Written by Olivier Guiberteau
The peaceful village of Eyam, tucked into the Peak District towards the north of England and just 56 km (35 miles) southeast of Manchester, is very much your quintessential English village – where aged cottages line the quiet streets with more than a whisper of a long-bygone era.
It is one of those modest, out-of-the-way places, with a population of just under 1,000, where you would be forgiven for assuming that nothing of importance ever happens – and you would be entirely wrong.
When the Great Plague of London erupted in 1665, some 250 km (160 miles) south of Eyam, for those living far from distant cities and still several centuries away from rolling news coverage, it must have seemed like a different world.
London was ravaged by the last major outbreak of the bubonic plague in the UK, with at least 100,000 people dying as a result – a quarter of the city’s population. But the country was not yet the vast interconnected web that we see today and much of Britain was spared the horror.
However, not everywhere was so lucky, and there were sporadic outbreaks in small villages and towns close to London and even further afield. In 1665, a bundle of cloth arrived in Eyam from London, destined for the local tailor, Alexander Hadfield. Unbeknown to everybody, the plague had arrived in the small village. What came next has long gone down in the annals of heroism, with Eyam’s population choosing to implement a voluntary quarantine to prevent the disease from spreading to nearby communities.
Over 14 months, the plague devastated Eyam, reducing its already tiny population by at least. The story of Eyam, often simply referred to as ‘Plague Village’, remains an astonishing tale of self-sacrifice in the face of one of the worst diseases we’ve ever experienced.
In many ways, Eyam hasn’t changed much over the centuries. Its church stands much as it did 350 years ago and many older buildings have been preserved in that quaint way that often tends to happen in English villages.
Whether it was the Romans or the Anglo-Saxons who first settled here is open to debate, but both left a presence in the local area. Lead mining was once a lucrative business in this northern region of England and continued up to the 19th Century when better and cheaper alternatives were found.
In 1665 the village was about as anonymous as it gets, just another English village in the north of the country, close to the quickly growing city of Manchester, but still a world away from the frantic hustle and bustle going on in London to the south.
Yet while this small village may have been relatively peaceful and tranquil, there were some political and religious undercurrents that we should go through before carrying on with the story.
Just over a year before the outbreak, Reverend Thomas Stanley had been dismissed from his official post for refusing to take the Oath of Conformity and use the Common Book of Prayer.
This was a series of reforms that had come into effect with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Stanley had firmly objected to the more authoritarian undertones of the Oath of Conformity and was replaced as Reverend William Mompesson, who had been the post just a year, and now lived in the rectory with his wife Katherine and their two small children. Stanley on the other hand had been banished to a house on the outskirts of the village but remained a deeply popular figure among his ex-parishioners.
The same could not be said for the unfortunate Mompesson who seems to have been landed a rather poisoned chalice. Villagers remained suspicious of him and it was clear where their allegiances still lay.
The Black Death
When the plague burst free in London in 1664, it was by no means the first time this hellish spectre had visited the country. Recent evidence suggests that the plague may have killed in Britain as early as 544 AD, though it’s not entirely clear just how widespread this outbreak was. However, there is no such confusion about what happened just over 800 years later.
In June 1348, a young sailor stepped ashore at Weymouth on England’s south coast after making the short journey from Gascony on France’s Atlantic seaboard. He would shortly become the first known plague victim in Britain during a pandemic that not only ravaged the British Isles but much of Europe as well as Nothern Africa and the Middle East.
The numbers killed during the Black Death, or ‘The Great Mortality’ as it was then known, were astonishingly high at a time when medical understanding and pathology were still essentially in their infancy. Between 75 and 200 million died as a result of the Black Death between 1346 and 1353, with approximately 40-60% of the British population dying – perhaps around 3 to 4 million people.
The plague returned to Britain with a vengeance in 1361 and 1362, killing another 20% of the population, before again petering out. But the events of the second half of the 14th Century were simply the start. What is now labelled as the ‘second plague pandemic’ was a multi-century period that stretched from the 14th Century up to the early 19th Century.
There were further large-scale outbreaks in Britain in 1563, 1593, and 1625, but the plague never really left and it was uncommon for any year to go past without at least some deaths attributed to it. London saw 30,000 plague deaths in 1603, 35,000 in 1625, and 10,000 in 1636 – but something much bigger was again lurking on the horizon.
What has come to be known as the Great Plague of London was a slow burner at first. It’s thought that this variation may have been carried over from the Netherlands, where Amsterdam had seen roughly 50,000 die from the plague that year.
The disease began creeping through the dock areas in London throughout the final months of 1664, but deaths were frequently attributed to something else. By April 1665, the number of deaths had increased and the city council acted to introduce household quarantine as a way of stemming the spread.
By May and June, with plague deaths mounting, panic set in. The rich were often able to flee the city to private houses in the country, while the poor either had to survive the best they could or attempt to leave the city, something that became increasingly difficult when regulations were introduced that required anybody leaving London to be in possession of a clean health certificate.
As the summer progressed, deaths climbed steadily, moving from 2,000 per week in July, to over 7,000 per week in September. The city was left a painful shell of its former self with abandoned businesses and deserted streets now a regular sight. Believing that animals might be the cause, the city ordered the culling of dogs and cats, while another theory that it was down to bad air led to giant bonfires appearing that were required to be kept going day and night.
While London received the worst of the outbreak, this was almost certainly down to its size and population density. Outside the capital, deaths were certainly lower, but small pockets still received a hellish battering. Derby and Norwich were both hit hard, while there were also cases of tiny villages near major towns that had been effectively emptied thanks to the plague.
The Plague arrives in Eyam
The story goes that the plague arrived in the peaceful village of Eyam within a bundle of cloth that had been sent from London to Alexander Hadfield, the local tailor. When his assistant, a man by the name of George Viccars, who also lived in the family home along with Hadfield, his wife, and their two children, noticed that the cloth was damp he made the fateful, and yet entirely practical decision to hang it up to dry.
Within a matter of days, Viccars had become seriously ill and died on 7th September 1665 – becoming the first plague victim in Eyam. Two weeks later, 4-year-old Edward died and was followed by his brother Jonathan a further two weeks later. Alexand Hadfield, whose unfortunate purchase from London had brought the plague to Eyam died the following August in 1666 – leaving his wife, Mary, the only survivor. Today a sign recalling the deaths stands beside the cottage where it all began, in block capitals at the top it simply reads, ‘Plague Cottage’.
Between September and December 1664, 42 villagers died and as 1665 began, then slowly progressed, panic gradually increased and many openly considered fleeing the small village.
By the spring, it was clear that Eyam had reached a tipping point, and Reverend Mompesson began to contemplate a plan that would almost certainly kill many in Eyam, but just might save nearby towns and villages.
Now, at this point, it’s important to remember that Reverend Mompesson was relatively new in the job in Eyam and remained unpopular, though probably more because his parishioners remained loyal to his ousted predecessor who many believe had been unfairly dismissed, rather than a genuine dislike for Mompesson himself.
Mompesson couldn’t have been in a worse position, and if he had any hope of convincing those on Eyam of his plan, he needed support – and there was only one man who could help. Not much has been recorded about the relationship between Mompesson and Stanley, his predecessor. It seems likely that Standley must have felt a degree of resentment in how he had been treated by the church, but whether this extended to his successor we can’t be sure.
The two men agreed to meet and together they concocted a plan that would place Eyam into self-imposed quarantine, with nobody allowed in or out. Villages nearby had agreed to leave food on the outskirts of Eyam and it was decided that money would be left in holes containing vinegar, a substance believed to ward off the plague. Now, all the two Reverends, both past and present, needed, was the agreement of those living within the proposed Cordon Sanitaire.
A meeting of all Eyam inhabitants was called and Mompesson, with Stanley standing beside him, set out the plan for how the village would combat the outbreak. Firstly, boundary stones would be laid around Eyam, with none of the inhabitants allowed to pass through, while signs would also be erected warning outsiders not to enter the quarantine zone. Secondly, all food and materials needed from outside would be left at the boundary, as would the money required. Thirdly, the church would be locked and all services would be held outside, and finally, and perhaps most gruesomely of all, the dead would have to be buried by their families as close as possible to where they died, instead of the church graveyard.
We can only begin to imagine what must have been going through the minds of the Eyam villagers as this plan was laid out before them. The Reverends were requesting the highest of sacrifices on their part, in the hope they might be able to save neighbouring villages. It’s not clear how unanimous the decision was, but the majority agreed to the plan, and Eyam soon found itself in self-imposed lockdown.
Death & Sacrifice
If there was a great nobility to the decision to quarantine the village, what came next was harrowing as the overwhelming majority remained inside the cordon as the summer temperatures climbed – along with deaths.
There were odd reports of people leaving the village, either fleeing or simply going to a market in a bigger town, but the compliance rate was said to be high. That summer was exceptionally warm, and at its peak, 4 or 5 villagers were dying each day. Any resemblance of normality soon collapsed and Eyam began to crumble. Crops were left abandoned in the fields with precious few people left to work them, while gardens, roads, and even houses were left to decay.
When the village’s only stonemason succumbed to the disease, those who had lost loved ones were forced to engrave markers themselves, some of which still stand in Eyam to this day. It wasn’t uncommon for entire families to be decimated and the story of Elizabeth Hancock is about as difficult a tale as you’re ever likely to hear.
Over the course of just 8 days, Hancock lost her five children and her husband. After each death, she would haul the body to a small plot on the outskirts of the villages and bury it herself. This plot still exists today, surrounded by a low stone wall, with sweeping views of the countryside.
A small plaque contains the names of those lost, and the tragic timeline that accompanied their deaths, it reads:
ELIZABETH HANCOCK, AUG 3rd 1666
JOHN HANCOCK, AUG 3rd 1666
ONER HANCOCK, AUG 7th 1666
WILLIAM HANCOCK, AUG 7th 1666
ALICE HANCOCK, AUG 9th 1666
ANN HANCOCK, AUG 10th 1666
The case of Elizabeth Hancock may have been one of the most difficult because of the sheer number of deaths in such a small amount of time, but it wasn’t isolated. Across Eyam, families were destroyed and it became all too common to hear the slow dragging of a corpse on its way to a lonely burial.
The summer proved to be the low point and as autumn slowly progressed, there were glimmers that the outbreak was coming to an end. By November, deaths in Eyam had ceased, and the decision was made to remove the quarantine.
The plague had ravaged Eyam for 14 months, with roughly nine months in its self-imposed lockdown. As the air began to clear, the true horror of what had happened became apparent. Now, the number of deaths in Eyam has been debated. Originally the figure was put at 260 out of 350 inhabitants, but more modern research appears to suggest higher numbers for both – perhaps 400 survivors out of a population of around 800. Whether it’s the former or the latter, what happened in Eyam meant that the tiny Derbyshire village saw higher rates of death than even London.
But quite remarkably, the quarantine not only held but actually worked. Nearby towns and villages remained plague free, which would have almost certainly been down to the actions of those living in Eyam.
The effect on the small village was shattering and it would take decades and perhaps even the best part of a century to fully recover. Reverend Mompesson’s wife Catherine is buried in the local cemetery, with flowers often left at her grave even to this day, in memory of her sacrifice to remain with her husband in Eyam, even as her two children left.
The events in Eyam, now just over 350 years ago, have been retold countless times in the last couple of years as we battle our own pandemic and perhaps search for parallels between our own experience and that of the past. While quarantines had been used long before Eyam, there were few, if any examples of self-imposed quarantines. The successful implementation in Eyam showed that it could work and with the cooperation of the community, diseases could be contained within a certain area.
The quick disposal of bodies and the vinegar used to handle the coins were two other factors that have continued to some degree or another. Sterilization has now become common practice, while speedy burials have been pivotal in bringing an end to recent Ebola outbreaks.
The story of Eyam and its valiant last stand has an almost mythical poeticness to it. Some argue that events have been embellished to create a noble story of self-sacrifice that we should all follow, and like any history that is several centuries old, there’s no way to know for certain, but few would claim the story to be untrue. This kind of tale is ripe for seasoning, as the most dramatic and heroic normally are, yet it remains an iconic story and one that is now more pertinent than ever.
In the words of Victorian local Historian William Wood,
“Let all who tread the green fields of Eyam remember, with feelings of awe and veneration, that beneath their feet repose the ashes of those moral heroes, who with a sublime, heroic and unparalleled resolution gave up their lives, yea doomed themselves to pestilential death to save the surrounding country.”


The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the Final Connectivity of Streams and Wetlands to Downstream Waters Report, which is intended to support EPA’s sweeping, proposed Waters of the U.S. rule.
The final report concludes that streams, regardless of their size or frequency of flow, are connected to downstream waters and notes that many isolated waters affect downstream water quality. The National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association (NSSGA) submitted extensive comments on both the Connectivity Report and rule, noting that proposed vast expansion of waters under federal jurisdiction would be devastating to the aggregates industry and impact the price of aggregates and the products that they go into – like highways.
“While the Connectivity Report shows that waters are connected, this has never been in question. EPA failed to address the issue the courts have found crucial: whether such connections significantly affect downstream waters. Now EPA is justifying its vast overreach based on a flawed process.”said NSSGA’s Director of Environmental Services Emily Coyner.
NSSGA said it applauded those producers that that wrote the EPA to comment on the rule and continues to deliver copies of producer comments to members of Congress. NSSGA urges members to continue to press their federal legislators to block finalization of the proposed rule because of its potentially harmful impacts on the aggregates industry and, more broadly, to America’s economy.
Despite the fact that EPA received more than 900,000 comments, the agency’s plan to finalize the rule in spring 2015 is unlikely to address major industry concerns.


- What country does the Fiji Islands belong to?
- Is a commonwealth a country?
- Why is Canada still part of British Commonwealth?
- Does England own Canada?
- Which country British ruled the most?
- Does Britain still own South Africa?
- When did Fiji leave the Commonwealth?
- Which countries are in the Commonwealth?
- How many countries are still under British rule?
- Which countries are not in Commonwealth?
- What countries does the queen rule?
- What countries does the queen own?
What country does the Fiji Islands belong to?
Fiji, in the southwest Pacific, is a Commonwealth nation with a native Melanesian population of some 300,000, in a total population of more than 700,000.
The islands, originally known as the Cannibal Islands, became part of the British Empire in 1874, following a period of generalized and bloody tribal warfare..
Is a commonwealth a country?
A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically it has sometimes been synonymous with “republic”. … Three countries – Australia, the Bahamas, and Dominica – have the official title “Commonwealth”, as do four U.S. states and two U.S. territories.
Why is Canada still part of British Commonwealth?
As a British dominion, the united provinces were no longer a colony, and Canada was free to act like its own country with its own laws and parliament. It also gained financial independence and the responsibility to defend itself.
Does England own Canada?
Canada is a wholly independent country from the UK. … Canada has, essentially, been a nation since 1867 (British North America Act), gained complete self-government in the 1930s (Statute of Westminster), and the final step, the creation of a separate Canadian Citizenship took place in 1948 (Canadian Citizenship Acts).
Which country British ruled the most?
IndiaIndia, Britain’s most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence as part of a larger decolonisation movement in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire.
Does Britain still own South Africa?
The country became a fully sovereign nation state within the British Empire, in 1934 following enactment of the Status of the Union Act. The monarchy came to an end on 31 May 1961, replaced by a republic as the consequence of a 1960 referendum, which legitimised the country becoming the Republic of South Africa.
When did Fiji leave the Commonwealth?
List of suspensionsMemberSuspension beganSuspension endedNigeria11 November 199529 May 1999Pakistan (first time)18 October 199922 May 2004Fiji (first time)6 June 200020 December 2001Zimbabwe19 March 20027 December 2003 by leaving the Commonwealth2 more rows
Which countries are in the Commonwealth?
Which countries are in the Commonwealth?Antigua and Barbuda.Australia.The Bahamas.Bangladesh.Barbados.Belize.Botswana.Brunei.More items…•
How many countries are still under British rule?
14Current territories Today 14 former colonies (since 2002 known as British Overseas Territories) remain under British rule; the term “colonies” is no longer officially used to describe these.
Which countries are not in Commonwealth?
Former British protectorates and mandates that did not become members of the Commonwealth are Egypt (independent in 1922), Iraq (1932), Transjordan (1946), Palestine (part of which became the state of Israel in 1948), Sudan (1956), British Somaliland (which united with the former Italian Somaliland in 1960 to form the …
What countries does the queen rule?
Queen Elizabeth II is also the Sovereign of 15 countries in the Commonwealth of Nations: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu.
What countries does the queen own?
As of 2020, there are 16 Commonwealth realms: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and the United Kingdom.


Write an argumentative essay about race classifications in forensic anthropology. How do physical and forensic anthropologists go about classifying race in human remains? How is racial classification relevant to physical and forensic anthropology? Why do physical and forensic anthropologists need to classify human remains according to race? Is race even an accepted term in the field? Why or why not? Support your answer with academically relevant literature.


Bipedal Cycling Robot Can Balance, Steer and Correct Itself
Robot creator Masahiko Yamaguchi has demonstrated a robot which can balance, steer and correct itself while riding a fixed-gear bike.
"A feature of this robot is, it pedals the bike with its own feet, and keeps its balance just by using the handlebars. I think this is probably a world first."
"I'm interested in artificial intelligence, and in that context, I think intelligence and skills have equal value. So my purpose in creating this robot was to pursue intelligence from the skills side. While I was thinking of suitable topics, my local science museum demonstrated a cycling robot. So I decided to consider cycling as the skill, and build a bicycle robot."
This robot system consists of a commercially available two-legged robot and a bicycle made by Yamaguchi. To detect how much the robot is tilting, the TAG201 gyro from Tamagawa Seiki is used. Based on the tilt data, a method called PID control is used to control the robot's balancing motion.
"There's a control board in the backpack. That needed to have a high processing speed, so I made my own board using the SH7125 CPU core."
"PID control is a classical control method. It's used to calculate how far to turn the handlebars when the frame tilts. By calculating proportional, integral, and differential components for the tilt, and adding them, the system calculates how far to turn the handlebars when the frame tilts. Also, the robot needs to decide which direction to go in, so we use a remote control to instruct it."
The system has two speeds. Because there aren't any brakes, the robot stops by taking its feet off the pedals and placing them on the ground.
"With an ordinary bicycle, the rear wheel keeps turning even when you stop pedaling. But in a fixed-gear bike, there's no ratcheting, so when you stop pedaling, the rear wheel stops, too. Ordinarily, that makes riding difficult, but with this robot, it also has a braking effect, so a fixed-gear bike is more convenient."
"From now on, I'd like to link this robot's skill to its intelligence. I personally don't like using a remote control for the robot. I'd like to make the robot intelligent enough to ride by itself. This system is the first step toward doing that."
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The climate of Kosovo is predominantly continental, resulting in warm summers and cold winters with Mediterranean and Alpine influences (average temperature within the country range from +30 °C (summer) to –10 °C (winter)). However, due to unequal elevations in certain parts of the country, there are differences in temperature and rainfall distribution.
December and January are regarded as the coldest months, July and August as the warmest months of the year. The maximum rainfall rate is reached between October and December. Between November and March, snowfall can be expected in Kosovo, even in the flat parts of the country. The highest snowfall rates can be expected in the mountain regions of Kosovo.
The valley between Mitrovica and Kaçanik belongs to the dryer areas of the country. In contrast, the plain of Dukagjini between Peja and Prizren is described as a very fertile area with more precipitation between November and March.
Based on the climate conditions, Kosovo can be separated into three climatic areas:
The climatic area of Kosovo (Kosovo Plain), which includes the Iber valley, is influenced by continental air masses. For this reason, in this part of the country, the winters are colder with medium temperatures above –10 °C, but sometimes down to –26 °C. The summers are very hot with average temperatures of 20 °C, sometimes up to 37 °C. This area is characterised by a dry climate and a total annual precipitation of 600 mm per year, approximately.
The climatic area of Dukagjini (Dukagjini Plain), which includes the watershed of the Drini i Bardh river, is influenced very much by the hot air masses, which cross the Adriatic Sea. Medium temperatures during winter range from 0.5 °C to sometimes 22.8 °C. The average annual precipitation of this climatic area is about 700 mm per year. The winter is characterised by heavy snowfalls.


When building a house, homeowners consider several things. Among these is how huge the building would be, how many bedrooms the structure can accommodate, where to place the kitchen area, and many more. Sometimes, environmental concerns are not prioritized. Homeowners should pay more attention to creating a safe home and environment rather than the structure’s aesthetics. To ensure that the air you will breathe at home is safe, building a radon-resistant home is essential.
How Radon Is Produced
For those who have never heard of what radon is, know that it is a kind of radioactive gas that comes from the soil. This gas is produced through the uranium breakdown that is present in most rocks and soil. As radon breaks down, it emits atomic particles that are incorporated in the air people breathe, posing risks to human health. Once a person is exposed to radon, it can increase the risk of respiratory diseases such as lung cancer.
The radon indoors is more harmful than the radioactive gas that you can find outside the home. It is because this chemical is diluted in the open air, but it could stay indoors. Radon can build up to dangerous levels at home, mainly if this gas is not eradicated. If a person inhales radon, its particles’ energy can change the DNA cell, increasing the risks of lung cancer.
How Radon Enters Your Home
The radioactive gas enters the house through the little openings and cracks in the foundation. It is where creating a radon-resistant home takes a vital role. If the house structure blocks this chemical, you can ensure that you and your loved ones are safe from inhaling this harmful chemical. If the house is not radon-resistant, then there’s a higher chance of having this toxic chemical inside the building.
The air pressure between the inside of a building and the soil surrounding it also plays a significant role in radon entry. For instance, radon will remain outside if the house’s air pressure is greater than the ground beneath it. If the air pressure of the building is lower than its surrounding soil, the radon gas will enter the home. It is essential to keep the pressure inside the house higher than the soil because if not, the building will act like a vacuum that sucks all the radon.
Things to Consider Before Building A Radon-Resistant Home
Before you talk to your builder and design a radon-resistant home, it is crucial to find the best location. Remember, radon comes from the soil; that’s why an area’s geology is a significant factor when building a house. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) collaborated with state and federal geologists to design maps that can predict every region’s potential radon levels.
The areas in the maps are labeled from Zone 1 to Zone 3. Zone 1 refers to places where the radon is potentially high. Meanwhile, Zone 3 consists of areas where radioactive gas is potentially low. It doesn’t mean that you cannot build houses in Zone 1 sites. If you are planning to construct a building there, you can include a radon control system. It is more affordable to add it to the total costs while building it rather than install the system after the house is built.
Here’s a map that can help you identify if your new house will be built in any of the three zones.
Radon-Resistant Home: Construction Tips and Techniques
You don’t need to be an expert in house building to create a radon-resistant home. Know that creating a radon-resistant house sometimes has simple techniques that are familiar to builders. Following the simple methods are sufficient enough to deter radon from entering the building. Here are some strategies to consider:
Install a layer of clean gravel or place it beneath the flooring system.
Place a four-inch layer of clean and coarse gravel below the foundation (slab). This layer allows radon and other soil gases to move freely underneath the house, creating an airflow layer or gas-permeable layer. If the gravel is too expensive or unnecessary in your area, you may consider perforated pipe and collection mat as alternatives.
Place polyethylene sheeting on top of the gravel layer.
Another technique to consider is installing a heavy-duty plastic sheeting or a vapor retarder on top of the gravel. Doing so prevents the radioactive gas from entering your home. Aside from that, it also keeps the concrete from clogging the gravel layer, especially when the slab is poured.
Install a gas-tight venting pipe starting from the gravel layer through the building to the roof.
You may install a three-inch or four-inch reliable PVC Schedule 40 pipe vertically from the gravel layer through the house’s conditioned space and roof. Doing so will help in safely venting the radon and other soil gases outside the home.
Ensure that the foundation is thoroughly sealed and caulked.
Make sure that all the cracks and little openings in the concrete foundation floor and walls are sealed and caulked. If so, the harmful soil gases will be prevented from entering your home.
Passive Radon System vs Active Radon System
These techniques make up a passive radon system. Sometimes, these construction techniques are enough to replace the vacuum effect that most houses experience. The passive radon system blocks the radon from entering by creating a pressure barrier. However, there could be instances when the passive radon system is not enough to prevent radon entry. If this is the case, an active radon system is recommended.
An active radon system is done by installing a fan that pulls the radon gas from the soil into the vent pipe. The radioactive gas is then exhausted outside the house. You can talk to your builder about which of the active to passive radon systems would work best for your home. As radon experts, they can help you identify which construction techniques can be applied in building the house, keeping you and your family safe from the radioactive gas.
As someone who plans to build a house, you must consider several factors to ensure that the building is safe from harmful gases like radon. You may talk to your builder and design a home using radon-resistant construction techniques. If the passive radon system is not enough, you may consider the active radon system. No matter what you use, what matters most is the safety of your family. Therefore, make sure that you will have a radon-resistant home.


Previously I wrote a bit about the wonders of aquaflying in penguins. This time, I thought it would be fun to write briefly on some of the interesting details of aquaflying in skates and rays.
Not all rays are aquaflyers in the sense I am using here. Many rays propel themselves by moving a series of waves down either pectoral complex like this. I'd like to talk more about that in the future, but for now, I am talking about those rays that propel themselves by flapping underwater flight - that is, reciprocating the entire pectoral complex on either side of the body as wings, like this.
One thing that is known, however, is that aquaflying rays move with almost absurdly large advance ratios. Ridiculous, even. To understand what this means, we need to examine the idea of advance ratios.
For an airplane with a propeller, advance ratio is simple: it is the ratio of the forward speed over the product of the revolution rate of the propeller and the diameter of the circle made by the propeller blades. So, we have:
Advance Ratio = v/(f * d)
Where v is forward speed, f is the rate of propeller spin, and d is the diameter of the swept disc.
For a flapping animal, we have to take into account the reciprocating wings/fins, and this can be done using amplitude as an added variable (see Ellington, 1984; Vogel, 2003). So, this gives us:
Advance Ratio = v/(2*r*f*l)
Where v is forward speed, r is the amplitude of the stroke (in radians), f is the flapping frequency, and l is the wing length. To get a number you can compare to an airplane or other machine using a propeller, multiple by π.
Now, flapping swimmers often do quite well. Penguins, for example, manage advance ratios around 0.5, which is quite good for motion in water (Hui, 1988). However, cownose rays exceed an advance ratio of 2 (Heine, 1992). This is an extraordinary amount of forward motion for each wing cycle. The trick is that they use their entire bodies as aquafoils, and therefore get lift (mostly as thrust) not just from motion of the "wings", but also from motion of their bodies.
Now, one thing that's interesting about this in rays is that, theoretically, they should be able to get a highly mirrored stroke. I mentioned the issue of mirrored strokes in the penguin post, and if you want a more technical discussion check out Habib (2010). The upshot is that if both the upstroke and downstroke produce similar amounts of thrust, then the animal will proceed at a relatively constant speed, rather than lunging forward on each downstroke. That "lunging" is called a surge acceleration. The orthogonal motion (up and down for an aquaflyer) is called a heave acceleration.
here). More photos of leaping mobula rays by Barcroft here.
Ellington CP. 1984. The aerodynamics of hovering insect flight. Philosophical Transacations of the Royal Society of London, Series B. 305: 1-181
Habib M. 2010. The structural mechanics and evolution of aquaflying birds. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 99(4): 687-698
Heine C. 1992. Mechanics of flapping fin locomotion in the cownose ray, Rhinoptera bonasus (Elasmobranchii: Myliobatidae). Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, Durham NC
Hui CA. 1988. Penguin swimming. I. Hydrodynamics. Physiological and Zoology. 61: 333-343
Vogel S. 2003. Comparative Biomechanics. Princeton University Press. 580 pp


Panasonic’s goal by 2050 is to create more energy than it uses. Projects on three continents showcase how it will get this done.
Call it “net-zero by the numbers.” For Panasonic, operating in a sustainable fashion means more than just implementing policy. It also means showing the world what happened when you did.
In the past three years, the electronics maker has made its home appliance recycling site, Panasonic ECO Technology Center (PETEC), and its battery manufacturing site, Panasonic Energy Belgium (PECBE), carbon emissions-neutral. Three more factories making up Panasonic do Brazil (PANABRAS) recently became the first on the American continent to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas status.
Each facility has its own success story. PETEC boosted its photovoltaic systems—largely due to a 600-plus kilowatt (kW) generator—switched to LED lighting, and bought the additional green energy it needed to compensate for lesser use of fossil fuels.
At Panasonic’s Eco Technology Center, everyday home appliances such as washers, refrigerators, and air conditioners are carefully broken down and sorted for recycling. Courtesy Panasonic
PECBE went for wind turbines—fueled by a 100-meter tall, 2 megawatt (MW) system—switched to energy-saving type boilers, and buying carbon credits. And PANABRAS uses a combination of wind, solar, and hydro for its renewable energy generation.
When it comes to emissions reduction, the results are huge. PECBE cut its CO2 output by 3,200 tons annually. PETEC has eliminated 1,800 tons. There is also a change in resource management. PECBE has adopted an electric car as its company vehicle, and used waste wood for new walls within the factory’s cafeteria.
PETEC plans to promote measures that utilize internally developed technologies, including strengthening energy conservation activities, further utilization of renewable energy such as geothermal heat, and introducing technology to absorb, separate, and utilize CO2 emitted from fossil fuels.
All facilities are models of what Panasonic hopes will one day be a companywide situation: net-zero everywhere. “Currently, relative to the amount of energy used, the amount of energy created is merely one-tenth,” the company notes. “From now on, for the energy used, we will develop technologies for improving energy-saving performances of products and innovate manufacturing processes to reduce the amount of energy consumption.”
That goal is one of two making up the company’s “Environment Vision 2050,” Panasonic’s long-range plan for implementing a green environment internally and externally. The first initiative, “creating a safe and secure society with clean energy,” calls for the development of environmental technologies through energy creation, conservation, storage, and management.
Solar energy storage can now be as simple as a vertical EverVolt unit mounted to a garage wall. Courtesy Panasonic
The company has amped up its solar cell and fuel cell technologies that use hydrogen derived from clean energy as a power source. It’s also working on technologies relating to storing and/or supplying hydrogen, and storage batteries. These will “expand the possibilities of utilizing clean energy anywhere in the society,” the company notes.
The other part, “promoting businesses aiming for a sustainable society,” focuses on sustainable use of resources through the reuse of parts and materials and product recycling. The various now-net-zero production facilities are key examples.
There’s also a consumer-oriented element. Panasonic offers products, such as its EverVolt battery, marketed through its solar products division—which is designed to encourage net-zero status in residential homes.
EverVolt, known for use in electric cars, has now been optimized for residential solar. The product stores electricity for instant access during peak hours and grid outages, providing homeowners with the ability to tap into their private energy storage anytime. It can be easily installed in a garage in a matter of hours by a qualified electrician.
“Achieving a net-zero home starts by lowering energy consumption and waste, and there are plenty of small changes that help toward that goal,” the company notes. “However, one of the biggest steps toward creating a net-zero home includes lifestyle transformations, such as becoming grid-independent.”
Alan Naditz is the managing editor of Green Builder magazine. He has covered numerous industries in his extensive career, including residential and commercial construction, small and corporate business, real estate and sustainability.


President Trump signs order to review national monuments
April 26, 2017
On Wednesday, 4/26/217, President Trump signed an Executive Order on national monuments, calling on Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review all national monuments over 100,000 acres created since 1996.That was the year President Clinton signed an Executive Order that created the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, a controversial move that shut down a proposed mining operation.
Former President Obama used the Antiquities Act prior to leaving office to create the Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, setting aside1,351,849 acres (2,112 sq. miles) despite the objections of Utah's governor and legislators. Obama used the Antiquities Act to lock up over 550 million acres of land and water during his eight years in office.
Trump asked Zinke to review the monuments and recommend changes, which could include changing the size of the designation or changing the Antiquities Act itself through Congress.
“Today I’m signing an Executive Order to end another egregious abuse of federal power and to give that power back to the states and to the people, where it belongs,” Trump said before signing the document at the Interior Department. “The previous administration used a 100-year-old law known as the Antiquities Act to unilaterally put millions of acres of land and water under strict federal control. Today, we are putting the states back in charge. It’s a big thing.".


Explains obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), including possible causes and how you can access treatment and support. Suggests ideas for managing OCD, and guidance for friends and family.
You may experience different types of stigma or misconceptions around OCD.
Stigma is a negative opinion or belief about a certain characteristic or experience. This can include stigma about having a mental health problem.
Misconceptions are beliefs or ideas which are inaccurate. They're often based on inaccurate, misunderstood or misleading information.
Experiencing these can be frustrating and upsetting. Especially if they come from a friend, colleague, family member or healthcare professional. We may also hold negative opinions about our own mental health. This is sometimes called self-stigma.
There are lots of unhelpful stereotypes and misconceptions about OCD. For example, some people think it just means you wash your hands a lot or that you like things to be tidy.
When there are so many incorrect stereotypes about OCD, it can be harder for those of us with OCD to recognise the symptoms in ourselves. And it may make it harder to explain our experiences to others.
Misinformation about OCD may stop genuine sufferers from realising that they even have OCD. I lived with OCD for twenty or thirty years before realising it, and that’s not an unusual story.
The everyday drip-drip-drip of jokes, comments and put-downs - in your office, classroom, your home, and on social media - creates an overall impression that OCD is something quite trivial, or comical, and not a serious illness.
I’ve made a spreadsheet - ‘I’m so OCD!’ These are all things I’ve heard in casual and professional conversations
You may feel guilty about your thoughts and feelings.
If you find your intrusive thoughts offensive or shameful, you may feel like you can't share them with anyone. You may worry about how people will react.
Or you may worry about whether your thoughts are true or what they mean. You may also feel guilty about things you've done or said when unwell.
Having these sorts of feelings about your OCD can lead to self-stigma. It could also make it harder to seek support.
Countless people with OCD hide their symptoms because of the nature of their thoughts. You do not need to suffer in silence.
Stigma about OCD can make it difficult to talk about. But it's important to remember you're not alone.
There are things you can do to support yourself, and people who can help. There are also ways to help change other people's understanding.
Here's some ideas you could try:
- Show people this information to help them understand more about OCD.
- Get more involved in your treatment. Our pages on seeking help for a mental health problem give guidance on having your say in your treatment. They also cover making your voice heard, and steps you can take if you're not happy with your care.
- Know your rights. Our pages on legal rights have more information.
- Take action with Mind. See our campaigning page for details of the different ways you can get involved with helping us challenge stigma.
- Share your story. Sharing your experiences with others can be a powerful way to raise awareness. You could do this through peer support groups or you could share your experiences online.
- Be kind to yourself if you feel self-stigma or feel guilty about intrusive thoughts. Our self-care for OCD page has more information.
Our page on stigma and misconceptions around mental health includes more information on dealing with stigma.
One of the most difficult things about OCD is how people perceive it. Intrusive thoughts and compulsions take a greater toll, yet people don't seem to understand that.
This information was published in October 2023. We will revise it in 2026.
References and bibliography available on request.
If you want to reproduce this content, see our permissions and licensing page.


- 1 What is occupational health care?
- 2 What do occupational health services do?
- 3 What is the main focus of occupational health?
- 4 What can I expect from an occupational health assessment?
- 5 Can occupational health overrule your doctor?
- 6 Can occupational health sign me off work?
- 7 Do employers have to follow occupational health recommendations?
- 8 What are the 5 elements of safety?
- 9 What do occupational health ask you?
- 10 How long do occupational health checks take?
- 11 Can I get sacked for being off sick with a doctor’s note?
- 12 Do occupational health ask for medical records?
What is occupational health care?
Occupational health care refers to services that assist the employers, workers, or their representatives to ensure that the workplace is safe and healthy according to accepted occupational safety and health guidelines and requirements.
What do occupational health services do?
Occupational health teams keep people well at work – physically and mentally. Occupational health services will help keep your employees healthy and safe whilst in work and manage any risks in the workplace that are likely to give rise to work-related ill health.
What is the main focus of occupational health?
“The main focus in occupational health is on three different objectives: (i) the maintenance and promotion of workers’ health and working capacity; (ii) the improvement of working environment and work to become conducive to safety and health and (iii) development of work organizations and working cultures in a
What can I expect from an occupational health assessment?
Who will I see in my occupational health assessment? They will check the details on your referral form, discuss the contents with you and ask you about your current health problems. They will also chat about your job, the activities involved and identify the areas where you might be experiencing difficulties.
Can occupational health overrule your doctor?
The Government has indicated that employers may, in principle, be able to overrule a GP’s advice in a fit note as to whether or not a person is potentially fit to return to work.
Can occupational health sign me off work?
Occupational health is not in charge of signing people off work since it is actually a medical service that can help support employees and employees and help promote their wellbeing in the workplace (both mental and physical health).
Do employers have to follow occupational health recommendations?
No. Employers must not ask about health and sickness when deciding who to recruit – but they are allowed to ask questions in order to: Establish whether you are able to undergo an assessment, and if you are not, to decide what reasonable adjustments they can make to ensure that the recruitment process is fair.
What are the 5 elements of safety?
5 Core Elements of Successful Safety Programs
- SAFETY CULTURE.
- EMPLOYEE TRAINING AND EMPOWERMENT.
- HAZARD IDENTIFICATION AND CONTROL SYSTEMS.
- FOCUS ON COMPLIANCE.
- CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT.
- LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATIONAL BUY-IN.
- THE SAFETY MANAGER ROLE.
- What is a safety manager’s job role?
What do occupational health ask you?
The occupational health adviser might ask the employee about:
- their health problem.
- any treatment they’re having.
- any concerns they have about returning to work.
How long do occupational health checks take?
Occupational health assessment: What to expect An initial conversation with a consultant can take up to 45 minutes. At this point, they’ll collect all the relevant information needed to give an informed opinion. There’ll also be a review at the end of the initial consultation that’ll need an extra 30 minutes.
Can I get sacked for being off sick with a doctor’s note?
You can still be dismissed if you are off sick. Your employer would normally be expected to allow a reasonable amount of time for you to recover from your illness.
Do occupational health ask for medical records?
Occupational health may wish to obtain further clinical information in accordance with the Access to Medical Reports Act 1988. Your occupational health advisor must obtain your consent before they request a medical report. Who can see my occupational health records?


- Aggregates Manager - http://www.aggman.com -
Rare Dinosaur bone found in Colorado quarry
Posted By Brian Ethridge On July 28, 2014 @ 7:39 am In Aggbeat Online,Featured Articles,News | No Comments
It was a groundbreaking discovery because the bone likely belonged to a creature that was 80 to 90 feet long, which is 15 to 25 feet longer than the average size.
Digging up the gigantic fossil was no easy task. Crews spent five years excavating the leg bone. When it was first discovered there was just a small piece of bone exposed; nobody had any clue how big it actually was.
Scientist believe the apatosauras was a herbivore that typically grew up to 69 feet long.
“You may have heard it referred to by its scientifically incorrect name, Brontosaurus,” the National Park Service said . “This sauropod (long-necked dinosaur) was discovered and named Apatosaurus, or ‘false lizard,’ because of its unbelievably large size. After Apatosaurus was named, other sauropod specimens were named Brontosaurus. It was later determined that both names actually referred to the same animal, Apatosaurus.”
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 National Park Service said: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_26185635/record-dinosaur-bone-found-colorado-quarry
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Inability to Sleep
"I haven't had a good night's sleep in 32 years"
Raped at knife point in June of 1973, Kathleen Hamm finally obtained justice 32-years later when her attacker was found guilty thanks to DNA evidence.
Insomnia is a common problem for survivors of rape and sexual abuse. Sleeping disturbance may decrease or disappear with time, or persist for weeks, months, and even years. Because your body needs time to rest and recharge, insomnia often results in daytime fatigue, poor concentration, irritability, depression and more.
Insomnia can manifest under different forms, like:
- Inability or difficulty falling asleep.
- Waking up frequently in the middle of the night, and having difficulties going back to sleep.
- Waking up too early in the morning, feeling tired, irritable, and not rested.


‘Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today, I am wise so I am changing myself.’
During the early weeks of March 2022, the coldest location on the planet experienced an episode of exceptionally warm weather. Temperatures over the eastern Antarctic ice sheet soared by 10 to 32°C above normal. The warm spell smashed records and confounded scientists and observers. This unprecedented event upended expectations about the Antarctic climate system with climatologists using words like ‘impossible’ and ‘unthinkable’ to describe the temperatures in tweets and interviews. While the heatwave temperatures are still well below zero, at –10°C, it is a massive temperature spike by Antarctic standards. Normally temperatures are expected to be about –50°C this time of year. The heatwave is also noteworthy for occurring in March, which marks the beginning of autumn in Antarctica. At this time of year, Antarctica is rapidly losing sunlight each day as it moves into winter. The unusually warm conditions were caused by an extreme atmospheric river (described as a narrow corridor of water vapour in the sky). The moisture diffused and spread over the continent, but it was trapped by a strong high-pressure system, described as ‘exceptionally intense’ (five standard deviations above normal). While these types of phenomena are not unusual, the extent and intensity of this specific event have not been observed before.
It is difficult to attribute a single event to climate change, but unusual meteorological conditions certainly raise concerns as we increasingly see changing patterns and extreme events. On the opposite side of the planet, temperatures near the North Pole also peaked above normal, with temperatures close to the melting point of ice recorded during the same week as the heatwave in the Antarctic. And in Australia, unusually warm waters are stressing sensitive corals in the Great Barrier Reef leading to the fourth major bleaching event in the last seven years.
The heatwave in Antarctica, the unusually hot weather in the Arctic, and the bleaching event in Australia were all reported on within two weeks in March, but they barely made the proverbial front pages. The world arena is currently complex and fraught with increasing possibilities for long-term conflict over national rivalries, economic competition, the impact of unmitigated climate change, and cultural and ideological differences. There is no doubt that the possible futures before us are increasingly unpredictable. Unconventional solutions will be required to address global challenges as what we once believed to be a relatively predictable road ahead, now forks in new and uncertain directions. Economic, social, ecological, and political challenges have been shaking up international systems recently and our confidence in interpreting and understanding these complexities is understandably challenged. An outlier such as the spike in temperature in the Antarctic just adds to this sense of uncertainty.
The Paris Agreement is an addition to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), initially agreed to by all 195 countries present at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which included the United States, then under the presidency of Barack Obama. The main aim of the Paris Agreement is to hold the increase in the global average temperature to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, predominantly by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Agreement differs from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in that no annexes are established to lessen the responsibility of developing nations. Rather, emissions targets for each nation were separately negotiated and are to be voluntarily adopted. In a dramatic statement on 1 June 2017, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement and the country formally exited the Agreement on 4 November 2020, the day after the presidential elections. Following his election, President-elect Joe Biden promised to re-join the Paris Agreement on his first day in office, and the United States formally re-joined the Agreement on 19 February 2021. For 107 days, during a time that one might say there has been an unprecedented global agreement that climate change requires action, the United States had not been a signatory of the Paris Agreement. The country likely would have remained outside of the Paris Agreement if President Biden had not taken office.
The brief exit of the United States from the Paris Agreement illustrates the fragility of international systems and agreements. It also illustrates that these types of international rules or treaties are not directly enforceable. Nation-states participate voluntarily and their participation is premised on their paradigms for economics, culture, or ideology. Increasingly, conventional approaches do not address the tasks at hand. Different paradigms are prioritized by different participants, which leads to wide divergence when it comes to the implementation of climate goals. We all view the world through the lenses that seem most accurate to us; we all also draw upon multiple lenses, arranging the elements to suit our view of the world depending on our priorities and personal circumstances.
The United Nations released the new flagship climate change report this month (4 April 2022) which presents the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). The organization’s chief, Mr António Guterres, said at the launch: ‘This is not fiction or exaggeration. It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies. We are on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5°C limits’ which were was agreed in Paris in 2015. Mr Guterres added in a video message that unless action is taken soon, some major cities will be under water and the message forecast ’unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages and the extinction of a million species of plants and animals’. The newest IPCC report insists that to limit global warming to around 2°C, global greenhouse gas emissions would have to peak before 2025 and be reduced by at least 25% by 2030. While it is valuable to have these insights published and discussed, there are important limitations to the data we use to assess the future. The scenarios assessed by the IPCC report can be thought of as visions of what could happen in the future. These models are not forecasts or predictions as it is impossible for the IPCC scenario database to perfectly assess all potential futures. One comment is that the database should be considered an ’ensemble of opportunity’ as it was not designed to be a single coherent collection of research. The database consists of a number of pathways that researchers from around the world were able to model to answer questions they considered relevant to their research focus. While this is valuable, it is easy to see that there may be multiple scenarios not yet assessed, that still make it possible to limit warming to 1.5°C. There is not a fundamental flaw in the scientific results per se, but we should also understand that the database is not complete. As a global community, we have not yet exhausted all the potential scenarios to avoid missing the target.
Equally, scenarios created with these extremely complex and comprehensive models can only capture part of the realities. For example, local challenges, barriers, opportunities, food security, and social inequalities are not included in the global scenarios. Through science, we attempt to define models and scenarios we can use to evaluate and measure existing paradigms. There was a time when the scientific paradigm stated that Earth is the centre of the solar system or that all things were made up of a combination of earth, fire, air, and water. These paradigms failed eventually in the face of increasingly sophisticated knowledge and something new replaced them. Where paradigms are less precisely defined and the criteria for confirmation or rejection are less clear, the process of change is understandably similarly less well defined and easily confounding. Because of the complexities involved, and therefore the less precise nature of the IPCC database, many people doubt that we are at risk. Others will ignore the complexities and take a more alarmist view of the available data. There is no clear pathway or prediction, but we have enough data indicating that unless we change our ways, something will happen. We are still questioning the complexities of predicting the impact of human behaviour on the planet, and the inequalities amongst nations still define how countries behave or develop. The IPCC report also reflects on the major gap between climate pledges and reality. Nobody should be surprised by the lack of progress. Scientists warn that we are already perilously close to tipping points that could lead to cascading and irreversible climate effects. The socio-economic and geopolitical landscape is also close to tipping points at various hotspots around the world. While we are not sure which of the many futures will realize, we cannot ignore the negative impacts of human activities, whether on a global scale or just in our backyard.
The future is coming, one way or another, and our ways of thinking, our philosophy, will need to be unconventionally wise to navigate the future paradigm. The word ‘philosophy’ literally translates as ‘love of wisdom’, from the Greek ‘philo’ and ‘sophia’ respectively. If we change, we can change the future, despite what feels like overwhelming problems and challenges. With caring and wisdom comes change.
‘I wanted to change the world, but I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.’
- Author Aldous Huxley.


Leaders like Hitler, for example, successfully used films as propaganda tools during war II. As technology keeps growing, political and economic leaders have utilized cinema in changing and shaping people’s outlooks either for his or her own benefit or for the nice thing about the people. Audiovisual translations are readily available and really affordable for everyone nowadays, which makes it easy for filmmakers to attain their target audiences from all corners of the world; in their tongue.
This post explores 7 ways within which cinematic art affects society and thus the fashionable times.
1. Movies inspire us
A good movie will entertain, educate, and encourage the viewer in many ways. consider the impact that songs wear people, as an example. they create us think. they create us compassionate. They inspire us to help others and to undertake and benefit to and for humanity.
They create us cry and bemock of our own romantic flaws, consequently helping us understand our partners and relations more. they create a life worth living- they create us feel alive.
There are many films whose plots give us reasons to rise every morning and venture into the world with hope and optimism. They encourage us to beat personal pains and to impact positively on other people’s lives. Movies just like the Pursuit of Happiness (2006) and so the Bucket List (2007), as an example, have inspired their viewers to work towards making the world better for everyone.
2. People must be reminded about the importance of formal education like co-curricular school activities like art and sports. School-related films underline this importance and supply education stakeholders with ideas on the thanks to improving education systems in several parts of the world. Besides that, the film brings us to know the negative effects of drugs, alcohol, and misuse.
Movies awaken the sense of empathy in people who haven’t experienced war firsthand. they assist us to feel answerable for our brothers and sisters living in war-torn countries when a great deal like we’ve never been there ourselves. this will be the eye that has fuelled the expansion of various charity organizations and trust funds.
3. Movies mirror culture
Every movie is about and developed during a selected culture. they’re an integral part of us; they mirror what we believe and also the way we coexist as people. And because of audiovisual translations, people from everywhere the world are ready to watch movies and understand the cultures of faraway communities.
4. Movies shape culture
An honest example is when people copy fashion trends from movie stars and musicians.
5. Movies teach us history
Most history movies are fact-based and, even for the few that are fictional, they still depict a smart and fantastic picture of how the world was before the invention of the audiovisual devices that we all know today. They connect the fashionable world with past generations.
6. Desensitization of sympathetic feelings
Bystander apathy is on the rise, with many folks within the larger urban areas opting to passively watch as people injure or kill one another. This tendency of not helping the victim or Okaying violence has grown as a result of the media’s desensitizing sympathetic feelings.
7. Parenting challenges
Romantic movies make sex look “cool”. Crime movies make lying seem calculative. There are genres that normalize stealing and dishonesty. Teenagers are now able to access pornographic content online and watch songs that advocate for drugs and abuse. All this content is misleading to young boys and girls, but parents can’t seem to hunt out reliable, foolproof strategies to forestall their kids from accessing it.


Anne Silverman, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Mines, wants to help change this, and her research is yielding some valuable information. Recently, she investigated lower-limb mechanics in individuals with an amputation. The 24 subjects she included, a little more than half of whom were amputees, had small, reflective spheres attached to their feet, ankles, shins, knees, thighs and hips. High-speed motion-capture cameras then tracked the movement of the spheres, allowing Silverman to characterize human-body motion. Silverman explains that it’s the same technology used to reproduce realistic movements for animated films and the video gaming industry.
After combining data from motion-capture and ground-force measurements, she was able to calculate the net power generated and absorbed at each joint, and so better understand how individuals with an amputation compensate during walking in the absence of a biological ankle. She also attached electrodes to her subjects’ legs to measure electrical activity in their muscles. By combining this electromyography data with other biomechanical measurements, she generated walking simulations in 3-D, which can be used to understand the roles of individual muscles and prosthetic devices in whole-body movements.
Commended for how well her approach brings a complex, dynamic system like walking into detailed and quantifiable definition, Silverman made some unexpected findings, including how little the intact leg was used by many subjects to compensate, and how much of the heavy lifting is done by hip muscles high in the amputated leg, especially when walking at faster speeds. She was also surprised by the degree of variability. “Some people are very well-adapted, physically active individuals, others with a similar amputation actually prefer a wheelchair,” Silverman says.
Ultimately, she hopes her work will contribute to technologies that can be widely applied in a clinical setting. She points out that the number of amputees is growing, driven by factors such as an aging population that is increasingly diagnosed with diabetes and dysvascular disease. Ironically, improved medical resources on the battlefield are a contributing factor as well, since surviving a severe injury often means living with an amputation. For these people, Silverman points out, ‘improving long-term mobility can have a tremendous impact on their lives.’


SynopsisDuring its years of operation, the government-funded Federal Art Project of the WPA hired hundreds of artists who collectively created more than 100,000 paintings and murals and over 18,000 sculptures. The Project was part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal during the Great Depression (1929-1943). Some of the 20th century's greatest visual artists were employed by the Project under the auspices of the WPA, before going on to create Abstract Expressionist artworks in the post-World War II era. Some of those artists were Jackson Pollock, , Lee Krasner, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Philip Guston, Thomas Hart Benton and Stuart Davis.
Origins of the WPA and Federal Art ProjectIn the mid 1930s, the United States remained at the center of a global economic depression. In an effort to provide economic relief to citizens, particularly artists, who were having trouble finding work, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration (WPA), created under Federal Project One. Several months later, a subdivision of the WPA called the Federal Art Project (FAP) was developed.
Prior to this, Roosevelt had made other attempts to provide relief for artists, including the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), which only lasted a year, from 1933-1934. The Treasury Department Section of Painting and Sculpture was created in 1934 after the PWAP was dissolved, but it was also unsuccessful.
Several U.S. politicians had originally envisioned a fusing of art and patriotic American values. This inspired President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to begin the Works Progress Administration in the spring of 1935, and its subprogram, the Federal Art Project, several months later. The FAP was designed to both supplement artists' incomes and, more importantly, fund patriotic art projects in an effort to rally dispirited American citizens.
For artists to be considered for the Federal Art Project, they first had to apply for Home Relief to confirm they were impoverished, and then submit samples of their work to demonstrate they were actively creating art. Once approved, an artist's stipend was $24 per week.
Only a few months after the Federal Art Project was announced, more than 1100 artists were working for the WPA, many in the Mural Division, which included artists like Stuart Davis, Jackson Pollock and Arshile Gorky.
The Early YearsOne of the greatest success stories during the early years of the FAP was that of Arshile Gorky. Between 1935 and 1937, Gorky worked for the Mural Division and was paid a little over $2000, or the equivalent of $103.40 per month.
In November 1935, head of the Mural Division, Burgoyne Diller, assigned Gorky to draw some sketches for the Administration Building of Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, NY for a mural devoted to aviation. The stipulations for the mural, dictated by the FAP's regional director, stated that it should incorporate "early legends and stories of man's aspiration to fly in a romantic period ... [portraying] the first attempts to build flying machines, through a combination of painted and photo murals." Having never traveled in an airplane, and appalled by the notion of realistically depicting aeronautic history, Gorky wanted to give viewers a sense of flying rather than simply depicting people in airplanes.
Originally, Gorky developed a ten-panel piece entitled Aviation: Evolution of Forms under Aerodynamic Limitations, which was to be divided onto four separate walls. The murals would also include photographs of aeronautical subjects by Wyatt Davis (Stuart Davis' brother), intermixed with Gorky's painting.
A few months after the commission, Gorky had produced well over 50 sketches for possible mural designs. As his ideas for the project developed further, Gorky was able to convince the FAP that it would better if he and Davis work on separate murals. Gorky had come to believe that incorporating photography wouldn't benefit his own vision. The project's location was soon changed from Bennett Field to Newark Airport, considered at the time to be one of the more advanced centers for aeronautic technology. Several painted murals were selected and unveiled at the airport in June 1937, none of which included any photographs by Davis.
Simultaneously, while Gorky and others were getting back to work, on December 27, 1935, the WPA opened the Federal Art Project Gallery at 225 West 57th Street in New York City. Included in one of its first exhibitions were rare watercolors by Jackson Pollock.
Beginning some time in late 1929-early 1930, Willem de Kooning was hired to design window displays for a chain of New York shoe stores called A.S. Beck. With the development of the FAP, de Kooning quit A.S. Beck (because as an unemployed artist he qualified for FAP assistance). In late 1935, while employed with the FAP, de Kooning was first introduced to Harold Rosenberg, who at the time was working as an assistant to muralist Max Spivak.
By 1936, a little more than 6000 artists were employed by the Works Progress Administration, and Adolph Gottlieb had also joined the Artists' Union and Easel Division of the FAP. In subsequent years, Mark Rothko submitted a series of figurative portraits for the Treasury Relief Art Project (another subdivision of the WPA), including Untitled (Two Women at the Window) (1937) and Untitled (Subway) (1937).
In the summer of 1937 the U.S. government announced that all WPA workers had to be legal U.S. citizens. This legally excluded Mark Rothko (Latvian), Arshile Gorky (Armenian) and Willem de Kooning (Dutch) from participating further in the FAP, although it would take some time for the federal government to track down all non-citizen WPA workers. Gorky and Rothko continued to work after the late-summer announcement. De Kooning, however, opted to resign from the WPA after only a year and a half of employment.
The Last Years Prior to WWIIIn January 1939, the Federal Art Project began laying off some of its artists. Within that same year, Arshile Gorky became an American citizen and once again was eligible to receive WPA grants, but Mark Rothko (still a non-U.S. citizen) was dropped from the FAP on August 17th.
The next year, the WPA instituted a new rule stipulating that artists be rotated, which meant they were to be laid off for at least one month after 18 consecutive months of service with the Federal Art Project. As a result of the new rule, Jackson Pollock was temporarily let go, but was re-hired in October 1940.
The WPA DissolvesOn New Year's Day, 1943, Lee Krasner was dismissed from the WPA, representing one of the first of many FAP artist lay-offs of the year. Jackson Pollock was officially let go less than a month later. On June 30th, the Federal Art Project disbanded and ceased providing funds of any kind to artists.
In December 1943, the government auctioned off thousands of WPA-funded paintings in a warehouse in Queens. Paintings weren't sold individually, but by the pound. Reportedly, a local plumber purchased a large number of paintings in bulk for the purposes of insulating pipes with used canvases, but he discovered that when the pipes got too hot, the melting paints produced an odd smell. Herbert Benevy, the owner of a local frame shop, also purchased a large number of paintings for a total of $3 a canvas. Among those he bought were paintings by Milton Avery, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.
LegacyAs the WPA was established in the 1930s, when Social Realism was the preferred artistic style, the Federal Art Project tended to favor figurative rather than abstract art. This trend proved difficult for many artists such as Gorky, Krasner and de Kooning, all of whom tended to resist external pressure to paint in a prescribed manner. Interestingly enough, the work of artists like Rothko and Pollock during the WPA years reflects such outside dictates.
In all, nearly 200,000 artworks were created under the Federal Art Project, yet many of those works have since become lost or were destroyed after the WPA auctioned off thousands of paintings in 1943, when all federally-funded art programs were dissolved.
Quotes"I had to scheme to get work for abstract artists. I succeeded some of the time, like getting Gorky transferred from the easel project to my mural project and obtaining for him a commission to paint walls at Newark Airport. In negotiating for the work I had to agree that it would not be abstract."
- Burgoyne Diller
"The Project was terribly important. It gave us enough to live on and we could paint what we wanted. It was terrific largely because of its director, Burgoyne Diller. I had to resign after a year because I was an alien, but even in that short time, I changed my attitude toward being an artist. Instead of doing odd jobs and painting on the side, I painted and did odd jobs on the side. My life was the same, but I had a different view of it. I gave up the idea of first making a fortune and then painting in my old age."
- Willem de Kooning
FEATURED BOOKS:The Federal Art Project and the Creation of Middlebrow Culture
Canvas Print, WPA Federal Art Project: Index of American Design
The Works Progress Administration in Detroit
Canvas Print, Sculpture Exhibition: WPA Federal Art Project
Federal Art Project: American Prints from the 1930s
University of Michigan Museum of Art
Articles about the Federal Art Project
American Printmakers and the Federal Art Project
By Mary Francey
Reprinted on October 18, 2008
Interview with Holger Cahill
Conducted by John Morse
New York, NY
April 12, 1960
Federal Art Project, Photographic Division collection, 1935-1942
Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Holger Cahill Papers, 1910-1993
Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project, 1934-1970
Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration records, 1935-1948
Smithsonian Archives of American Art
|Willem de Kooning, a Dutch immigrant to New York, was one of the foremost Abstract Expressionist painters. His abstract compositions drew on Surrealist and figurative traditions, and typified the expressionistic 'gestural' style of the New York School.
ArtStory: Willem De Kooning Page


Infographic: The History of EMAIL
It is often difficult to think of life before the advent of some possession that we now have. For example, it can be difficult to think what we did before there were mobiles or smartphones. We are certain that within a few decades it will be difficult to think of life before there were Google cars or similar self-driving cars. Similarly, it is difficult to think of a time before emails.
“The History of Email” infographic shows that emails are actually older than most people are aware. It states that the first email was in 1971. However, the history is even longer. A cursory glance at Wikipedia says that 1971 was the year of the first networked email and that email had its origins in 1962.
It states that the word “spam” was added to the OED in 1998. Those of us who are old enough to remember the late 90s and early 00s as the time when there were probably 100 junk emails for every 1 desired email. Fortunately, email providers such as Google, Yahoo, Outlook, Rediff and others now have a great many filters which eliminate most unwanted and unexpected emails.
Perhaps we all remember (since it is occurring now) that the history of email is the history of email. Email seems to be getting replaced by messaging through various social media, and through communicating via Skype. But who knows what the future will bring?
Likes: We love trivia and were glad to learn that Queen Elizabeth II was the first head of state to send an email (although we highly doubt that she sent the email implied in the infographic).
Dislikes: It provides just one mention of the last 7 years.
Click to enlarge


Remote viewing, also referred to as psychic spying, is the ability to collect details about a far-off or unseen target through extrasensory perception. It has been the topic of various research studies and experiments, consisting of those conducted by the United States government throughout the Cold War.
The concept of remote viewing can be traced back to the late 19th century, when spiritualist movements emerged and declared that people could interact with the dead or gain access to info from a distance through psychic methods. However, it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that remote viewing gained more extensive attention, as a result of the CIA’s interest in psychic phenomena for military and intelligence functions. The CIA funded a program called Star Gate, which intended to establish remote viewing as a tool for intelligence gathering and to examine its usefulness as a military asset.
For many years, remote viewing has been used in a range of fields, consisting of psychology, sociology, health, and police. In psychology, remote viewing has actually been utilized as a tool for checking out altered states of consciousness, along with for studying the relationship between understanding and reality. In sociology, remote viewing has been utilized to study the effect of mass media and advertising on public opinion. In health, remote viewing has actually been used for remote healing, in which a remote viewer tries to treat an individual at a distance, by sending favorable energy and focusing their intention on the individual in need. In law enforcement, remote viewing has actually been utilized to collect information about missing individuals or to resolve criminal offenses.
Nevertheless, in spite of its potential applications, remote viewing is still a questionable and disputed field, with lots of skeptics arguing that it lacks clinical rigor and that the proof for its efficiency is weak or nonexistent. Some scientists argue that remote viewing results can be described by chance, or by the impact of the experimenter or the individual’s expectations and beliefs.
Remote viewing has evolved over the years, from a belief in spiritualist movements to a topic of scientific investigation, and from a questionable and disputed field to one with useful applications throughout a range of fields. In spite of its possible advantages, remote watching stays a controversial topic, and its credibility as a tool for details collecting and problem-solving is still the subject of argument and continuous research study.
Moreover, the development of remote viewing has been shaped by advances in technology, which have allowed remote viewing experiments to be carried out more effectively and with greater accuracy. For example, with the arrival of the web and digital communication, remote viewing can now be carried out over long distances, enabling higher partnership and exchange of information among remote viewers and researchers.
Furthermore, the growing interest in alternative and holistic approaches to health and wellness has actually led to an increased interest in remote viewing as a tool for recovery and individual growth. Many people have reported positive experiences with remote viewing, consisting of improved self-awareness, increased compassion and empathy, and a greater sense of connection with others.
Regardless of the ongoing argument over its validity, remote viewing continues to be a subject of interest and research study. In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in remote viewing, with new techniques and methods being established to enhance its precision and dependability. This has actually caused new applications of remote viewing in fields such as environmental science, where remote viewing is utilized to gather information about environmental conditions and to evaluate the impact of human activities on the environment.
Over the last few years, there has been an increase in making use of remote viewing in the economic sector, as services and people look for new methods to gather details and solve problems. Remote viewing has actually been applied to company and finance, as well as to individual development and self-improvement.
In enterprise and finance, remote viewing has been used to gather details about rivals, to find new financial investment opportunities, and to make better-informed choices. In personal development and self-improvement, remote viewing has actually been used to assist individuals gain insight into their own thoughts and feelings, to overcome limiting beliefs, and to achieve higher success and happiness in life.
In conclusion, the evolution of remote viewing has actually been formed by advances in innovation, as well as by modifications in cultural mindsets and beliefs about psychic phenomena and alternative techniques to health and wellness. Despite ongoing debate and skepticism, remote viewing remains a remarkable and appealing field, with the capacity for useful applications across a large range of disciplines.


Bringing WtE as an energy source from sci-fi into reality
By Simone Lawson, STEINERT Australia marketing manager
IN an expanding world where traditional forms of energy production are contributing to the depletion of natural resources and adding to environmental issues such as global warming and pollution, the need to innovate and employ alternate energy sourceshas become crucial to our future.
|Waste to Energy can and should play a role in energy production in Australia.|
Waste to Energy (WtE) is one such alternative energy source that is slowly beginning to gain traction in Australia with ‘slowly’ being the operative, as the concept of turning waste to fuel had flashed across our screens as early as the 1980s and has been used as an alternative energy source in many countries for some time. Yet, in Australia its merits are still debated in the political and business arenas.
This predicament reminds me of Back to the Future, as in Doc Brown, DeLorean and Marty McFly. In the film we see Doc’s DeLorean, the car-turned-time machine, whose ‘flux capacitor’ allowed it to move between the ages. It shifted from being originally fuelled by plutonium to becoming ‘Mr Fusion’ – a home energy generator from the future that was powered by extracting hydrogen atoms from garbage.
This fusion generator is close to what current WtE technologies represent. Doc Brown was effectively turning trash into fuel - something that may have been a wild sci-fi concept in the 1980s, but which has become a reality. A reality that is not quite as simple as putting rubbish directly into the fuel department of a car via ‘Mr Fusion’, but an energy derived from the vast waste mountains around the world using technologies such as gasification and pyrolysis for processing household rubbish and food wastes.
Our search for more efficient energy recovery has stimulated many countries, including Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, US, UK and Germany to lead the way in adopting and utilising waste as a source of energy. So, why are some countries, even countries much smaller than Australia, willing to use WtE technology to become self-sufficient in their energy generation and supply, but Australia lags behind in investing and accepting proven technologies to ensure the long-term security of energy sources for the country?
Even as Australia faces a potential energy crisis with the closing of the coal-fire powered Hazelwood plant and the looming closure of the Liddell plant, we are still debating the merits of WtE. With no secure and reliable backup or succession plan to support Australia’s energy generation, how can we guarantee that the rest of Australia does not encounter the same blackout problems faced by South Australia in 2016? It is not feasible nor sensible to close down power plants without having in place an alternative and reliable source of energy generation.
A recent article in The Conversation makes these concerns very clear:
‘The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has issued several reports over the past year or so telegraphing supply shortfalls in the next couple of years. What is surprising is its view that action needs to be taken when Liddell, the AGL-owned power station in New South Wales, closes in 2022. That is five years away, and AGL has been trumpeting the decision at every opportunity, but AEMO is clearly not confident that the market will respond by delivering new generation, or storage, or demand response, to fill the gap.
‘AEMO’s job is to make sure there is enough generation available – that supply equals demand. A strategic reserve will deliver the capacity – be it gas generation, storage or demand response – that it needs to meet any shortfall. Neither coal nor wind and solar can fulfil this function. Coal takes too long to come online, while wind and solar provide intermittent supply so there is no certainty that renewable energy will be there when needed.’1
The renewable energy matrix for Australia follows the somewhat seasonable and non-continuous sources of energy: wind, solar, hydro. The WtE industry, however, is still waiting to be considered by the government as a serious contender for infrastructure funding to solve not only the issue of fuel and energy, but also resolve the waste and resource recovery issues in this country.
We need more of an open mind to resource opportunities and a little less fear mongering aimed at new technologies such as WtE. Educating ourselves about the options available for affordable and achievable energy sources is key. Let’s utilise a little more of Doc Brown’s foresight and enthusiasm for converting ‘rubbish into fuel’ to power Australia’s future.
1 David Blowers, ‘The day Australia was put on blackout alert’, The Conversation, September 6,
|STEINERT is involved in the provision of WtE through its equipment which sorts and separates material.|
STEINERT can sort and separate material for WtE systems while providing synergy with your objectives, such as materials recovery and/or fuel preparation. STEINERT works with some of the largest waste-to-energy companies in the world and can create a solution that is right for you.


Smoking- Yuk! We’ve all seen adults and older kids smoking. But have you ever wondered why they do it or why smoking is so bad for your health anyway? Read our 5 Smoking Facts to find out. 1) Smoking is Poisonous Cigarettes contain thousands of poisonous chemicals which taste horrible. Your body tries to get rid of poison by making you feel sick. This is why first time smokers often feel sick and dizzy or may cough a lot - it’s their body trying to protect them. If it tastes so awful why do people keep smoking? 2) It’s very hard to stop smoking One of the chemicals in cigarettes is called nicotine. Nicotine is a very addictive drug which makes it hard to stop smoking. When you finish smoking a cigarette the levels of nicotine in your body starts to drop which makes you want another one. Fact: Over 78% of adults who smoke have tried to stop at some point. 3) Smoking Stinks! Cigarette smoke sticks to your clothes, hair and makes your breath smell horrible. Kids and adults who smoke often don’t realise how bad they smell to other people. Is that the worst smoking will do to me? 4) Smoking Kills. Smoking damages your lungs which makes it harder for you to run and play sport with your friends. It also makes you more likely to catch coughs and colds or suffer with asthma. Worst of all, smoking increases your chances of getting cancer and other horrible diseases which can kill you. Fact: The smoke from a lit cigarette is so bad it also harms the lungs of people around you too. 5) Smoking is Expensive Believe it or not, kids and adults have to pay a lot of money to smoke. In fact smoking 20 cigarettes a day for 5 years costs £8000. Imagine what you could buy with that! Fact: Smoking is illegal until you are 18 years old and people who buy or sell cigarettes are breaking the law. Many kids and teenagers try smoking because they have seen other people do it and they are curious. Some people think it makes them look cool or more grown up. They may offer you a cigarette because it makes them feel better if you do it as well. The best thing to do is tell them that you don’t want to smoke and walk away. Saying no may feel like a very hard do but quitting smoking is even harder. If you are worried about smoking or a friend who smokes you should talk to a parent or teacher who can give you more advice.
Smoking StinksInformation about the dangers of smoking and how to avoid peer pressure.


Production efficiency is maximised by detection cameras which constantly monitor the flow of materials across the plant’s three production lines, ensuring that each line always runs at full capacity. No water is used at any stage of the recycling process, and waste glass arriving at the site is immediately placed under cover to minimise the need for drying.
All waste glass arriving at San Cesario is sourced in Italy, and all recycled glass (cullet) produced for the container glass industry is used by local manufacturers. The combination of technologies employed at the plant allows our team to really maximise production yields and minimise waste.
With a lower melting point than primary raw materials, cullet enables container glass manufacturers to reduce energy costs and CO2 emissions, as well as diverting waste glass from landfill. Glass recycling makes perfect environmental and economic sense, and San Cesario is making the equation even stronger.


before & after the experience
Creating a teams’ experience for building a relationship to the «real world»
The Reason Why
Through a self-made experience students can reach a deeper learning, activate their prior knowledge and acquire new knowledge. The new teaching and learning concept is an alternate approach for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Furthermore the students can get confidence in their abilities and improve their social and media competencies.
before the experience
Step 1 – Imagination
Ask yourself and imagine …
Close your eyes – reflect on your own about a chosen topic (e.g. life cycle of a cable) without any tools or aids. Take your time and think about it freely.
Now write down all that came into your mind by contemplating about your subject! Give it a try and imagine “how it might work”, just invent, guess and fantazise …
* Result: A student’s post written on our closed (account protected) teaching and learning website called «The horse» (more on teachingweb.org)
Step 2 – Research
Discussion in the team and online research of about half an hour.
* Result: Write your team’s outcome (source links included) in a post on «The horse».
Step 3 – Experience !
Perform your experience (research project related to your research question). For example the team could visit a company and do an interview on site! There are different ways to perform something new: For example designing an experiment, doing an interview or survey, asking questions to an experienced person or scientist which explains and shows you exactly how it works. (No ideas? There is a toolbox on «The horse»)
* Result: A collection of impressions & insights, media (video, audio, images, text, etc.) and maybe new evolving questions.
after the experience
Step 4 – Shape & create
Edit and produce your own content and media collected during step 3: text, pictures, audio (voice recording), video, graphs, etc.
* Result: A team’s contribution (draft) resp. a collection of self-made materials on «The horse”, ready for publishing on the public students’ project website www.save-energy.tips
Step 5 – Reflection
Reflect and compare with step 1 and 2. What happened to you personally and/or to the team in between? What kind of knowledge and experience could you achieve? How biased has your perception of the “real world” been? Did your guesses correspond?
* Result: A student’s and/or team’s post on «The horse»*.
Step 6 – Publish
The web contributions are going to be published on the students’ project website www.save-energy.tips
It’s an approach towards sustainable education linked to the UN goals of sustainable development: The students’ engagement, effort and insights are “no wasted energy” in the sense of “fulfilled” but contribute to the many little knowledge/experience drops building a vivid ocean and fertile soil for the present & future generations (e.g. upcoming classes of environment & technology).
Step 7 – Promote and get feedback
Asking for feedback and initiating discussions. Our aim is to encourage the students to think independently (e.g. questioning the media, when talking to experts); to see their work in a larger context (“my own life, the world”); to make decisions affecting their own behaviours in daily life and to discuss issues rationally. As such discussions may lead to conflict, the students are asked to discuss along certain guidelines of goodwill, respecting others’ opinions and cultural differences.
* «The horse» is the login-protected wkvw teaching and learning web called «The horse». We developed it for co-working across classes, across borders, across cultures. Learn more » (teachingweb.org)
Would you like “to befter” in collaboration? There are experiences, results, teaching & planning materials as well as self & team assessments for students.
Just get in contact.