Social media now plays a massive role in people’s lives as a space to connect, share experiences and seek information. But when it comes to mental health, relying on it for self-diagnosis can do more harm than good. Explore the importance of seeking professional help for your mental well-being and the potential dangers of self-diagnosing through social media.
It Can Give You Unreliable Information
It’s undeniable that there is informative and accurate content out there. Social media platforms are full of information about mental health, but not all of it is reliable. Relying on what non-professionals say can lead to misconceptions and incorrect assumptions about your mental health.
It Can Lead to Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency of individuals to look at or interpret information that will confirm their preexisting beliefs. This can ignore or downplay contradictory evidence. It can also create a distorted perception of present symptoms, leading to a biased self-diagnosis that can overlook other possible conditions or explanations of what you’re experiencing.
It Doesn’t Provide Professional Expertise
Social media platforms will never be a substitute for psychiatric or professional expertise. It’s essential to remember that even though there are influencers who are sharing their personal experiences, mental health conditions are comprehensive and complex. They only be diagnosed and assessed by a licensed professional. Self-diagnosing through social media can result in misinterpretation of symptoms and hinder you from receiving suitable treatment.
It Can Overlook Co-Occurring Conditions
It’s a high possibility that mental health conditions coexist with other disorders or underlying issues. If you attempt to self-diagnose without proper assessment, you don’t get a complete explanation of what you’re experiencing. Social media is also limited from giving a comprehensive evaluation and an appropriate treatment plan.
It Can Increase Anxiety
Basing your diagnosis on someone else’s diagnosis through social media can give inaccurate information and lead you to worry. Instead of seeking appropriate support, it can lead you to experience anxiety, which can worsen what you’re already experiencing.
The Importance of Professional Evaluation
Seeking professional evaluation is essential for accurate diagnosis and effective treatment. In the United States alone, approximately 20% of adults have a mental illness. Therapy and mental health resources have evolved to become even more accessible to those who may need it. Online therapy sites, telemental health, virtual psychiatry, and even therapy via texting have emerged as valuable options for millennial women.
Customized Treatment Plans and Expert Guidance
The biggest advantage of a consultation with a mental health professional is it gives you a personalized treatment plan tailored to your goals and needs. Social media content on mental health is often vague and can be misleading. A personalized treatment plan from a mental health professional can help you thrive.
Empowering Yourself with Reliable Resources
Although social media isn’t a substitute for professional help, you can still use it to gain more information about mental health conditions. Various sites talk about mental health and wellness, which can help you gain more insights on what you might be experiencing. There are also different ways you can take care of your mental health, such as mindfulness and yoga.
Remember that your mental health matters, and seeking an accurate diagnosis and professional treatment is crucial. Self-diagnosing through social media can lead to misinformation and unnecessary stress. Instead, choose the best ways to care for yourself, such as connecting with mental health professionals who can provide personalized support and guidance.
- Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
- Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
- Click to print (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)


A report published this summer by the National Resources Defense Council found that the electricity powering household computers, small networks and accessories is costing a lot more energy than most people realize.
With 88 million homes running broadband on their computers, they consume 8.3 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. “All of that energy comes with a $1 billion price tag as household small networks guzzle around the clock, even when our gadgets hibernate and we sleep,” the NRDC found.
More efficient models use one-third less energy than average models, and if used widely could save a third of that annual, billion-dollar pricetag.
A previous report by the Council found that video-gaming households can save as much as $100 a year simply by turning the game consoles off when they are not being used.
Meanwhile, Arizona utility the Salt River Project cautions that “vampire appliances,” that sap electricity even when they’re not turned on, absorb about 4-5 percent of the average household’s power usage. Nationally, that adds up to 52 billion kilowatt-hours being wasted each year, or the output of about 26 average-sized power plants. The SRP’s top five “Power Vampires?
1. Home computers and computer-related equipment.
2. Instant-on televisions, such as plasma, LCD or rear-projection.
3. Surround-sound systems.
4. Cable or satellite television boxes.
5. Any appliance that contains a clock, like microwave ovens, coffee makers, or DVD players.
What’s the best thing you can do to save electricity (and lower your monthly bill) from these “Vampires”? Unplug the device when you’re not using it, or switch off the power strip it’s plugged in to…


Indonesia, the biggest economy in Southeast Asia, is predicted to see its demand for electricity double in the next ten years. In an attempt to accelerate its economic development, the country is likely to remain dependent on cheap and plentiful coal to meet its soaring electricity demand, which will further accelerate the warming of the planet.
Indonesia relies mainly on fossil fuels for its energy supply, with coal accounting for almost one-third of its energy sources, and oil and natural gas accounting for 42% and 16% respectively. The use of coal has steadily risen since the turn of the century and is predicted to rise further in an effort to boost the country’s economy.
Last year, Indonesia saw ten coal-fired power plants begin operations with a total capacity of 3 GW, making up almost three-fourths of the new power generation in 2019. Among the newly-launched plants is the largest coal-fired power unit, called Java 7 Unit 1, which has a capacity of 1 GW.
These new coal plants, critics pointed out, offset the nation’s renewable energy growth efforts. The capacity of the Java 7 Unit 1 alone is nearly three times greater than the 376 MW worth of green energy plants launched last year. Java 7’s second unit, also with a capacity of 1 GW, is set to come online next year.
Climate change is of particular significance to Indonesia: its massive coastal population is particularly at risk to sea level rise and the livelihoods of many people depend on agriculture and fishing, which is impacted by temperature changes and water availability.
The Indonesian government has acknowledged the urgent need to cut its coal dependence. However, the country- the world’s 4th largest coal producer after Kazakhstan, South Africa and Russia- is still struggling to do so, mostly because coal is a reliable means to boost the economy.
In order to achieve its green energy commitments under the Paris Agreement, Indonesia needs to end its coal addiction, ending the construction of coal plants and phasing out coal power by this year.
Coal will become more expensive as the price of renewable resources falls. Building new renewables, like solar photovoltaic panels, is projected to be less costly compared to operating existing coal plants.
There’s also a substantial risk of those existing coal plants becoming stranded assets (prematurely retired coal plants due to their high operating costs). Under a scenario in which coal power will be phased out in a manner consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement, Indonesia is at risk of losing $35 billion in the next decades from these stranded assets.
To avoid these risks, Indonesia should accelerate its energy transition to renewables, exploring and developing alternative fuels, like geothermal and solar power. Unfortunately, renewable energy has yet to show a significant uptake: last year, the country had 12.36% renewable energy in its electricity production mix, far below its 17.5% target. The country voluntarily set itself the target of achieving 23% renewable energy use by 2025, and 31% by 2050.
However, there are signs of hope. At least 35 renewable energy projects with a capacity of 834.71 MW are entering construction with a commercial operation target of between 2019 and 2021. Indonesia is also planning to replace old coal plants with renewable energy and introduce a regulation on renewable energy to attract foreign investors. Those moves can increase the share of renewables in its power mix.
Indonesia needs to work to stick to its emissions reduction targets while continuing to develop its economy. If the mission is successful, Indonesia can set an example for other developing countries that it is possible to decouple economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions.


Seasonal calendars have been useful in discussing community's coping strategies during periods when they are susceptible to emergency risks or disasters. It helped them analyse what they would do to mitigate the likely effects of a particular incidence analysed using the seasonal calendar. For example, communities using the Rainfall calendar were able to map out the months of the year when they receive rainfall and also indicated those periods when they receive very heavy down pours that result into floods. This led them the discussion which areas that are most affected by floods, the impact of those floods on them and what coping strategies they have. They also discussed what mitigation measures they should take on. Their discussion highlighted the need to involve different players and engaging the departments that are responsible where they mentioned environment and agriculture.
This Rainfall calendar was followed with other tools such as the Map, which plotted the areas that are prone to floods. Like all other participatory tools, the seasonal calendar can be enriched with the use of other tools such as the Map as mentioned, the matrix, even a timeline to analyse the trends, intensity for example of the floods over the years.


Area 51: How do Acanthamoeba invade the central nervous system?
Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Acanthamoeba granulomatous encephalitis generally develops as a result of haematogenous spread, but it is unclear how circulating amoebae enter the central nervous system (CNS) and cause inflammation. At present, the mechanisms which Acanthamoeba use to invade this incredibly well-protected area of the CNS and produce infection are not well understood. In this paper, we propose two key virulence factors: mannose-binding protein and extracellular serine proteases as key players in Acanthamoeba traversal of the blood-brain barrier leading to neuronal injury. Both molecules should provide excellent opportunities as potential targets in the rational development of therapeutic interventions against Acanthamoeba encephalitis.
Trends in Parasitology
(2011). Area 51: How do Acanthamoeba invade the central nervous system?. Trends in Parasitology, 27(5), 185-189.
Available at: https://ecommons.aku.edu/pakistan_fhs_mc_bbs/40


by Staff Writers
Sacramento, CA (SPX) Jan 23, 2012
A new class of nanoparticles, synthesized by a UC Davis research team to prevent premature drug release, holds promise for greater accuracy and effectiveness in delivering cancer drugs to tumors. The work is published in the current issue of Angewandte Chemie, a leading international chemistry journal.
In their paper, featured on the inside back cover of the journal, Kit Lam, professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, and his team report on the synthesis of a novel class of micelles called dual-responsive boronate cross-linked micelles (BCMs) , which produce physicochemical changes in response to specific triggers.
A micelle is an aggregate of surfactant molecules dispersed in water-based liquid such as saline. Micelles are nano-sized, measuring about 25-50 nanometers (one nanometer is one billionth of a meter), and can function as nanocarriers for drug delivery.
BCMs are a unique type of micelle, which releases the payload quickly when triggered by the acidic micro-environment of the tumor or when exposed to an intravenously administered chemical compound such as mannitol, an FDA-approved sugar compound often used as a diuretic agent, which interferes with the cross-linked micelles.
"This use of reversibly cross-linked targeting micellar nanocarriers to deliver anti-cancer drugs helps prevent premature drug release during circulation and ensures delivery of high concentrations of drugs to the tumor site," said first author Yuanpei Li, a postdoctoral fellow in Lam's laboratory who created the novel nanoparticle with Lam. "It holds great promise for a significant improvement in cancer therapy."
Stimuli-responsive nanoparticles are gaining considerable attention in the field of drug delivery due to their ability to transform in response to specific triggers. Among these nanoparticles, stimuli-responsive cross-linked micelles (SCMs) represent a versatile nanocarrier system for tumor-targeting drug delivery.
Too often, nanoparticles release drugs prematurely and miss their target. SCMs can better retain the encapsulated drug and minimize its premature release while circulating in the blood pool.
The introduction of environmentally sensitive cross-linkers makes these micelles responsive to the local environment of the tumor. In these instances, the payload drug is released primarily in the cancerous tissue.
The dual-responsive boronate cross-linked micelles that Lam's team has developed represent an even smarter second generation of SCMs able to respond to multiple stimuli as tools for accomplishing the multi-stage delivery of drugs to the complex in vivo tumor micro-environment.
These BCMs deliver drugs based on the self-assembly of boronic acid-containing polymers and catechol-containing polymers, both of which make these micelles unusually sensitive to changes in the pH of the environment.
The team has optimized the stability of the resulting boronate cross-linked micelles as well as their stimuli-response to acidic pH and mannitol.
This novel nano-carrier platform shows great promise for drug delivery that minimizes premature drug release and can release the drug on demand within the acidic tumor micro-environment or in the acidic cellular compartments when taken in by the target tumor cells. It also can be induced to release the drug through the intravenous administration of mannitol.
The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and a Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program Postdoctoral Award. Other authors are Wenwu Xiao, Kai Xiao, Lorenzo Berti, Harry P. Tseng, and Gabriel Fung of UC Davis; and Juntao Luo of SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York.
UC Davis Health System
Hospital and Medical News at InternDaily.com
Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.
Mapping the destructive path from cigarette to emphysema
Houston TX (SPX) Jan 19, 2012
From the cherry red tip of a lighted cigarette through the respiratory tract to vital lung cells, the havoc created by tobacco smoke seems almost criminal, activating genes and portions of the immune system to create inflammation that results in life-shortening emphysema, said researchers led by those at Baylor College of Medicine and the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center. ... read more
|The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2012 - Space Media Network. AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement|


In the mid-fifties, gold cost $35 an ounce. My father, a mine captain, earned a hundred and fifty pounds a month. I cannot be sure of the exchange rate. Vaguely I recall that a pound was about two dollars. So let us say he earned about ten ounces of gold a month or about one hundred ounces of gold a year.
With gold at about $1,700 an ounce these days, a hundred-ounce-a-year salary is about $170,000. How many miners these days earn that sum? Truth is not many from what I can see. You have to be pretty senior to earn that salary–but then my father was relatively senior.
These gold-price to salary comparisons are prompted by a fun article in Commodity HQ at this link. Surprising how little an ounce of gold buys these days. I know that I spend the equivalent of an ounce of gold each month on books, CDs, DVDs, and other indulgences, vices, and diversions. What gold-percent of your income goes on pure pleasure?
Which makes me wonder if mining salaries and the price of gold have advanced in lock-step with the price of gold — or have salaries fallen behind? Is there a correlation? I have done no research for this posting. I leave that to those with a greater eye for the detail of the price of gold. And I would appreciate your take on the correlation of the gold price and mining salaries.


The big boom
Flying faster than the speed of sound may still seem futuristic for the average person, but nearly 20 years after the first commercial supersonic aircrafts retired their wings, what once sounded like science fiction might once again become a reality. Thanks to technological advances and innovative minds, we are on the cusp of a new generation of travel that will provide people with the ability to traverse the globe faster and more often while minimizing adverse effects on the planet.
One company in particular, Boom Supersonic, is keeping the dream of ultra-fast travel alive by creating XB-1, the first independently developed supersonic aircraft, a demonstrator it will use to build a future supersonic passenger aircraft called Overture.
We asked Boom Supersonic—and several of the Mines alumni who work there—for more details about this technology and what the future of travel might look like. This is what we learned.
Supersonic travel isn’t easy, but XB-1 is optimized for performance.
One of the central design challenges engineers had to address was essentially figuring out how to put two airplanes into one. The plane must fly efficiently at high speeds while also being able to take off and land at slow speeds, so engineers were tasked with developing a design that balances both.
At 71 feet long, XB-1’s long and slender shape allows for ideal aerodynamics, and the carbon-composite frame maintains its shape under extreme heat. The aircraft’s three engines provide more than 12,000 pounds of thrust to fly at supersonic speeds, and the delta wing is optimized for low-speed stability and high-speed efficiency. XB-1 also leverages a high-resolution video camera and cockpit display to give pilots a virtual window through the nose and superior runway visibility for landing.
And every design decision took safety, accessibility and the plane’s environmental footprint into consideration—in fact, Boom Supersonic is committed to making their Overture fleet carbon neutral and capable of running on sustainable alternative fuels.
“The challenges that we face in designing a supersonic airliner that is safe, economically viable and sustainable have been growing throughout the past 50 years and is not a problem that can be solved by applying the same techniques as previous airliners,” said Allison Pelzel ’17, MS ’18, an aircraft performance engineer who has worked on both XB-1 and Overture. “It takes strong problem-solving skills and determination to solve each new problem—this is one of the lessons that Mines teaches best.”
Recent innovation in supersonic technology was made possible by past aerospace advancements and bringing different skill sets together.
Over the years, new ideas such as building aircraft with a carbon fiber material instead of aluminum, using computer simulations for testing instead of wind tunnels, overhauling the jet engine design and more were key to XB-1’s design, each component working together to create the safest and most efficient model.
“New technologies are allowing us to design, build and test at speeds which are increasingly only limited by the scope of our imagination,” said Benjamin Collins ’12, a manufacturing engineering and CAD/PDM administrator.
Ryan McKay ’07, a mechanical engineer on the project, said even his own experiences working in different industries and gaining a multitude of disparate skills allowed for new ideas when working on XB-1. “Compiling experiences from multiple industries allows one to acquire a much broader perspective on how things are done and how they can be done,” he said.
Making supersonic travel a possibility again may not be easy, but for Collins, it’s worth the challenges. “We have to be brave enough to attempt our goals in the first place, humble enough to know we have much to learn to succeed and meticulous and tenacious enough to see it through to a safe and successful conclusion,” he said. “It will take a few years for the revolution to become apparent, but the world will never be the same again.”


Exile and Struggle
Joyce left Ireland for good in October 1904, together with Nora Barnacle, who was to be his companion for life. Joyce foresaw that the kind of writing he wished to do would be very difficult in Ireland, and exile suited his image of himself as a man apart. The Joyces settled first in Pola (now Pula, Croatia), south of Trieste. Both Pola and Trieste were at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Over the next sixteen years the Joyces would circulate among Pola, Trieste, and Zurich, with a brief stint in Rome. During this time Joyce supported himself through language tutoring, lectures, and for a brief time, writing articles for a Triestine newspaper, Il Piccolo della Sera.
Living abroad may well have intensified Joyces appreciation of the intricacies and delights of language. Trieste in particular was a European crossroads, inhabited by people of multiple nationalities, and a linguistic melting pot. The languages spoken there included Armenian, English, Spanish, German, Turkish, Sicilian, Maltese, Hungarian, Slovenian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, and several different dialects of Italian. Joyces style in Finnegans Wake has been described as taking its inspiration from the Triestine dialect, a mixture of many languages.
Items Exhibited in the Exile and Struggle Section
James Joyce, Seated. Zurich, ca. 1914. [view]
James Joyce. Letter to the Joyce Family from Paris. December 6, 1902.
James Joyce. Workbook in Italian and German. 1904–ca. 1919.
Sir Cecil Hertslet, Consul General of Great Britain. Letter to James Joyce. March 1, 1916. [view]
Lucia and Giorgio Joyce. Trieste, 1910.
Ticket to a series of lectures on Hamlet, to be given by James Joyce. November, 1912. [view]
Notice of the proclamation of the Irish Republic. Neue Zürcher Zeitung. January 22, 1919.
The Berlitz Schools of Languages, Ltd. Letter to James Joyce. October 7, 1904. [view]


5G is coming. This Verizon partnership aims to show how it will disrupt manufacturing
5G is inching closer to becoming a reality for many people, and there’s no question it will make devices faster, smarter and more connected.
But talk about what that technology will enable often sounds like something out of a science fiction film: driverless cars, the internet of things, smart cities, the emergence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
For months, Verizon has been inviting leaders from various industries to test possible applications of 5G in specialized labs across the country. Widespread consumer uses of the technology, such as 5G-enabled smartphones, are still relatively far off.
But in a new partnership with industrial manufacturer Corning, Verizon aims to demonstrate the real life impact of the technology right now, by deploying and testing the effects of a 5G network in one of Corning’s largest manufacturing facilities. The companies will work together to test existing theories and develop new solutions for how 5G can make manufacturing more efficient, effective and safe.
“We’ve gone from a stage of imagining, ‘Could 5G be real?’ To really finding ourselves in a place where we’re seeing 5G not just in our labs,” Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business Group, told CNN Business. “We took it out of the labs and actually put it into production.”
Testing the technology in this way means confronting the imperfections and unknowns of a working factory environment — large and heavy equipment moving around, humans interacting with machines. The experiment is expected to prove how 5G can make manufacturing more efficient, effective and safe.
5G is nearly 100 times faster than 4G, and would allow a huge number of devices to be connected all at one time, something earlier networks couldn’t handle. That means devices can communicate almost instantly with the servers that control them and with one another.
So in a factory setting, it might be possible to replace the humans driving materials around the plant with self-driving cars, according to Claudio Mazzalli, Corning’s vice president of technology. And because the cars would sense other equipment and vehicles in the facility, he said, they could move around more quickly and with fewer errors and less energy, helping the company cut costs.
The new network technology also has the capacity to process significantly more data. For example, Mazzalli said this will allow the company to do real-time video monitoring of goods in production, which he expects will help to ensure higher quality.
The Corning factory deployed 5G about three months ago, but Mazzalli said it’s too early to tell what financial impact it will have.
“As artificial intelligence starts using this data and improving our process, making our processes more efficient, that’s when we’re going to start seeing the value,” Mazzalli said. “We are not speculating right now what’s the financial impact of this to this plant, but I can tell you that this question is a very important question for us. We don’t want to start just adding devices everywhere if we don’t see the value.”
The automation and new data collection that 5G will enable also creates new concerns, particularly over security. As companies generate and make use of so much more data, protecting that information becomes even more crucial. For Verizon’s part, Erwin said the company works to build both security and privacy into its networks proactively.
And Mazzali said 5G can, in some ways, make information more secure. Today, machines in a plant are connected to the company’s servers in a variety of ways, including WiFi or through an internet cable. 5G, he said, “allows all of that to be in one single network. And once you put everything into a single network, you have your hands around it and you control that better, you can provide more security to that.”
Verizon’s Erwin said she hopes the effort will help Verizon gain an advantage over other wireless providers in scoring enterprise customers as more companies begin to examine the ways 5G could transform their businesses.
And it might need the boost — Verizon has invested slightly less than its main competitor AT&T in 5G infrastructure. Verizon is spending $17 billion annually in capital expenses to roll out 5G, compared to AT&T’s $20 billion, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data (AT&T is the parent company of WarnerMedia).
“There isn’t a company in the world that doesn’t want to talk to Verizon right now because they understand the power and potential of 5G,” Erwin said.


An indepth look at what is happening with the volcanic activity in Iceland, along with regular updates – from Daily Kos
‘In Icelandic volcanoes deep in the highlands, lava is rarely a major threat. The serious threats we face from volcanoes in the currently active system, as mentioned previously, are:
1) Jökulhlaup – catastrophic glacial outburst floods which can reach biblical proportions. This is a local catastrophe.
2) Pumice / ash falls – some of the volcanoes in the current system have had tremendous explosive eruptions of a scale that caused widespread abandonment of farms and towns over a hundred miles away. This is a local catastrophe.
3) Ash clouds – eruptions from this system before airplanes were invented have caused orders of magnitude worse ash problems than Eyjafjallajökull. This is both a local and international disaster.
4) Gas emissions – eruptions from the broader system have at times released enough climate-altering, poisonous gases to kill millions of people worldwide.
Those who remember my first article in this series will recall the consequences of the last time, a couple hundred years ago, that #4 led to a catastrophe. Well, finally we have meters on site measuring sulfur dioxide emissions from the first sizeable eruption of the current event…….
Update, 10:00 2 september: Early reports are that activity is roughly the same as yesterday. Quake activity in the dike continues to be (proportionally) low but steady. Scientists are now heading out to the site with gas meters to decide whether they think it’s safe enough to work there today or not.
Finally got a good NESDIS SO2 satellite pass, at least for the northeast side of the country (the 11:07 pass here)). Not pretty. :Þ It’s halfway to Svalbard and Northern Norway.
New Met Office update. GPS meters suggest that outflow is nearly matching inflow. Of course, that doesn’t suggest how long inflow will continue, but at least it limits it’s potential to expand to the south (jökulhlaups) or north (potentially triggering Askja). This the current status is thus, obviously, a good thing, one that we hope will hold. Flow rates are said to be similar to yesterday. SO2 emissions are reportedly up, but still no estimates on the total emission rate. I should send an inquiry.
Heavy seismic activity continues in Herðarbreiðartögl and the Bárðarbunga caldera.’
Continue Reading article/updates at Daily Kos
Latest posts by Carol Adl (see all)
- Church Minister Raped & Abused Vulnerable Women During Exorcisms - July 27, 2017
- Britain To Send Warship To South China Sea - July 27, 2017
- Putin: Russia Will Respond To ‘Insolent’ US Sanctions - July 27, 2017


Nichol, JE, Wong, MS, Wang, JZ (2010). A 3D aerosol and visibility information system for urban areas using remote sensing and GIS. ATMOSPHERIC ENVIRONMENT, 44(21-22), 2501-2506.
Currently, the depiction of urban air quality at boundary layer scale uses modelled climatic and land cover data. However, such models are difficult to verify, and only low to moderate accuracy may be achieved due to the complexity of the input data required and the reliance on assumptions about dispersion patterns. The provision of comprehensive air quality data to urban residents in city districts, at a level of detail commensurate with other Location-Based Services (LBS) which are time- and place-sensitive, has therefore not been possible. A method for urban air quality monitoring over cities at boundary layer scale, other than by the use of air quality models is presented here. The system presented uses empirical Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) data in near-real time, combining AOT data from AERONET with aerosol vertical profiles computed from twice-daily MODIS satellite images at 500 in resolution, to give three dimensional (3D) air quality data over the urban landscape. There has been no previous attempt to project the horizontal spatial distribution of aerosols from satellite image pixels into a vertical dimension to give a spatially comprehensive three dimensional record of air quality. The paper describes the sources and accuracy of the AOT data input to the system as well as its storage and retrieval on a Geographic Information System (GIS) platform, to provide air quality and visibility information according to user query at any 3D geographical location, including individual buildings or building floor. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


Recess & Play Time! - A Brief History | A Cool School Kids Wiki
📚CHECK OUT THE COOL SCHOOL STORE TODAY!! : https://bit.ly/CSRedbubble
For this week's Cool School Wiki Project learn all about the history of recess. Recess and play time have been around since ancient times. Learn how classic games like, hopscotch, duck duck goose, kickball, and red light, green light came about.
Subscribe to the channel today! http://bit.ly/SubscribeToCoolSchool
Watch the latest Cool School Videos! https://bit.ly/CoolSchoolLatestVideos
Follow Cool School on Instagram! https://bit.ly/CoolSchoolonInstagram
Follow Cool School on Facebook! http://bit.ly/CoolSchoolOnFacebook
Nikki’s Wiki and Science are exciting educational videos for kids, featuring Cool School’s very own kid encyclopedia, Nikki!
Jump right into the past with her Wiki series, as Nikki gives fun facts for kids and history from topics such as dragons, monsters, witches, holidays, sports, and more! The Nikki Show has all the kids science experiments to do at home, from making nachos WITH THE SUN to making your VERY OWN RAINBOW! Every day is a learning adventure with Nikki!
#NikkiWiki #KidsHistory #KidsScience


Wondering how to strengthen your hands at the piano, so you can tackle that difficult repertoire you’ve always wanted to learn?
Here, tonebase Head of Piano Ben Laude will dive into how to best strengthen your hands to advance your repertoire.
So it turns out there are no muscles in your fingers (actually there are very, very tiny ones in your hair follicles, but those aren't relevant).
The muscles you use to move your fingers are all found in the hand and arm and connect to tendons that extend from muscles in your arm all the way into the fingers and help control their movement. There are a bunch of them, and pianists are for the most part not aware that they’re using them when they play. They might even be confused as to which part of their mechanism is “strong” – it is certainly not the fingers.
You have extensor muscles on the top of your hand that help straighten the fingers and flexor muscles in your palm that help bend them.
These are connected through tendons and blood vessels running through the "carpal tunnel" in your wrist from your forearm, where you have very important larger muscles responsible for much of the activity of playing the piano.
These are the muscles participating both in larger movements in and out, laterally, and rotationally, while also controlling finger activity.
Should you work out your hand muscles?
I do not recommend actively "working out" these muscles in some non-musical way (of course you're welcome to "work out" for the purposes of fitness, although do it carefully and be careful with gripping heavy weight – but it won't make much of a difference at all in playing the piano).
What I've found is that the best way to develop the kind of strength in your hand and forearm needed for piano playing is to practice the piano regularly, and healthily!
We pianists tend to develop pronounced muscles at the base of our thumb and pinky (thenar and hypothenar muscles) which comes from balancing our weight into our fingers when we play properly.
This is especially true of the 5th finger, which is considered a "weak" finger, but that's just because it's small.
Once you develop the hand muscles that move the pinky, you can play just and firmly and loudly as any other finger, with ease (and this is very important since our pinkies are usually responsible for melodies and bass lines).
How to strengthen your hand
To strengthen your hand, I would start with the little exercises for stretching and firming up the fingers, which are the first two lessons in Seymour Bernstein's Keyboard Choreography course here on tonebase. I can only recommend you incorporate as much of the wisdom and good advice in Penelope Roskell's and Robert Durso's tonebase technique series.
It might seem unrelated, but their discussions of body alignment with respect to the piano are very important to what's going on down in the forearm and hands.
When you begin to play with the finger, hand, and arm operating as a unit that swings from your shoulders/torso, then you can channel all that good body weight efficiently into your fingers, which are merely conduits and balance points for distributing energy into the keyboard.
Then, questions of "finger strength" don't arise much, because it's not the fingers that are doing any of the "heavy lifting."
It's your bigger muscles in your forearm, upper arm, and shoulders that align and coordinate to play everything from simple to complex passagework.
Depending on your level, you might try approaching the Chopin Etude Training with Marina Lomazov with these foundational physical principles in mind. All of this will help you develop your technique and allow you to play with freedom and agility and power.
Understanding hand strength at the piano is a tricky subject that can get confusing very quickly, especially when you factor in how the muscles in your arm actually contribute to your playing.
If this post helped you in any way, let us know!
Shoot us a DM on Instagram at @tonebasepiano, we’d love to hear your thoughts :)
Did you learn something new?
Feel free to click this link to check out our in-depth courses on piano, taught by artists including Grammy winning pianists and professors from schools such as Juilliard, Curtis, and more.
On tonebase, you will find in-depth courses and workshops with some of the world’s top pianists, covering a wide range of subjects such as repertoire-specific lessons, piano technique, and more.


Superfine Powder Grinding Mills have emerged as a transformative technology in the Philippines, benefiting a wide array of industries. From pharmaceuticals to food processing and electronics to cosmetics, these mills have improved product quality, efficiency, and competitiveness. The case studies provided demonstrate the tangible benefits that businesses in the Philippines have realized through the adoption of this technology.
Precision powder processing is a cutting-edge technology that has revolutionized various industries, including pharmaceuticals, food, ceramics, and more. This innovative approach to handling and manipulating powders offers unparalleled control, consistency, and efficiency compared to traditional methods.
Precision powder processing, also known as advanced powder processing or powder metallurgy, is a sophisticated technique that involves the manipulation of fine powders to produce high-quality products with precise characteristics. This technology employs a range of methods, including granulation, compaction, sintering, and blending, to transform raw powders into tailored end products. Precision powder processing enables precise control over particle size, shape, distribution, and composition, resulting in enhanced product performance and quality.
Precision powder processing plays a pivotal role in a wide range of industries due to its numerous advantages:
In pharmaceuticals, precise control over powder characteristics is essential for drug formulation and manufacturing. Precision powder processing ensures uniform drug distribution, improves drug solubility, and enhances drug delivery systems, such as tablets, capsules, and inhalers.
The food industry relies on precision powder processing to create ingredients like flavorings, colorants, and thickeners. This technology enables consistent particle size and distribution, enhancing the quality, taste, and appearance of food products.
Precision powder processing is instrumental in the ceramics industry, where it helps produce high-strength, durable ceramics with uniform microstructures. This results in improved mechanical properties and resistance to wear and corrosion.
Precision powder processing is vital for additive manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing. By using finely controlled powders, it becomes possible to create complex and highly customized parts with excellent precision and reproducibility.
In energy storage systems and electronics, precision powder processing is employed to produce advanced materials like battery electrodes and conductive inks. This technology enhances the performance and reliability of these components.
Traditional powder processing methods, while functional, have several limitations that precision powder processing addresses:
In the realm of industrial manufacturing, the quest for precision and efficiency is unceasing. One of the most significant advancements in this quest has been the emergence of Superfine Powder Grinding Mills. These cutting-edge machines have revolutionized the process of powder production, offering unrivaled precision and efficiency compared to conventional grinding mills.
A Superfine Powder Grinding Mill, often referred to simply as a Superfine Mill, is a specialized machine designed for the purpose of grinding and processing fine and ultra-fine powders. These powders are typically used in industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, cosmetics, food, and minerals, where the particle size and uniformity play a crucial role in the product’s quality and performance. While conventional grinding mills have been used for centuries to break down materials into smaller particles, Superfine Powder Grinding Mills take this process to a whole new level.
The key distinction between a Superfine Powder Grinding Mill and conventional grinding mills lies in their ability to achieve unparalleled levels of precision and uniformity in particle size reduction. This is achieved through several innovative mechanisms and technologies:
Superfine Powder Grinding Mills operate at much higher rotational speeds than traditional mills. This high-speed rotation creates intense shear forces and impact, effectively reducing the particle size to microscopic levels.
These mills incorporate advanced grinding mechanisms such as jet milling, bead milling, or vibration milling. These mechanisms enable the controlled size reduction of particles, resulting in a narrower particle size distribution.
Many Superfine Powder Grinding Mills are equipped with air classification systems that separate particles based on their size and density. This ensures that only particles of the desired size are collected, further enhancing product quality.
Superfine Mills allow for precise control over various parameters, including feed rate, grinding pressure, and airflow. Operators can fine-tune these settings to achieve the desired particle size and distribution.
The operation of Superfine Powder Grinding Mills relies on a combination of mechanical and pneumatic forces. Here’s a simplified overview of how these machines work:
Precision Particle Size Control: Superfine Powder Grinding Mills excel in delivering precise particle size control, which is vital for industries that demand uniformity and consistency in their products. This precision is particularly valuable in pharmaceuticals, where dosage accuracy is paramount.
The high-speed operation and advanced grinding mechanisms of Superfine Mills result in shorter processing times and reduced energy consumption compared to conventional mills. This translates into cost savings and increased production capacity.
The ability to achieve a narrow particle size distribution enhances the quality of the final product. This is especially significant in industries like cosmetics and food, where texture and appearance matter.
Superfine Powder Grinding Mills can process a wide range of materials, from soft and friable substances to hard and abrasive ones. This versatility makes them suitable for a variety of industries and applications.
Reduced energy consumption and improved efficiency contribute to a smaller carbon footprint, aligning with the growing emphasis on sustainability in manufacturing.
One of the most significant recent advancements is the integration of nanotechnology into Superfine Powder Grinding Mills. Nanoparticles, which are particles on the nanometer scale, offer unique properties that can transform various industries. Manufacturers have developed grinding mills capable of achieving unprecedented levels of fineness, producing nanoparticles with remarkable precision. This innovation has opened up new possibilities in fields such as drug delivery systems, where precise particle size control is paramount.
Energy consumption is a significant concern in materials processing. Recent innovations in Superfine Powder Grinding Mills have focused on improving energy efficiency. This is achieved through the use of advanced materials in the grinding chambers, optimized rotor designs, and enhanced cooling systems. As a result, these mills can process materials with minimal energy wastage, reducing operational costs and environmental impact.
The integration of digital technologies and automation has revolutionized the operation of Superfine Powder Grinding Mills. Real-time monitoring and control of various parameters such as particle size, temperature, and grinding speed are now possible. This not only ensures consistent product quality but also reduces the need for manual intervention, enhancing overall efficiency and safety.
Modern industries often require large quantities of finely ground powders in a short time. Recent innovations have focused on increasing the throughput capacity of Superfine Powder Grinding Mills. This is achieved through the development of larger and more powerful machines with improved milling techniques. These high-throughput mills are ideal for mass production while maintaining precision and efficiency.
The selection of materials for both the grinding chamber and the grinding elements has seen significant advancements. Superhard materials like ceramics and composites have become commonplace, ensuring longer equipment life and minimal contamination of the processed materials. This innovation is particularly crucial in industries like pharmaceuticals, where product purity is paramount.
Superfine Powder Grinding Mills have evolved to offer greater flexibility through modular designs. Manufacturers now provide customizable options to cater to specific industry needs. This allows businesses to adapt their equipment to different applications easily, further enhancing efficiency and versatility.
The integration of nanotechnology has pushed the boundaries of precision in powder processing. Superfine Powder Grinding Mills can now produce particles with remarkable uniformity and consistency in size, shape, and distribution. This level of precision is crucial for industries such as pharmaceuticals, where slight variations can affect the efficacy and safety of drugs.
Enhanced energy efficiency and high throughput design not only reduce operational costs but also minimize waste production. This is a significant benefit for both economic and environmental reasons. Efficient milling processes ensure that a higher percentage of the raw material is transformed into the desired product, reducing the need for costly material disposal.
Precision and efficiency go hand in hand in ensuring superior product quality. Advanced material selection and automation systems guarantee that the final product meets strict quality standards. Whether it’s achieving the desired particle size distribution or preventing contamination, these innovations contribute to consistently high-quality output.
High-throughput designs, coupled with automation and digitalization, enable faster production cycles. Industries that rely on finely ground powders, such as food processing or cosmetics manufacturing, can significantly increase their production rates without compromising precision. This translates into quicker time-to-market and improved competitiveness.
Customization and modular design allow for easier maintenance and replacement of components. This minimizes downtime for maintenance and repairs, ensuring continuous production and optimal efficiency. Businesses can also adapt their equipment to changing production needs without the need for significant capital investments.
Copyright © ZENITH, All Right Reserved.


June 1, 2014
The Texas Panhandle offers the flatlands of the Low Plains and the really, really flatlands of the High Plains.
By Bill Langer
Today, we resume our trip along historic Route 66 starting at Texola, Okla., and head west across the Texas Panhandle. Those of you who enjoy a slow pace can ride along 150 miles of the original 178 miles of Route 66 that crossed Texas. We choose to take I-40, which parallels old Route 66 across the Panhandle.
Many of the towns along Route 66 survived the decline of the oil and gas industry, the dust bowl, and loss of Route 66 business. A few towns were doomed to extinction when I-40 attracted tourists, just like us, away from Route 66. I feel a pang of conscience as we forsake those towns for the speed and convenience of the interstate. But we press on.
Geographically, the Panhandle is divided into the Low Plains on the east and High Plains on the west. Separating them is a feature called the “Caprock Escarpment.” A caprock is a hard rock that resists erosion while the underlying softer rocks are eroded away. This results in a cliff or escarpment. However, there is no escarpment along Route 66 in the northeast Texas Panhandle because there are no big rivers to sweep away the sediment from the base of the caprock.
We leave I-40/Route 66 at Amarillo and travel 27 miles southeast to Palo Duro Canyon. The canyon was formed by the Red River’s Prairie Dog Town Fork, which, over the millennia, eroded through the caprock and transported the underlying sediment downstream. Voilá, an escarpment!
The buttes, mesas, and pinnacles of Palo Duro Canyon are protected by the caprock. The steep canyon sides consist of bright layers of orange, red, brown, yellow, grey, maroon, and white rocks from four geologic periods spanning more than 240 million years. In places, the canyon is 20 miles wide and more than 800 feet deep. It is worth the visit.
We resume our westward journey on I-40/Route 66. While the Low Plains were pretty flat, the High Plains are really, really flat. Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado was the first European to see the vast open spaces of the Texas Panhandle. Coronado approached the area from the west where it is bounded by the Mescalero Escarpment and named it the Llano Estacado (pronounced yano esta ka’do), commonly known as the “Staked Plains,” but more accurately as the “Palisaded Plains.” (Palisades are high cliffs like the Mescalero Escarpment.)
Members of the Coronado expedition recorded their impressions of the Llano:
“[The expedition] encountered a land level like the sea. ***The land is so level that men became lost when they were separated by half a league [a Spanish league was about 2.6 miles]. ***[S]ince the land is so flat, if at midday [the men] have wandered foolishly following their prey from one place to another, they must stay calmly near their prey until the sun lowers, in order to see by what course they must return to where they departed from.”
There are no hills, no valleys, no road cuts along the interstate. Aggregate is scarcer than hens’ teeth around here, so some of the tallest things we see are the stockpiles of crushed stone shipped in from distant sources.
We exit I-40 and drive through Adrian, which is located midway between Los Angeles and Chicago — 1,139 miles either way. We are half way through our journey and are anxious to see what awaits us on the other side of Adrian.
Hopefully it is not FLAT.
Bill Langer is a consulting research geologist who spent 41 years with the U.S. Geological Survey before starting his own business. He can be reached at Bill_Langer@hotmail.com
Editor’s note: To read about other stops on the Route 66 tour, click here.


What powers does the House of Commons speaker have?
John Bercow angers Brexiteers by rejecting Boris Johnson’s request for simple vote on deal
John Bercow is making the most of his final days as the House of Commons speaker to exercise his powers over MPs battling about Brexit.
Bercow said it would be “repetitive and disorderly” to debate the motion again after it was brought before Parliament on Saturday.
A spokesperson for the PM responded that “the speaker has yet again denied us a chance to deliver on the will of British people”, while Tory Leaver Sir Bernard Jenkin told Bercow that it was “remarkable how often you please one lot and not the other”.
So what exactly is the speaker entitled to do?
What is the speaker’s role?
To ensure the orderly flow of business, the House of Commons observes parliamentary rules and traditions, both written and unwritten. It is the speaker's duty to interpret these rules impartially, to maintain order, and to defend the rights and privileges of MPs, particularly backbenchers.
The speaker controls debates in the Commons, deciding who can speak, and can - although rare - exercise a casting vote in the event of a draw. The speaker has significant influence on legislation by selecting which amendments to a bill may be proposed, and by interpreting and enforcing the rules of Parliament as laid out in the official parliamentary rulebook, Erskine May.
Originally, the speaker was the monarch’s de facto representative in Parliament. From the 18th century onwards, the speaker gained greater independence, beginning to represent the collective voice of Parliament. Now, “the modern speaker is politically impartial and expected to avoid taking a political stance or favouring particular interests over others”, says the Institute for Government.
Although the speaker is still a serving MP, with constituency work, they are expected to resign from their party and avoid campaigning in elections on appointment.
How is the speaker selected?
The speaker is elected by a secret ballot of MPs at the beginning of a new Parliament, usually following a general election or the resignation, death or retirement of the previous incumbent.
More than 150 people have served as speaker of the House of Commons. Betty Boothroyd, elected in 1992, was the first female speaker. Michael Martin, elected in 2000, was the first Roman Catholic to hold the office since the Reformation, while Bercow, elected in 2009, is the first Jewish speaker.
If the speaker in post wishes to retain the role following a general election, they do not need to be re-elected by secret ballot and can instead be reappointed by a motion passed by a majority of MPs.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For more political analysis - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Get your first six issues free–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Why is Bercow so controversial?
“Read interviews with John Bercow and it’s clear how he sees his role today - making sure no political party disrespects Parliament by bending or breaking the rules,” says the BBC’s Chris Smith.
During his ten years in the speaker’s chair, Bercow has clashed with four prime ministers, survived attempts to oust him and spoken out against US President Donald Trump. But the majority of criticism of Bercow has come over Brexit, in particular over the perception of him as a Remainer.
He has been willing to enable MPs to exert authority over the government and hold it to account, by allowing more emergency debates and amendments from backbenchers. Bercow stopped the government from repeating votes on the terms of Brexit under Theresa May and has now ruled out another debate on Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.
But “he is not without his advocates, even among hard-line Brexiteers”, says Politico.
Bercow, who will stand down on 31 October, has said it is not his job to be “cheerleader for the executive branch” but rather to “stand up for the rights of the House of Commons”, adding that the abuse he gets for it is “water off a duck’s back as far as I am concerned”.


Originally featured in Points West in Summer 2007
Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep specimens
On December 24, 2000, poachers killed these two Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep Rams (foreground) in the valley bordering the North Fork of the Shoshone River west of Cody. The poachers were caught and convicted, and the rams were confiscated for evidence.
Subsequently, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department donated these two specimens, known by local wildlife watchers as Arnold and Big Boy (or Big Guy), to the Draper Natural History Museum for installation in our Alpine exhibit which opened in 2002. They serve as a poignant reminder for our Draper Museum explorers—poaching is a crime that demonstrates blatant disregard for our natural heritage.
Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep. Scientific name: Ovis canadensis. Whole mount DRA.305.10; skeletal mount DRA.305.38


The Menta Group tracks student data and outcomes. From reading scores to engaged learning time, attendance, specific behavioral outcomes, reintegration to public school programs, and graduation, the organization believes that these kinds of data provide the foundation for ensuring that each individual student has the proper tools for success.
The educational model does not seek to simply move students through our programs, but rather to reintegrate students back to their home districts and prepare them for success in a less restrictive environment.
The Individual Reading Inventory (IRI) is administered to each student upon enrollment and then annually. Scores from the IRI are used to determine each student’s reading tier and to identify appropriate reading interventions and strategies.
The Menta Group’s programs consistently see an average increase of 100 lexile points from the beginning of the academic year to the end. This growth is significant given that almost all students are significantly behind academically when they enter Menta programs. A typical student in a Menta program enters with an achievement gap ranging from 2-11 years and many middle school and high school students enter the programs as non-readers.
Social-emotional skills are strongly related to academic achievement. Students, who are able to manage their feelings and behavior, interact appropriately with peers and teachers, work persistently towards personal goals, make good decisions, and are better able to stay on task in the classroom. Social-emotional skills are also critical to functioning outside of school: in the community, at work, and in family life.
Student behavior at school is an important indicator of social-emotional functioning. In order to exhibit appropriate behavior in a school setting, a student must be able to control impulsivity, manage conflicts with others, and deal appropriately with uncomfortable feelings like frustration, disappointment, and anger. In Menta schools, students are referred to Crisis Intervention Behavior Stabilization (CIBS) if they behave inappropriately. CIBS referrals are one behavioral indicator of social-emotional functioning at school and are similar to an office discipline referral or in-school suspension in a general education setting.
The Menta Group has programs in Illinois and Arizona.


These are just question to answer before the essay start. Please go into depth with the answers
-What did the Gaspesian Indian say about French cultural superiority?
-How did John Winthrop defend Puritans settling in New England?
-In additional to religious freedom, why did the Pilgrims travel to New England?
Most important question is below.(This is suppose to be an essay)
~Religion was a motivation factor in the immigration of many Europeans. Many came to convert native peoples. Many came to escape persecution form established churches in Europe. In this essay, explain the importance of religion in the colonial Period. Why did the Puritans leave England and how did the religion influence their settlements? How was religion used to justify settlement in the Americans? What was the religious influence in the Carolina Backcountry according to Charles Woodmason?


Diel changes in resource demand: competition and predation in species replacement among crayfishes
With laboratory experiments and field surveys, we examine community—structuring mechanisms in a system undergoing invasion. Orconectes rusticus, an invading crayfish species, is replacing O. propinquus and O. Virilis in northern Wisconsin lakes. We test the hypothesis that periodicity of species interactions influences invasion success. Specifically, we test whether the intensity of interspecific competition varies on a diel cycle as a function of predation risk from visually feeding fishes. We tested for competitive exclusion in experimental pools (1.4 m in diameter) by determining habitat use of the three crayfishes in single—0 and three—species treatments. The pools contained equal area habitats of cobble, open sand, macrophytes in organic sediments (muck), and macrophytes in sand. In single—species treatments, all three species preferred cobble habitat during the day with a secondary preference for muck—macrophyte habitat. In three—species relative to single—species pools, O. rusticus increased daytime use of cobble habitat while O. virilis and O. propinquus reduced use of cobble and increased use of muck—macrophyte and sand—macrophyte habitats, respectively. Crayfish were evenly distributed among habitats at night. All three crayfishes altered habitat use between night and day, consistent with the need to forage at night and seek refuge from predation during the day. Results of a laboratory experiment giving crayfish the choice of feeding in the open or hiding in clean cobble in the presence and absence of a predator showed that crayfish chose habitat on the basis of food availability when predation risk was low and on the basis of shelter availability when risk was high. Data from experiments were consistent with habitat use observed in single— and mixed—species lakes, supporting our hypothesis that the interaction of competition with diel fluctuations in predation risk contributes to the ongoing O. rusticus invasion.


Scientists find a possible new means to battle the flu.
WiredPRNews – Scientists have made a discovery that can possibly be the catalyst for the development of advanced treatments and preventative medicines for the flu, as reported by HealthDay News. Dr. Wayne A. Marasco, who teaches at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, is quoted in the report as stating, “We identified new human antibodies that inactivate influenza, not just bird flu, but any of the seasonal influenza viruses that affect us in the winter.”
Marasco further notes that drugs may be derived from the antibodies as well as a long-term vaccination for the flu, and is quoted as also stating, “These antibodies do not replace the flu vaccine… But the exciting part is, this gives us a new approach to vaccine development. This is a new area that is highly conserved, and the viruses do not appear to easily undergo change in their genetic code to escape the antibodies directed against them.”
Information about the study can be found in the February 22 online edition of Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.


Writing Up Your Linguistics Project
- Resources Project Guides
If you’re new to linguistics, committing your analysis to paper can be anxiety producing. What follows are some tips to help you on your way. First, I would suggest that you find models to emulate. For example, you might draw from some of the example in the article database, or something you found elsewhere. Then, I would apply an analysts eye to those models. Note how they are structured, the vocabulary they use (and not just the nouns, check the verbs), and the ways in which they both present and discuss their data.
Regardless of the specific models you consult, here are a few things your paper should do (in rough order):
- Set out the focus and scope of your research
- Situate your research within an ongoing conversation in the field
- Articulate what insights are to be gained from your research
- Describe your data, where it comes from, and how it was collected
- Describe your methods of analysis and explain why those methods were selected and why they have explanatory power
- Present your results
- Analyze those results
- Summarize you findings and, perhaps, reinforce their implications or posit areas of potential future inquiry
As you draft your paper, here are a few quick pointers:
- Working with linguistic data is often a processes of discovery. You are not necessarily going to know what your main claims are (your thesis) until after you’ve written up much of your analysis. With that in mind, I recommend that you write your introduction last. It is often easiest to begin with descriptions of your data and your methods, followed by results and discussion — and saving your introduction and conclusion until after you’ve drafted the body of your paper.
- Visual presentation matters. Tables and figures (including charts, graphs, and images) are rhetorical tools. They are as much a part of your argumentation as your prose, and you should attend to them accordingly. They should be clearly designed and labeled (check here for some tips). They should be numbered and captioned for easy reference (e.g., see Fig. 1). And you should choose the appropriate chart for the information you want to communicate (see here and here). If you are new to making charts, my advice is to keep it simple. Don’t overdesign and focus on clarity. If a simple bar chart is appropriate, use one.
- Know and articulate not just the strengths of your data, but also its limitations. All data have limitations. This is not a fatal flaw, but is simply part of doing this kind of work. There is no need, therefore, to oversell your results. In fact, doing so can undermine your credibility.
Now, I want to look at a few issues in more detail and with the help of some examples.
1. Make effective use of subsections.
This may seem odd to you if you are used to writing essays comprised of what is effectively a single section of continuous text. Section headings are a highly efficient way for you to orient your reader’s expectations without having to do a lot of rhetorical work. When a reader sees “Methods,” she or he know what to expect. You don’t need to do any set up: In this section, I describe the tools that I used to generate my analysis… blah, blah, blah. No! You can dive right in. In a typical linguistic analysis you will have the following sections:
- Data & Methods
- Results & Discussion
In between the Introduction and the Data & Methods sections, there is sometimes a short literature review (though it is most often subtitled something more specific to the research topic). Its purpose is to situate the research within the context of an ongoing conversation in the field (more here). This is important, but within the context of a research paper, it is not as important as your own analysis. In many cases, the work of situating the research is folded into the introduction, itself.
In some disciplines, Results & Discussion are rigorously separated, with the former emphasizing the presentation of the findings and the latter on what Swales and Feak (2012: 157) describe as “an increasingly generalized account of what has been learned in the study.” Perhaps because linguistics is such a diverse discipline, Results and Discussion are not always strictly divided. What you choose to do with these will depend on the kinds of research questions you are pursuing and how you think your findings can most clearly be presented. Often, however, they are going to be woven together in a series of subsections that move through different types of analysis (quantitative and qualitative), with repeated and explicit connections back to the arguments established in the introduction.
Similarly, the Data & Methods are sometimes separated, but it can be more efficient to do these rhetorical tasks together. Here, you want to describe what your data are, where you got them from, how you are analyzing them, and why your analytical approach is appropriate. I’ll say more about the Methods in a bit. But I would stress that it is in your interest to be clear and efficient. This is set up for the main event — the analysis of your data. When appropriate, you might take advantage of tables as a tool for presenting important information. For example, if you are using a corpus, you will need to provide that information for the reader in the Data & Methods section. And one way to do that is with a table, as Fischer-Starcke does in her study of Pride and Prejudice:
If you are using a corpus compiled by someone, you should describe at cite it, as in this excerpt from Ng et al.:
This study used the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), a database of approximately 400 million words that covers 1810–2009 (Davies 2012). To examine age stereotypes in this database, we generated a comprehensive list of synonyms for the term elderly from 1810–2009 using two historical thesauri that included American English (Kay 2009; Waite 2012). This generated a list of 11 elderly synonyms that appeared at least 10 times in the dataset. Some synonyms entered the database in later decades reflecting expected variation over time in language use (e.g., senior citizen first appeared in 1949). Three nouns (i.e., aged, elderly, old people) appeared across all 20 decades; these were analyzed as a subset.
2. Be clear about the purpose of a Methods section.
For anyone coming to linguistics from the sciences, a methods section with be perfectly familiar. However, for those trained in literary studies, it might seem strange. As I said above, you will need to describe your choice of method and explain your motivations for that choice. Why does doing linguistic analysis in the way you’ve selected have explanatory power?
If you are new to this (heck even if you’re not), the chances are you’ll be leaning heavily (if not entirely) on methods developed by other scholars, which you are now applying to a new set of data with (presumably) the purpose of providing some sort of insight. This can be accomplished with some efficient summary and strategic citation. Again, let’s look at Fischer-Starcke’s example:
Keywords indicate dominant topics or themes of a text or corpus since the reason for their frequent occurrence in the data is their significance either for the data’s content or its structure. One function of keywords therefore is to indicate the ‘aboutness’ (Phillips 1985) of the data. This ‘aboutness’ is revealed by words which form semantic fields on a list of keywords, and which in their turn represent topics of the text. These semantic fields consist of words which express semantically related concepts. Consequently, the analysis of keywords from a dominant semantic field on a list of keywords is likely to reveal dominant meanings of the data. The relevance of keywords for detecting meaning in literary and non-literary texts has been shown, for example, by Scott (2002), Rayson (2008) and Culpeper (2009). While keywords cannot be identified intuitively, but only by using a quantitative comparative approach to the analysis, the classification of words into semantic fields is an intuitive process in this paper.
A couple of paragraphs later, that summary is followed by an explanation of her own choices:
Thee choice of reference corpora was based on three reasons:
a. Comparing the language of P&P with that of Austen’s other five novels allows for the identification of lexical features that are specific to P&P as opposed to Austen’s other novels. Meanings of the text can therefore be identified that are distinct from those of the other novels.
b. Using contempLit as a reference corpus allows for the identification of differences between P&P and its contemporary literature.
c. Comparing Austen to contempLit allows for the identification of features of Austen’s idiolect and authorial style compared to her contemporary literature. This, however, is only a minor issue touched upon in this paper.
Performing two keyword analyses serves two aims. First, words or topics that are identified as dominant on both lists of keywords are doubly legitimized as significant for the data. Second, a comparison between the two lists of keywords helps identify differences between the two reference corpora and shows how the compilation of a reference corpus influences the results of an analysis.
Notice, too, how she uses her explanation of her methods as an opportunity to clarify the scope of her analysis. In her point under (c), she notes that while this method sheds light on issues related to authorial style, that “is only a minor issue touched upon in this paper.”
Here is another example from Lancaster’s examination of academic writing:
The three corpora I examined offer a snapshot of academic writing at three distinct levels. The first corpus is the academic section of the Corpus of Contemporary American English, or COCA (Davies). This is a 91-million-word database of published texts from almost 100 different peer-reviewed journals across disciplines. The second is the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP), an online corpus of 829 high-graded papers written by senior undergraduate students and early graduate students across sixteen fields, totaling 2.2 million words (see Römer and O’Donnell for further details). The third is a corpus of 19,456 directed self-placement (DSP) essays collected from five years at the University of Michigan and Wake Forest University. These are essays written by newly admitted university students in response to varied prompts asking for evidence-based arguments, ones that support or challenge arguments from assigned reading(s). At 19.2 million words, the corpus is to my knowledge the largest of its kind. To be sure, these corpora are not perfectly comparable. The first-year (FY) essays are predisciplinary argumentative essays, while the COCA and MICUSP papers are a mix of essays, reports, critiques, research papers, and other academic genres across disciplines. Nevertheless, all the papers are from academic contexts and thus offer a broad testing ground for whether and how the TSIS templates are used.
The concordancing software I used to examine the corpora is AntConc (Anthony). The procedures involved three recursive steps: (1) targeted searches of wordings taken directly from the TSIS templates and from the literature on evaluation and metadiscourse (e.g., Hyland, Metadiscourse); (2) inductive analysis of word/phrase lists from the corpora generated by AntConc; and (3) qualitative interpretation of concordance results. The purpose of Step 1 was to examine how frequently the exact wordings from the TSIS templates were used, as well as how their frequency compared to alternative wordings for achieving the same function. The purpose of the inductive analysis, Step 2, was to identify other common phraseological patterns for achieving the moves, ones that were not picked up in the targeted searches. The purpose of Step 3 was to ensure form/function matching. For example, in many instances the formulation It could be argued that functions to entertain an objection; in other cases it is used to suggest the writer’s own view in tentative terms. I carefully read the context for each instance to make sure the wording was operating to realize the rhetorical move under analysis
In the first paragraph he describes his data, and in the second he explains his analytical method. Note that similar to Fischer-Starcke, he takes the opportunity to note some of the limitations of his study, specifically that his datasets “are not perfectly comparable.”
3. Provide a robust and thorough analysis of your data.
The analytical portions of your paper are really its heart and soul. In my experience, less successful papers are ones in which the analysis is not fully realized. The writer, for example, may make a broad claim about the data, but fail to follow that up with explanations of exactly how that claim is illustrated or expressed in the data itself. That failure forces the reader to stop and do that interpretive work herself or himself. Presumably you have gone through an interpretive process to arrive at a series of conclusions about what your data is showing. You need to get that information out of your head and onto the page.
Here, for example, is an example from Baker’s analysis of the words bachelor and spinster:
Table 6.3 shows that the relationship between the two collocates always occurs in descriptions of someone’s ‘bachelor days’. However, we can go further than this by looking for discourse prosodies. Lines 5 and 6 refer to ‘happy bachelor days’, whereas lines 4 and 6 refer to ‘memories’ of bachelor days. With line 7 there is ‘a memento’ of bachelor days, again suggesting that they are worth remembering. So bachelor days could be characterized as containing a discourse prosody of happy memories – again, a positive representation of unmarried men (although there is also an implication, particularly regarding the references to memories – that these bachelors were youthful). Interestingly, line 7 includes the phrase her bachelor days. Here, bachelor refers to a woman, suggesting that the fine gender distinction between bachelor and spinster is not absolute.
Here, Baker is unpacking his concordance lines. Note how specifically he refers back to the data — both using numbers and short quotations. In the last sentence of this excerpt, Baker also complicates his primary claim. He calls attention to an exception, adding nuance to the main thrust of his argument. This is what I mean by being thorough. Linguistic data is often messy and complex. Overlooking or omitting the ways in which that complexity is realized in your data can make your analysis seem facile or less than fully considered.
Here is another example from Bucholtz and Lopez’s analysis of Hollywood films:
In Bringing Down the House, language ideology is key to establishing Martin’s character Peter, a workaholic lawyer whose tightly-wound personality is signaled to viewers by his penchant for correcting others’ English. The appearance of Queen Latifah’s character Charlene, a wrongly convicted felon who seeks Peter’s help to clear her name, wreaks havoc on his orderly if emotionally unsatisfying life. Charlene’s speech is the target of Peter’s disapproving metapragmatic commentary early in the film, as they dine together in an upscale restaurant:
Further reinscribing the linguistic division between these characters, Peter’s condemnation of Charlene’s use of slang does little to alter her language: in her next turn, she uses an AAE structure (zero auxiliary in a wh- question; line 4) as she challenges his comment.
Although this is an excerpt rather than a series of concordance lines, notice how clearly it is presented in order to make specific reference back to it (as in the parenthetical in the last sentence).


If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.
If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.
Unit 10: Gastrointestinal system physiology and disease
About this unit
Do you live to eat, or eat to live? Either way, no one can deny the importance of food and water in our everyday lives. The energy from food is carefully extracted through ingestion, digestion, and absorption, and requires one long tube with some organs attached. Go ahead and grab a bite to eat before we get started…


Peacekeepers from the United Nations are a familiar sight during many international conflicts. There are currently 16 ongoing UN peacekeeping operations on four continents. But this was not always the case.
It was the crisis on the Suez Canal that led to the establishment of the UN's first peacekeeping force. The General Assembly convened its First Emergency Special Session in response to military action taken by Israeli and Anglo-French forces against Egypt. On 7 November, the General Assembly passes a resolution establishing the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF). UNEF would patrol the armistice demarcation line until June 1967.
In 1954, the General Assembly passed the ‘Atoms for Peace’ resolution expressing the hope that an atomic energy agency would be established “as quickly as possible” to facilitate the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, and to encourage international co-operation in the further development and practical use of atomic energy for the benefit of humanity. Work on drafting a statute for such an agency began in April 1955 and was submitted to the 1956 Conference on the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency. After its approval, the General Assembly would pass an agreement that governed the relationship between the United Nations and the new agency, known as the International Atomic Energy Agency or IAEA. The Agency reports to the Assembly annually and to the Security Council on matters of safety and security. Today, the IAEA continues to partner with Member States and others worldwide to promote the safe, secure, and peaceful use of nuclear technologies. The IAEA received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for its efforts.
The precursor of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) - the UN's global development network - was the United Nations Special Fund. In 1958, the General Assembly took action to “employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples…”, as stated in the Charter of the UN. The United Nations Special Fund was established on 14 October 1958 by resolution A/RES/1240 (XII). The Fund would be equipped to carry out large-scale projects of a pre-investment nature. Its operations would speed the economic development of less-developed countries by creating conditions that facilitated new capital investments of all types. The Special Fund, along with the Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance would combine in 1966 to form the United Nations Development Programme.
The League of Nations- predecessor to the United Nations- adopted the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child, recognizing “that mankind owes to the Child the best that it has to give”. The United Nations built on this international agreement with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, in 1959, with the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the first UN statement devoted exclusively to the rights of children. The General Assembly unanimously passed the Declaration, which says, “The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity.” Thirty years later, the principles laid out in the Declaration will become the basis for the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
When the United Nations came into being in 1945, over 1/3 of the world’s people lived in dependent territories. In 1960, the UN would admit 17 new Member States, 16 of which are newly independent African nations. Believing decolonization needed to occur faster, the General Assembly adopted, on 14 December 1960, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. It states “[T]he necessity of bringing to a speedy and unconditional end colonialism in all its forms and manifestations…all peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development."
United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld lost his life on 18 September 1961 when his plane crashes on his way to the the town of Ndola for peace talks between the Congolese government and the separatists. As the UN and the world mourn, many pay tribute to the fallen Secretary-General and on 20 September, members of the United Nations eulogised Hammarskjöld in a plenary meeting of the General Assembly.
“Let us recall on this day of grief the man we knew, the man for whom difference between races or nationalities did not exist, the man who faced all problems with a profound desire to find the best peaceful solution" (Mr. Bahizi of Congo, Leopoldville).
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, both the Acting Secretary-General U Thant and the Security Council played a vital role in averting an international crisis when a dispute between the United States of America and the Soviet Union over Cuba escalated. In the Security Council, representatives for the US, Cuba and USSR stated their views for the world to hear publicly. Behind the scenes, Acting Secretary-General U Thant worked as a mediator between US President Kennedy and USSR Premier Khrushchev, appealing to both to find a solution to the situation without military action. Thant addressed the Security Council stating, "Today the United Nations faces a moment of grave responsibility. What is at stake is not just the interests of the parties directly involved, nor just the interests of all the Member States, but the very fate of mankind. If today the United Nations should prove itself ineffective, it may have proved itself so for all time."
The United Nations had been grappling with apartheid, South Africa’s system of legalized racial discrimination, since it was founded. In 1963, South Africa began an arms build-up that many feared would be used to enforce the government’s racial policies. In response, the Security Council passes the first voluntary arms embargo on 7 August 1963. The Council “calls upon all States to cease forthwith the sale and shipment of arms, ammunition of all types and military vehicles to South Africa." The embargo is the UN’s strongest condemnation of apartheid to date and strengthens the General Assembly’s previous resolutions calling on South Africa to reject Apartheid and release all political prisoners. Thirty-one years later, in 1994, the UN would observe South Africa's first multi-racial elections in which former political prisoner Nelson Mandela would be elected the country's first black president.
The Republic of Cyprus became independent in 1960. The country’s constitution intended to balance the needs of its Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities and Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom entered into a treaty to guarantee the basic provisions of the constitution. However, the constitution could not ease the difficulties between the two communities and tensions grew. On 15 February 1964, the representatives of the UK and Cyprus requested action by the Security Council in an attempt to restore peace. Three weeks later, the Council adopts resolution 186 (1964); recommending the establishment of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP). The Force will become operational on 27 March 1964 and continues to operate on the island today: supervising ceasefire lines, maintaining a buffer zone, undertaking humanitarian activities, and supporting the good offices mission of the Secretary-General.
Article I of the Charter of the United Nations states the United Nations is to promote and encourage "respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.” In 1965, the General Assembly considered the question of the prevention of discrimination and the protection of minorities and, on 21 December, approved A/RES/2106(XX), the text of an International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The States Parties to the Convention agree “to adopt all necessary measures for speedily eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms and manifestations, and to prevent and combat racist doctrines and practices in order to promote understanding between races and to build an international community free from all forms of racial segregation and racial discrimination.”