his career as the chief design consultant for Olivetti, one of the most prestigious design firms in Italy.
He has worked on a huge variety of different projects that include everything from designing cars for Fiat to creating such masterful works as the Museum of Islamic Art at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France.
9. Andrea Palladio
Another one of Italy’s most recognized architects from the Italian Renaissance era is Andrea Palladio, who was a prominent architect remembered for his work in designing and building grandiose houses and buildings.
Also Read: Renaissance Buildings
Palladio was born in Padua, which was a small city in the Republic of Venice, in 1508. Throughout his lifetime, he was an accomplished architect, as well as a teacher and writer, producing a famous book known as The Four Books of Architecture.
He is one of the few Italian Renaissance architects whose work is mostly still standing compared to many other designers from the era. Palladio designed more than 20 different buildings in the city of Vicenza alone that are still in pristine condition today.
One of his greatest achievements has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is known as the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto.
10. Richard Rogers
Another one of Italy’s more well-known modern architects is also one that gained much more of his reputation outside of the country.
Richard Rogers was born in Florence in 1933 and would pursue a career in architecture from a very early age. His family was of Jewish descent and he is the cousin of prominent architect and writer, Ernesto Nathan Rogers.
Rogers obtained a scholarship to attend the Yale School of Architecture and later became a prolific architect who worked on such buildings as One Hyde Park in London and the International Towers Sydney.


On Feb. 15, the Earth was hit by the largest asteroid impact it had seen in a century: A 17-meter rock screamed in over central Russia, underwent tremendous pressure as it plowed through our atmosphere 20 times faster than a rifle bullet, and exploded at a height of 23 kilometers (14-plus miles) above the ground. The shock wave blew out windows in the nearby city of Chelyabinsk, injuring a thousand people from flying glass.
Pictures and videos of the event from people in Chelyabinsk abound. The vapor trail left behind lingered for hours, and a few satellites were also able to capture it (such as, for example, METEOSAT-9).
We can add another one to the list: Elektro-L, a Russian Earth-observing satellite (sometimes also spelled “Electro-L,” transliterated from Russian). Elektro-L is in geosynchronous orbit, circling Earth once every 24 hours. From its vantage point, 36,000 km (22,000 miles) above the planet’s surface, the Earth appears motionless, the satellite moving around the world at the same speed the Earth turns. It stares perpetually down at us, centered on the equator a few thousand kilometers south of India.
That view includes Russia, and on that morning of Feb. 15, Elektro-L saw the meteor vapor trail:
That animated picture was put together by journalist Vitaliy Egorov, who wrote a detailed and fascinating description of how he got the images on his own blog, which has also been translated on the Planetary Society blog. The earliest shots of the Chelyabinsk event from Elektro-L weren’t public, but Egorov managed to get them and create that animation. He also sent me one that shows a much wider view of the Earth, in color:
The animation plays first, and then repeats with the vapor trail highlighted. Images like these are pretty useful; big impacts like Chelyabinsk only happen statistically every century or so, and this is the first one where we’ve had detailed observations. Asteroids are a real threat, and although rare, are something we must take seriously. Scientifically they’re fascinating, but they pose a risk to our civilization. Every piece of information we can get will help us understand this event better.


You use identifiers to name the PL/SQL program items and units that include constants, variables, cursors, exceptions, cursor variables, subprograms, and packages. Some of the examples of identifiers is shown below:
An identifier consists of a letter optionally followed by many letters, numerals, underscores, dollar signs, and number signs. Other characters like slashes, hyphens, and spaces are illegal, as the examples shown below:
mine&yours -- illegal ampersand
debit-amount -- illegal hyphen
on/off -- illegal slash
user id -- illegal space
The next examples represents that adjoining and trailing dollar signs, underscores, and number signs are permitted:
You can use lower, upper, or mixed case to write the identifiers. The PL/SQL is not case sensitive except within the string and character literals. Therefore, if the only difference between identifiers is the case of corresponding letters, then PL/SQL considers the identifiers to be similar, as the example shown below:
LastName-- same as lastname
LASTNAME-- same as lastname and LastName
The length of an identifier may not exceed 30 characters. But, each character, involving underscores, dollar signs, and number signs, is significant. For example, the PL/SQL considers the following identifiers to be different:
Identifiers must be descriptive. And hence, avoid obscure names like cpm. Rather, use of meaningful names like cost_per_thousand.
The Identifiers worldwide declared in package STANDARD, like the exception INVALID_NUMBER, can be re-declared. Though, re-declaring predefined identifiers is error prone as your local declaration overrides the global declaration.
For flexibility, the PL/SQL encloses identifiers within the double quotes. The Quoted identifiers are seldom required, but rarely can they be useful. They can contain any sequence of printable characters together with spaces but excluding the double quotes. And hence, the following identifiers are valid:
"*** header info ***"
The highest length of a quoted identifier is 30 characters not counting the double quotes. However allowed, using the PL/SQL reserved words as quoted identifiers is a poor programming practice.
Some of the PL/SQL reserved words are not reserved by the SQL. For example, you can use the PL/SQL reserved word TYPE in a CREATE TABLE statement to name a database column. But, if a SQL statement in your program refers to that column, you get a compilation error, as the following example is shown below:
SELECT acct, type, bal INTO ...-- causes compilation error
To prevent the error, enclose the uppercase column name in double quotes, as shown below:
SELECT acct, "TYPE", bal INTO ...
The column name cannot appear in the lower or mixed case (unless it was defined that way in the CREATE TABLE statement). For example, the statement below is invalid:
SELECT acct, "type", bal INTO ...-- causes compilation error
Otherwise, you can create a view that renames the troublesome column, then use the view rather of the base table in SQL statements.


The area of Pylons Four, Five and Six at Karnak Temple: assessing the architecture, sequence of construction and ensuing historical implications
thesisposted on 28.03.2022, 09:54 authored by Gillian Smith
This thesis presents a historiographic assessment of the architectural and archaeological study of the area of Pylons Four, Five and Six of the Ancient Egyptian temple of Amun-Re at Karnak. Built during the politically significant period of the reigns of Thutmose I, Thutmose II, Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, this area is characterised by the remains of numerous architectural elements such as pylons, obelisks, columns and colossi that are situated within a relatively small space. Today, the remains of the various building projects of the different pharaohs lie superimposed on top of one another making it difficult for scholars to attribute specific architectural elements to these individual pharaohs. The confusion relating to the historical period has further made it problematic for scholars to determine the sequence of construction of this area of the temple. This study identifies the complexities and trends within the work of scholars Borchardt (1905), Barguet (1962), Carlotti and Gabolde (2003) and Larché (2007) who have endeavoured to reconstruct the building history of this area. Furthermore, it reflects on the impact of contemporary discoveries relating to the archaeology and history of the site during these four phases of study on the area of Pylons Four, Five and Six of Karnak.


These are the Zekelman Standards for Chumash.
The Zekelman Standards are made up of 6 areas that you can explore using this menu.
Many of the standards are preceded by “The Essential Questions,” “Enduring Understandings” and “Key Knowledge” as a valuable introduction that follows the framework of UBD (Understanding By Design.) The standards themselves are found in the grade level charts that follow.
You may choose to navigate the standards by grade, material or browse all of them at once. Alongside the standards, for your convenience, are all the associated materials for purchase that will support your teaching.


A Journal of the Plague Year is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in March 1722.
This novel is an account of one man’s experiences of the year 1665, in which the Great Plague or the bubonic plague struck the city of London. The book is told somewhat chronologically, though without sections or chapter headings.
Presented as an eyewitness account of the events at the time, it was written in the years just prior to the book’s first publication in March 1722. Defoe was only five years old in 1665, and the book itself was published under the initials H. F. and is probably based on the journals of Defoe’s uncle, Henry Foe.
In the book, Defoe goes to great pains to achieve an effect of verisimilitude, identifying specific neighborhoods, streets, and even houses in which events took place. Additionally, it provides tables of casualty figures and discusses the credibility of various accounts and anecdotes received by the narrator.
The novel is often compared to the actual, contemporary accounts of the plague in the diary of Samuel Pepys. Defoe’s account, which appears to include much research, is far more systematic and detailed than Pepys’s first-person account.
Daniel Defoe (1659/1661 [?] – 1731) was an English writer, journalist, and spy, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest practitioners of the novel and helped popularize the genre in Britain. In some texts he is even referred to as one of the founders, if not the founder, of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote more than five hundred books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics (including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural). He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.
Quotes From this Book
“But it was impossible to make any impression upon the middling people and the working labouring poor. Their fears were predominant over all their passions, and they threw away their money in a most distracted manner upon those whimsies.”
“Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And ’twill be found upon examination The latter has the largest congregation.”


Block Island Wind Farm, the first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States, is officially running operations. The wind farm, developed by Deepwater Wind, LLC, produces 30 megawatts of energy through 5 turbines, which were assembled at sea. The installation took a total of two years, and received support from 300 local workers who helped develop, build and commission the project.
“It’s official: America’s first offshore wind farm is powering homes and businesses with clean, reliable energy,” said U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). “This is a historic milestone for reducing our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels, and I couldn’t be more thrilled that it’s happening here in the Ocean State.”
According to the Providence Journal, each turbine was assembled in a multistep process. First, the turbine’s foundation was pinned to the ocean floor. After that, towers were added in three sections, as well as the nacelles, which hold the generators. Finally, they place the blades of the turbines, which were 58,000 pounds each.
In a report outlining the scope of the project, Deepwater Wind said the blades were made with fiberglass-reinforced epoxy resin manufactured in a single operation. Additionally, the nacelles are made of fiberglass-reinforced laminated panels with multiple fire-protecting properties.
Technicians from GE Renewable Energy, which supplied the project’s five offshore wind turbines, put the wind farm through its paces during the initial four-month testing period. The project’s crew transfer vessel, the Rhode Island-built Atlantic Pioneer, transported technicians to the wind farm around the clock.
Deepwater Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski said that there is still more work that needs to be done, which will benefit both the environment and the American economy. The company notes on its website that in Europe, the offshore wind industry employs nearly 60,000 works, and there is a great opportunity for American businesses to take part in this burgeoning industry.
“We’ve made history here in the Ocean State, but our work is far from over,” Grybowski said. “We’re more confident than ever that this is just the start of a new U.S. renewable energy industry that will put thousands of Americans to work and power communities up and down the East Coast for decades to come.”


The energy of electromagnetic waves depends on their frequency. Low-frequency waves have little energy and are normally harmless. High-frequency waves have a lot of energy and are potentially very harmful.
What are the factors of electromagnetic waves?
Electromagnetic waves consist of both electric and magnetic field waves. These waves oscillate in perpendicular planes with respect to each other, and are in phase. The creation of all electromagnetic waves begins with an oscillating charged particle, which creates oscillating electric and magnetic fields.
What do electromagnetic waves require?
Electromagnetic waves differ from mechanical waves in that they do not require a medium to propagate. This means that electromagnetic waves can travel not only through air and solid materials, but also through the vacuum of space.
Does electromagnetic wave depend on frequency?
Factors Affecting Wave Speed:
Electromagnetic waves, like any wave, have a finite speed value which is dependent upon the properties of the medium through which it flows. … While the speed can be calculated from knowledge of the frequency and wavelength, its value is not affected by changes in frequency and wavelength.
What does the speed of electromagnetic waves depends on?
Hence the speed of electromagnetic waves depends both on frequency and wavelength. The speed of light is only independent of the intensity. Hence, option C is the correct answer. Note:When electromagnetic waves are passing through a medium, then their speed decreases.
What are the 4 main properties of electromagnetic waves?
Every form of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, oscillates in a periodic fashion with peaks and valleys, and displaying a characteristic amplitude, wavelength, and frequency that defines the direction, energy, and intensity of the radiation.
What are three properties of electromagnetic waves?
Electromagnetic waves are typically described by any of the following three physical properties: frequency (f), wavelength (λ), or intensity (I). Light quanta are typically described by frequency (f), wavelength (λ), or photon energy (E). The spectrum can be ordered according to frequency or wavelength.
How does an electromagnetic wave carries energy from place to place?
In electromagnetic waves, energy is transferred through vibrations of electric and magnetic fields. In sound waves, energy is transferred through vibration of air particles or particles of a solid through which the sound travels. In water waves, energy is transferred through the vibration of the water particles.
Which property of an electromagnetic wave depends on the medium in which it is Travelling explain your answer?
The frequency, wavelength and time period can all vary according to the wave producing source. But, the velocity of an electromagnetic wave depends upon the medium through which it is travelling.
How electromagnetic wave is produced and propagated?
The spark current oscillates at a frequency (ν), which is a characteristic of the circuit. … The changing magnetic field, in turn, induces an electric field so that a series of electrical and magnetic oscillations combine to produce a formation that propagates as an electromagnetic wave.
Do radios use electromagnetic waves?
Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation best-known for their use in communication technologies, such as television, mobile phones and radios. These devices receive radio waves and convert them to mechanical vibrations in the speaker to create sound waves.
Which electromagnetic wave has the highest frequency?
Gamma rays have the highest energies, the shortest wavelengths, and the highest frequencies. Radio waves, on the other hand, have the lowest energies, longest wavelengths, and lowest frequencies of any type of EM radiation.
Why does the speed of a wave depend on the medium and not the frequency or wavelength?
If the wavelength decreases at the source, then the frequency increases because the speed has not changed. If the wavelength decreases due to a decrease in speed as the wave enters a different medium, then the frequency is not affected.
On what factors does the velocity of electromagnetic waves in vacuum depends?
On what factors does its velocity in vacuum depend? field vectors, at right angles to each other as well as at right angles to the direction of its propagation. These two field vectors vibrate in the same phase and with the same frequency.
What is the factor that affects the speed of electromagnetic waves passing through the different material?
This is observed in the animation below. The actual speed of an electromagnetic wave through a material medium is dependent upon the optical density of that medium. Different materials cause a different amount of delay due to the absorption and reemission process.
Why do all electromagnetic waves have the same speed?
The speed of a wave is a product of its wavelength and frequency. Because all electromagnetic waves travel at the same speed through space, a wave with a shorter wavelength must have a higher frequency, and vice versa.


Highlights Introduction (continued)
1. When we think of microbes (bacteria/yeast) involved in food production, a few others have a long history. They include bacteria involved in making yoghurt and cheese. Lactobacillus bacteria produce lactic acid as a byproduct and it is tasty.
2. As noted in the previous lecture, cells are the fundamental unit of life.
3. We can divide cell types into several categories. The ones we will use in this class are a) prokaryotic; b) eukaryotic; and c) archebacteria
4. Prokaryotic cells are distinguished by a) always being unicellular; b) being tiny in size; and c) not having internal organelles, such as a nucleus or mitochondria. Prokaryotic cells are literally 'bags' of proteins and DNA/RNA.
5. Archebacteria are unusual cell types found in harsh environments. They too are unicellular and we won't have much to say about them.
6. Eukaryotic cells are those of higher organisms, such as animals, plants, fungi (mushrooms, for example) and yeast. Most eukaryotic cells are part of multicellular organisms, but some, like yeast, are unicellular. All eukaryotic cells have internal "organs" called organelles. These include the nucleus (where DNA is stored) and the mitochondria where energy is produced.
7. Viruses are not living organisms. To reproduce, they must invade a cell and use components of the cell they invade to make copies of themselves.
8. We use the byproducts of cellular biochemistry in biotechnology. Though most cells on the face of the earth have most of the same reactions, some cells favor production of some molecules more than others do. For example, yeast produce ethanol, though animal cells (such as ours) cannot.
9. The sum of all the biochemical reactions of a cell is known as metabolism. Metabolism can be divided into catabolism (breaks big molecules down into smaller ones) and anabolism (makes big molecules from smaller pieces).
10. Catabolism usually involves oxidation. Oxidation reactions generally produce energy, so catabolic reactions are used by cells to produce energy. We eat food so our body can break it down to obtain energy through catabolism to do things.
11. Catabolism that uses oxygen is called aerobic and catabolism that does not use oxygen is called anaerobic.
12. Anaerobic catabolism produces products like ethanol (beer/wine)l, lactic acid (tasty), butyric acid (bad smell in sweat), and acetic acid (vinegar).
13. An example of aerobic catabolism is glycolysis, which is the process by which glucose is broken down by cells. This breakdown yields energy that cells can use to make things or do work.
14. Biochemical reactions are catalyzed by enzymes. I'll say more about these in the next lecture. In glycolysis, there are 10 reactions to break down glucose and each reaction requires a different enzyme.
15. Energy generated by catabolism is "captured" in the form of ATP. I think of ATP as the "cellular gasoline" since it is the energy source for most of what the cell does.


Stem Cells as Producers of Oncolytic Virus
The central concept associated with these investigations involves the use of viruses that have been modified for selective infection and destruction of tumor cells. This approach has been used by numerous investigators for several years, but with limited success to date. A major contributing factor associated with the limited success is insufficient spread of viruses throughout tumor, such that many tumor cells do not take in the virus. To address this limitation, MBTI investigators are using human stem cells, which have the ability to migrate over considerable distances in the brain, as producers of an oncolytic virus that infects and destroys any residual tumor that remains after surgical resection of tumor bulk. A clinical trial for testing this therapeutic approach is ongoing at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.


Verbs and nouns in awake neurosurgery: needs and answers
thesisposted on 28.03.2022, 19:26 authored by Adrià Rofes
Awake neurosurgery (henceforth, awake surgery) is a medical procedure recommended for patients with brain tumors or pharmacologically intractable epilepsy. It borrows its name from the intraoperative stage in which patients are awake, so that neuropsychological and/or language tasks can be administered (e.g., Berger 1996; Duffau et al. 1999; Huncke, Van de Wiele, Itzhak, & Rubinstein, 1998; Kilbride, 2013; Ojemann & Mateer, 1979; Penfield & Boldrey, 1937). Awake surgery has gained popularity over the last years, because in more classical approaches - where patients are not awake and language tests cannot be administered - less tumor tissue may be removed and worse cognitive outcomes may be obtained (see, for a meta-analysis, De Witt Hamer, Gil-Robles, Zwinderman, Duffau, & Berger, 2012). Language testing is usually also performed shortly before and after surgery (the so-called “perioperative stages”). Awake surgery finds its way within a multidisciplinary field that includes a range of specialists – radiologist, anesthesiologist, neurosurgeon, neuropathologist, neurophysiologist and neuropsychologist (or speech/language therapist or clinical linguist). All these professionals have a specific role in the assessment and treatment of each individual patient. As researchers, we should strive to understand the needs of these professionals, and provide answers that help them reach their goals, while enabling us to gain knowledge on language and the brain, and to improve current standards of patient care. A recurrent topic throughout this dissertation is that the language capacities of patients with brain tumors have been traditionally assessed with few tasks, and sometimes with non-standardized materials (e.g., Finch & Copland, 2014; Rofes & Miceli, 2014). Object naming tasks have been a key component of these assessments (for a review see De Witte & Mariën, 2013). Object naming has much to commend it, as seeing a picture and producing a noun (“apple”) or a determiner phrase (“the apple”) engages lexico-semantic input and output processes that are indispensable for everyday communication (Goodglass & Wingfield, 1997). For example, perioperative processing speed on object naming has been shown to correlate with postsurgical chances of return to work in patients undergoing this type of surgery (Moritz-Gasser, Herbet, Maldonado, & Duffau, 2012). Furthermore, object naming tasks were introduced by pioneers in the field and have maintained their role as a gold standard in the identification of areas relevant for language processing during surgery (Hamberger & Tamny, 1999; Ojemann & Mateer, 1979; Ojemann, Ojemann, & Lettich, 2002; Sanai & Berger, 2009). Despite these positive results, having object naming as the main component of assessment in awake surgery may not be always sufficient. This is because (1) the language capacities required for object naming may be relatively spared in spite of damage to other language abilities such as reading, writing, comprehension, or naming of actions (Santini, Talacchi, Squintani, Casagrande, Capasso, & Miceli, 2012; Satoer et al., 2014); (2) there are language processes typically used in everyday language (e.g., for sentence formulation, to refer to actions, or to moments in time) that cannot be assessed with object naming (e.g., Rofes & Miceli, 2014; for a review); and (3) the neural correlates of object naming may be partially segregated from those of other processes such as action-naming (e.g., Mätzig, Druks, Masterson, & Vigliocco, 2009; Vigliocco, Vinson, Druks, Barber, & Cappa, 2011; for reviews). These are important issues in aphasiology, neurolinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience, which we revisited to work on critical improvements for awake surgery: the use of standardized tasks for language mapping, more specifically, the use of verbs as isolated words and finite verbs in sentences. Verbs differ from nouns in a number of ways: they typically refer to actions (Gentner, 1982), and may weigh differently on psycholinguistic variables that affect performance in individuals with aphasia and non-brain-damaged people (e.g., Whitworth, Webster, & Howard, 2005; Vigliocco, Vinson, Druks, Barber, & Cappa, 2011). Verbs also entail a predicate-argument and a thematic structure (Carlson & Tanenhaus, 1989), and when they are used in the context of a sentence they require that agreement relations between the subject and the verb be fulfilled (Hale & Keyser, 1998). Verbs also allow the positioning of events in time and reference to events within a specific time frame (Bastiaanse, Bamyaci, Hsu, Lee, Yarbay Duman, & Thompson, 2011). Furthermore, they may be processed in different brain regions compared to nouns. It has been shown that verb processing elicits activation in the frontal and inferior-parietal lobe, whereas nouns trigger more activation in the temporal lobe (e.g., subjects KJ-1360, AN- 1033 and Boswell in Damasio & Tranel, 1993; Lubrano, Filleron, Démonet, & Roux, 2014; Miceli, Silveri, Noncentini, & Caramazza, 1988). Overall, earlier research suggests that the current assessments in awake surgery are pertinent but not sufficient. In this dissertation, we contribute to the efforts that are underway to meet the needs of awake surgery, both in terms of behavioral and anatomical knowledge. We approach the issue from the perspective of aphasiology, neurolinguistics and cognitive neuroscience (e.g., Coltheart 2011; Withworth et al., 2005). The chapters of this thesis each correspond to an article published in an international peer-reviewed journal or to a final draft that is (or will be) submitted for publication. The thesis begins with a review of language mapping with tests that use verbs and sentences (Chapter 2). This chapter serves as a critical introduction to some of the needs that neurosurgeons and people responsible for the assessment of language skills in individuals with brain gliomas face in everyday practice. More specifically, it talks about renewing the consideration of tasks that use verbs, an approach already tackled in classical papers such as Ojemann and Mateer (1979). After this introduction, we deal with the design and development of an object naming task and a task with finite verbs in sentences, specifically designed to assess Italian-speakers undergoing awake surgery (Chapter 3). Such tools did not exist for the Italian language. The standardization of the tasks is described so that both the task methodology and the standardization of the tasks can be easily adopted by other research or awake surgery teams. In Chapter 4, the validity of the noun and verb picture-naming tasks are assessed, as well as two other tasks typically used to assess language deficits in communicative contexts. By evaluating the performance of people suffering from post-stroke aphasia, we assess how well these naming tasks correlate with the ability to use language in an everyday context. The next two chapters describe the implementation of these tasks in surgical rooms and report the neurofunctional results of perioperative tests, their relation to the current neuroscience of language literature, and a critical review of the advantages and disadvantages that language mapping tasks may entail for awake surgery (Chapter 5 and Chapter 6). We finish the dissertation with a general discussion, aimed at describing theoretical and clinical reasons way a rigorous approach may improve awake surgery procedures. We also discuss some future implications of this line of work (Chapter 7).


Hornbills: The Bucerotiformes
Hornbills are very distinctive birds, often seen in aviaries and zoos as well as on television nature programmes.
Their generally large size, bold pied colouring and noisy manner make them obvious birds in many habitats.
Besides all this though, it is their oversized beaks – often decorated with large casques – and their unusual breeding habits that make them truly fascinating.
There are 54 species of Hornbills in the world.
They comprise the order Bucerotiformes, which is sub-divided into 2 families and 9 genera.
Hornbills are strictly ‘old world’ birds, meaning their range extends from Africa across India – and Asia to Papua New Guinea. They do not occur in the Americas, where a similar ecological niche of medium sized species is filled by Toucans.
Hornbills come in a large range of sizes from the small Dwarf Red-billed Hornbill (Tockus camurus) weighing in at 111 grams, to the Great Southern Ground Hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri) standing nearly 3 ft tall and weighing 4,190 grams.
Hornbills occupy a wide variety of habitat, from the Namib Desert to the lushest S. E. Asian tropical rainforest.
They have been known to mankind for a long time and feature in many ancient customs and myths. The distinctive features given to their skulls by their large beaks and casques has resulted in these skulls being used in ceremonial head gear. In ancient Rome they were known as Rhinoceros birds.
Hornbills are the only birds in which the first two vertebrae (the axis and atlas) are fused together.
They are also the only bird with a two-lobed kidney – all other birds having a three-lobed kidney.
Though Hornbills live in a wide range of habitats, they prefer mature forests and over 75% of the 54 species are forest dwellers.
They have long bills which help them collect food items from branch extremities – which they would not otherwise be able to reach. They have short, broad, rounded wings which are good for short bouts of flying – but not for extended periods of flight.
Males are usually larger than females, being up to 17% heavier and with up to 21% greater wingspan.
The ‘Casque’, the outgrowth which adorns the top mandible of the bill of so many species, is hollow and composed of the same keratin which lines the entire bill.
The casque is probably important as an indication of the age, sex and status of an individual bird. The casque is poorly developed in some species, but large and very evident in others.
An interesting exception to the above comments is the Great Helmeted Hornbill (Buceros vigil), where the front end of the casque is solid ‘ivory’ and so in this case the skull comprises 11% of the adult bird’s weight.
Hornbills are omnivorous, with a range of diets from almost wholly carnivorous to almost wholly frugivorous (fruit eating).
The large Southern Ground Hornbill is almost entirely carnivorous, feeding on lizards, frogs and small mammals as well as other birds. The much smaller Monteiro’s Hornbill (Tockus monteiri) is also virtually entirely carnivorous, feeding extensively on insects.
At the other end of this continuum, andof more average size, are a number of species including the Great Pied Hornbill (Buceros bicornis) and the Narcondam Wreathed Hornbill (Aceros narcondami), which are predominantly frugivorous.
Interestingly, all the savannah and steppe species are carnivorous whilst all the frugivorous species are forest dwellers. However, a number of Tockus species are forest dwellers yet primarily carnivorous (insectivorous).
Few species appear to need water to drink, most gaining all the moisture that they need form their food.
Like most animals, the food taken by hornbills varies throughout the year depending on what is available.
Reproduction in Hornbills
All hornbills (so far studied) breed as monogamous pairs.
They all breed in existing holes or crevices – normally naturally occurring ones – either in trees or rocks.
The fascinating thing about Hornbills is that the female seals herself up inside the cavity and then proceeds to moult all her flight feathers in one go, while she is incubating the eggs. In some cases the males help seal the female in.
Part of the entrance will be sealed up with mud before the female gets into the nest. When the entrance is only just big enough for her to get through, she gets into the cavity and remains there! The hole is then further sealed up form the inside using food items and faeces.
The end result is a narrow slit opening, which is just big enough for the male to offer food through.
The female and the young are then fed by the male, who brings food to the nest and passes it inside. This undoubtedly helps to protect the female and young from predation. But it also causes problems of sanitation and makes a lot of work for the male.
The two Bucorvus species nest in open cavities – rolling stumps, etc – the nest is not sealed and the female emerges daily to preen and defecate.
The larger species can be very long-lived.
A pair of Northern Ground Hornbills lived for 40 years as adults in captivity. Even smaller species live for a reasonable length of time, a Tockus hermprichii survived 22 years in captivity and a Tockus nasutus survived for 20 years .
The sanitation problems are dealt with in part by the female defecating out of the entrance slit or by passing soiled nest lining out of the nest. Some species do neither of these things and appear to rely on having a large stock of dry lining materials to soak up the mess of faeces and dropped food.
Many species, even those which forage in flocks, maintain the pair bond throughout the year. However, given the workload carried by the male during the breeding season, it is not surprising that helpers at the nest have been observed – or are suspected – for about one third of the Hornbill species.
This is the highest occurrence of co-operative breeding in any order of birds. The helpers are usually young of the they previous year, but can be adult males.
Incubation begins with the first egg laid, which means that the young hatch out in sequence rather than altogether.
In the larger species, only one or two eggs are laid – but in the smaller species as many as 8 eggs may be laid. This inevitably produces a succession of variably sized young. The percentage of young which survive will depend on the number of helpers and/or on the amount of food available.
Incubation takes from between 23 and 46 days. The larger the species, the longer the incubation period. This correlation between size and developmental time also applies to the fledging period (the time it takes for the young to develop sufficient plumage to be able to fly).
The range is 42-137 days. Smaller species reach sexual maturity in a year, medium sized species (+500g) in two years, and larger species (+1800g) in 3-6 years.
Many Hornbills and other Bucerotiformes are relatively large forest birds and require large expanses of forest, with many old trees for nesting – in order to maintain a viable breeding population.
While tropical rainforests are being felled at 95 square miles per day – to supply the first world with pretty doors, furniture, scaffolding and disposable chopsticks – the future is not terribly secure for any Hornbill or other large forest resident.


The Forests & Fish Law is an historic, science-based set of forest practices regulations that protect 60,000 miles of streams running through 9.3 million acres of state and private forestland. In 2006, the Forests & Fish Law was endorsed by the federal government, through a statewide Habitat Conservation Plan. As one of the largest and most comprehensive pieces of environmental legislation in the U.S., the law is designed to fully comply with both the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Clean Water Act (CWA) to protect Washington's native fish and aquatic species and assure clean water compliance.
Working in Collaboration
The Forests & Fish Law was developed in collaboration with federal, state, tribal, and county governments and private forest landowners. Representatives from each of these groups worked together for 18 months to make changes to the forest practices rules to protect clean water and riparian habitat on non-federal forestland in Washington State. Changes were made to improve forest roads and culverts, enlarge buffer zones along stream banks, and identify and protect unstable slopes. An Adaptive Management monitoring program has also been put into place to test the effectiveness of the new rules.
Guided by Science
Adaptive Management is “learning by doing”—using the best available science to monitor and verify that forest practices are meeting standards set by the Forests & Fish Law. Forest practice rules monitored for their effectiveness at meeting resource objectives and are designed to change, if needed, based on peer-reviewed scientific study.
CMER (Cooperative Monitoring, Evaluation and Research) is the science research arm of Adaptive Management and develops scientific information to inform policy makers and the Forest Practices Board, the group responsible for making changes to forest practices rules.
Strong Bipartisan Support from the Legislature
With strong bipartisan legislative support the Forests & Fish legislation (officially ESHB 2091) was passed on May 19, 1999. Former Governor Gary Locke signed it into law on June 7, 1999. This act directed the state’s Forest Practices Board to adopt permanent rules implementing forest and fish protection measures, effective July 1, 2001. On June 6, 2006, the State of Washington received approval for the 50-year Forest Practices Habitat Conservation Plan, which was accepted by Governor Gregoire on behalf of the State. A Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) is a long-term land management plan designed to protect endangered or potentially endangered plant and animal species and their habitats.
The Forest Practices Habitat Conservation Plan (FPHCP), set in motion by the Forests & Fish Law, is the largest multi-species HCP in the nation, protecting all native fish species, seven species of amphibians and 60,000 miles of streams on 9.3 million acres non-federal forestland in Washington.


Cerebral palsy motion analysis using a wearable activity tracking device and humanoid robot
Wearable devices for human activity tracking are becoming a commonly used infotainment gadget in daily life. Many commercial devices have emerged for human health and wellness assessment, such as daily physical activity monitoring through step counting or exercise tracking. The popularity of wearables has improved drastically with developments in internet of things (IoT) technologies and the ability to analyse data with cloud-computing. However, wearables have not been fully utilized in the physical activity tracking of disabled people. This is primarily due to the ethical requirements and restrictions imposed when acquiring data from this cohort. In this study, we show that humanoid robots have the potential to be used as a model for the movement and physical activity analysis of disabled people. This will aid in the development of wearable devices capable of providing services to disabled people.


Working In the Firm’s Best Interest
Each year, public schools are rewarded with bigger budgets for achieving a rating of “excellent” or “recommended” and are punished for rating “needs improvement”. These ratings are based on meeting thresholds on a broad set of measures such as attendance rates, graduation rates, standardized test scores, SAT scores, and so on. Discuss the incentives for school principals (who are the agents, in this case) under this scheme and how you might improve them.
In chapter 1 two of Froeb’s problem solving skills were: 1) think about the problem from the organization’s point of view; and 2) think about the organizational design. As your examine this week’s question consider the following, who does a Superintendent work for, i.e. what is the organizational design?


Scholars have long recognized the formal significance of Claes Jansz. Visscher’s 1612 copies of the Small Landscape prints for the development of seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes. The prints, which were originally published in Antwerp in the mid-sixteenth century, represent the rural terrain of Brabant with a direct naturalism and topographic specificity that would later become a hallmark of Dutch Golden Age landscape prints and paintings. This article focuses on the content of the series and attempts to understand the Dutch market and appreciation for views of Brabant in the early seventeenth century. Published in the early years of the Twelve Years’ Truce, likely with the vast émigré population of Southern Netherlanders in mind, the prints visually restore Brabant to its pre-Revolt past of peace and prosperity at the same time as they stimulate hope for a reunification of this lost southern province into a new United Netherlands.
Claes Jansz. Visscher has long been acknowledged as a pivotal figure in the early development of seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes. Soon after setting up shop on the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam in 1611, Visscher began issuing a remarkable number of landscape prints that offered realistic views of the local Dutch countryside, quickly establishing himself as the leading publisher of Dutch landscape prints in Amsterdam.1 However, many of the earliest of these prints were not original series, nor did they depict Dutch locales. Instead, Visscher’s specialization in landscapes first took shape through a campaign to republish Flemish landscapes from the sixteenth century.
At the center of what we might call this “Flemish revival” stands Visscher’s copied set of the Small Landscapes, views of the Brabantine countryside and villages that were originally published in two sets by Hieronymus Cock in Antwerp in 1559 and 1561 (figs. 1–7).2 Unable to acquire the original plates for the series, which remained in Antwerp in the possession of the Galle printing dynasty, Visscher did the next best thing, copying twenty-six of the original forty-four views, which he published as a set in 1612, under the title Regiunculae, et Villae Aliquot Ducatus Brabantiae, with a newly devised title page, which will be discussed below. The views in the original Small Landscape series appear to depict particular places and to concentrate their visual focus on the local terrain itself. The two title pages that Cock issued with his original series assert that the views were in fact drawn “naer d’leven” and “ad vivum,” respectively – that is to say, from life (fig. 1).3 Cock’s Small Landscapes include only scant staffage, and the few figures that are included appear incidental and never distract from the primary focus on the locales themselves. This same sense of topographic specificity is communicated in Visscher’s copies. There can be no doubt that these small, humble views of country villages and rural farms, half a century old by the time Visscher encountered them, spurred the young printmaker and publisher to represent his native Dutch terrain with a similar simplicity and specificity and, in so doing, helped to usher in a new mode of naturalistic Dutch landscape imagery.4
According to many scholars, more than the particular content of the prints, it was the descriptive, almost documentary approach to rustic scenery in the Small Landscapes – that is, the formal example they set forth – that provided the artistic stimulus for Visscher’s subsequent production of local Dutch views.5 As this model of landscape migrated from prints to paintings, it influenced the distinctive development of Dutch Golden Age landscape more broadly. Visscher’s translations of the humble Brabantine views of the Small Landscapes, in other words, anticipated and indeed precipitated the new indigenous form of landscape art that emerged in the Northern Netherlands in the decades after their appearance.
Although Visscher’s copies of the Small Landscapes are integral in charting his well-known trajectory toward the creation of innovative native Dutch landscapes, this article will suggest an alternative perspective on the way these prints may have operated in the north when they were published there in 1612. Rather than conceiving of his copied views as revolutionary or new, Visscher almost certainly understood them as retrospective rather than innovative, as embodying and re-presenting a venerable older Flemish tradition as much as anticipating a new pictorial model for Dutch landscapes. The question then arises: why would Visscher have gone to such an effort to reproduce these old views and what resonances or associations might they have had for contemporary Dutch audiences? I believe there was good reason for Visscher, always the savvy businessman, to have been confident that old views of the Brabantine countryside would have found a receptive audience in Holland in 1612. Just three years into the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–21), these prints offered a nostalgic invocation of the region of the Southern Netherlands that had so recently been ceded to the Spanish in the brokering of a temporary peace. Thus, in addition to or apart from the role their formal power played in transforming the artistic idiom of landscape in Holland, the specific topographic content of Visscher’s Small Landscapes recalled for Dutch audiences both an earlier era and a now-distant place.
To explore this hypothesis requires a careful examination of the prints themselves (figs. 8–15). Twenty-four of the etchings in Visscher’s series are copied from Cock’s original 1561 set. Along with a new title page, he also appended two additional prints at the end of the series. The last print, of a moated castle, has no precedent in Cock’s work and seems to be related to some of Visscher’s slightly later prints of nearby castles, while the penultimate print is a free copy loosely based on one of the views from Cock’s 1559 set.6 All the rest of Visscher’s prints hue closely to Cock’s original models, indicating that while Visscher augmented the series, he also sought to remain faithful in his reproductions to the original views.
It was a common practice among early seventeenth-century print publishers in both the Southern and Northern Netherlands to republish older plates.7 Visscher himself regularly bought up old plates and reissued them throughout the long duration of his career as a publisher.8 Nor were the Small Landscapes the only print series that he replicated when he could not attain original plates; he would later go on to produce copies of several other landscape print series, though this is, to my knowledge, the earliest instance of his doing so.9 Given how many secondhand plates were available in the north, including plates for Flemish landscapes, and his own skills as a landscape draftsman and etcher, it is perhaps all the more notable that Visscher went to the effort to produce new plates after these particular prints. He must have deemed them both significant enough to warrant being copied, with a broad enough appeal to garner a wide audience, and sufficiently difficult to obtain in Amsterdam to prove commercially viable – this despite the fact that the original prints had been reissued in Antwerp by Philips Galle in 1601 and his son Theodoor Galle some years thereafter.10 This suggests that the print markets in Antwerp and Amsterdam were isolated from one another, even after the Twelve Years’ Truce, to a degree that made copying the plates a reasonable and attractive scheme.11
Because he had to recreate the Small Landscapes rather than simply reprint existing plates, we can tell a great deal about what Visscher sought to maintain from the original prints and what aspects of the images he was willing to alter and adjust. Let us consider first the changes.12 Visscher numbered the prints in his series, thereby creating a clear sequence of views, while Cock’s sets had been issued unnumbered. Visscher’s versions are also smaller in scale than the original prints, measuring about 10 x 16 cm, compared to 13 x 20 cm. Although this slight reduction might have been a strategy to control costs (these smaller plates would require less copper), the reduced scale also makes the resulting views more compact and intimate. In addition to the overall reduction in size, Visscher also cropped most of the images at the edges, sometimes by tiny increments, sometimes to a more significant degree (compare figs. 2 and 9; 3 and 10; 4 and 11). These reductions tighten the centralized focus of the images by curtailing slightly their lateral expansiveness, bringing the views slightly closer to the viewer. Because of the reductions at the margins, the central views are now often more clearly framed by trees that rise along the edges, their foliage slightly fuller and softer, which suggests a record not just of a specific place but also a specific, fecund, season and atmosphere. These bushy trees create an enclosing boundary at the edges of the views, heightening the sense of quietude and intimacy they create for the viewer (compare figs. 3 and 10; 4 and 11). The greater concentration of Visscher’s scenes is also heightened by his treatment of the sky – his billowy clouds are more heavily defined compared to the stark blank skies or the horizontal hatching found in the original prints (compare figs. 3 and 10; 5 and 12). In most of Visscher’s copies, hatching fills in the top corners of the prints, transforming their rectangular format by establishing an oval framing device at the top that encloses the landscape below (compare figs. 6 and 13; 7 and 14).
The overall tone of the prints – in part because of their compression but also because of Visscher’s freer etching technique – is slightly darker or denser. While Cock’s original prints, etched and engraved by the van Doetecum brothers, are stark in their clarity and precise in their contrasts, Visscher creates larger swathes of deep shadow, particularly in the immediate foreground of his views, which results in a more dramatic, unified atmosphere. The few figures included in the copies are set out in silhouette against patches of light in the middle ground (compare figs. 2 and 9; 3 and 10; 7 and 14). The darkened foreground and lighter middle ground also help to more forcefully pull the viewer’s eye into the scene, an effect enhanced by the more strongly articulated lines in the curving sweep of the roads that frequently lead from the foreground into the middle distance.
In addition to these changes to the framing and atmosphere of the scenes, we see significant alterations to the staffage as well. Virtually all of Cock’s original figures have been replaced or removed, their positions and activities changed, and new figures added. Some take up typical rural activities. Visscher added fishing scenes to two of the prints, possibly a punning reference to his own name (figs. 12, 13).13 However, most of Visscher’s figures simply stroll or rest along a central road, with few references to any sort of work or toil. The figures in Cock’s series often appear as awkward afterthoughts too small for their surroundings. By contrast, Visscher’s occasional figures cohere seamlessly within their environment, their compositional integration and their easy repose heightening the sense of the pleasant peacefulness of these rural places (compare figs. 7 and 14).
For all these changes and adjustments, there is one important way in which Visscher was scrupulously faithful to his models. His copies are exacting in their accurate reproduction of the original architecture and arrangement of the views. Every building, indeed every window and wooden slat in every farmhouse, is assiduously recreated. Every fence, well, tree, and hedge appears again in precisely the same location, so as to maintain the organization and composition of each scene. Although Visscher’s etched lines and forms are slightly more irregular than those of the van Doetecums, there is an obvious effort to render each detail of these structures and their setting with diligent accuracy. Thus, while Visscher treats the aspects of the prints that establish space, atmosphere, and human presence with much greater latitude and freedom, he is at great pains to carefully replicate the specific topographic details of each scene. Visscher’s desire to remain true to the topographic content of the Small Landscapes is indicated not only in the views themselves but in Visscher’s title page (fig. 8). A large sheet tacked to the wall of a barn bears the title, which can be roughly translated as: “Some small residences and villas of the duchy of Brabant, delineated by P. Breugelio, and for the sake of painters engraved and published by Claes Jansz Visscher, Amsterdam.”14 While he might as easily have proclaimed the series to be rustic country views of less specific provenance, Visscher clearly identifies the views as Brabantine. He then begins his series with one of the only views that depicts an easily identifiable monument, the Roode Poort of Antwerp, further tethering the rest of series to this particular geographical setting (fig. 15).15 There is another notable feature to Visscher’s title page. He attributes the series to Pieter Bruegel, despite the fact that Hieronymus Cock did not identify the designer of the Small Landscapes at all, and Philips Galle had attributed them to Cornelis Cort in his 1601 edition.16 The large peasant holding a bagpipe and a walking stick placed next to the title sheet seems aimed at reinforcing this association with Bruegelian imagery. Visscher’s attribution might be interpreted simply as a canny commercial ploy to boost sales, given the resurgence in Bruegel’s posthumous reputation in the Netherlands at this time.17 But there was perhaps a further impetus. Just as the title page overtly states that these are views of Brabant, attaching Pieter Bruegel’s name to the series further authenticates its Flemish origins. This also underscores the idea that Visscher was not marketing these views as contemporary or new images; rather, he deliberately stressed their venerable provenance. Visscher’s title page thus functions both to locate and historicize his copies of the Small Landscapes by explicitly binding them to Brabant and to the past.
Visscher’s investment in recreating the Small Landscapes suggests that he sensed a strong market for these retrospective Flemish images in the Dutch Republic. Indeed, he undertook a campaign to republish several other sixteenth-century Flemish landscapes around the same time. He likely purchased the plates for several series of landscapes, originally published in Antwerp by Hans van Luyck, from the estate sale of Cornelis Claes in 1610.18 These included the By Antwerpen series, twelve landscape views ostensibly representing the countryside around Antwerp, engraved by Adriaen Collaert after designs by Jacob Grimmer and first published by van Luyck around 1580. He also acquired the plates for a series of views of the environs of Brussels, engraved by Hans Collaert I and published by van Luyck around 1575–80. Visscher, following Cornelis Claes, attributed this series, perhaps opportunistically, to Hans Bol, another Flemish artist whose considerable posthumous reputation in the north would have added cachet to the series.19 Visscher’s editions of these Flemish series include his name as publisher and are undated, but it is likely that he republished them within a few years of purchasing the plates, that is to say, exactly contemporaneous with his copies of the Small Landscapes. As a result of this campaign, Visscher was able to offer a substantial number of old Flemish landscapes for sale in his shop, all at about the same time. Although varied in compositional arrangement and the degree of specific detail, all of the series present, or purport to present, topographic views of the Brabantine countryside. The sheets of the Brussels series are even carefully labeled with the name of each location depicted. Visscher’s Small Landscapes are therefore neither anomalous nor coincidental but must be viewed as part of his larger program to revive a particular type of sixteenth-century Flemish topographic landscape imagery. With the publication of these series, Visscher essentially cornered the market in early seventeenth-century Amsterdam for such Flemish views.20
Visscher would not have invested such effort and capital both in acquiring and copying plates for Flemish topographical landscapes without a firm conviction that these series would appeal to a wide audience and prove commercially profitable. One of Visscher’s intended audiences for the Small Landscape copies, and likely his other Flemish series, was other artists. He specifically dedicated the Small Landscapes to other artists on his title page: “in pictorum gratiam.”21 As exempla for artists, including painters, these prints disseminated a direct, documentary approach to depicting the landscape in a realistic, immediate way. In this way, the prints, not unlike sketches and drawings, served as tools, workshop models to be referred to in the course of composing other works. Visscher clearly foresaw the generative potential of the Small Landscapes; though there are no known Dutch prints or paintings that directly employ motifs or compositions from the Small Landscapes, there can be little doubt of their later artistic impact on Dutch landscape artists, beginning first and foremost with Visscher’s own Dutch landscape prints, to be discussed in detail below.22
It is, however, extremely unlikely that Visscher’s commercial goals for these series extended only to other artists. As Nadine Orenstein has cogently argued, Visscher’s success in this field was due in large part to the fact that his landscapes could appeal to different segments of a wide art-purchasing market in a variety of ways.23 Scholars have long debated the appeal and significance of the newly naturalistic and topographic Dutch landscapes that appeared in the early decades of the seventeenth century in the wake of Visscher’s enterprise. While some have read these landscapes in symbolic and religious terms, seeking to determine the scriptural significance of particular elements or structures within the landscapes, others have suggested a more holistic interpretation of the genre in a broadly Calvinist context as records and celebrations of God’s natural creation.24 Others have pointed to the ways that these landscapes often called forth recent history and memory and helped to shape the contours of an emerging, specifically Dutch, geographical and cultural identity.25 Still others argue that Dutch landscapes must be understood within more specific urban contexts, in which both local pride and pleasure in rustic retreat shaped viewers’ reactions to naturalistic views of their lived environment.26
Throughout these discussions, there has been little effort as yet to determine and elucidate the particular resonances of Visscher’s Small Landscape copies and his other reprinted Flemish landscapes, which were, after all, not views of local Dutch places. It is difficult now to reimagine how they were received in 1612 without the hindsight of their later artistic and formal influence, that is, without locating them in the formative first stages of an artistic trajectory that we know leads to the flourishing Golden Age of Dutch landscape. However, audiences in 1612 could not yet have foreseen this trajectory and therefore must have viewed the Small Landscapes in other terms. For them, the landscapes’ resonances would not have been prospective or Dutch, but rather retrospective and Brabantine.
One especially receptive audience would have been homesick Southern Netherlanders who emigrated to the north in huge waves from the 1570s on.27 Jan Briels has calculated that at least 46,000 people emigrated from Antwerp to the north between 1578 and 1589 alone, mostly settling in Amsterdam. In some northern towns and cities, southern émigrés as much as doubled the local population. These refugees brought with them a taste for art and luxury decorations, which as Eric Jan Sluijter has shown, proved an enormous spur for both the importation of paintings from Antwerp, as well as the indigenous production of paintings by émigré and northern artists alike. He stresses the nostalgic appeal of the Small Landscapes in particular for immigrants and has placed these images in the context of a wide array of textual sources pointing to a similar nostalgic impulse.28 There can be little doubt that Visscher, ever responsive to potential audiences for his prints, must have recognized the commercial possibilities in a vast, culturally sophisticated immigrant population that was both predisposed to patronize the arts and homesick for the south.29 For them, his Small Landscape copies would have directly and realistically recalled the rural regions of their abandoned homeland with a simplicity, candor, and apparent accuracy unmatched in any other prints then available. The invitation to walk into and through the villages and countryside of Brabant proffered by the prints made this distant region visually present and accessible.30
However, the peaceful virtual tour constructed by the prints does not depict the Brabantine countryside as it existed in 1612. Devastated by the dislocations and depredations visited upon it during the preceding decades of war, Brabant’s rural terrain had been transformed by the turn of the century into a wasteland that recovered only haltingly in the years of peace that the truce granted.31 Rather than documenting these true conditions, Visscher’s copied series replaced the present reality with an ideal reconstruction of the region as it might have been known to immigrants in times past. This phenomenon is not unlike that noted by Anna Knaap in her discussion of views of rustic Dutch subjects and terrains from the early seventeenth century. With reference to Haarlem in particular, she notes that “during a period in which the Haarlem countryside underwent significant economic changes, artists rarely depicted any industrial innovations in their work. Eschewing the countryside’s entrepreneurial aspects, they rendered it as a place of pleasure, stability, and communal harmony.” Rather than documenting and embracing any precipitous and uncertain changes in the appearance, use and significance of the actual landscape, artistic renderings of the landscape might be characterized rather as essentially conservative and retrospective.32 Fueled by a powerful nostalgia for a lost place and a time gone by, Visscher’s copies of the Small Landscapes promised audiences just such a retrospective journey, the opportunity to travel back in time as well as to traverse the widening distance between north and south.
This resonance would have been particularly poignant for immigrants in the north, who still held fast to the dream of a reunited Netherlands. Although without political representation in their adopted home in the north and therefore without an influential voice in political life at this time, Southern Netherlanders were among the strongest supporters of the continued war against Spain in the hopes that this would result in the restoration of the seventeen provinces into a single body politic.33 While the Twelve Years’ Truce had finally brought a cessation to the hostilities between the Dutch and the Spanish and provided a de facto acknowledgment of the political legitimacy and independence of the new United Provinces, it also ratified the territorial loss of Brabant, Flanders, and the other southern provinces to Spain, a loss that had been a practical reality since the fall of Antwerp in 1585 but that was nonetheless still keenly felt in 1609.34 Southerners certainly had a great deal at stake in the debate on the future course of the war, hoping even after decades of assimilation into northern Dutch culture and society for the freedom to return to their native lands. This became increasingly urgent and fraught over time, since the Southern Netherlands and its inhabitants were, with the passing of time and the growing political, ideological, cultural, and religious differences between north and south, becoming increasingly foreign, or “hispanicized,” according to Dutch popular opinion.35 The ambivalence and growing complexity of the immigrants’ relationship to their own lost homeland were entirely elided in Visscher’s copies of the Small Landscapes, which offered instead a reassuring and familiar memory that served simultaneously as a visual promise of peaceful restoration and of seamless reintegration.
Pierre Nora’s conception of lieux de memoire is particularly apt in this context. He theorizes that what he calls milieux de memoire, or active sites of cultural memory that are inhabited and experienced in the present, as in ritual, can be transformed into lieux de memoire, or fixed vestiges of a cultural past, when they are no longer actively experienced in the present. These lieux de memoire are essentially commemorative and nostalgic, creating a discontinuity between the present and the past.36 This is akin to the process of distancing that southern immigrants encountered in the early seventeenth century when faced with the breach between their current lived experience within the Dutch Republic and their nostalgia for their past homeland. The Small Landscape prints might well have served as a visual lieu de memoire, by which images of the Brabantine countryside became a locus for consolidating memories of a past now disconnected from a present, lived experience.
If displaced southerners were especially invested in the struggle for Netherlandish unity, the Twelve Years’ Truce elicited a broader ideological interest in and debate about the fate of Brabant and the southern provinces. Although the main points of contention in the two years of negotiations that led up to the signing of the truce and in the resumption of war in 1621 focused primarily on economic and trade concerns rather than territorial ones, factions within the Republic nonetheless found it expedient to continue to promote the idea that the war was primarily driven by a desire to free their Southern Netherlandish brethren from the yoke of Spanish oppression.37 This position was also forcefully promulgated by the hard-line Protestants who sought to stem the perceived tide of Catholic dominion spreading across Europe, though this militant Protestant ideology was more concerned with confessional freedom than with territorial reconquest and political reunification.38 Even as the actual reunification of the Netherlands as a single nation became less and less likely from a pragmatic political perspective, the concept of natural Netherlandish unity sustained its ideological force. The early seventeenth century witnessed a surge in pamphlets, songs, popular plays, and prints promoting the idea of “Netherlandishness.”39
Maps were one of the most powerful formats in which ideas of Netherlandish solidarity found visual form in the wake of the Twelve Years’ Truce. In particular, Leo Belgicus maps, which had long represented the seventeen provinces bound together within the outline of a lion and which were published in large numbers in the United Provinces, represented the Netherlandish provinces as united rather than sundered.40 The Leo Belgicus map that Visscher himself published sometime between 1611 and 1621, titled “Novissima, et Acuratissima Leonis Belgici…,” explicitly celebrates the peace and prosperity brought about by the truce (fig. 16).41 At the lower left, two female personifications of the Northern and Southern Netherlands, labeled “t’ Vrye Neerlant (the Free Netherlands)” and “t’ Neerlandt onder d’Aertshartogh Albertus (the Netherlands under Archduke Albert),” embrace one another and trample “d’Oude Twist (the Old Dispute),” beneath their feet. Around them, allegorical scenes extol the flourishing arts, trade, agriculture, and science and the thriving cities that resulted from the peace. The central lion drives the tip of a sword into the ground. From its hilt hang two medallions inscribed “for twelve years” in Latin and Dutch, referring to the years of peace guaranteed by the truce. To accentuate this point, at the bottom right corner slumps a figure in armor named “Sleeping War,” the lion’s sword thrust just behind him as though pinning him to the spot. The coats of arms of all seventeen provinces border the top of the map and twenty small views of both northern and southern cities decorate the two sides. Just as these framing devices suggest a unified territory, the map embodied within the contours of the lion joins the seventeen provinces together into a single, vital entity. This map bespeaks the optimism engendered by the cessation of hostilities and the prospect of peace, as well as the residual faith that the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands in some essential way were – and would continue to be – a united land, restored rather than divided by the truce.42
Visscher’s copied Small Landscapes perhaps reflect the same optimistic spirit. Although neither Visscher’s title page nor the prints themselves contain overt or direct references to contemporary attitudes toward Netherlandish reunification, recent history and the debates surrounding Brabant and the Southern Netherlands could not but have informed the perceptions of contemporary viewers of the prints. By recreating views of an older Brabantine countryside, one not yet marred by the depredations of war, and circulating them at a moment when hopes were highest for a broad renewal of prosperity, Visscher offered Dutch audiences a vision of a past landscape of peace and tranquility that at long last, at least for a brief period, seemed once again within reach. Relinquished to the Spanish, Brabant was in a real sense quite removed from the United Provinces, but in their direct, unmediated format and composition, Visscher’s Small Landscapes brought this southern province to the north with a visual immediacy that belied the political rift that separated the two. In the context of the nascent Dutch Republic, the prints might imaginatively restore and reanimate the lost unity of the Netherlands by offering viewers the opportunity to enter and traverse – visually, at least – this lost region to the south. By heightening the views’ sense of intimate, placid harmony, while carefully replicating their topographic content, Visscher’s series reconstructed an older, more peaceful Brabant that had existed prior to the long intervening years of war, eliding the very conflict that had disrupted and splintered the Netherlands from its previous unified state. At the same time, by making this Brabant appear decidedly present and proximate to contemporary Dutch audiences, the prints make a visual case for the natural and geographic connection conjoining the north and the south and thereby reinforce the justness of a fundamental national bond.
At precisely the same time that he issued his copies of the Small Landscapes, Visscher was also working on an analogous set of views of the rural surroundings of Haarlem, known as the Plaisante Plaetsen (figs. 17–20). This series of twelve etchings includes an elaborate title page and a table of contents identifying each of the scenes that follows. Although undated, the Plaisante Plaetsen have been convincingly dated between 1611, when Visscher began operations in the Kalverstraat, and 1613.43 In an important sense, Visscher’s Plaisante Plaetsen are the perfect pendant to his version of the Small Landscapes. It is immediately evident why the two series are so often paired by art historians, since Visscher’s Haarlem views are heavily indebted to the compositional logic and apparently unfiltered realism of the Small Landscapes.44 The two series share the same dimensions, suggesting that they could be easily collected together. As in the Small Landscapes, Visscher encourages the viewer of the Plaisante Plaetsen to explore the rural surroundings of Haarlem through a virtual tour of particular spots in the local countryside. His carefully orchestrated sequence of views is numbered and labeled in the table of contents, with a view of Zandtvoort at the beginning of this visual journey (fig. 17). The prints move in a wide arc from south to east to north around the outskirts of Haarlem, offering views of dunes, inns, woods, and bleaching fields along the way. Despite the resolute topographic specificity with which the prints distinguish the terrain of Holland from that of Brabant, the viewer is invited to enter the views of both series along similar roads leading out from the foreground (compare figs. 14 and 18). Resemblances in the rustic architecture and the mundane activities of the peasants and wayfarers encountered within the views suggest the comparable nature of rural life outside Antwerp and Haarlem (compare figs. 9 and 20; 10 and 19). The Plaisante Plaetsen share with the Small Landscapes their matter-of-fact presentation of mostly unremarkable rural structures in an immediate and naturalistic manner that engages the viewer directly.45 Taken together, as they must often have been, the Plaisante Plaetsen and the Small Landscapes suggest a visual parity and conformity between the two regions they record.
Visscher’s transposition of the pictorial model of the Brabantine landscapes to his local views of Haarlem points not only to the likeness between the two regions but also to a deeper thematic union. As with the views of towns and coats of arms, north and south, that frame his “Leonis Belgici” map, Visscher’s Brabant and Haarlem series mirror one another and make a visual case for the natural and topographical correspondence that conjoined the two regions. In turn, this natural unity evokes a continuity of community that it was believed once bound the seventeen provinces together and that some hoped might yet be reestablished. The rural lands around Antwerp and Haarlem appear as two parts of the same natural territory and as complementary regions within a common national body. Because of the naturalism and seemingly unmediated directness of these rustic landscapes and the immediacy of the visual experience they engender, the two sets of prints together hold forth a promise of objective veracity that makes the claim for unity all the more visually and ideologically compelling.
This article has suggested the multivalence of Visscher’s 1612 version of the Small Landscapes within the artistic, cultural, and political context around the time of the Twelve Years’ Truce. On the one hand, the copied prints were deliberately retrospective, being recreations of older images attributed to the past great master Pieter Bruegel that were part of Visscher’s broader program of Flemish landscape print republication; on the other, they provided the artistic impetus for Visscher and other artists in his wake to create very immediate views of their own local landscapes. The copied Small Landscapes might have evoked nostalgia for a lost home and past, particularly among the enormous population of southern immigrants and refugees who took up residence in the north. At the same time, the Brabantine views, by making this southern countryside palpably present, offered hope for a restoration – if only in print – of the inherent unity of the Netherlands, particularly when considered in tandem with Visscher’s contemporaneous Plaisante Plaetsen prints. In these ways, Visscher’s copies of the Small Landscapes were at once old and new, occupying a critical fulcrum between the Southern and Northern Netherlands, between artistic tradition and innovation, between aesthetic experience and ideological meaning, between a retrospective view of the past and hopes for the future. As such, they suggest the complexity of the migration that these Flemish topographic landscape prints underwent in their transference from Antwerp to Amsterdam in the early seventeenth century and the attendant revisioning of place, memory, and nation that they enabled for contemporary audiences.


In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
– Genesis 1:1
To say that you and this universe exist by chance is like saying a bunch of strings, drums, and sticks composed a beautiful symphony. The universe reflects the glory of God. The truth is that intelligent composers compose symphonies and these composers own what they create. The Bible agrees with this right of ownership, too:
“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him” (Psalm 24:1).
God created animals, birds, fish, colorful leaves, and flowers. God also created the ground-producing food that your body needs and enjoys: herbs, vegetables, and fruits. God made fertile soil, the complex system of the chemical structure of the earth.
Snow, rain, and water fall down from heaven to provide rivers. God gave us oceans, light, air, and oxygen-nitrogen gaseous mixtures. We don’t find these blessings on any other planet.
Sing out your thanks to the Lord, sing out your thanks to the Lord, sing praises to our God with a harp. He covers the heavens with clouds, provides rain for the earth (Psalm 147:7-8).
Have you also considered the sunshine? The earth exists 93 million miles away from the sun. If the earth were any closer, we would burn. If the earth were a little farther away from the sun, we would freeze. God gave us the perfect temperature for living. Furthermore, the moon is precisely located in the correct place from the earth.
When we look at the magnificent universe we live in, we realize that God gave all people enough evidence to show them that there is a supreme, intelligent, good Designer who called into existence the physical universe and He keeps the universe in perfect order.
Every building must have a builder. In the same way, the universe must also have a builder; nothing cannot cause everything to exist in harmony:
The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display His craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make Him known (Psalm 19:1-2).
Precious reader, you may enjoy the created things of this world, but they will never give you complete rest or deep satisfaction because you were made to have a personal relationship with The Creator of this world, your one and only Maker.


We’ve discussed some classes of planet that are pretty strange: hot super-Earths, hot Jupiters and eccentric gas giants. But that was just the warm-up. In this post we’ll check out three more extra-weird ones.
First up: Tatoine planets. In case you are less nerdy than you should be, Tatooine is where Luke came from in Star Wars. Instead of orbiting single stars like the Sun, Tatooine planets orbit in double (also called “binary”) star systems. Their orbits take them around two stars that orbit each other very fast. The Kepler mission has found a few of these systems. The most interesting one found so far is Kepler-47.
Kepler-47 is made up of two stars that orbit each other about once a week. One star is similar to the Sun and the other is a small faint “red dwarf”. The Kepler-47 system has two planets. Each is about the size of Neptune. The inner one takes about 50 days to orbit around the pair of stars and the outer one takes ten months. The outer planet is located in the habitable zone, where the temperature is about right for water to exist on its surface. Unfortunately, the planet is gaseous and has no surface. Might it have a moon that could host life?
Up next: planets on very long orbits. Stars are much brighter than planets. Stars wash out the light from close-in planets, so astronomers generally use indirect techniques to find and study planets. But if the planets are far enough away from their stars, they can block the starlight and see the planet directly. This has been done successfully in a few cases.
HR 8799 is our next weirdo. It has four known planets on very wide orbits. Each is a gas giant five to ten times more massive than Jupiter.
Imagine each star is a city. Earth is a small house in the suburbs. Uranus and Neptune are pretty big houses on a country road 20 miles away. The HR 8799 planets are huge mansions way out of town off some tiny overgrown dirt road in the middle of nowhere.
The HR8799 system is full of surprises. The three outer planets may be in a special orbital configuration called a resonance. For every orbit of the outermost planet (b), the second-outermost planet (c) completes two orbits and the third-outermost planet (d) completes four orbits. This celestial dance keeps the planets in line and stable. In fact, three of Jupiter’s moons (Io, Europa and Ganymede) are in the same resonance. So are three planets in the system Gliese 876.
The HR 8799 system contains both warm and cold dust. The cold dust is located even farther away than the outermost planet. The warm dust is located closer-in than the innermost planet. The dust temperatures are actually similar to dust in the Solar System. In the Solar System, cold dust comes from beyond Neptune, and warm dust from the asteroid belt. Around HR 8799 the dust is much farther away but has about the same temperature.
The star HR 8799 is about five times brighter than the Sun. So planets on wide orbits are not as cold as we might expect. Maybe our analogy was off. Maybe HR 8799’s “city” is a super-mega-metropolis like Tokyo or Mexico City. Everything is scaled up compared with a small-sized city. The suburbs and countryside are farther away even though they are really the same as for a smaller city. But the lay of the land is the same.
Last up: free-floating planets. These planets are not in the suburbs or the countryside. They are hobos who hop the train from town to town (or those houses that ride on flatbed trucks). Planets that wander between the stars. They still orbit within the Galaxy but are not associated with stars.
For every star in the Galaxy there are 2-3 free-floating gas giant planets! These things are everywhere! How do free-floating planets get there? One idea is that they formed in orbit around stars and were then lost to space. One way to lose planets is in dynamical instabilities, the same ones that are responsible for the stretched-out orbits of many extra-solar planets. But there are just too many free-floaters to make the numbers work. The mystery remains.
Of course, with no star there is no external source of heat. So free-floating planets must be lifeless hunks of gas and rock, right?
Not so fast! If a planet is born with enough heat (say, from a star) and has the right kind of atmosphere (with lots of hydrogen), then it can hold on to its heat pretty much forever. Liquid water might exist on an Earth-sized free-floating planet! What about life? Sure, why not? But what kind and how much? That is actually a pretty complex question that we will get back to in a later blog post….
Questions, comments, words of wisdom?


Today in class we discussed we discussed how immigrants are a growing part of the labor force in the United States, holding jobs in many industries, including Accommodations, Food Services, Management and Administration, Information Technology, and many other fields. Even though these immigrants are becoming an important part of these industries, some still push back against the success of these immigrants, claiming that they take jobs away from native-born Americans.
Currently, America’s unemployment rate is 8.1%, and some people blame immigrants for this high percentage. However, in reality, immigration has created more jobs in the United States and has added to the success of our economy in general. It is extremely important to understand that immigrants all offer different skills and contributions, which allow America to improve and grow. For example, Fiscal Policy reports that immigrant-owned small businesses employ about 4.7 million people. I find it interesting that while people claim immigrants take away jobs from natives, statistics show that immigrant-owned businesses actually provide more opportunities. Many household names such as AT&T, Kraft, Google, Yahoo!, and eBay were either started by immigrants or their children. Just hearing this fact makes me wonder what the United States or even the world be like if these immigrants did not have the chance to come to America and realize their potential to change the world.
The United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, and other nations are giving legal residency to more than half of the immigrants coming to work in their countries. These legal actions show that the rest of the world understands how much immigrants have to offer bringing in specialized skills to a country’s economy. An article from the Huffington Post, “The U.S. Needs More Immigrants to Grow the Economy and Create Jobs,” explains “specialization makes economies more efficient, and efficiency drives economic growth.” Limits on immigration or immigration reform have the ability to slow the economy and end many jobs. American needs to remember that we are a country that was built on immigration. If we forget where we come from, how can we know where we are going?


This black digger wasp, Sphex pensylvanicus, was visiting the extrafloral nectaries of partridge pea.
It visited several in rapid succession, spending about a second or two at each one.
Partridge pea is an annual plant found in tallgrass prairies. It has extrafloral nectaries which secrete a sweet fluid. The purpose of these structures is thought to be to attract ants which protect the plant from insects which would harm it.
This wasp was not bothered by ants. Many insects visit the nectaries, which seem more attractive to nectar-loving insects than the flowers themselves do.
Digger wasps capture insects–usually katydids or crickets, paralyze them, and bury them in holes as a provision for their young.


Japan to Conduct Test of Space ElevatorLeave a Comment
It may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a Japanese team appears determined to bring a far-out-sounding concept to reality – they have developed a “space elevator.”
Researchers at Shizuoka University, working in conjunction with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, are going to conduct the first trial on a miniature version of a space elevator.
A university spokesperson said, “It’s going to be the world’s first experiment to test elevator movement in space.”
The space elevator consists of a box only 6 centimeters (2.4 inches) long and 3 centimeters (1.18 inches) wide and 3 centimeters high. This box will move along a 10-meter (32-foot) cable suspended in space between two miniature satellites
The test equipment, carrying two satellites, one of which will contain the elevator stand-in, will hitch a ride on an H-2B rocket. Movement of the motorized motion of the box will be monitored with cameras in the satellites.
If the researchers succeed in this experiment, the achievement would take the team closer to its dream of building its own space elevator to put tourists in space by 2050.