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The Independent Jane
For all the love, romance and scandal in Jane Austen’s books, what they are really about is freedom and independence. Independence of thought and the freedom to choose.
Elizabeth’s refusal of Mr. Collins offer of marriage showed an independence seldom seen in heroines of the day. Her refusal of Mr. Darcy while triggered by anger showed a level of independence that left him shocked and stunned.
The freedom she exhibited in finally accepting him in direct defiance of Lady Catherine and knowing her father would disapprove was unusual even for Austen. In her last book Anne Elliot is persuaded to refuse Captain Wentworth at Lady Russel’s insistence.
Although Jane played by the rules of the day, all of her writing is infused with how she wanted life to be. She ‘screams’ her outrage at the limitations for women in Emma.
When accosted by Mrs. Elton, Jane Fairfax says,
“Excuse me, ma’am, but this is by no means my intention; I make no inquiry myself, and should be sorry to have any made by my friends. When I am quite determined as to the time, I am not at all afraid of being long unemployed. There are places in town, offices, where inquiry would soon produce something — offices for the sale, not quite of human flesh, but of human intellect.”
“Oh! my dear, human flesh! You quite shock me; if you mean a fling at the slave-trade, I assure you Mr. Suckling was always rather a friend to the abolition.”
“I did not mean, I was not thinking of the slave-trade,” replied Jane; “governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely different certainly, as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies.”
That same sentiment is emphasized in Emma’s shock when Mrs. Weston tells her of Frank Churchill’s secret engagement to Jane.
“Good God!” cried Emma, “Jane actually on the point of going as governess! What could he mean by such horrible indelicacy? To suffer her to engage herself — to suffer her even to think of such a measure!”
I find it interesting that at the moment of Austen’s birth or there about, John Adams left his farm in Massachusetts for the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Doesn’t sound particularly interesting, I know but consider this.
John Adams left his home in mid-December 1775 to attend an unprecedented meeting of colonial representatives to consider severing ties with their mother country and her monarch; a decision that culminated in a document unlike any ever written. In the mother country, one day in that same cold December a baby girl was born at Steventon Rectory. Her cry was heard by only the people in the house but the years to come would see her pen create works unlike any the world had ever seen.
Comparing Austen’s words with Thomas Jefferson’s may seem a trivialization but I believe that Austen’s impact on the world is no less important than Jefferson’s. The effect of Jane’s writing maybe more subtle than that of the Virginian but it is no less influential.
Jefferson’s words instigated and promoted a revolution, a war of independence. Jane’s words had no such excessive consequence. Still in her own quiet, genteel yet powerful way she declared and promoted the same principles of freedom and self-regulated independence as our American forefathers. In all her novels Jane advocates independence of person and thought, the rights of all and acceptance of responsibility for those rights.
Jane may not have incited military action as Jefferson did but even as an avowed royalist, I doubt not that Jane Austen firmly believed in his declaration of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. | <urn:uuid:0d8a309d-25c5-405d-a08a-c11239f0d717> | http://austenauthors.net/the-independent-jane |
Taking Play Seriously
By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG
Published: February 17, 2008
On a drizzly Tuesday night in late January, 200 people came out to hear a psychiatrist talk rhapsodically about play -- not just the intense, joyous play of children, but play for all people, at all ages, at all times. (All species too; the lecture featured touching photos of a polar bear and a husky engaging playfully at a snowy outpost in northern Canada.) Stuart Brown, president of the National Institute for Play, was speaking at the New York Public Library's main branch on 42nd Street. He created the institute in 1996, after more than 20 years of psychiatric practice and research persuaded him of the dangerous long-term consequences of play deprivation. In a sold-out talk at the library, he and Krista Tippett, host of the public-radio program ''Speaking of Faith,'' discussed the biological and spiritual underpinnings of play. Brown called play part of the ''developmental sequencing of becoming a human primate. If you look at what produces learning and memory and well-being, play is as fundamental as any other aspect of life, including sleep and dreams.''
The message seemed to resonate with audience members, who asked anxious questions about what seemed to be the loss of play in their children's lives. Their concern came, no doubt, from the recent deluge of eulogies to play . Educators fret that school officials are hacking away at recess to make room for an increasingly crammed curriculum. Psychologists complain that overscheduled kids have no time left for the real business of childhood: idle, creative, unstructured free play. Public health officials link insufficient playtime to a rise in childhood obesity. Parents bemoan the fact that kids don't play the way they themselves did -- or think they did. And everyone seems to worry that without the chance to play stickball or hopscotch out on the street, to play with dolls on the kitchen floor or climb trees in the woods, today's children are missing out on something essential.
The success of ''The Dangerous Book for Boys'' -- which has been on the best-seller list for the last nine months -- and its step-by-step instructions for activities like folding paper airplanes is testament to the generalized longing for play's good old days. So were the questions after Stuart Brown's library talk; one woman asked how her children will learn trust, empathy and social skills when their most frequent playing is done online. Brown told her that while video games do have some play value, a true sense of ''interpersonal nuance'' can be achieved only by a child who is engaging all five senses by playing in the three-dimensional world.
This is part of a larger conversation Americans are having about play. Parents bobble between a nostalgia-infused yearning for their children to play and fear that time spent playing is time lost to more practical pursuits. Alarming headlines about U.S. students falling behind other countries in science and math, combined with the ever-more-intense competition to get kids into college, make parents rush to sign up their children for piano lessons and test-prep courses instead of just leaving them to improvise on their own; playtime versus r?m?uilding.
Discussions about play force us to reckon with our underlying ideas about childhood, sex differences, creativity and success. Do boys play differently than girls? Are children being damaged by staring at computer screens and video games? Are they missing something when fantasy play is populated with characters from Hollywood's imagination and not their own? Most of these issues are too vast to be addressed by a single field of study (let alone a magazine article). But the growing science of play does have much to add to the conversation. Armed with research grounded in evolutionary biology and experimental neuroscience, some scientists have shown themselves eager -- at times perhaps a little too eager -- to promote a scientific argument for play. They have spent the past few decades learning how and why play evolved in animals, generating insights that can inform our understanding of its evolution in humans too. They are studying, from an evolutionary perspective, to what extent play is a luxury that can be dispensed with when there are too many other competing claims on the growing brain, and to what extent it is central to how that brain grows in the first place.
Scientists who study play, in animals and humans alike, are developing a consensus view that play is something more than a way for restless kids to work off steam; more than a way for chubby kids to burn off calories; more than a frivolous luxury. Play, in their view, is a central part of neurological growth and development -- one important way that children build complex, skilled, responsive, socially adept and cognitively flexible brains.
Their work still leaves some questions unanswered, including questions about play's darker, more ambiguous side: is there really an evolutionary or developmental need for dangerous games, say, or for the meanness and hurt feelings that seem to attend so much child's play? Answering these and other questions could help us understand what might be lost if children play less. | <urn:uuid:316c7af5-14e1-4d0b-9576-753e17ef2cc5> | http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9404E7DA1339F934A25751C0A96E9C8B63&scp=2&sq=taking%20play%20seriously&st=cse |
How do you get HIV?
HIV can be passed on when infected bodily fluid, such as blood or semen, is passed into an uninfected person. Semen is the liquid which is released from a man's penis during sex which carries sperm. It can be infected with HIV or AIDS when someone is HIV positive or is carrying the AIDS virus. This can happen during unprotected sex. For example when two people have sex without using a condom when one partner is already infected, or between drug users who inject and share needles.
It can't be transmitted by things like coughing, sneezing, kissing, sharing a toilet seat, swimming pools, sweat and tears. | <urn:uuid:a3e140cd-7f25-48c9-a2f0-a7d0b1954e0d> | http://www.childline.org.uk/Explore/SexRelationships/Pages/HIVAIDS.aspx |
CTComms sends on average 2 million emails monthly on behalf of over 125 different charities and not for profits.
Take the complexity of technology and stir in the complexity of the legal system and what do you get? Software licenses! If you've ever attempted to read one you know how true this is, but you have to know a little about software licensing even if you can't parse all of the fine print.
By: Chris Peters
March 10, 2009
A software license is an agreement between you and the owner of a program which lets you perform certain activities which would otherwise constitute an infringement under copyright law. The software license usually answers questions such as:
The price of the software and the licensing fees, if any, are sometimes discussed in the licensing agreement, but usually it's described elsewhere.
If you read the definitions below and you're still scratching your head, check out Categories of Free and Non-Free Software which includes a helpful diagram.
Free vs Proprietary:
When you hear the phrase "free software" or "free software license," "free" is referring to your rights and permissions ("free as in freedom" or "free as in free speech"). In other words, a free software license gives you more rights than a proprietary license. You can usually copy, modify, and redistribute free software without paying a fee or obtaining permission from the developers and distributors. In most cases "free software" won't cost you anything, but that's not always the case – in this instance the word free is making no assertion whatsoever about the price of the software. Proprietary software puts more restrictions and limits on your legal permission to copy, modify, and distribute the program.
Free, Open-Source or FOSS?
In everyday conversation, there's not much difference between "free software," "open source software," and "FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software)." In other words, you'll hear these terms used interchangeably, and the proponents of free software and the supporters of open-source software agree with one another on most issues. However, the official definition of free software differs somewhat from the official definition of open-source software, and the philosophies underlying those definitions differ as well. For a short description of the difference, read Live and Let License. For a longer discussion from the "free software" side, read Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software. For the "open-source" perspective, read Why Free Software is Too Ambiguous.
Public domain and copyleft.
These terms refer to different categories of free, unrestricted licensing. A copyleft license allows you all the freedoms of a free software license, but adds one restriction. Under a copyleft license, you have to release any modifications under the same terms as the original software. In effect, this blocks companies and developers who want to alter free software and then make their altered version proprietary. In practice, almost all free and open-source software is also copylefted. However, technically you can release "free software" that isn't copylefted. For example, if you developed software and released it under a "public domain" license, it would qualify as free software, but it isn't copyleft. In effect, when you release something into the public domain, you give up all copyrights and rights of ownership.
Shareware and freeware.
These terms don't really refer to licensing, and they're confusing in light of the discussion of free software above. Freeware refers to software (usually small utilities at sites such as Tucows.com) that you can download and install without paying. However, you don't have the right to view the source code, and you may not have the right to copy and redistribute the software. In other words, freeware is proprietary software. Shareware is even more restrictive. In effect, shareware is trial software. You can use it for a limited amount of time (usually 30 or 60 days) and then you're expected to pay to continue using it.
End User Licensing Agreement (EULA).
When you acquire software yourself, directly from a vendor or retailer, or directly from the vendor's Web site, you usually have to indicate by clicking a box that you accept the licensing terms. This "click-through" agreement that no one ever reads is commonly known as a EULA. If you negotiate a large purchase of software with a company, and you sign a contract to seal the agreement, that contract usually replaces or supersedes the EULA.
Most major vendors of proprietary software offer some type of bulk purchasing and volume licensing mechanism. The terms vary widely, but if you order enough software to qualify, the benefits in terms of cost and convenience are significant. Also, not-for-profits sometimes qualify for it with very small initial purchases.
Some of the benefits of volume licensing include:
Lower cost. As with most products, software costs less when you buy more of it.
Ease of installation. Without volume licenses, you usually have to enter a separate activation code (also known as a product key or license key) for each installed copy of the program. On the other hand, volume licenses provide you with a single, organisation-wide activation code, which makes it much easier to find when you need to reinstall the software.
Easier tracking of licenses. Keeping track of how many licenses you own, and how many copies you've actually installed, is a tedious, difficult task. Many volume licensing programs provide an online account which is automatically updated when you obtain or activate a copy of that company's software. These accounts can also coordinate licensing across multiple offices within your organisation.
To learn more about volume licensing from a particular vendor, check out some of the resources below:
Qualified not-for-profits and libraries can receive donated volume licenses for Microsoft products through TechSoup. For more information, check out our introduction to the Microsoft Software Donation Program, and the Microsoft Software Donation Program FAQ. For general information about the volume licensing of Microsoft software, see Volume Licensing Overview.
If you get Microsoft software from TechSoup or other software distributors who work with not-for-profits, you may need to go to the eOpen Web site to locate your Volume license keys. For more information, check out the TechSoup Donation Recipient's Guide to the Microsoft eOpen Web Site.
Always check TechSoup Stock first to see if there's a volume licensing donation program for the software you're interested in. If TechSoup doesn't offer that product or if you need more copies than you can find at TechSoup, search for "volume licensing not-for-profits software" or just "not-for-profits software." For example, when we have an inventory of Adobe products, qualifying and eligible not-for-profits can obtain four individual products or one copy of Creative Suite 4 through TechSoup. If we're out of stock, or you've used up your annual Adobe donation, you can also check TechSoup's special Adobe donation program and also Adobe Solutions for Nonprofits for other discounts available to not-for-profits. For more software-hunting tips, see A Quick Guide to Discounted Software Programs.
Pay close attention to the options and licensing requirements when you acquire server-based software. You might need two different types of license – one for the server software itself, and a set of licenses for all the "clients" accessing the software. Depending on the vendor and the licensing scenario, "client" can refer either to the end users themselves (for example, employees, contractors, clients, and anyone else who uses the software in question) or their computing devices (for example, laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, PDAs, etc.). We'll focus on Microsoft server products, but similar issues can arise with other server applications.
Over the years, Microsoft has released hundreds of server-based applications, and the licensing terms are slightly different for each one. Fortunately, there are common license types and licensing structures across different products. In other words, while a User CAL (Client Access License) for Windows Server is distinct from a User CAL for SharePoint Server, the underlying terms and rights are very similar. The TechSoup product pages for Microsoft software do a good job of describing the differences between products, so we'll focus on the common threads in this article.
Moreover, Microsoft often lets you license a single server application in more than one way, depending on the needs of your organisation. This allows you the flexibility to choose the licenses that best reflect your organisation's usage patterns and thereby cost you the least amount of money. For example, for Windows Server and other products you can acquire licenses on a per-user basis (for example, User CALs) or per-device basis (for example, Device CALs).
The license required to install and run most server applications usually comes bundled with the software itself. So you can install and run most applications "out of the box," as long as you have the right number of client licenses (see the section below for more on that). However, when you're running certain server products on a computer with multiple processors, you may need to get additional licenses. For example, if you run Windows Server 2008 DataCenter edition on a server with two processors, you need a separate license for each processor. SQL Server 2008 works the same way. This type of license is referred to as a processor license. Generally you don't need client licenses for any application that's licensed this way.
Client Licenses for Internal Users
Many Microsoft products, including Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, require client access licenses for all authenticated internal users (for example, employees, contractors, volunteers, etc.). On the other hand, SQL Server 2008 and other products don't require any client licenses. Read the product description at CTXchange if you're looking for the details about licensing a particular application.
User CALs: User CALs allow each user access to all the instances of a particular server product in an organisation, no matter which device they use to gain access. In other words, if you run five copies of Windows Server 2008 on five separate servers, you only need one User CAL for each person in your organisation who access those servers (or any software installed on those servers), whether they access a single server, all five servers, or some number in between. Each user with a single CAL assigned to them can access the server software from as many devices as they want (for example, desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, etc.). User CALs are a popular licensing option.
Device CALs: Device CALs allow access to all instances of a particular server application from a single device (for example, a desktop computer, a laptop, etc.) in your organisation. Device CALs only make sense when multiple employees use the same computer. For example, in 24-hour call centres different employees on different shifts often use the same machine, so Device CALs make sense in this situation.
Choosing a licensing mode for your Windows Server CALs: With Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, you use a CAL (either a User CAL or a Device CAL) in one of two licensing modes: per seat or per server. You make this decision when you're installing your Windows Server products, not when you acquire the CALs. The CALs themselves don't have any mode designation, so you can use either a User CAL or a Device CAL in either mode. Per seat mode is the default mode, and the one used most frequently. The description of User CALs and Device CALs above describes the typical per seat mode. In "per server" mode, Windows treats each license as a "simultaneous connection." In other words, if you have 40 CALs, Windows will let 40 authenticated users have access. The 41st user will be denied access. However, in per server mode, each CAL is tied to a particular instance of Windows Server, and you have to acquire a new set of licenses for each new server you build that runs Windows. Therefore, per server mode works for some small organisations with one or two servers and limited access requirements.
You don't "install" client licenses the way you install software. There are ways to automate the tracking of software licenses indirectly, but the server software can't refuse access to a user or device on licensing grounds. The licenses don't leave any "digital footprint" that the server software can read. An exception to this occurs when you license Windows Server in per server mode. In this case, if you have 50 licenses, the 51st authenticated user will be denied access (though anonymous users can still access services).
Some key points to remember about client licensing:
The licensing scenarios described in this section arise less frequently, and are too complex to cover completely in this article, so they're described briefly below along with more comprehensive resources.
You don't need client licenses for anonymous, unauthenticated external users. In other words, if someone accesses your Web site, and that site runs on Internet Information Server (IIS), Microsoft's Web serving software, you don't need a client license for any of those anonymous users.
If you have any authenticated external users who access services on your Windows-based servers, you can obtain CALs to cover their licensing requirements. However, the External Connector License (ECL) is a second option in this scenario. The ECL covers all use by authenticated external users, but it's a lot more expensive than a CAL, so only get one if you'll have a lot of external users. For example, even if you get your licenses through the CTXchange donation program, an ECL for Windows Server 2008 has an £76 administrative fee, while a User CAL for Windows Server 2008 carries a £1 admin fee. If only a handful of external users access your Windows servers, you're better off acquiring User CALs. Also, an ECL only applies to external users and devices. In other words, if you have an ECL, you still have to get a CAL for all employees and contractors.
Even though Terminal Services (TS) is built into Windows Server 2003 and 2008, you need to get a separate TS CAL for each client (i.e. each user or each device) that will access Terminal Services in your organisation. This TS license is in addition to your Windows Server CALs.
Microsoft's System Centre products (a line of enterprise-level administrative software packages) use a special type of license known as a management license (ML). Applications that use this type of licensing include System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and System Center Operations Manager 2007. Any desktop or workstation managed by one of these applications needs a client management license. Any server managed by one of these applications requires a server management license, and there are two types of server management licenses – standard and enterprise. You need one or the other but not both. There are also special licensing requirements if you're managing virtual instances of Windows operating systems. For more information, see TechSoup's Guide to System Center Products and Licensing and Microsoft's white paper on Systems Center licensing.
Some Microsoft server products have two client licensing modes, standard and enterprise. As you might imagine, an Enterprise CAL grants access to more advanced features of a product. Furthermore, with some products, such as Microsoft Exchange, the licenses are additive. In other words, a user needs both a Standard CAL AND an Enterprise CAL in order to access the advanced features. See Exchange Server 2007 Editions and Client Access Licenses for more information.
With virtualisation technologies, multiple operating systems can run simultaneously on a single physical server. Every time you install a Microsoft application, whether on a physical hardware system or a virtual hardware system, you create an "instance" of that application. The number of "instances" of particular application that you can run using a single license varies from product to product. For more information see the Volume Licensing Briefs, Microsoft Licensing for Virtualization and the Windows Server Virtualization Calculator. For TechSoup Stock products, see the product description for more information.
There are a lot of nuances to Microsoft licensing, and also a lot of excellent resources to help you understand different scenarios.
About the Author:
Chris is a former technology writer and technology analyst for TechSoup for Libraries, which aims to provide IT management guidance to libraries. His previous experience includes working at Washington State Library as a technology consultant and technology trainer, and at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a technology trainer and tech support analyst. He received his M.L.S. from the University of Michigan in 1997.
Originally posted here.
Copyright © 2009 CompuMentor. This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.
The latest version of Microsoft Office Professional Plus is an integrated collection of programs, servers, and services designed to work together to enable optimised information work. | <urn:uuid:c337bcd8-6aa1-4f2d-8c48-b916442ebbee> | http://www.ctt.org/resource_centre/getting_started/learning/understanding_licenses |
Hold the salt: UCLA engineers develop revolutionary new desalination membrane
Process uses atmospheric pressure plasma to create filtering 'brush layer'
Desalination can become more economical and used as a viable alternate water resource.
By Wileen Wong Kromhout
Originally published in UCLA Newsroom
Researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have unveiled a new class of reverse-osmosis membranes for desalination that resist the clogging which typically occurs when seawater, brackish water and waste water are purified.
The highly permeable, surface-structured membrane can easily be incorporated into today's commercial production system, the researchers say, and could help to significantly reduce desalination operating costs. Their findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry.
Reverse-osmosis (RO) desalination uses high pressure to force polluted water through the pores of a membrane. While water molecules pass through the pores, mineral salt ions, bacteria and other impurities cannot. Over time, these particles build up on the membrane's surface, leading to clogging and membrane damage. This scaling and fouling places higher energy demands on the pumping system and necessitates costly cleanup and membrane replacement.
The new UCLA membrane's novel surface topography and chemistry allow it to avoid such drawbacks.
"Besides possessing high water permeability, the new membrane also shows high rejection characteristics and long-term stability," said Nancy H. Lin, a UCLA Engineering senior researcher and the study's lead author. "Structuring the membrane surface does not require a long reaction time, high reaction temperature or the use of a vacuum chamber. The anti-scaling property, which can increase membrane life and decrease operational costs, is superior to existing commercial membranes."
The new membrane was synthesized through a three-step process. First, researchers synthesized a polyamide thin-film composite membrane using conventional interfacial polymerization. Next, they activated the polyamide surface with atmospheric pressure plasma to create active sites on the surface. Finally, these active sites were used to initiate a graft polymerization reaction with a monomer solution to create a polymer "brush layer" on the polyamide surface. This graft polymerization is carried out for a specific period of time at a specific temperature in order to control the brush layer thickness and topography.
"In the early years, surface plasma treatment could only be accomplished in a vacuum chamber," said Yoram Cohen, UCLA professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and a corresponding author of the study. "It wasn't practical for large-scale commercialization because thousands of meters of membranes could not be synthesized in a vacuum chamber. It's too costly. But now, with the advent of atmospheric pressure plasma, we don't even need to initiate the reaction chemically. It's as simple as brushing the surface with plasma, and it can be done for almost any surface."
In this new membrane, the polymer chains of the tethered brush layer are in constant motion. The chains are chemically anchored to the surface and are thus more thermally stable, relative to physically coated polymer films. Water flow also adds to the brush layer's movement, making it extremely difficult for bacteria and other colloidal matter to anchor to the surface of the membrane.
"If you've ever snorkeled, you'll know that sea kelp move back and forth with the current or water flow," Cohen said. "So imagine that you have this varied structure with continuous movement. Protein or bacteria need to be able to anchor to multiple spots on the membrane to attach themselves to the surface — a task which is extremely difficult to attain due to the constant motion of the brush layer. The polymer chains protect and screen the membrane surface underneath."
Another factor in preventing adhesion is the surface charge of the membrane. Cohen's team is able to choose the chemistry of the brush layer to impart the desired surface charge, enabling the membrane to repel molecules of an opposite charge.
The team's next step is to expand the membrane synthesis into a much larger, continuous process and to optimize the new membrane's performance for different water sources.
"We want to be able to narrow down and create a membrane selection system for different water sources that have different fouling tendencies," Lin said. "With such knowledge, one can optimize the membrane surface properties with different polymer brush layers to delay or prevent the onset of membrane fouling and scaling.
"The cost of desalination will therefore decrease when we reduce the cost of chemicals [used for membrane cleaning], as well as process operation [for membrane replacement]. Desalination can become more economical and used as a viable alternate water resource."
Cohen's team, in collaboration with the UCLA Water Technology Research (WaTeR) Center, is currently carrying out specific studies to test the performance of the new membrane's fouling properties under field conditions.
"We work directly with industry and water agencies on everything that we're doing here in water technology," Cohen said. "The reason for this is simple: If we are to accelerate the transfer of knowledge technology from the university to the real world, where those solutions are needed, we have to make sure we address the real issues. This also provides our students with a tremendous opportunity to work with industry, government and local agencies."
A paper providing a preliminary introduction to the new membrane also appeared in the Journal of Membrane Science last month.
Published: Thursday, April 08, 2010 | <urn:uuid:c0b175bb-65fb-420e-a881-a80b91d00ecd> | http://www.environment.ucla.edu/water/news/article.asp?parentid=6178 |
Not Just for Kids
The Hunt for Falling Leaves...
Nature's Color on the Ground
by Mary Catherine Ball
Being a reporter, I am always looking for an adventure. Last week, I found one.
I left work to go on a simple journey, but it turned out to be much more.
First, I crossed a mud-ridden stream. Then, I came face to face with flying creatures, fighting to get near me. I even endured webmakers spinning my hair into a shiny maze.
Where did I go? Into the woods, of course. Why? I wanted to gather some fallen leaves.
My luck was good that day. I was able to spy lots of different kinds of leaves lying on the ground. Some were leaves I had never seen. Some were still green, while others were changing to their autumn colors.
Have you ever hunted for leaves? I wonder if you know the names of five of the trees that live in your neighborhood? I bet the answer is no.
Well, me neither. So I had five of the leaves analyzed. I had found the leaves from an oak, a beech, a sweet gum tree and more.
Now, I invite you to make this journey.
Narrow body with pointy edges
Narrow body with pointy edges
May grow berries
Good for sap & color
3 distinct leafs
May grow nuts
This is your task...
Travel to the deep, dark woods (in the daylight) to find these 5 leaves. Cut out the page and take it with you. Make sure you can match your discovery with mine. Happy leaf-hunting!
Stone Soup October 9 (11:30am)-Enjoy lunch and a show. After you eat peanut butter & jelly, watch Stone Soup, performed by the Lost Caravan. Lunch is at noon; show starts at 12:30. Chesapeake Music Hall, Off Rt. 50 approaching the Bay Bridge: 410/406-0306.
All Aboard October 9 & 10 (2pm)-Chug a chug to Zany Brainy for train fun. Listen to stories and sing railroad songs. Build your own trains. Ages 3+. Zany Brainy, Annap. Harb. Ctr.: 410/266-1447.
Tiny Tots Fall for Nature Tues. Oct 12 (10:30am-noon) Three- to five-year-olds (and their adult) hike into the woods to hear autumn stories, gather leaves and make a craft. Bring a bag lunch to enjoy w/apple cider @ King's Landing Park, Huntingtown. $3 rsvp: 800/735-2258.
Spooky Stories in the Woods Tues. Oct. 12 (10:30-noon)-Hike with a ranger to a clearing in the woods. Listen to autumn stories and drink warm apple cider. Gather leaves to make a craft. Bring a bag lunch. Kings Landing Park, Huntingtown: 410/535-5327.
Musical Minds Wed. Oct. 13 (4-4:45pm)-Music makes the world go round. So sing, listen to stories and play musical instruments. Ages 2-4. Chesapeake Children's Museum, Festival at Riva. $8.50; rsvp: 410/266-0677.
Nature Designs Deadline Oct. 15-Create your favorite nature scene out of clay or on paper to win prizes. Age categories are 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12 years. Place winners win nature books or statues. All art forms accepted. Take your masterpiece to Wild Bird Center, Annapolis Harbour Center: 410/573-0345.
Tiny Tots get in Touch with Mother Nature Sat. Oct 16 (10-10:30am)
Tiny tots (2-3 w/adult) learn nature by touch, feeling the many different
textures rough and soft in the world around us. @ Battle Creek Cypress Swamp,
Prince Frederick: 800/735-2258.
| Issue 40 |
Volume VII Number 40
October 7-13, 1999
New Bay Times
| Homepage |
| Back to Archives | | <urn:uuid:373cc951-d17e-4d57-b0f5-122effe3a054> | http://bayweekly.com/old-site/year99/issue7_40/kids7_40.html |
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft is expected to discover its 1,000TH comet this summer.
The SOHO spacecraft is a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency. It has accounted for approximately one-half of all comet discoveries with computed orbits in the history of astronomy.
"Before SOHO was launched, only 16 sun grazing comets had been discovered by space observatories. Based on that experience, who could have predicted SOHO would discover more than 60 times that number, and in only nine years," said Dr. Chris St. Cyr. He is senior project scientist for NASA's Living With a Star program at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "This is truly a remarkable achievement!"
About 85 percent of the comets SOHO discovered belongs to the Kreutz group of sun grazing comets, so named because their orbits take them very close to Earth's star. The Kreutz sun grazers pass within 500,000 miles of the star's visible surface. Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, is about 36 million miles from the solar surface.
SOHO has also been used to discover three other well-populated comet groups: the Meyer, with at least 55 members; Marsden, with at least 21 members; and the Kracht, with 24 members. These groups are named after the astronomers who suggested the comets are related, because they have similar orbits.
Many comet discoveries were made by amateurs using SOHO images on the Internet. SOHO comet hunters come from all over the world. The United States, United Kingdom, China, Japan, Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, and Lithuania are among the many countries whose citizens have used SOHO to chase comets.
Almost all of SOHO's comets are discovered using images from its Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument. LASCO is used to observe the faint, multimillion-degree outer atmosphere of the sun, called the corona. A disk in the instrument is used to make an artificial eclipse, blocking direct light from the sun, so the much fainter corona can be seen. Sun grazing comets are discovered when they enter LASCO's field of view as they pass close by the star.
"Building coronagraphs like LASCO is still more art than science, because the light we are trying to detect is very faint," said Dr. Joe Gurman, U.S. project scientist for SOHO at Goddard. "Any imperfections in the optics or dust in the instrument will scatter the light, making the images too noisy to be useful. Discovering almost 1,000 comets since SOHO's launch on December 2, 1995 is a testament to the skill of the LASCO team."
SOHO successfully completed its primary mission in April 1998. It has enough fuel to remain on station to keep hunting comets for decades if the LASCO continues to function.
For information about SOHO on the Internet, visit:
Explore further: Long-term warming, short-term variability: Why climate change is still an issue | <urn:uuid:78cbe1bd-1849-4138-b59a-5521e93122a3> | http://phys.org/news4969.html |
Bolivia: Coca-chewing protest outside US embassy
Indigenous activists in Bolivia have been holding a mass coca-chewing protest as part of campaign to end an international ban on the practice.
Hundreds of people chewed the leaf outside the US embassy in La Paz and in other cities across the country.
Bolivia wants to amend a UN drugs treaty that bans chewing coca, which is an ancient tradition in the Andes.
But the US has said it will veto the amendment because coca is also the raw material for making cocaine.
The protesters outside the US embassy also displayed products made from coca, including soft drinks, toothpaste, sweets and ointments.
They were supporting a Bolivian government campaign to amend the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to remove language that bans the chewing of coca leaf.
The convention stipulates that coca-chewing be eliminated within 25 years of the convention coming into effect in 1964.
Bolivia says that is discriminatory, given that coca use is so deeply rooted in the indigenous culture of the Andes.Eradication
The US is opposed to changing the UN convention because it says it would weaken the fight against cocaine production.
In a statement, the US embassy said Washington recognised coca-chewing as a "traditional custom" of Bolivia's indigenous peoples but could not support the amendment.
"The position of the US government in not supporting the amendment is based on the importance of maintaining the integrity of the UN convention, which is an important tool in the fight against drug-trafficking," it said.
The US is the world's largest consumer of cocaine and has been leading efforts to eradicate coca production in the Andes for decades.
Bolivia is the world's first biggest producer of cocaine after Peru and Colombia, and much of its coca crop is used to make the illegal drug.
Bolivian President Evo Morales has long advocated the recognition of coca as a plant of great medicinal, cultural and religious importance that is distinct from cocaine.
As well as being Bolivia's first indigenous head of state, Mr Morales is also a former coca-grower and leader of a coca-growers trade union.
The Bolivian amendment would come into effect on 31 January only if there were no objections. | <urn:uuid:a63f6870-f496-4355-adfd-f3296c1577e5> | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12292661 |
Breaking the COX code
Using the team approach
Editor’s Note: This story, first published in 2004, has been updated.
Prostaglandins, which were first isolated from the prostate gland in 1936, are very rapidly metabolized, or broken down, making measurement in the blood difficult. Researchers at Vanderbilt led by John Oates, M.D., developed methods for measuring levels of prostaglandin metabolites (breakdown products) in the urine using mass spectrometry.
Using this technique, the research team—which by the late 1970s included L. Jackson Roberts, M.D.—identified prostaglandin D2 as a product of the human mast cell and demonstrated its release during allergic asthma.
With colleagues including Garret A. FitzGerald, M.D., now chair of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania, Oates and Roberts showed that low doses of aspirin blocked the production of thromboxane, a prostaglandin made by platelets that causes blood clotting and constriction of blood vessels. Their findings supported the use of low dose aspirin to prevent heart attacks.
In the early 1990s, Vanderbilt researchers led by Ray DuBois, M.D., Ph.D., discovered a link between the COX-2 enzyme and colon cancer. That work helped lead to current tests of COX-2 inhibitors as a potential way to prevent cancer.
In 2004 another group led by the late Jason Morrow, M.D., and David H. Johnson, M.D., director of the Hematology-Oncology division at Vanderbilt, reported that urine levels of a prostaglandin metabolite called PGE-M could predict the effectiveness of a COX-2 inhibitor in patients with non-small cell lung cancer. This suggests, Morrow said in 2004, “that the measurement of these inflammatory ‘mediators’ and their suppression may be useful in the treatment of lung cancer.”
COX enzymes also may play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. In addition to prostaglandins, the COX pathway can lead to the production of highly reactive molecular compounds called levuglandins, which, in turn, can form “adducts,” or irreversible attachments to proteins that may be toxic to nerve cells.
Also in 2004, Oates and his colleagues at Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins University reported that they found a 12-fold increase in the level of adducts in the brains of patients who had Alzheimer’s disease compared to age-matched control brains.
“These are the first clear data showing that COX products are elevated in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease,” says Oates, Thomas F. Frist Professor of Medicine and professor of Pharmacology.
Vanderbilt currently is participating in a national trial to see if long-term use of COX inhibitors will reduce the incidence of the disease. | <urn:uuid:0428aaca-1b84-4407-9b6f-93b230a692b3> | http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/lens/article/?id=110&pg=999 |
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2012 June 23
Explanation: As seen from Frösön island in northern Sweden the Sun did set a day after the summer solstice. From that location below the arctic circle it settled slowly behind the northern horizon. During the sunset's final minute, this remarkable sequence of 7 images follows the distorted edge of the solar disk as it just disappears against a distant tree line, capturing both a green and blue flash. Not a myth even in a land of runes, the colorful but elusive glints are caused by atmospheric refraction enhanced by long, low, sight lines and strong atmospheric temperature gradients.
Authors & editors:
Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U. | <urn:uuid:6665d40b-fee1-4353-8a03-3268af4a76bb> | http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120623.html |
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Lauren Boulden's Story
Using Think-Alouds to Get Inside Langston Hughes' Head
Over my past few years of teaching, there have been multiple occasions where I have been stumped on how to present a particular concept to my students. I've always been able to turn to ReadWriteThink.org for hands-on, engaging lessons. For example, I knew I wanted my students to develop their skills when it came to interacting with text, particularly with poetry. While searching through the myriad options on ReadWriteThink, I came upon "Building Reading Comprehension Through Think-Alouds."
At first, I planned to use the lesson exactly as written: Read Langston Hughes's poem "Dream Variation" and model a think-aloud with students; then have the students try their hand at some think-alouds using other poetry. After working out all of the details, I realized I could develop some additional skills, which would fit perfectly into the scope and sequence of my class. After completing the think-aloud to "Dream Variation," I broke students into selected groups. Each group was given a different Langston Hughes poem and asked to complete a think-aloud. The next day, the students were put into a new jigsaw group where they were solely responsible for sharing what their Langston Hughes poem conveyed. Based on the meanings behind their group mates' poems, along with using the knowledge of both their poem and "Dream Variation," students were asked to figure out who Langston Hughes was as a man. What did he stand for? What were his beliefs? What did he want out of life? Students used clues from the various poems to fill in a head-shaped graphic organizer to depict their understanding of who Hughes could be. This simple lesson of working with poems and think-alouds turned into a few days of group communication, text deciphering, inferences, and even an author study!
Without great lessons available on ReadWriteThink.org, such as "Building Reading Comprehension Through Think-Alouds," my students would never have been able to tackle so many key reading strategies in such a short amount of time.
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Students learn components of think-alouds and type-of-text interactions through teacher modeling. In the process, students develop the ability to use think-alouds to aid in reading comprehension tasks.
Lauren describes how she used ReadWriteThink in her classroom.
I have been teaching seventh- and eighth-grade language arts in Delaware for the past five years. I grew up in Long Island, New York, but have called Delaware my home since completing my undergraduate and master’s work at the University of Delaware. Teaching and learning have become my prime passions in life, which is why my days are spent teaching English, directing plays, organizing the school newspaper, and teaching yoga in the evenings. | <urn:uuid:d55ba202-34fa-4fe6-b6ae-698c282eb244> | http://www.readwritethink.org/about/community-stories/using-think-alouds-inside-36.html |
King James II of England (who was also James VII of Scotland) inherited the throne in 1685 upon the death of his brother, Charles II. James II was unpopular because of his attempts to increase the power of the monarchy and restore the Catholic faith. Deposed in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688-89, he fled to France. His daughter and son-in-law succeeded him as Queen Mary II and King William III. James II died in 1701.
Unless otherwise noted, these books are for sale at Amazon.com. Your purchase through these links will help to support the continued operation and improvement of the Royalty.nu site.
James II by John Miller. Biography from the Yale English Monarchs series.
James II: The Triumph and the Tragedy by John Callow. Charts James' life using little-known material from the UK National Archives. Includes James' own description of the Battle of Edgehill, his reasons for his conversion to Catholicism, and his correspondence with William of Orange.
A Court in Exile: The Stuarts in France, 1689-1718 by Edward Corp. After James II was deposed, he established his court in France. The book describes his court and the close relationships between the British and French royal families.
King in Exile: James II: Warrior, King and Saint by John Callow. Reassesses James's strategy for dealing with his downfall and exile, presenting a portrait of a man who planned for great political rewards and popular acclaim.
James II and the Trial of the Seven Bishops by William Gibson. The trial of seven bishops in 1688 was a prelude to the Glorious Revolution, as popular support for the bishops led to widespread welcome for William of Orange's invasion.
The Making of King James II by John Callow is about the formative years of the fallen king. Out of print, but sometimes available from Alibris.
The Countess and the King: A Novel of the Countess of Dorchester and King James II by Susan Holloway Scott. Novel about Katherine Sedley, a royal mistress forced to make the most perilous of choices: to remain loyal to the king, or to England.
The Crown for a Lie by Jane Lane. Novel about how James II lost his throne. Out of print, but sometimes available from Alibris. | <urn:uuid:be22c535-4fcb-4d7e-9507-2ace71b51909> | http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/England/Stuart/JamesII.html |
RWJF Priority: Use pricing strategies—both incentives and disincentives—to promote the purchase of healthier foods
Prices can significantly affect family food choices and are emerging as an important strategy in the movement to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic. For example, when healthy foods like fruits and vegetables are more affordable, children are less likely to gain excess weight. And leading health authorities, including the Institute of Medicine, recommend new policies to reduce overconsumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, which are one of the top sources of calories in the American diet.
The resources below, from RWJF grantees and partners, explore the possible health and economic impacts of using pricing strategies to promote consumption of healthy foods and beverages and discourage consumption of unhealthy products. | <urn:uuid:3cd46b83-2936-49a0-9b1f-a7fc2baa9e50> | http://www.rwjf.org/en/about-rwjf/program-areas/childhood-obesity/strategy/policy-priority-pricing-strategies.html?t=topics%3A499&t=topics%3A260&t=topics%3A1813 |
This section provides primary sources that document how Indian and European men and one English and one Indian woman have described the practice of sati, or the self-immolation of Hindu widows.
Although they are all critical of self-immolation, Francois Bernier, Fanny Parks, Lord William Bentinck, and Rev. England present four different European perspectives on the practice of sati and what it represents about Indian culture in general, and the Hindu religion and Hindu women in particular. They also indicate increasing negativism in European attitudes toward India and the Hindu religion in general. It would be useful to compare the attitudes of Bentinck and England as representing the secular and sacred aspects of British criticism of sati. A comparison of Bentinck’s minute with the subsequent legislation also reveals differences in tone between private and public documents of colonial officials. Finally, a comparison between the Fanny Parks and the three men should raise discussion on whether or not the gender and social status of the writer made any difference in his or her appraisal of the practice of self-immolation.
The three sources by Indian men and one by an Indian woman illustrate the diversity of their attitudes toward sati. The Marathi source illuminates the material concerns of relatives of the Hindu widow who is urged to adopt a son, so as to keep a potentially lucrative office within the extended family. These men are willing to undertake intense and delicate negotiations to secure a suitably related male child who could be adopted. This letter also documents that adoption was a legitimate practice among Hindus, and that Hindu women as well as men could adopt an heir. Ram Mohan Roy’s argument illustrates a rationalist effort to reform Hindu customs with the assistance of British legislation. Roy illustrates one of the many ways in which Indians collaborate with British political power in order to secure change within Indian society. He also enabled the British to counter the arguments of orthodox Hindus about the scriptural basis for the legitimacy of self-immolation of Hindu widows. The petition of the orthodox Hindu community in Calcutta, the capital of the Company’s territories in India, documents an early effort of Indians to keep the British colonial power from legislating on matters pertaining to the private sphere of Indian family life. Finally, Pandita Ramabai reflects the ways in which ancient Hindu scriptures and their interpretation continued to dominate debate. Students should consider how Ramabai’s effort to raise funds for her future work among child widows in India might have influenced her discussion of sati.
Two key issues should be emphasized. First, both Indian supporters and European and Indian opponents of the practice of self-immolation argue their positions on the bodies of Hindu women, and all the men involved appeal to Hindu scriptures to legitimate their support or opposition. Second, the voices of Indian women were filtered through the sieve of Indian and European men and a very few British women until the late 19th century.
- How do the written and visual sources portray the Hindu women who commit self-immolation? Possible aspects range from physical appearance and age, motivation, evidence of physical pain (that even the most devoted woman must suffer while burning to death), to any evidence of the agency or autonomy of the Hindu widow in deciding to commit sati. Are any differences discernible, and if so, do they seem related to gender or nationality of the observer or time period in which they were observed?
- How are the brahman priests who preside at the self-immolation portrayed in Indian and European sources? What might account for any similarities and differences?
- What reasons are used to deter Hindu widows from committing sati? What do these reasons reveal about the nature of family life in India and the relationships between men and women?
- What do the reasons that orthodox Hindus provide to European observers and to Indian reformers reveal about the significance of sati for the practice of the Hindu religion? What do their arguments reveal about orthodox Hindu attitudes toward women and the family?
- How are Hindu scriptures used in various ways in the debates before and after the prohibition of sati?
- What is the tone of the petition from 800 Hindus to their British governor? Whom do they claim to represent? What is their justification for the ritual of self-immolation? What is their attitude toward the Mughal empire whose Muslim rulers had preceded the British? What is their characterization of the petitioners toward those Hindus who support the prohibition on sati? How do the petitioners envision the proper relationship between the state and the practice of religion among its subjects?
- Who or what factors do European observers, British officials, and Indian opponents of sati hold to be responsible for the continuance of the practice of sati?
- What were the reasons that widows gave for committing sati? Were they religious, social or material motives? What is the evidence that the widows were voluntarily committing sati before 1829? What reasons did the opponents of sati give for the decisions of widows to commit self-immolation? What reasons did opponents give for widows who tried to escape from their husbands’ pyres?
- What are the reasons that Lord Bentinck and his Executive Council cite for their decision to declare the practice of sati illegal? Are the arguments similar to or different from his arguments in his minute a month earlier? What do these reasons reveal about British attitudes toward their role or mission in India? Do they use any of the arguments cited by Ram Mohan Roy or Pandita Ramabai?
- What do these sources, both those who oppose sati and those who advocate it, reveal about their attitudes to the Hindu religion in particular and Indian culture in general? | <urn:uuid:672e69ee-fd10-42dc-8e01-f4fde95914a0> | http://chnm.gmu.edu/wwh/modules/lesson5/lesson5.php?menu=1&c=strategies&s=0 |
March 30, 2012
CDC Releases New Report on Autism Prevalence in U.S.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health contributed to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that estimates the prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) as affecting 1 in 88 U.S. children overall, and 1 in 54 boys.
This is the third such report by the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (ADDM), which has used the same surveillance methods for more than a decade. Previous ADDM reports estimated the rate of ASDs at 1 in 110 children in the 2009 report that looked at data from 2006, and 1 in 150 children in the 2007 report, which covered data from 2002. The current prevalence estimate, which analyzed data from 2008, represents a 78 percent increase since 2002, and a 23 percent increase since 2006.
ASDs include diagnoses of autistic disorder, Asperger disorder, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). ASDs encompass a wide spectrum of conditions, all of which affect communication, social and behavioral skills. The causes of these developmental disorders are not completely understood, although studies show that both environment and genetics play an important and complex role. There is no known cure for ASDs, but studies have shown that behavioral interventions, particularly those begun early in a child’s life, can greatly improve learning and skills.
The latest CDC report, “Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders – Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 14 Sites, United States, 2008,” provides autism prevalence estimates from different areas of the United States, including Maryland. The purpose of the report is to provide high-quality data on the extent and distribution of ASDs in the U.S. population, to promote better planning for health and educational services, and to inform the further development of research on the causes, progression, and treatments.
“We continue observing increases in prevalence since the inception of the project in 2000,” said Li-Ching Lee, PhD, a psychiatric epidemiologist with the Bloomberg School"s Departments of Epidemiology and Mental Health and the principal investigator for the prevalence project’s Maryland site. “In Maryland, we found 27 percent of children with ASDs were never diagnosed by professionals. So, we know there are more children out there and we may see the increase continue in coming years.”
The new report, which focuses on 8-year-olds because that is an age where most children with ASD have been identified, shows that the number of those affected varies widely among the 14 participating states, with Utah having the the highest overall rate (1 in 47) and Alabama the lowest (1 in 210). Across all sites, nearly five times as many boys as girls are affected. Additionally, growing numbers of minority children are being diagnosed, with a 91 percent increase among black non-Hispanic children and a 110 percent increase for Hispanic children. Researchers say better screening and diagnosis may contribute to those increases among minority children.
The overall rate in Maryland is 1 in 80 children; 1 in 49 boys and 1 in 256 girls. In Maryland, the prevalence has increased 85 percent from 2002 to 2008. The increase was 41 percent between 2004 and 2008, and 35 percent between 2006 and 2008.
The data were gathered through collaboration with the Maryland State Department of Education and participating schools in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Cecil, Harford and Howard counties, as well as clinical sources such as Kennedy Krieger Institute, Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital, and University of Maryland Medical System.
While the report focuses on the numbers, its authors acknowledge that the reasons for the increase are not completely understood and that more research is needed. They note that the increase is likely due in part to a broadened definition of ASDs, greater awareness among the public and professionals, and the way children receive services in their local communities. “It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to tease these factors apart to quantify how much each of these factors contributed to the increase,” Dr. Lee said.
But whatever the cause, “This report paints a picture of the magnitude of the condition across our country and helps us understand how communities identify children with autism. One thing the data tell us with certainty – there are more children and families that need help,” said CDC Director Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH.
Researchers also identified the median age of ASD diagnosis, documented in records. In Maryland, that age was 5 years and 6 months, compared with 4 years, 6 months nationally. Across all sites, children who have autistic disorder tend to be identified earlier, while those with Asperger Disorder tend to be diagnosed later. Given the importance of early intervention, ADDM researchers carefully track at what age children receive an ASD diagnosis.
“Unfortunately, most children still are not diagnosed until after they reach age 4. We’ve heard from too many parents that they were concerned long before their child was diagnosed. We are working hard to change that,” said Coleen Boyle, PhD, MSHyg, director of CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.
To see the full report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6103a1.htm?s_cid=ss6103a1_w
To the Community Report with state statistics: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/documents/ADDM-2012-Community-Report.pdf
Media contact for Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Natalie Wood-Wright at 410-614-6029 or [email protected] | <urn:uuid:c63d3de8-6d63-4687-b45d-41b137a97594> | http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2012/lee-autism-prevalence.html |
- Yes, this is a good time to plant native grass seed in the ground. You may have to supplement with irrigation if the rains stop before the seeds have germinated and made good root growth.
- Which grasses should I plant? The wonderful thing about California is that we have so many different ecosystems; the challenging thing about California is that we have so many different ecosystems. It’s impossible for us to know definitively which particular bunchgrasses used to grow or may still grow at your particular site, but to make the best guesses possible, we recommend the following:
- Bestcase scenario is to have bunchgrasses already on the site that you can augment through proper mowing or grazing techniques.
- Next best is to have a nearby site with native bunchgrasses and similar elevation, aspect, and soils, that you can use as a model.
- After that, go to sources such as our pamphlet Distribution of Native Grasses of California, by Alan Beetle, $7.50.
- Also reference local floras of your area, available through the California Native Plant Society.
Container growing: We grow seedlings in pots throughout the season, but ideal planning for growing your own plants in pots is to sow six months before you want to put them in the ground. Though restorationists frequently use plugs and liners (long narrow containers), and they may be required for large areas, we prefer growing them the horticultural way: first in flats, then transplanting into 4" pots, and when they are sturdy little plants, into the ground. Our thinking is that since they are not tap-rooted but fibrous-rooted (one of their main advantages as far as deep erosion control is concerned) square 4" pots suit them, and so far our experiences have borne this out.
In future newsletters, we will be reporting on the experiences and opinions of Marin ranchers Peggy Rathmann and John Wick, who are working with UC Berkeley researcher Wendy Silver on a study of carbon sequestration and bunchgrasses. So far, it’s very promising. But more on that later. For now, I’ll end with a quote from Peggy, who grows, eats, nurtures, lives, and sleeps bunchgrasses, for the health of their land and the benefit of their cows.
“It takes a while. But it’s so worth it.” | <urn:uuid:c183066d-32a9-42eb-91b6-191fdb0980c2> | http://judithlarnerlowry.blogspot.com/2009/02/simplifying-california-native.html |
I’m struggling a bit to teach my children to pack for themselves. I want them to learn how to be self-reliant, but I also want to make sure they have everything they need for the day. If I don’t triple check every detail, they’re likely to be fully prepared for snack time but missing important papers or sports equipment. What’s the right thing to do?
Your desire to raise self-reliant children is fantastic. But there’s no doubt that passing the baton can be tough. The first question has to be: how old are your children? A good general rule of thumb is, if they’re old enough to read, they’re old enough to pack their own bags. Assuming your little ones are old enough, the most effective thing to do is give them some time frame to take complete responsibility for getting themselves ready, ask questions to help prompt them if you think they aren’t paying attention to something crucial, and most importantly, when things aren’t crucial (e.g. do they have the right uniform packed), letting them fail. Nothing teaches quite like experience. As you let go of the reigns a bit, here are some more ideas to guide you.
• Planning Starts the Night Before. Mornings are not the right time to teach your children how to pack themselves. You’re rushed, and they’re often bleary-eyed and grumpy. The ideal time to sit down with them, explain what you are trying to accomplish, and get them to start preparing for the next day is after homework but before TV time. That way you have time to ask them questions and offer un-stressed help in the initial stages. This is a process that will take time and spending time in the evenings helping them learn how to become responsible for themselves is time well spent.
• Explain as You Go. You need to develop a checklist with them and then go through the items. Don’t criticize or watch over the task being done. Accept that the task will not be done exactly the way you would do it but recognize that as long as it is accomplished and done on time, that it is okay. In the beginning, be prepared to patiently ask and answer a lot of questions! Why do emergency numbers need to be in the backpacks? Because you might need to call someone. Why does lunch have to be prepared? So that mom knows they are eating healthy and, besides, too much sugar will make them feel bad, Why do you keep asking about permission slips or projects that need to go with them? Because it’s important they do not miss out on something the rest of the class is doing. This is just a primer but you get the idea.
• Provide Feedback. Once the task has been completed, give constructive feedback to the person. As a guideline, tell your son or daughter five great things about the job for every one criticism. If after some time you notice they are consistently sloppy or forgetful, be patient but firm and make sure there are consequences for actions. | <urn:uuid:c2dcc337-4538-4bf9-8838-d2005b03e76d> | http://www.mommytracked.com/node/4457/print |
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Table of contents
Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless data transfer. Bluetooth connectivity is often found in high-end keyboards and mice. Bluetooth generally provide an operating range of up to 30 feet and is less prone to interference in comparison to RF technology.
DPI and FPS
DPI (dots per inch) and FPS (frames per second) are the number of counts in an inch of movement and the number of times the sensor reads the surface in a second respectively. These figures are measures of the amount of information recorded by the mouse's sensor. The greater the amount of information that is gathered, the more accurately and precisely the surface can be tracked. To detect movement, optical and laser mice use sensors to read beams of light as they are reflected from the tracking surface.
Currently 400 and 800 DPI optical mice as well as 800 DPI laser mice are very popular, but some high-end models are capable of 1000, 1600 or even 2000 DPI tracking speeds.
The Personal System/2 or PS/2 was the designation for IBM's second generation of personal computers. The PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports were introduced with it. PS/2 ports connect the keyboard and mouse to a computer and are usually color-coded on today's systems - purple for keyboards and green for mice. Most desktop motherboards still provide PS/2 ports, but an increasing number of keyboards and mice are using USB ports.
Radio Frequency (RF) is a wireless communication technology. Using RF technology allows keyboards and mice to computers without annoying cables.
The USB (Universal Serial Bus) port is a popular I/O interface used for connecting computers and peripherals or other devices. It is capable of supporting up to 127 daisy-chained peripheral devices simultaneously. The latest USB 2.0 specification can deliver 480Mbps data transfer bandwidth. In addition, USB provides plug-and-play capabilities to allow device changes while the computer is powered on. Today, many keyboard and mice use the USB interface. | <urn:uuid:cc2f6ff5-32a8-4803-8794-bd3c0c07dc53> | http://www.newegg.com/Product/CategoryIntelligenceArticle.aspx?articleId=94 |
exactly located (exactlyLocated)
The actual, minimal location of an
Object. This is a subrelation of the more general Predicate
SUMO / BASE-ONTOLOGY
Related WordNet synsets
- the precise location of something; a spatially limited location; "she walked to a point where she could survey the whole street"
Agar obj is partly located in region, to yah kuch subobj nahin, ki subobj is a part of obj aur subobj is exactly located in region.
(partlyLocated ?OBJ ?REGION)
(part ?SUBOBJ ?OBJ)
(exactlyLocated ?SUBOBJ ?REGION))))
Agar obj is exactly located in region, to yah kuch otherobj nahin, ki otherobj is exactly located in region aur otherobj is not equal to obj.
(exactlyLocated ?OBJ ?REGION)
(exactlyLocated ?OTHEROBJ ?REGION)
(equal ?OTHEROBJ ?OBJ))))))
"thing ki jagah time tha" is equal to region agar hai thing is exactly located in region during time.
(WhereFn ?THING ?TIME)
(exactlyLocated ?THING ?REGION))) | <urn:uuid:c9bd6a3e-3426-45f4-8eec-ef2af2ae747f> | http://virtual.cvut.cz/kifb/hindi/concepts/exactly_located.html |
Reishiki - the external expression of respect
In Iaido dojo you will practice with a wooden sword (Bokken), or a training sword (Iaito), or even a real Japanese sword with a cutting blade (Katana). There will be numerous people practicing, all in one room. Following the rules of etiquette ensures that no one gets injured. Also, following the rules of etiquette enhances practice in other ways. The teacher can more quickly determine skill levels when students line up in the order of rank. The ceremonial bowing serves as a concentration and focusing point; when bowing, practitioners shows respect for others. Maintaining observant silence allows students to focus their attention and practice reading body language. Cleaning the dojo after practice leaves it ready for the next group.
Always remember, reishiki comes from the heart and without sincere respect it will be only an empty gestures.
- Be on time.
- Do not make class wait.
- Finger and toe nails must be cut short and all jewelry removed.
- Remove shoes before entering.
- A sword should be untied and held in the right hand.
- Step directly in to the dojo.
- Do not block doorway.
- Stop and bow to Shinzen.
- Avoid drawing or pointing a sword toward Shinzen.
- Before practice, be sure your sword is in proper shape.
- Check the Mekugi.
- Place it at Shimoza (opposite side of room from shinzen) with the Ha to the wall.
- Never touch a sword without the owner's permission.
- Do not knock or step over any sword.
- The floor must be cleared and swept.
- Leave the Dojo ready for those who practice after you.
- Eating, drinking, and smoking are not allowed on the Dojo floor.
- When on the practice floor do not have private conversations other than iaido related subjects.
- Tell the teacher of any injuries or problems, or of having to leave early.
- Do not leave without permission.
- Do not speak when teacher is speaking.
- Thank the teacher.
- Show respect to other iaidoka (students)
- Do not draw directly towards others.
- Do not do anything that may distract or injure a fellow practitioner or spectator. | <urn:uuid:566c0f69-f932-4d46-abcd-00f058076cf6> | http://www.artofiaido.com/etiquette |
- Enter a word for the dictionary definition.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Nectarine \Nec`tar*ine"\ (n[e^]k`t[~e]r*[=e]n"), n. [Cf. F. nectarine. See Nectar.] (Bot.) A smooth-skinned variety of peach. [1913 Webster] Spanish nectarine, the plumlike fruit of the West Indian tree Chrysobalanus Icaco; -- also called cocoa plum. It is made into a sweet conserve which is largely exported from Cuba. [1913 Webster] | <urn:uuid:8026eb8e-2045-4425-bfb5-1eb355f7472a> | http://www.crosswordpuzzlehelp.net/old/dictionary.php?q=Spanish%20nectarine |
Throughout life there are many times when outside influences change or influence decision-making. The young child has inner motivation to learn and explore, but as he matures, finds outside sources to be a motivating force for development, as well. Along with being a beneficial influence, there are moments when peer pressure can overwhelm a child and lead him down a challenging path. And, peer pressure is a real thing – it is not only observable, but changes the way the brain behaves.
As a young adult, observational learning plays a part in development through observing and then doing. A child sees another child playing a game in a certain way and having success, so the observing child tries the same behavior. Albert Bandura was a leading researcher in this area. His famous bobo doll studies found that the young child is greatly influenced by observing other’s actions. When a child sees something that catches his attention, he retains the information, attempts to reproduce it, and then feels motivated to continue the behavior if it is met with success.
Observational learning and peer pressure are two different things – one being the observing of behaviors and then the child attempting to reproduce them based on a child’s own free will. Peer pressure is the act of one child coercing another to follow suit. Often the behavior being pressured is questionable or taboo, such as smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol.
Peer Pressure and the Brain
Recent studies find that peer pressure influences the way our brains behave, which leads to better understanding about the impact of peer pressure and the developing child. According to studies from Temple University, peer pressure has an effect on brain signals involved in risk and reward department, especially when the teen’s friends are around. Compared to adults in the study, teenagers were much more likely to take risks they would not normally take on their own when with friends. Brain signals were more activated in the reward center of the brain, firing greatest during at risk behaviors.
Peer pressure can be difficult for young adults to deal with, and learning ways to say “no” or avoid pressure-filled situations can become overwhelming. Resisting peer pressure is not just about saying “no,” but how the brain functions. Children that have stronger connections among regions in their frontal lobes, along with other areas of the brain, are better equipped to resist peer pressure. During adolescence, the frontal lobes of the brain develop rapidly, causing axioms in the region to have a coating of fatty myelin, which insulates them and causes the frontal lobes to more effectively communicate with other brain regions. This helps the young adult to develop judgment and self-control needed to resist peer pressure.
Along with the frontal lobes contributing to the brain and peer pressure, other studies find that the prefrontal cortex plays a role in how teens respond to peer pressure. Just as with the previous study, children that were not exposed to peer pressure had greater connectivity within the brain as well as abilities to resist peer pressure.
Working through Peer Pressure
The teenage years are exciting years. The young adult is often going through physical changes due to puberty, adjusting to new friends and educational environments, and learning how to make decisions for themselves. Adults can offer a helping and supportive hand to young adults when dealing with peer pressure by considering the following:
Separation: Understanding that this is a time for the child to separate and learn how to be his own individual is important. It is hard to let go and allow the child to make mistakes for himself, especially when you want to offer input or change plans and actions, but allowing the child to go down his own path is important. As an adult, offering a helping hand if things go awry and being there to offer support is beneficial.
Talk it Out: As an adult, take a firm stand on rules and regulations with your child. Although you cannot control whom your child selects as friends, you can take a stand on your control of your child. Setting specific goals, rules, and limits encourages respect and trust, which must be earned in response. Do not be afraid to start talking with your child early about ways to resist peer pressure. Focus on how it will build your child’s confidence when he learns to say “no” at the right time and reassure him that it can be accomplished without feeling guilty or losing self-confidence.
Stay Involved: Keep family dinner as a priority, make time each week for a family meeting or game time, and plan family outings and vacations regularly. Spending quality time with kids models positive behavior and offers lots of opportunities for discussions about what is happening at school and with friends.
If at any time there are concerns a child is becoming involved in questionable behavior due to peer pressure, ask for help. Understand that involving others in helping a child cope with peer pressure, such as a family doctor, youth advisor, or other trusted friend, does not mean that the adult is not equipped to properly help the child, but that including others in assisting a child, that may be on the brink of heading down the wrong path, is beneficial.
By Sarah Lipoff. Sarah is an art educator and parent. Visit Sarah’s website here.
Read More → | <urn:uuid:4fafe4c1-2dd0-49fd-8b1b-41d1829f7cdf> | http://www.funderstanding.com/category/child-development/brain-child-development/ |
Ptosis Correction Surgery:
Ptosis Correction Surgery India offers information on Ptosis Correction Surgery in India, Ptosis Correction Surgery cost India, Ptosis Correction Surgery hospital in India, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad & Bangalore, Ptosis Correction Surgeon in India.
Ptosis is the medical term for drooping of the upper eyelid, a condition that may affect one or botheyes.
The ptosis may be mild - in which the lid partially covers the pupil; or severe - in which the lid completely covers the pupil.
When does Ptosis occur?
Ptosis can occur at any age. When present since birth it is called congenital ptosis. When present in the elderly it is called acquired ptosis.
What causes Ptosis?
While the cause of congenital ptosis is often unclear, the most common reason is improper development of the levator muscle. The levator muscle is the major muscle responsible for elevating the upper eyelid. In adults ptosis is generally due to weakening / dehiscence of the levator muscle. It may also occur following injury to the muscle as after lid injuries and eye surgeries. Rarely it may be due to myasthenia gravis ( a condition where there is progressive weakness of muscles).
Why should Ptosis be treated?
Children with significant ptosis may need to tilt their head back into a chin-up position, lift their eyelid with a finger, or raise their eyebrows in an effort to see from under their drooping eyelid. Children with congenital ptosis may also have amblyopia ("lazy eye"), strabismus or squint (eyes that are not properly aligned or straight), refractive errors, astigmatism, or blurred vision. In addition, drooping of the eyelid may result in an undesired facial appearance and difficult social life. In moderate ptosis there is a loss of the upper field of vision by the drooping upper lid.
How is Ptosis treated?
The eye condition Ptosis is trated by a specified sugery called ptosis surgery.
Ptosis is treated surgically, with the specific operation based on the severity of the ptosis and the strength of the levator muscle. If the ptosis is not severe, surgery is generally performed when the child is between 3 and 5 years of age (the "pre-school" years). However, when the ptosis interferes with the child's vision, surgery is performed at an earlier age to allow proper visual development. Ptosis repair is usually completed under general anesthesia in infants and young children and under local anesthesia in adults.
What to expect after surgery ?
Most patients will tolerate the procedure very well and have a rapid recovery. Cold packs may need to be applied to the operated eyelid for the first 48 hours following surgery. Antibiotic ointments applied to the incision are sometimes recommended. The elevation of the eyelid will often be immediately noticeable, though in some cases bruising and swelling will obscure this finding. Most patients will have sutures that need removing about a week following surgery. In children, absorbable sutures are often used.
The bruising and swelling associated with the surgery will usually resolve in two to three weeks. Some patients may need adjustment of the sutures to better align the lid height. This may or may not require additional anaesthesia or a trip to the operating room.
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Vol. 17 Issue 6
One-Legged (Single Limb) Stance Test
The One-Legged Stance Test (OLST)1,2 is a simple, easy and effective method to screen for balance impairments in the older adult population.
You may be asking yourself, "how can standing on one leg provide you with any information about balance, after all, we do not go around for extended periods of time standing on one leg?"
True, as a rule we are a dynamic people, always moving, our world always in motion, but there are instances were we do need to maintain single limb support. The most obvious times are when we are performing our everyday functional activities.
Stepping into a bath tub or up onto a curb would be difficult, if not impossible to do without the ability to maintain single limb support for a given amount of time. The ability to switch from two- to one-leg standing is required to perform turns, climb stairs and dress.
As we know, the gait cycle requires a certain amount of single limb support in order to be able to progress ourselves along in a normal pattern. When the dynamics of the cycle are disrupted, loss of balance leading to falls may occur.
This is especially true in older individuals whose gait cycle is altered due to normal and potentially abnormal changes that occur as a result of aging.
The One-Legged Stance Test measures postural stability (i.e., balance) and is more difficult to perform due to the narrow base of support required to do the test. Along with five other tests of balance and mobility, reliability of the One-Legged Stance Test was examined for 45 healthy females 55 to 71 years old and found to have "good" intraclass correlations coefficients (ICC range = .95 to .099). Within raters ICC ranged from 0.73 to 0.93.3
To perform the test, the patient is instructed to stand on one leg without support of the upper extremities or bracing of the unweighted leg against the stance leg. The patient begins the test with the eyes open, practicing once or twice on each side with his gaze fixed straight ahead.
The patient is then instructed to close his eyes and maintain balance for up to 30 seconds.1
The number of seconds that the patient/client is able to maintain this position is recorded. Termination or a fail test is recorded if 1) the foot touches the support leg; 2) hopping occurs; 3) the foot touches the floor, or 4) the arms touch something for support.
Normal ranges with eyes open are: 60-69 yrs/22.5 ± 8.6s, 70-79 yrs/14.2 ± 9.3s. Normal ranges for eyes closed are: 60-69 yrs/10.2 ± 8.6s, 70-79 yrs/4.3 ± 3.0s.4 Briggs and colleagues reported balance times on the One-Legged Stance Test in females age 60 to 86 years for dominant and nondominant legs.
Given the results of this data, there appears to be some difference in whether individuals use their dominant versus their nondominant leg in the youngest and oldest age groups.
When using this test, having patients choose what leg they would like to stand on would be appropriate as you want to record their "best" performance.
It has been reported in the literature that individuals increase their chances of sustaining an injury due to a fall by two times if they are unable to perform a One-Legged Stance Test for five seconds.5 Other studies utilizing the One-Legged Stance Test have been conducted in older adults to assess static balance after strength training,6 performance of activities of daily living and platform sway tests.7
Interestingly, subscales of other balance measures such as the Tinetti Performance Oriented Mobility Assessment8 and Berg Balance Scale9 utilize unsupported single limb stance times of 10 seconds and 5 seconds respectively, for older individuals to be considered to have "normal" balance.
Thirty percent to 60 percent of community-dwelling elderly individuals fall each year, with many experiencing multiple falls.10 Because falls are the leading cause of injury-related deaths in older adults and a significant cause of disability in this population, prevention of falls and subsequent injuries is a worthwhile endeavor.11
The One-Legged Stance Test can be used as a quick, reliable and easy way for clinicians to screen their patients/clients for fall risks and is easily incorporated into a comprehensive functional evaluation for older adults.
1. Briggs, R., Gossman, M., Birch, R., Drews, J., & Shaddeau, S. (1989). Balance performance among noninstitutionalized elderly women. Physical Therapy, 69(9), 748-756.
2. Anemaet, W., & Moffa-Trotter, M. (1999). Functional tools for assessing balance and gait impairments. Topics in Geriatric Rehab, 15(1), 66-83.
3. Franchignoni, F., Tesio, L., Martino, M., & Ricupero, C. (1998). Reliability of four simple, quantitative tests of balance and mobility in healthy elderly females. Aging (Milan), 10(1), 26-31.
4. Bohannon, R., Larkin, P., Cook, A., & Singer, J. (1984). Decrease in timed balance test scores with aging. Physical Therapy, 64, 1067-1070.
5. Vellas, B., Wayne, S., Romero, L., Baumgartner, R., et al. (1997). One-leg balance is an important predictor of injurious falls in older persons. Journal of the American Geriatric Society, 45, 735-738.
6. Schlicht, J., Camaione, D., & Owen, S. (2001). Effect of intense strength training on standing balance, walking speed, and sit-to-stand performance in older adults. Journal of Gerontological Medicine and Science, 56A(5), M281-M286.
7. Frandin, K., Sonn, U., Svantesson, U., & Grimby, G. (1996). Functional balance tests in 76-year-olds in relation to performance, activities of daily living and platform tests. Scandinavian Journal of Rehabilitative Medicine, 27(4), 231-241.
8. Tinetti, M., Williams, T., & Mayewski, R. (1986). Fall risk index for elderly patients based on number of chronic disabilities. American Journal of Medicine, 80, 429-434.
9. Berg, K., et al. (1989). Measuring balance in the elderly: Preliminary development of an instrument. Physio Therapy Canada, 41(6), 304-311.
10. Rubenstein, L., & Josephson, K. (2002). The epidemiology of falls and syncope. Clinical Geriatric Medicine, 18, 141-158.
11. National Safety Council. (2004). Injury Facts. Itasca, IL: Author.
Dr. Lewis is a physical therapist in private practice and president of Premier Physical Therapy of Washington, DC. She lectures exclusively for GREAT Seminars and Books, Inc. Dr. Lewis is also the author of numerous textbooks. Her Website address is www.greatseminarsandbooks.com. Dr. Shaw is an assistant professor in the physical therapy program at the University of South Florida dedicated to the area of geriatric rehabilitation. She lectures exclusively for GREAT Seminars and Books in the area of geriatric function.
APTA Encouraged by Cap Exceptions
New process grants automatic exceptions to beneficiaries needing care the most
Calling it "a good first step toward ensuring that Medicare beneficiaries continue to have coverage for the physical therapy they need," Ben F Massey, Jr, PT, MA, president of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), expressed optimism that the new exceptions process will allow a significant number of Medicare patients to receive services exceeding the $1,740 annual financial cap on Medicare therapy coverage. The new procedure, authorized by Congress in the recently enacted Deficit Reduction Act (PL 109-171), will be available to Medicare beneficiaries on March 13 under rules released this week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
"APTA is encouraged by the new therapy cap exceptions process," Massey said. "CMS has made a good effort to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries who need the most care are not harmed by an arbitrary cap."
As APTA recommended, the process includes automatic exceptions and also grants exceptions to beneficiaries who are receiving both physical therapy and speech language pathology (the services are currently combined under one $1,740 cap).
"We have yet to see how well Medicare contractors will be able to implement and apply this process. Even if it works well, Congress only authorized this new process through 2006. Congress must address this issue again this year, and we are confident that this experience will demonstrate to legislators that they must completely repeal the caps and provide a more permanent solution for Medicare beneficiaries needing physical therapy," Massey continued.
The therapy caps went into effect on Jan. 1, 2006, limiting Medicare coverage on outpatient rehabilitation services to $1,740 for physical therapy and speech therapy combined and $1,740 for occupational therapy.
The American Physical Therapy Association is a national professional organization representing more than 65,000 members. Its goal is to foster advancements in physical therapy practice, research and education.
New Mouthwash Helps With Pain
Doctors in Italy are studying whether a new type of mouthwash will help alleviate pain for patients suffering from head and neck cancer who were treated with radiation therapy, according to a new study (International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, Feb. 1, 2006).
Fifty patients, suffering from various forms of head and neck cancer and who received radiation therapy, were observed during the course of their radiation treatment. Mucositis, or inflammation of the mucous membrane in the mouth, is the most common side effect yet no additional therapy has been identified that successfully reduces the pain.
This study sought to discover if a mouthwash made from the local anesthetic tetracaine was able to alleviate the discomfort associated with head and neck cancer and if there would be any negative side effects of the mouthwash. The doctors chose to concoct a tetracaine-based mouthwash instead of a lidocaine-based version because it was found to be four times more effective, worked faster and produced a prolonged relief.
The tetracaine was administered by a mouthwash approximately 30 minutes before and after meals, or roughly six times a day. Relief of oral pain was reported in 48 of the 50 patients. Sixteen patients reported that the mouthwash had an unpleasant taste or altered the taste of their food. | <urn:uuid:f8131c7f-1b2a-41bd-9eaa-951dad06e313> | http://physical-therapy.advanceweb.com/Article/One-Legged-Single-Limb-Stance-Test.aspx |
Hypertension is often diagnosed during a visit to your doctor. Blood pressure is measured using a cuff around your arm and a device called a sphygmomanometer. Your doctor may ask you to sit quietly for five minutes before checking your blood pressure.
If your blood pressure reading is high, you will probably be asked to come back for repeat blood pressure checks. If you have three visits with readings over 140/90 mmHG, you will be diagnosed with high blood pressure.
Some people’s blood pressure goes up when they are at the doctor’s office. If your doctor suspects that may be occurring, he or she may ask you to get some blood pressure readings at home. In some cases, he or she may recommend that you wear an ambulatory blood pressure monitor. This device measures your blood pressure regularly throughout the day as you go about your activities. It is usually worn for 24 hours, even while sleeping.
- Reviewer: Michael J. Fucci, DO
- Review Date: 09/2012 -
- Update Date: 00/91/2012 - | <urn:uuid:9dafa879-7f20-47af-9000-4507980185f0> | http://portsmouthhospital.com/your-health/?/19601/Next |
Engineer your first step to a four-year degree at Edmonds Community College
Engineers Make a Difference
Engineering is the art of applying scientific and mathematical principles, experience, judgment, and common sense to make things that benefit people. Engineers solve problems. They improve and develop products to meet consumer and societal needs. They find ways for existing products to work better, last longer, operate more safely and cost less.
They also look for innovative solutions to global problems. Engineers design bridges and important medical equipment as well as processes for cleaning up toxic spills and systems for mass transit.
It's a Fact
Engineering professions requiring a four-year degree are among the highest paying jobs in Washington State according to the office of Labor Market and Economic Analysis. Source: www.workforceexplorer.com | <urn:uuid:c9d71a03-1a5c-4380-b591-b22abec06ba2> | http://www.edcc.edu/engr/default.php?showflash=1 |
Information for Students
Welcome to the Flint Regional Science Fair! We look forward to seeing you at the Fair in March.
Taking part in a science fair is fun, educational, and rewarding. This part of our web site provides information and links that can help you get started, conduct your research and enter the Flint Regional Science Fair.
The FASF is held every Spring. This means you should begin planning in the Fall and Winter prior to the Fair to ensure you pick a good research topic, and have plenty of time to do a good job and present a quality project.
Parents, teachers, and mentors are important helpers to identify projects, collect the resources required for your project, and track your progress. Ask your parents and your teachers for assistance. They are your best bet for one-on-one direction and support in your Science Fair experience.
Elementary Division and Junior Division projects follow simpler rules than Senior Division projects.
More Web Student Science Resources
Questions? Email [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:6cd796d0-6c60-4c49-88fe-b887ea27aa1d> | http://www.flintsciencefair.org/students.php |
Linn, Amy. Illuminating News: What You Don't Know About Lightning Might
Come As Shock. Providence Sunday Journal. August 21, 1988.
Abstract: This article explains some common misconceptions about
lightning. For example, one misconception is that lightning never strikes
the same place twice. This is untrue. Once lightning discovers an easy target
it will likely strike again. The article also provides important safety
precautions. The safest place during a thunderstorm is inside a house away
from windows or inside a closed car. | <urn:uuid:2069c051-8762-4c3d-a0d3-651a55fe3924> | http://www.interfire.org/res_file/fseab_in.asp |
Problems of Philosophy
Chapter 5 - Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description
After distinguishing two types of knowledge, knowledge of things and knowledge of truths, Russell devotes this fifth chapter to an elucidation of knowledge of things. He further distinguishes two types of knowledge of things, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. We have knowledge by acquaintance when we are directly aware of a thing, without any inference. We are immediately conscious and acquainted with a color or hardness of a table before us, our sense-data. Since acquaintance with things is logically independent from any knowledge of truths, we can be acquainted with something immediately without knowing any truth about it. I can know the color of a table "perfectly and completely when I see it" and not know any truth about the color in itself. The other type of knowledge of things is called knowledge by description. When we say we have knowledge of the table itself, a physical object, we refer to a kind of knowledge other than immediate, direct knowledge. "The physical object which causes such-and-such sense-data" is a phrase that describes the table by way of sense-data. We only have a description of the table. Knowledge by description is predicated on something with which we are acquainted, sense-data, and some knowledge of truths, like knowing that "such- and-such sense-data are caused by the physical object." Thus, knowledge by description allows us to infer knowledge about the actual world via the things that can be known to us, things with which we have direct acquaintance (our subjective sense-data).
According to this outline, knowledge by acquaintance forms the bedrock for all of our other knowledge. Sense-data is not the only instance of things with which we can be immediately acquainted. For how would we recall the past, Russell argues, if we could only know what was immediately present to our senses. Beyond sense-data, we also have "acquaintance by memory." Remembering what we were immediately aware of makes it so that we are still immediately aware of that past, perceived thing. We may therefore access many past things with the same requisite immediacy. Beyond sense-data and memories, we possess "acquaintance by introspection." When we are aware of an awareness, like in the case of hunger, "my desiring food" becomes an object of acquaintance. Introspective acquaintance is a kind of acquaintance with our own minds that may be understood as self-consciousness. However, this self-consciousness is really more like a consciousness of a feeling or a particular thought; the awareness rarely includes the explicit use of "I," which would identify the Self as a subject. Russell abandons this strand of knowledge, knowledge of the Self, as a probable but unclear dimension of acquaintance.
Russell summarizes our acquaintance with things as follows: "We have acquaintance in sensation with the data of the outer senses, and in introspection with the data of what may be called the inner sense—thoughts, feelings, desires, etc.; we have acquaintance in memory with things which have been data either of the outer senses or of the inner sense. Further, it is probable, though not certain, that we have acquaintance with Self, as that which is aware of things or has desires towards things." All these objects of acquaintance are particulars, concrete, existing things. Russell cautions that we can also have acquaintance with abstract, general ideas called universals. He addresses universals more fully later in chapter 9.
Russell allocates the rest of the chapter to explaining how the complicated theory of knowledge by description actually works. The most conspicuous things that are known to us by description are physical objects and other people's minds. We approach a case of having knowledge by description when we know "that there is an object answering to a definite description, though we are not acquainted with any such object." Russell offers several illustrations in the service of understanding knowledge by description. He claims that it is important to understand this kind of knowledge because our language uses depends so heavily on it. When we say common words or proper names, we are really relying on the meanings implicit in descriptive knowledge. The thought connoted by the use of a proper name can only really be explicitly expressed through a description or proposition.
Bismarck, or "the first Chancellor of the German Empire," is Russell's most cogent example. Imagine that there is a proposition, or statement, made about Bismarck. If Bismarck is the speaker, admitting that he has a kind of direct acquaintance with his own self, Bismarck might have voiced his name in order to make a self-referential judgment, of which his name is a constituent. In this simplest case, the "proper name has the direct use which it always wishes to have, as simply standing for a certain object, and not for a description of the object." If one of Bismarck's friends who knew him directly was the speaker of the statement, then we would say that the speaker had knowledge by description. The speaker is acquainted with sense-data which he infers corresponds with Bismarck's body. The body or physical object representing the mind is "only known as the body and the mind connected with these sense-data," which is the vital description. Since the sense-data corresponding to Bismarck change from moment to moment and with perspective, the speaker knows which various descriptions are valid.
Still more removed from direct acquaintance, imagine that someone like you or I comes along and makes a statement about Bismarck that is a description based on a "more or less vague mass of historical knowledge." We say that Bismarck was the "first Chancellor of the German Empire." In order to make a valid description applicable to the physical object, Bismarck's body, we must find a relation between some particular with which we have acquaintance and the physical object, the particular with which we wish to have an indirect acquaintance. We must make such a reference in order to secure a meaningful description.
To usefully distinguish particulars from universals, Russell posits the example of "the most long-lived of men," a description which wholly consists of universals. We assume that the description must apply to some man, but we have no way of inferring any judgment about him. Russell remarks, "all knowledge of truths, as we shall show, demands acquaintance with things which are of an essentially different character from sense-data, the things which are sometimes called 'abstract ideas', but which we shall call 'universals'." The description composed only of universals gives no knowledge by acquaintance with which we might anchor an inference about the longest-lived man. A further statement about Bismarck, like "The first Chancellor of the German Empire was an astute diplomatist," is a statement that contains particulars and asserts a judgment that we can only make in virtue of some acquaintance (like something heard or read).
Statements about things known by description function in our language as statements about the "actual thing described;" that is, we intend to refer to that thing. We intend to say something with the direct authority that only Bismarck himself could have when he makes a statement about himself, something with which he has direct acquaintance. Yet, there is a spectrum of removal from acquaintance with the relevant particulars: from Bismarck himself, "there is Bismarck to people who knew him; Bismarck to those who only know of him through history" and at a far end of the spectrum "the longest lived of men." At the latter end, we can only make propositions that are logically deducible from universals, and at the former end, we come as close as possible to direct acquaintance and can make many propositions identifying the actual object. It is now clear how knowledge gained by description is reducible to knowledge by acquaintance. Russell calls this observation his fundamental principle in the study of "propositions containing descriptions": "Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted."
Indirect knowledge of some particulars seems necessary if we are to expressively attach meanings to the words we commonly use. When we say something referring to Julius Caesar, we clearly have no direct acquaintance with the man. Rather, we are thinking of such descriptions as "the man who was assassinated on the Ides of March" or "the founder of the Roman Empire." Since we have no way of being directly acquainted with Julius Caesar, our knowledge by description allows us to gain knowledge of "things which we have never experienced." It allows us to overstep the boundaries of our private, immediate experiences and engage a public knowledge and public language.
This knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description theory was a famous epistemological problem-solver for Russell. Its innovative character allowed him to shift to his moderate realism, a realism ruled by a more definite categorization of objects. It is a theory of knowledge that considers our practice of language to be meaningful and worthy of detailed analysis. Russell contemplates how we construct a sense of meaning about objects remote from our experience. The realm of acquaintance offers the most secure references for our understanding of the world. Knowledge by description allows us to draw inferences from our realm of acquaintance but leaves us in a more vulnerable position. Since knowledge by description also depends on truths, we are prone to error about our descriptive knowledge if we are somehow mistaken about a proposition that we have taken to be true.
Critics of this theory have held that Russell's hypothesis of knowledge by description is confusing. His comments when defining sense-data, that the physical world is unknowable to us, contradict his theory of knowledge by descriptions. He implies that "knowledge by description" is not really a form of knowledge since we can only know those things with which we are acquainted and we cannot be acquainted with physical objects. Russell's theory amounts to the proposition that our acquaintance with mental objects appears related in a distant way to physical objects and renders us obliquely acquainted with the physical world. Sense-data are our subjective representations of the external world, and they negotiate this indirect contact.
While innovative, Russell's theory of knowledge by description is not an attractive theory of knowledge. It is clearly unappealing because our impressions of the real world, on his view, are commensurate with muddy representations of reality. Though we have direct access to these representations, it seems impossible to have any kind of direct experience of reality. Reality, rather, consists in unconscious, inferential pieces of reasoning.
Readers' Notes allow users to add their own analysis and insights to our SparkNotes—and to discuss those ideas with one another. Have a novel take or think we left something out? Add a Readers' Note! | <urn:uuid:0abbeab1-fafa-4389-9f7e-7573eb693c9e> | http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/problems/section5.rhtml |
What are managed lanes?
Highway facilities or a set of lanes where operational strategies are proactively implemented and managed in response to changing conditions.
Transportation agencies are faced with growing challenges of congestion and a limited ability to expand freeway capacity due to construction costs, right-of-way constraints, and environmental and societal impacts. Transportation officials are taking advantage of opportunities to address mobility needs and provide travel options through a combination of limited capacity expansion coupled with operational strategies that seek to manage travel demand and improve transit and other forms of ridesharing. The managed lanes concept is gaining interest around the country as an approach that combines these elements to make the most effective and efficient use of a freeway facility.
The distinction between managed lanes and other traditional forms of freeway lane management is the operating philosophy of "active management." Under this philosophy, the operating agency proactively manages demand and available capacity on the facility by applying new strategies or modifying existing strategies. The agency defines from the outset the operating objectives for the managed lanes and the kinds of actions that will be taken once pre-defined performance thresholds are met.
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United States Department of Transportation - Federal Highway Administration | <urn:uuid:a2bf4085-1745-4ba3-afd8-5a46d9ad2a75> | http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freewaymgmt/managed_lanes.htm |
Dengue Fever in India
04 March 2013
Dengue fever is a growing concern in India. In 2012, 247 deaths were recorded as a result of dengue fever nationwide.
Latest data on disease prevalence released by the Health Ministry shows a significant rise in the incidence of dengue fever from 18 860 cases in 2011, to 49 606 in year 2012.
Around 1700 dengue cases were reported from Delhi in 2012.
Advice for Travellers
India is a popular tourist destination and travellers should be aware of the risk of dengue fever. Avoidance of mosquito bites, particularly during daylight hours, by covering up with clothing, the use of bite avoidance measures such as repellent and bed nets is advised. Elimination of breeding sites around hotel rooms/houses is advised for longer term stays. | <urn:uuid:cec56b3f-1f86-4cf0-8456-717120369364> | http://www.fitfortravel.scot.nhs.uk/news/newsdetail/3908.aspx |
Intellectual knowledge appears to be innate and privy to the few, but in fact, access to information, development of intellectual work skills, time investment, and the maintenance of intellectual appearances are key to being perceived as an intellectual.
To make education more equitable, professors must go beyond knowledge transmission and instruct students in the concrete skills of knowledge acquisition and knowledge presentation. Instruction in intellectual skills-acquisition implies the breakdown of the traditional professor-student relationship and of the academic intellectual hierarchy and professors must learn to cope with the consequences of adopting new pedagogies. If we wish to share the secrets of our professions, how do we prepare our students for such a democratic approach and at the same time maintain our professional status?
The author, a professor of Spanish language and literature, presents strategies for democratizing education and demystifying intellectual work through the application of skills-based pedagogical methodologies to the teaching of literature. The implications that these strategies have for a new type of learning and the impact that they have on social stratification will also be discussed.
|Keywords:||Democratizing Education, Demystifying Intellectual Work, Knowledge Acquisition Skills, Interpretative Skills, Teaching Literature, Skills Based Teaching|
Assistant Professor of Spanish, Department of Literature and Languages, Roosevelt University, Chicago, Illinois, USA
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(Phys.org)—Controlling "mixing" between acceptor and donor layers, or domains, in polymer-based solar cells could increase their efficiency, according to a team of researchers that included physicists from North Carolina State University. Their findings shed light on the inner workings of these solar cells, and could lead to further improvements in efficiency.
Polymer-based solar cells consist of two domains, known as the acceptor and the donor layers. Excitons, the energy particles created by solar cells, must be able to travel quickly to the interface of the donor and acceptor domains in order to be harnessed as an energy source. Researchers had believed that keeping the donor and acceptor layers as pure as possible was the best way to ensure that the excitons could travel unimpeded, so that solar cells could capture the maximum amount of energy.
NC State physicist Harald Ade and his group worked with teams of scientists from the United Kingdom, Australia and China to examine the physical structure and improve the production of polymer-based solar cells. In findings published in two separate papers appearing this month online in Advanced Energy Materials and Advanced Materials, the researchers show that some mixing of the two domains may not be a bad thing. In fact, if the morphology, or structure, of the mixed domains is small, the solar cell can still be quite efficient.
According to Ade, "We had previously found that the domains in these solar cells weren't pure. So we looked at how additives affected the production of these cells. When you manufacture the cell, the relative rate of evaporation of the solvents and additives determines how the active layer forms and the donor and acceptor mix. Ideally, you want the solvent to evaporate slowly enough so that the materials have time to separate – otherwise the layers 'gum up' and lower the cell's efficiency. We utilized an additive that slowed evaporation. This controlled the mixing and domain size of the active layer, and the portions that mixed were small."
The efficiency of those mixed layers was excellent, leading to speculation that perhaps some mixing of the donor and acceptor isn't a problem, as long as the domains are small.
"We're looking for the perfect mix here, both in terms of the solvents and additives we might use in order to manufacture polymer-based solar cells, and in terms of the physical mixing of the domains and how that may affect efficiency," Ade says.
Explore further: Femtosecond 'snapshots' reveal a dramatic bond tightening in photo-excited gold complexes
More information: "From Binary to Ternary Solvent: Morphology Fine-tuning of D/A Blend in PDPP3T-based Polymer Solar Cells", Advanced Materials, 2012.
In the past decade, great success has been achieved in bulk hetero-junction (BHJ) polymer solar cells (PSCs) in which donor/acceptor (D/A) bi-continuous interpenetrating networks can be formed and in some recent reports, power conversion efficiency (PCE) even approach 8%. In addition to the intrinsic properties of active layer materials, such as band gaps and molecular energy levels, morphological properties of the D/A blends including crystallinity of polymers, domain size, materials miscibility, hierarchical structures, and molecular orientation, are also of great importance for photovoltaic performance of the devices. Therefore, several strategies including slow growth, solvent annealing, thermal annealing, selection of solvent or mixed solvent have been applied to modify or control of the morphology of the D/A blends. Among these, binary solvent mixtures have been successfully used in morphology control. For example, the dichlorobenzene (DCB) or chlorobenzene (CB)/1, 8-diiodooctane (DIO) binary solvent system has been widely applied in PSC device fabrication process. By mixing a few volume percent of DIO with the host solvent (DCB or CB), efficiencies of many kinds of polymers can be improved dramatically. Besides DIO, other solvents, like 1, 8-octanedithiol (OT), N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), 1-chloronaphthalene (CN), chloroform (CF), can also be used. According to these works, it can be concluded that crystallinity, as well as domain size in the blends can be tuned effectively by using binary solvent mixtures, and thus binary solvent mixtures play a very important role in high performance PSCs. | <urn:uuid:cb5db99f-40e4-45b6-9b59-e96df82a88dc> | http://phys.org/news/2012-10-reveal-solvent-mixtures-affect-solar.html |
Heel Bursitis is another type of heel pain. The sufferer of this kind of heel pain experiences pain at the back of the heel when the patient moves his joint of the ankle. In the heel bursitis type of heel pain there is swelling on the sides of the Achilles’ tendon. In this condition the sufferer may experience pain in the heel when his feet hit the ground. Heel bruises are also referred as heel bumps they are usually caused by improper shoes. The constant rubbing of the shoes against the heel.
What is bursitis?
Bursitis is the inflammation of a bursa. Normally, the bursa provides a slippery surface that has almost no friction. A problem arises when a bursa becomes inflamed. The bursa loses its gliding capabilities, and becomes more and more irritated when it is moved.
When the condition called bursitis occurs, the normally slippery bursa becomes swollen and inflamed. The added bulk of the swollen bursa causes more friction within an already confined space. Also, the smooth gliding bursa becomes gritty and rough. Movement of an inflamed bursa is painful and irritating.
“Itis” usually refers to the inflammation of a certain part of the body, therefore Bursitis refers to the constant irritation of the natural cushion that supports the heel of the foot (the bursa). Bursitis is often associated with Plantar Fasciitis, which affects the arch and heel of the foot.
What causes bursitis?
- Bursitis and Plantar Fasciitis can occur when a person increases their levels of physical activity or when the heel’s fat pad becomes thinner, providing less protection to the foot.
- Ill fitting shoes.
- Biomechanical problems (e.g. mal-alignment of the foot, including over-pronation).
- Rheumatoid arthritis.
Bursitis usually results from a repetitive movement or due to prolonged and excessive pressure. Patients who rest on their elbows for long periods or those who bend their elbows frequently and repetitively (for example, a custodian using a vacuum for hours at a time) can develop elbow bursitis, also called olecranon bursitis. Similarly in other parts of the body, repetitive use or frequent pressure can irritate a bursa and cause inflammation.
Another cause of bursitis is a traumatic injury. Following trauma, such as a car accident or fall, a patient may develop bursitis. Usually a contusion causes swelling within the bursa. The bursa, which had functioned normally up until that point, now begins to develop inflammation, and bursitis results. Once the bursa is inflamed, normal movements and activities can become painful.
Systemic inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, may also lead to bursitis. These types of conditions can make patients susceptible to developing bursitis.
- Cold presses or ice packs.
- Anti-inflammatory tablets.
- Cushioning products.
- Massaging the foot / muscle stimulation.
- Stretching exercises.
- Insoles or orthotics. | <urn:uuid:76a4c6bc-e63f-4d77-8492-c24be187795c> | http://sugarlandheelpain.com/?page_id=78 |
EVEN a material 10 billion times as strong as steel has a breaking point. It seems neutron stars may shatter under extreme forces, explaining puzzling X-ray flares.
Neutron stars are dense remnants of stars gone supernova, packing the mass of the sun into a sphere the size of a city. Their cores may be fluid, but their outer surfaces are solid and extremely tough - making graphene, the strongest material on Earth, look like tissue paper by comparison.
These shells may shatter, though, in the final few seconds before a pair of neutron stars merges to form a black hole - a union thought to generate explosions known as short gamma-ray bursts.
David Tsang of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and colleagues have calculated how the mutual gravitational pull of such stars will distort their shape, creating moving tidal bulges. As the stars spiral towards each other, orbiting ever faster, they squeeze and stretch each other ever faster too.
A few seconds before the stars merge, the frequency of this squeezing and stretching matches the frequency at which one of the stars vibrates most easily. This creates a resonance that boosts the vibrations dramatically, causing the star's crust to crack in many places - just as a wine glass may shatter when a certain note is sung, the team says (Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.108.011102).
The star's gravity is too powerful to let the pieces fly away, but the sudden movement can disturb its magnetic field, accelerating electrons and leading to a powerful X-ray flare. That could explain observations by NASA's Swift satellite in which a blast of X-rays preceded some short gamma-ray bursts by a few seconds.
Combining observations of X-ray flares with those of gravitational waves emitted by the stars as they spiral together could fix the exact frequency at which the shattering occurs, which would reveal more about the stars' mysterious interiors, says Tsang.
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When he shot President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth was 26 years old, and one of the nation’s most famous actors. (Charles DeForest Fredericks/National Portrait Gallery)
John Wilkes Booth, a Maryland native, spent the war performing in theatrical productions. But the conflict was never far from his mind. In a letter to his mother, he expressed chagrin that he hadn’t joined the Confederate army, writing, “I have … begun to deem myself a coward, and to despise my own existence.” He was outraged by the reelection of Lincoln, whom he viewed as the instigator of all the country’s woes. The month after the inauguration, Booth learned that Lincoln would be attending a performance at Ford’s Theatre on April 14. That night, he crept into Lincoln’s theater box and shot him in the back of the head. It was the first time a president had been murdered. “Wanted” posters were issued for Booth, and on April 26, he was cornered in a tobacco barn and shot by a federal sergeant, acting against orders to bring him in alive.
Several months later, Charles Creighton Hazewell, a frequent contributor, sought to make sense of the assassination—speculating that the plot may have been hatched in Canada (where a number of secessionist schemes had originated) and hinting at evidence that the plan had been endorsed at the highest levels of the Confederate government.—Sage Stossel
The assassination of President Lincoln threw a whole nation into mourning … Of all our Presidents since Washington, Mr. Lincoln had excited the smallest amount of that feeling which places its object in personal danger. He was a man who made a singularly favorable impression on those who approached him, resembling in that respect President Jackson, who often made warm friends of bitter foes, when circumstances had forced them to seek his presence; and it is probable, that, if he and the honest chiefs of the Rebels could have been brought face to face, there never would have been civil war,—at least, any contest of grand proportions; for he would not have failed to convince them that all that they had any right to claim, and therefore all that they could expect their fellow-citizens to fight for, would be more secure under his government than it had been under the governments of such men as Pierce and Buchanan, who made use of sectionalism and slavery to promote the selfish interests of themselves and their party … Ignorance was the parent of the civil war, as it has been the parent of many other evils,—ignorance of the character and purpose of the man who was chosen President in 1860–61, and who entered upon official life with less animosity toward his opponents than ever before or since had been felt by a man elected to a great place after a bitter and exciting contest …
That one of the most insignificant of [the secessionists’] number should have murdered the man whose election they declared to be cause for war is nothing strange, being in perfect keeping with their whole course. The wretch who shot the chief magistrate of the Republic is of hardly more account than was the weapon which he used. The real murderers of Mr. Lincoln are the men whose action brought about the civil war. Booth’s deed was a logical proceeding, following strictly from the principles avowed by the Rebels, and in harmony with their course during the last five years. The fall of a public man by the hand of an assassin always affects the mind more strongly than it is affected by the fall of thousands of men in battle; but in strictness, Booth, vile as his deed was, can be held to have been no worse, morally, than was that old gentleman who insisted upon being allowed the privilege of firing the first shot at Fort Sumter. Ruffin’s act is not so disgusting as Booth’s; but of the two men, Booth exhibited the greater courage,—courage of the basest kind, indeed, but sure to be attended with the heaviest risks, as the hand of every man would be directed against its exhibitor. Had the Rebels succeeded, Ruffin would have been honored by his fellows; but even a successful Southern Confederacy would have been too hot a country for the abode of a wilful murderer. Such a man would have been no more pleasantly situated even in South Carolina than was Benedict Arnold in England. And as he chose to become an assassin after the event of the war had been decided, and when his victim was bent upon sparing Southern feeling so far as it could be spared without injustice being done to the country, Booth must have expected to find his act condemned by every rational Southern man as a worse than useless crime, as a blunder of the very first magnitude. Had he succeeded in getting abroad, Secession exiles would have shunned him, and have treated him as one who had brought an ineffaceable stain on their cause, and also had rendered their restoration to their homes impossible. The pistol-shot of Sergeant Corbett saved him from the gallows, and it saved him also from the denunciations of the men whom he thought to serve. He exhibited, therefore, a species of courage that is by no means common; for he not only risked his life, and rendered it impossible for honorable men to sympathize with him, but he ran the hazard of being denounced and cast off by his own party … All Secessionists who retain any self-respect must rejoice that one whose doings brought additional ignominy on a cause that could not well bear it has passed away and gone to his account. It would have been more satisfactory to loyal men, if he had been reserved for the gallows; but even they must admit that it is a terrible trial to any people who get possession of an odious criminal, because they may be led so to act as to disgrace themselves, and to turn sympathy in the direction of the evil-doer … Therefore the shot of Sergeant Corbett is not to be regretted, save that it gave too honorable a form of death to one who had earned all that there is of disgraceful in that mode of dying to which a peculiar stigma is attached by the common consent of mankind.
Whether Booth was the agent of a band of conspirators, or was one of a few vile men who sought an odious immortality, it is impossible to say. We have the authority of a high Government official for the statement that “the President’s murder was organized in Canada and approved at Richmond”; but the evidence in support of this extraordinary announcement is, doubtless for the best of reasons, withheld at the time we write. There is nothing improbable in the supposition that the assassination plot was formed in Canada, as some of the vilest miscreants of the Secession side have been allowed to live in that country … But it is not probable that British subjects had anything to do with any conspiracy of this kind. The Canadian error was in allowing the scum of Secession to abuse the “right of hospitality” through the pursuit of hostile action against us from the territory of a neutral …
That a plan to murder President Lincoln should have been approved at Richmond is nothing strange; and though such approval would have been supremely foolish, what but supreme folly is the chief characteristic of the whole Southern movement? If the seal of Richmond’s approval was placed on a plan formed in Canada, something more than the murder of Mr. Lincoln was intended. It must have been meant to kill every man who could legally take his place, either as President or as President pro tempore. The only persons who had any title to step into the Presidency on Mr. Lincoln’s death were Mr. Johnson, who became President on the 15th of April, and Mr. Foster, one of the Connecticut Senators, who is President of the Senate … It does not appear that any attempt was made on the life of Mr. Foster, though Mr. Johnson was on the list of those doomed by the assassins; and the savage attack made on Mr. Seward shows what those assassins were capable of. But had all the members of the Administration been struck down at the same time, it is not at all probable that “anarchy” would have been the effect, though to produce that must have been the object aimed at by the conspirators. Anarchy is not so easily brought about as persons of an anarchical turn of mind suppose. The training we have gone through since the close of 1860 has fitted us to bear many rude assaults on order without our becoming disorderly. Our conviction is, that, if every man who held high office at Washington had been killed on the 14th of April, things would have gone pretty much as we have seen them go, and that thus the American people would have vindicated their right to be considered a self-governing race. It would not be a very flattering thought, that the peace of the country is at the command of any dozen of hardened ruffians who should have the capacity to form an assassination plot, the discretion to keep silent respecting their purpose, and the boldness and the skill requisite to carry it out to its most minute details: for the neglect of one of those details might be fatal to the whole project. Society does not exist in such peril as that.
john wilkes booth, a Maryland native, spent the war performing in theatrical productions. But the conflict was never far from his mind. In a letter to his mother, he expressed chagrin that he hadn’t joined the Confederate army, writing, “I have … begun to deem myself a coward, and to despise my own existence.” He was outraged by the reelection of Lincoln, whom he viewed as the instigator of all the country’s woes.
The month after the inauguration, Booth learned that Lincoln would be attending a performance at Ford’s Theatre on April 14. That night, he crept into Lincoln’s theater box and shot him in the back of the head. It was the first time a president had been murdered. “Wanted” posters were issued for Booth, and on April 26, he was cornered in a tobacco barn and shot by a federal sergeant, who acted against orders to bring him in alive.
Several months later, Charles Creighton Hazewell, a frequent Atlantic contributor, sought to make sense of the assassination—speculating that the plot may have been hatched in Canada (where a number of secessionist schemes had originated) and hinting at evidence that the plan had been endorsed at the highest levels of the Confederate government.
Read the full text of this article here.
This article available online at: | <urn:uuid:b48891ec-4670-49b3-85a7-ec1a2ad95bf5> | http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2012/02/assassination/308804/ |
On January 9th, citizens living in southern Sudan will vote on a referendum to secede from the northern part of the country. A clock in the town of Juba, the political center of southern Sudan, counts down to this referendum, symbolical of the locals’ excitement to part from the hegemonic north. Nearby, the Darfur genocide crisis that continues to plague the area is not an isolated event. It’s all related, part of two brutal civil wars that have been for decades tearing the nation apart; as of late, literally.
Sudan has traditionally been seen by many as the bridge between the Arab and the African worlds—one not particularly easy to cross. The north and the south of Sudan are just about as culturally and religiously different from each other as you could possibly imagine. In the north, Arab culture dominates, and the majority religion is Islam. In the south, the predominant culture is more traditionally sub-Saharan African, and the primary religions are animist belief systems and Christianity. Ever since the country gained independence from Britain in 1956, the cultural and religious systems of the north have been heavily imposed on the whole of Sudan, resulting in southern resistance and the ongoing strife.
In particular, this imposition of a differing set of beliefs can in large part be attributed to the current Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir. Al-Bashir arose to power in 1989 through a bloodless coup, and this past April, won the first ostensibly democratic election the nation has held in 24 years. I hesitate to call the election democratic because many believe that al-Bashir, who is notorious for his corruption, rigged it in his favor. While there is no proof, it is generally not unsafe to consider that leaders who are in power through a coup have significant sway in any following elections. Whether he is rightfully in power or not, al-Bashir has imposed northern ideals throughout the whole nation, a primary cause of the Sudanese civil wars. Many attribute the Darfur genocide, just a single episode of the extensive bloodshed since Sudan’s independence, to al-Bashir. Because of these accusations, he is currently on trial for war crimes, the only current head of state in such a predicament. To drive home his impositional tendencies further, al-Bashir has said that if the south secedes, he will impose Shari’a in the north, in an effort to make northern Sudan officially an Islamic state.
My first response to this situation was wondering: How did two peoples so immensely different from one another end up together in the first place? This is not the same as the American Civil War, where regional differences led to ideological differences, which in turn led to secession. In the Sudanese case, ideological and cultural differences existed long before the country gained independence. Thus, one should look to colonialism as the primary cause of Sudan’s problems. It seems to me that Sudan’s independence process was dangerously arbitrary; occurring at the time of mass European decolonization in Africa. It’s as if Britain backed out of the region and drew a national border at random. And now, after over half a century, the people want that to change.
Despite the referendum on schedule for next month, the potential new border still has not been set. Money, of course, is a factor. Sudan is one of the most oil-rich nations of Africa, but most of the country’s oil is found in the south. On the one hand, the north might not want to draw a new boundary where the south gets all of the resource wealth, a potential cause for even more strife. On the other hand, some see oil as a potential area that could keep the two sides friendly if they do end up splitting. Mutual desire for the oil wealth may bring the two sides together diplomatically if the split ends up happening peacefully.
As you can see, this situation is extremely complex, far more so than the south simply saying “we want to secede” and secession then happening. To better understand the context, one needs to consider the past, but one should also consider the future: what will happen if the current nation of Sudan does in fact split? I am wondering particularly about those who have their roots in the south but live in the north. Since the referendum was announced, many of these people have moved back to the south, but a fair number still remain in the north. What will happen to these primarily non-Muslim people (and Muslims alike) if the north does in fact impose Shari’a on al-Bashir’s whim? Al-Bashir will go from an imposer of northern Arab and Islamic values to being completely intolerant of this significant minority in his newly allotted half of Sudan, and the results would be tragic.
What message would a Sudanese split portray to the rest of Africa, the rest of the world? The African Union fears that a Sudanese split would incite other secessionists around the continent. Other nations undergoing similar domestic, regional conflicts of interest may feel not only that they have a right to secede, but may even feel encouraged to do so. Is this kind of outright division the right answer to such a complicated historical struggle?
Is there even a right answer? Experts seem to agree that the nation will inevitably split. Whether this bifurcation happens via a timely, democratic, and peaceful referendum or through continuing bloodshed is a matter that only time will tell. I will certainly be following this issue in the coming weeks, and I wrote this article before the scheduled referendum in the hope to spark more interest on the issue. I urge you to follow it in the news; the results affect a much wider area than simply Sudan.
Stay tuned for my next column, where I will compare and contrast two leaders in South America on opposite sides of the political spectrum and compare their respective political systems to that of the United States.
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- When One Nation Becomes Two - December 31, 2010 | <urn:uuid:775f924c-1e42-4c9d-96ef-70a47ee35ac0> | http://www.wupr.org/2010/12/31/when-one-nation-becomes-two/ |
Hanukkah begins this year on December 1st, at sundown. Be honest. When I say “Hanukkah,” the first thing you think of is the Adam Sandler song, talking about “eight crazy nights.” If you are a little more connected to Jewish culture, you may also think about a dreidel or potato latkes (pancakes). While it’s commonly called the “Festival of Lights,” a better translation is “Dedication.” Being Jewish (circumcised at 8 days, Bar Mitzvah at age 13) and a Christ-follower (for over 15 years), I’d like to give a brief explanation of this holiday, and why it’s a meaningful opportunity to help me worship the Lord.
Here’s the story of Hanukkah: In the 2nd century BC, Antiochus Epiphanes gained control over parts of the Middle East, including Judea (Israel). He erected an altar to Zeus in the Temple in Jerusalem, and sacrificed pigs there, which are unclean to Jews. The Maccabee family led a revolt, finally liberating Jerusalem and the Temple in 165 BC. Before God could be properly worshiped in the Temple, it had to be cleaned and dedicated. The menorah (lamp) had to burn continuously for 8 days for the purification process. Despite there only being enough olive oil for one day, the oil miraculously lasted for 8 days and nights. That is why Hanukkah is celebrated for 8 nights.
Most people consider this miracle to be the end in itself, and I think the bigger meaning is missed. The point isn’t just that God did a miracle, but that the miracle was the means to allow Him to be properly worshiped. The Temple needed to be purified in order for Yahweh to be worshiped, but it couldn’t be purified unless He worked a miracle. God worked a miracle so that His people could be near Him in worship.
Let us not miss that meaning, as we celebrate the Advent of Jesus Christ, the Light of the world (John 8:12). I don’t think we need merely to reflect on the birth of Jesus, but we need to consider why the Father sent His Son. God performed a miracle (the Incarnation) not as an end to itself, but as a means to allow us to be near Him in worship (through Christ’s redemptive sacrifice for our sins). Jesus did not come only to be marveled at as a baby, but to pour out His life and blood, to open the way for a new covenant with Him. | <urn:uuid:e7cb4707-ca52-448e-b78d-9bafd1458d65> | http://differentway4kids.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html |
by Piter Kehoma Boll
Let’s expand the universe of Friday Fellow by presenting a plant for the first time! And what could be a better choice to start than the famous Grandidier’s Baobab? Belonging to the species Adansonia grandidieri, this tree is one of the trademarks of Madagascar, being the biggest species of this genus found in the island.
Reaching up to 30 m in height and having a massive trunk only branched at the very top, it has a unique look and is found only at southwestern Madagascar. However, despite being so attractive and famous, it is classified as an endangered species by IUCN Red List, with a declining population threatened by agriculture expansion.
This tree is also heavily exploited, having vitamin C-rich fruits which can be consumed fresh and seeds used to extract oil. Its bark can also be used to make ropes and many trees are found with scars due to the extraction of part of the bark.
Having a fibrous trunk, baoabs are able to deal with drought by apparently storaging water inside them. There are no seed dispersors, which can be due to the extiction of the original dispersor by human activities.
Originally occuring close to temporary water bodies in the dry deciduous forest, today many large trees are found in always dry terrains. This probably is due to human impact that changed the local ecosystem, letting it to become drier than it was. Those areas have no or very poor ability to regenerate and probably will never go back to what they were and, once the old trees die, there will be no more baobabs there.
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Baum, D. A. (1995). A Systematic Revision of Adansonia (Bombacaceae) Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 82, 440-470 DOI: 10.2307/2399893
Wikipedia. Adamsonia grandidieri. Available online at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adansonia_grandidieri>. Access on October 02, 2012.
World Conservation Monitoring Centre 1998. Adansonia grandidieri. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.1. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Access on October 02, 2012. | <urn:uuid:10459212-d96b-47fa-9ead-4447c5ba731f> | http://earthlingnature.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/friday-fellow-grandidiers-baobab/ |
Ki Tisa (Mitzvot)
For more teachings on this portion, see the archives to this blog, below at March 2006.
This week’s parasha is best known for the dramatic and richly meaningful story of the Golden Calf and the Divine anger, of Moses’ pleading on behalf of Israel, and the eventual reconciliation in the mysterious meeting of Moses with God in the Cleft of the Rock—subjects about which I’ve written at length, from various aspects, in previous years. Yet the first third of the reading (Exod 30:11-31:17) is concerned with various practical mitzvot, mostly focused on the ritual worship conducted in the Temple, which tend to be skimmed over in light of the intense interest of the Calf story. As this year we are concerned specifically with the mitzvot in each parasha, I shall focus on this section.
These include: the giving by each Israelite [male] of a half-shekel to the Temple; the making of the laver, from which the priests wash their hands and feet before engaging in Divine service; the compounding of the incense and of the anointing oil; and the Shabbat. I shall focus here upon the washing of the hands.
Hand-washing is a familiar Jewish ritual: it is, in fact, the first act performed by pious Jews upon awakening in the morning (some people even keep a cup of water next to their beds, so that they may wash their hands before taking even a single step); one performs a ritual washing of the hands before eating bread; before each of the daily prayers; etc. The section here dealing with the laver in the Temple (Exod 30:17-21) is also one of the four portions from the Torah recited by many each morning, as part of the section of the liturgy known as korbanot, chapters of Written and Oral Torah reminiscent of the ancient sacrificial system, that precede Pesukei de-Zimra.
Sefer ha-Hinukh, at §106, explains the washing of hands as an offshoot of the honor due to the Temple and its service—one of many laws intended to honor, magnify, and glorify the Temple. Even if the priest was pure and clean, he must wash (literally, “sanctify”) his hands before engaging in avodah. This simple gesture of purification served as a kind of separation between the Divine service and everyday life. It added a feeling of solemnity, of seriousness, a sense that one was engaged in something higher, in some way separate from the mundane activities of regular life. (One hand-washing by kohanim, in the morning, was sufficient, unless they left the Temple grounds or otherwise lost the continuity of their sacred activity.) Our own netilat yadaim, whether before prayer or breaking bread, may be seen as a kind of halakhic carryover from the Temple service, albeit on the level of Rabbinic injunction.
What is the symbolism of purifying one’s hands? Water, as a flowing element, as a solvent that washes away many of the things with which it comes in contact, is at once a natural symbol of both purity, and of the renewal of life. Mayim Hayyim—living waters—is an age old association. Torah is compared to water; water, constantly flowing, is constantly returning to its source. At the End of Days, “the land will be filled with knowledge of the Lord, like waters going down to the sea.” A small part of this is hinted in this simple, everyday gesture.
“See that this nation is Your people”
But I cannot pass over Ki Tisa without some comment on the incident of the Golden Calf and its ramifications. This week, reading through the words of the parasha in preparation for a shiur (what Ruth Calderon, founder of Alma, a secularist-oriented center for the study of Judaism in Tel Aviv, called “barefoot reading”—that is, naïve, without preconceptions), I discovered something utterly simple that I had never noticed before in quite the same way.
At the beginning of the Calf incident, God tells Moses, who has been up on the mountain with Him, “Go down, for your people have spoiled” (32:7). A few verses later, when God asks leave of Moses (!) to destroy them, Moses begs for mercy on behalf of the people with the words “Why should Your anger burn so fiercely against Your people…” (v. 11). That is, God calls them Moses’ people, while Moses refers to them as God’s people. Subsequent to this exchange, each of them refers to them repeatedly in the third person, as “the people” or “this people” (העם; העם הזה). Neither of them refers to them, as God did in the initial revelation to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:7 and passim) as “my people,” or with the dignified title, “the children of Israel”—as if both felt a certain alienation, of distance from this tumultuous, capricious bunch. Only towards the end, after God agrees not to destroy them, but still states “I will not go up with them,” but instead promises to send an angel, does Moses says “See, that this nation is Your people” (וראה כי עמך הגוי הזה; 33:13).
What does all this signify? Reading the peshat carefully, there is one inevitable conclusion: that God wished to nullify His covenant with the people Israel. It is in this that there lies the true gravity, and uniqueness, of the Golden Calf incident. We are not speaking here, as we read elsewhere in the Bible—for example, in the two great Imprecations (tokhahot) in Lev 26 and Deut 28, or in the words of the prophets during the First Temple—merely of threats of punishment, however harsh, such as drought, famine, pestilence, enemy attacks, or even exile and slavery. There, the implicit message is that, after a period of punishment, a kind of moral purgation through suffering, things will be restored as they were. Here, the very covenant itself, the very existence of an intimate connection with God, hangs in the balance. God tells Moses, “I shall make of you a people,” i.e., instead of them.
This, it seems to me, is the point of the second phase of this story. Moses breaks the tablets; he and his fellow Levites go through the camp killing all those most directly implicated in worshipping the Calf; God recants and agrees not to destroy the people. However, “My angel will go before them” but “I will not go up in your midst” (33:2, 3). This should have been of some comfort; yet this tiding is called “this bad thing,” the people mourn, and remove the ornaments they had been wearing until then. Evidently, they understood the absence of God’s presence or “face” as a grave step; His being with them was everything. That is the true importance of the Sanctuary in the desert and the Tent of Meeting, where Moses speaks with God in the pillar of cloud (33:10). God was present with them there in a tangible way, in a certain way continuing the epiphany at Sinai. All that was threatened by this new declaration.
Moses second round of appeals to God, in Exod 33:12-23, focuses on bringing God, as it were, to a full reconciliation with the people. This is the significance of the Thirteen Qualities of Mercy, of what I have called the Covenant in the Cleft of the Rock, the “faith of Yom Kippur” as opposed to that of Shavuot (see HY I: Ki Tisa; and note Prof. Jacob Milgrom’s observation that this chapter stands in the exact center, in a literary sense, of the unit known as the Hextateuch—Torah plus the Book of Joshua).
But I would add two important points. One, that this is the first place in the Torah where we read about sin followed by reconciliation. After Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Garden, they were punished without hope of reprieve; indeed, their “punishment “ reads very much like a description of some basic aspects of the human condition itself. Cain, after murdering Abel, was banished, made to wander the face of the earth. The sin of the brothers in selling Joseph, and their own sense of guilt, is a central factor in their family dynamic from then on, but there is nary a word of God’s response or intervention. It would appear that God’s initial expectation in the covenant at Sinai was one of total loyalty and fidelity. The act of idolatry was an unforgivable breach of the covenant—much as adultery is generally perceived as a fundamental violation of the marital bond.
Moses, in persuading God to recant of His jealousy and anger, to give the faithless people another chance, is thus introducing a new concept: of a covenant that includes the possibility of even the most serious transgressions being forgiven; of the knowledge that human beings are fallible, and that teshuvah and forgiveness are essential components of any economy of men living before a demanding God.
The second, truly astonishing point is the role played by Moses in all this. Moshe Rabbenu, “the man of God,” is not only the great teacher of Israel, the channel through which they learn the Divine Torah, but also, as it were, one who teaches God Himself. It is God who “reveals His Qualities of Mercy” at the Cleft of the Rock; but without Moses cajoling, arguing, persuading (and note the numerous midrashim around this theme), “were it not for my servant Moses who stood in the breach,” all this would not have happened. It was Moses who elicited this response and who, so to speak, pushed God Himself to this new stage in his relation with Israel—to give up His expectations of perfection from His covenanted people, and to understand that living within a covenant means, not rigid adherence to a set of laws, but a living relationship with real people, taking the bad with the good. (Again, the parallel to human relationships is obvious) | <urn:uuid:c4c19472-691a-44c6-a55b-21fbb183475b> | http://hitzeiyehonatan.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html |
“A remote Indian village is responding to global warming-induced water shortages by creating large masses of ice, or “artificial glaciers,” to get through the dry spring months. (See a map of the region.)
Located on the western edge of the Tibetan plateau, the village of Skara in the Ladakh region of India is not a common tourist destination.
“It’s beautiful, but really remote and difficult to get to,” said Amy Higgins, a graduate student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies who worked on the artificial glacier project.
“A lot of people, when I met them in Delhi and I said I was going to Ladakh, they looked at me like I was going to the moon,” said Higgins, who is also a National Geographic grantee.
People in Skara and surrounding villages survive by growing crops such as barley for their own consumption and for sale in neighboring towns. In the past, water for the crops came from meltwater originating in glaciers high in the Himalaya.”
Read more: National Geographic | <urn:uuid:5050ac83-4770-4e9c-9b44-38ba46d2466e> | http://peakwater.org/2012/02/artificial-glaciers-water-crops-in-indian-highlands/ |
America's oil and natural gas industry is committed to protecting the environment and to continuously improving its hurricane preparation and response plans. After any hurricane or tropical storm, the goal is to return to full operations as quickly and as safely as possible. For the 2012 hurricane season, the industry continues to build upon critical lessons learned from 2008's major hurricanes, Gustav and Ike, as well as other powerful storms, such as 2005's Katrina and Rita and 2004's Ivan.
API plays two primary roles for the industry in preparing for hurricanes. First, it helps the industry gain a better understanding of the environmental conditions in and around the Gulf of Mexico during hurricane or tropical storm activity and then assists industry in using that knowledge to make offshore and onshore facilities less vulnerable. Second, API collaborates with member companies, other industries and with federal, state and local governments to prepare for hurricanes and return operations as quickly and as safely as possible.
API member companies also independently work to improve preparedness for hurricanes and other natural or manmade disasters. They have, for example, reviewed and updated emergency response plans, established redundant communication paths and made pre-arrangements with suppliers to help ensure they have adequate resources during an emergency.
The API Subcommittee on Offshore Stuctures, the International Association of Drilling Contractors, and the Offshore Operators Committee, serve as a liaison to regulatory agencies, coordinate industry review of critical design standards and provide a forum for sharing lessons learned from previous hurricanes.
These combined efforts are critical since the Gulf of Mexico accounted for about 23 percent of the oil and 8 percent of total natural gas produced in the United States (approximately 82 percent of the oil supply comes from deepwater facilities), and the Gulf Coast region is home to almost half of the U.S. refining capacity.
Upstream (Exploration and Production)
During the major 2005 hurricanes, waves were higher and winds were stronger than anticipated in deeper parts of the Gulf so the industry moved away from viewing it as a uniform body of water. Evaluating the effects of those and other storms, helped scientists discover that the Central Gulf of Mexico was more prone to hurricanes because it acts as a gathering spot for warm currents that can strengthen a storm.
The revised wind, wave and water current measurements ("metocean" data) prompted API to reassess its recommended practices (RPs) for industry operations in the region.
- The upstream segment continues to integrate the updated environmental (metocean) data on how powerful storms affect conditions in the Gulf of Mexico into its offshore structure design standards. This effort led to the publication in 2008 of an update to RP 2SK, Design and Analysis of Stationkeeping Systems for Floating Structures, that provides guidance for design and operation of Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU) mooring systems in the Gulf of Mexico during the hurricane season. API RP 95J, Gulf of Mexico Jack-up Operations for Hurricane Season, which recommends locating jack-up rigs on more stable areas of the sea floor, and positioning platform decks higher above the sea surface, was also updated.
API publications are available at our (Search and Order
API in the past six years also has issued a number of bulletins to help better prepare for and bring production back online after Gulf hurricanes. These include:
Production and Hurricanes (steps industry takes to prepare for and return after a storm)
- Bulletin 2TD, Guidelines for Tie-downs on Offshore Production Facilities for Hurricane Season, which is aimed at better-securing separate platform equipment.
- Bulletin 2INT-MET, Interim Guidance on Hurricane Conditions in the Gulf of Mexico, which provides updated metocean data for four regions of the Gulf, including wind velocities, deepwater wave conditions, ocean current information, and surge and tidal data.
- Bulletin 2INT-DG, Interim Guidance for Design of Offshore Structures for Hurricane Conditions, which explains how to apply the updated metocean data during design.
- Bulletin 2INT-EX, Interim Guidance for Assessment of Existing Offshore Structures for Hurricane Conditions, which assists owners/operators and engineers with existing facilities.
- Bulletin 2HINS, Guidance on Post-hurricane Structural Inspection of Offshore Structures, which provides guidance on determining if a structure sustained hurricane-induced damage that affects the safety of personnel, the primary structural integrity, or its ability to perform the purpose for which it was intended.
Refineries and Pipelines
- Days in advance of a tropical storm or hurricane moving toward or near their drilling and production operations, companies will evacuate all non-essential personnel and begin the process of shutting down production.
- As the storm gets closer, all personnel will be evacuated from the drilling rigs and platforms, and production is shut down. Drillships may relocate to a safe location. Operations in areas not forecast to take a direct hit from the storm often will be shut down as well because storms can change direction with little notice.
- After a storm has passed and it is safe to fly, operators will initiate "flyovers" of onshore and offshore facilities to evaluate damage from the air. For onshore facilities, these "flyovers" can identify flooding, facility damage, road or other infrastructure problems, and spills. Offshore "flyovers" look for damaged drilling rigs, platform damage, spills, and possible pipeline damage.
- Many offshore drilling rigs are equipped with GPS locator systems, which allow federal officials and drilling contractors to remotely monitor the rigs' location before, during and after a hurricane. If a rig is pulled offsite by the storm, locator systems allow crews to find and recover the rig as quickly and as safely as possible.
- Once safety concerns are addressed, operators will send assessment crews to offshore facilities to physically assess the facilities for damage.
- If facilities are undamaged, and ancillary facilities, like pipelines that carry the oil and natural gas, are undamaged and ready to accept shipments, operators will begin restarting production. Drilling rigs will commence operations.
Despite sustaining unprecedented damage and supply outages during the 2005 and 2008 hurricanes, the industry quickly and safely brought refining and pipeline operations back online, delivering to consumers near-record levels of gasoline and record levels of distillate (diesel and heating oil) in 2008. The oil and oil-product pipelines operating on or near the Gulf of Mexico continue to review their assets and operations to minimize the potential impacts of storms and shorten the time it takes to recover. While there have been some shortages caused by hurricanes, supply disruptions have been temporary despite extensive damage to supporting infrastructure, such as electric power generation and distribution, production shut-ins and refinery shutdowns. Pipelines need a steady supply of crude oil or refined products to keep product flowing to its intended destinations.
To prepare for future severe storms, refiners and pipeline companies have
Refineries and hurricanes (steps industry takes to prepare for and return after a storm)
- Worked with utilities to clarify priorities for electric power restoration critical to restarting operations and to help minimize significant disruptions to fuel distribution and delivery.
- Secured backup power generation equipment and worked with federal, state and local governments to ensure that pipelines and refineries are considered "critical" infrastructure for back-up power purposes.
- Established redundant communications systems to support continuity of operations and locate employees.
- Worked with vendors to pre-position food, water and transportation, and updated emergency plans to secure other emergency supplies and services.
- Provided additional training for employees who have participated in various exercises and drills.
- Reexamined and improved emergency response and business continuity plans.
- Strengthened onshore buildings and elevated equipment where appropriate to minimize potential flood damage.
- Worked with the states and local emergency management officials to provide documentation and credentials for employees who need access to disaster sites where access is restricted during an emergency.
- Participated in industry conferences to share best practices and improvement opportunities.
Pipelines and hurricanes (steps industry takes to prepare for and return after a storm)
- Refiners, in the hours before a large storm makes landfall, will usually evacuate all non-essential personnel and begin shutting down or reducing operations.
- Operations in areas not forecast to take a direct hit from the storm often are shut down or curtailed as a precaution because storms can change direction with little notice.
- Once safe, teams come in to assess damage. If damage or flooding has occurred, it must be repaired and dealt with before the refinery can be brought back on-line.
- Other factors that can cause delays in restarting refineries include the availability of crude oil, electricity to run the plant and water used for cooling the process units.
- Refineries are complex. It takes more than a flip of a switch to get a refinery back up and running. Once a decision has been made that it is safe to restart, it can take several days before the facility is back to full operating levels. This is because the process units and associated equipment must be returned to operation in a staged manner to ensure a safe and successful startup.
- If facilities are undamaged or necessary repairs have been made, and ancillary facilities - like pipelines that carry the oil and natural gas - are undamaged and ready to accept shipments, operators will begin restarting production.
- Pipeline operations can be impacted by storms, primarily through power outages, but also by direct damage.
- Offshore pipelines damaged require the hiring of divers, repairs and safety inspections before supplies can flow. Damaged onshore pipelines must be assessed, repaired and inspected before resuming operations.
- Without power, crude oil and petroleum products cannot be moved through pipelines. Operators routinely hold or lease back-up generators but need time to get them onsite.
- If there is no product put into pipelines because Gulf Coast/Gulf of Mexico crude or natural gas production has been curtailed, or because of refinery shutdowns, the crude and products already in the pipelines cannot be pushed out the other end.
- Wind damage to above ground tanks at storage terminals can also impact supplies into the pipeline.
: The 2008 hurricane season was very active, with 16 named storms, of which eight became hurricanes and five of those were major hurricanes. For the U.S. oil and natural gas industry, the two most serious storms of 2008 were Hurricane Ike, which made landfall in mid-September near Baytown, Texas, and Hurricane Gustav, which made landfall on September 1 in Louisiana.
Hurricane Gustav, a strong Category 2 storm, kept off-line oil and natural gas delivery systems and production platforms that had not yet been fully restored from a smaller storm two weeks earlier, and brought significant flooding as far north as Baton Rouge. Hurricane Ike, another strong Category 2 hurricane, caused significant portions of the production, processing, and pipeline infrastructure along the Gulf Coast in East Texas and Louisiana to shut down. Ike caused significant destruction to electric transmission and distribution lines, and these damages delayed the restart of major processing plants, pipelines, and refineries. As many as 3.7 million customers were without electric power following the storm, with about 2.5 million in Texas alone.
At the peak of disruptions, more than 20 percent of total U.S. refinery capacity was idled. The Minerals Management Service - now called Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE)
estimated that 2,127 of the 3,800 total oil and natural gas production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico were exposed to hurricane conditions, with winds greater than 74 miles per hour, from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. A total of 60 platforms were destroyed as a result of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Some platforms which had been previously reported as having extensive damage were reassessed and determined to be destroyed. The destroyed platforms produced 13,657 barrels of oil and 96.5 million cubic feet of natural gas daily or 1.05 percent of the oil and 1.3 percent of the natural gas produced daily in the Gulf of Mexico.
: The 2005 hurricane season was the most active in recorded history, shattering previous records. According to the Department of Energy, refineries in the path of hurricanes Katrina and Rita accounting for about 29 percent of U.S. refining capacity were shut down at the peak of disruptions. Offshore, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) estimated 22,000 of the 33,000 miles of pipelines and 3,050 of the 4,000 platforms in the Gulf were in the direct paths of the two Category 5 storms. Together the storms destroyed 115 platforms and damaged 52 others.
Even so, there was no loss of life among industry workers and contractors. An MMS report found "no accounts of spills from facilities on the federal Outer Continental Shelf that reached the shoreline; oiled birds or mammals; or involved any discoveries of oil to be collected or cleaned up".
: Hurricane Ivan was the strongest hurricane of the 2004 season and among one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record. It moved across the Gulf of Mexico to make landfall in Alabama. Ivan then looped across Florida and back into the Gulf, regenerating into a new tropical system, which moved into Louisiana and Texas.
The MMS estimated approximately 150 offshore facilities and 10,000 miles of pipelines were in the direct path of Ivan. Seven platforms were destroyed and 24 others damaged. The oil and natural gas industry submitted numerous damage reports to MMS, including for mobile drilling rigs, offshore platforms, producing wells, topside systems including wellheads and production and processing equipment, risers, and pipeline systems that transport oil and gas ashore from offshore facilities. | <urn:uuid:5a1087ae-92e7-46db-8ae2-20172a204f5d> | http://www.api.org/news-and-media/hurricane-information/hurricane-preparation.aspx |
This section provides a short description of all the major characters in the book. This can be printed out as a study guide for students, used as a "key" for leading a class discussion, or you can jump to the quiz/homework section to find worksheets that incorporate these descriptions into a variety of question formats.
Muhammad Bilal - This character is the son of a farmer who is stolen from Africa and sold as a slave.
Lizzy - This character is a slave on the Live Oaks plantation in South Carolina who never has a freedom dream.
Elijah Lewis - This character is intelligent and forward thinking and dreams of making enough money to help his family hold onto the Glory Field.
Luvenia Lewis - This character is tall and dark-skinned. He/she has ideas of his/her own and does not want to move to Curry Island with his/her...
This section contains 570 words|
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) | <urn:uuid:5d62c583-9e93-4909-ab3d-b04e84ed203f> | http://www.bookrags.com/lessonplan/the-glory-field/characters.html |
Fun Learning with Printable Flash Cards
Here you will find our selection of free printable flash cards for preschool learning (and beyond!). Flash cards are a great way for kids to learn the basic elements and memorize them through short repeat sessions. You’ll find helping them learn their first abc, animal names and numbers incredibly rewarding.
A few minutes here, a few minutes there, whether at home, traveling, in the park or at Auntie’s it’s learning on the go. These lovely cards turn learning into playing (… but we also love decorating kids’ rooms by sticking them on the wall or putting them in picture frames.)
We’ve made all our printable flash cards here free for everybody and of course you can print them as many times as you like!
Alphabet Flash Cards
Helping the little one’s first learning fun and sweet!
Vocabulary Flash Cards
Learning new words and concepts is great fun!
Number & Math Flash Cards
Various flash cards for all your math activities.
Shapes & Colors Flash Cards
Try combining abstract shapes and pretty colors with various colorful activities.
We have a growing selection of children’s resources for preschool, homeschool & classroom learning activities. Please check back soon to see what’s new. Thank you!
We’d also love to hear from parents and teachers with suggestions. | <urn:uuid:3bcc3f8d-efc9-4c16-87f0-df69d12c3b5a> | http://www.mrprintables.com/printable-flash-cards.html |
• Incubation: 18-20 days
• Clutch Size: 4 eggs
• Young Fledge: 16-21 days after hatching
• Typical Foods: insects, aquatic invertebrates and seeds
Female red phalaropes are stunning -- they are a rich chestnut color with a dark crown and white face. However, virtually all Ohio birds are in drab non-breeding plumage.
Habitat and Habits
This species prefers the open waters of Lake Erie. It is most typically found along stone jetties and breakwalls in sheltered harbors. The flight call is similar to that of the red-necked phalarope, but generally higher pitched.
Reproduction and Care of the Young
Breeding takes place in Alaska and northern Canada. Nests are hollows in the ground of marshy tundra. The male raises the young. | <urn:uuid:5822656d-7af7-48bb-9307-359a74f2061e> | http://www.ohiodnr.com/Home/species_a_to_z/redphalarope/tabid/17697/Default.aspx |
Learn something new every day More Info... by email
A predicate is part of a sentence or clause in English and is one of two primary components that serves to effectively complete the sentence. Sentences consist of two main components: subjects and predicates. Subjects are the primary “thing” in a sentence which the rest of the words then describe through either a direct description or by indicating what type of action that subject is performing. The predicate is this secondary aspect of the sentence and usually consists of a verb or adjective, though complicated sentences may have multiple verbs and a number of descriptions affecting the subject.
It can be easiest to understand predicates by first understanding subjects and how sentences are constructed. A sentence just about always has a subject, though it can be implied in some way and not necessarily directly stated. In a simple sentence like “The cat slept,” the subject is “the cat,” which is a noun phrase consisting of the direct article “the” and the noun “cat.” Subjects can be longer and more complicated, but they are usually fairly simple in nature.
The predicate of a sentence is then basically the rest of the sentence, though this is not always the case for longer and more complicated sentences. In “The cat slept,” the predicate is quite simple and merely consists of the word “slept.” This is simple because “slept” is an intransitive verb, which means that it requires no further description or objects to make it complete. The sentence could be expanded as “The cat slept on the bed,” but this is not necessary and merely adds a descriptive component to the predicate through the prepositional phrase “on the bed.”
In a somewhat more complicated sentence, such as “The man gave the ball to his son,” the subject of the sentence is still quite simple: “The man.” The predicate in this sentence, however, has become substantially more complicated and consists of the rest of the sentence: “gave the ball to his son.” This has been made more complicated because the verb “gave” is transitive, specifically ditransitive, which indicates both a direct object and an indirect object.
The act of “giving” requires that there is a direct object, which is the item given, and an indirect object, which is who or what it is given to. In this instance, the predicate consists of the verb “gave” and the direct object “the ball” with a connecting preposition “to” and the indirect object “his son.” Predicates can become even more complicated as an idea expands, such as a sentence like “The rock rolled off the table, landed on top of a skateboard, and proceeded to roll down the hill until it was stopped by a wall.” In this sentence, the subject is only “The rock,” which means that the rest of the sentence is the predicate. | <urn:uuid:b6182938-d2ed-4d47-a28c-9ae9952dbc8d> | http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-predicate.htm |
History of Initiative & Referendum in Arizona
|Laws • History|
|List of measures|
The History of Initiative & Referendum in Arizona began when acquired statewide initiative, referendum, and recall rights at the time of statehood in 1912. The first initiative in the state was for women's suffrage. It was a landslide victory, passing by a margin of greater than two to one on Nov. 5, 1912.
Then, in 1914, Arizona saw of 15 qualified initiatives, which held the record until 2006 when 19 initiatives were passed. Four of the 1914 initiatives passed because of the efforts of organized labor. One prohibited blacklisting of union members; a second established an "old age and mothers' pension"; another established a state government contract system, and a fourth limited businesses employment of non-citizens. Lastly, the voters in 1914 passed an initiative that barred the governor and legislature from amending or repealing initiatives.
In response, the legislature tried to pass a constitutional amendment that would make it more difficult to pass initiatives. Because this amendment needed the approval of voters, the Arizona Federation of Labor waged a campaign against the measure. The amendment was narrowly defeated in 1916.
- This chart includes all ballot measures to appear on the Arizona ballot in the year indicated, not just initiated measures. See also Arizona ballot measures.
|Year||Propositions on ballot||How many were approved?||How many were defeated?|
Arizonans owe many of their reforms to John Kromko. Kromko, like most Arizonans, is not a native; he was born near Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1940 and moved to Tucson in the mid-1960s. He was active in protests against the Vietnam War, and in the 1970s and 1980s he was elected to the lower house of the state legislature several times. By night, he was a computer-programming instructor; by day, he was Arizona’s "Mr. Initiative."
Kromko’s first petition was a referendum drive to stop a Tucson city council ordinance banning topless dancing, arguing for free speech. In 1976 Kromko was among the handful of Arizonans who, in cooperation with the People’s Lobby Western Bloc campaign, succeeded in putting on the state ballot an initiative to phase out nuclear power. The initiative lost at the polls, but Kromko’s leadership on the issue got him elected to his first term in the legislature.
Repealing the sales tax on food
Once elected, Kromko set his sights on abolishing the sales tax on food, a "regressive" tax that hits the poor hardest. Unsuccessful in the legislature, Kromko launched a statewide initiative petition and got enough signatures to put food tax repeal on the ballot. The legislature, faced with the initiative, acted to repeal the tax.
After the food tax victory, Kromko turned to voter registration reform. Again the legislature was unresponsive, so he launched an initiative petition. He narrowly missed getting enough signatures in 1980, and he failed to win re-election that year.
Undaunted, he revived the voter registration campaign and turned to yet another cause: Medicaid funding. Arizona in 1981 was the only state without Medicaid, since the legislature had refused to appropriate money for the state's share of this federal program.
In 1982, with an initiative petition drive under way and headed for success, the legislature got the message and established a Medicaid program. Kromko and his allies on this issue, the state’s churches, were satisfied and dropped their petition drive.
Motor Voter initiative
The voter registration initiative, now under the leadership of Les Miller, a Phoenix attorney, and the state Democratic Party, gained ballot placement and voter approval. In the ensuing four years, this "Motor Voter" initiative increased by over 10 percent the proportion of Arizona’s eligible population who were registered to vote.
Late legislative career
Kromko, re-elected to the legislature in 1982, took up his petitions again in 1983 to prevent construction of a freeway in Tucson that would have smashed through several residential neighborhoods. The initiative was merely to make freeway plans subject to voter approval, but Tucson officials, seeing the campaign as the death knell for their freeway plans, blocked its placement on the ballot through various legal technicalities. Kromko and neighborhood activists fighting to save their homes refused to admit defeat. They began a new petition drive in 1984, qualified their measure for the ballot, and won voter approval for it in November 1985.
Arizona’s moneyed interests poured funds into a campaign to unseat Kromko in 1986. Kromko not only survived but also fought back by supporting a statewide initiative to limit campaign contributions, sponsored by his colleague in the legislature, Democratic State Representative Reid Ewing of Tucson. Voters passed the measure by a two to one margin.
Kromko’s initiative exploits have made him the most effective Democratic political figure, besides former governor Bruce Babbitt, in this perennially Republican-dominated state. And Babbitt owes partial credit for one of his biggest successes - enactment of restrictions on the toxic chemical pollution of drinking water - to Kromko. Early in 1986 Kromko helped organize an environmentalist petition drive for an anti-toxic initiative, while Babbitt negotiated with the legislature for passage of a similar bill. When initiative backers had enough signatures to put their measure on the ballot, the legislature bowed to the pressure and passed Babbitt's bill. Even today, Kromko is still active in politics, writing letters to the editor about immigration policies.
Petition drive problems in 2008
2008 was a tough year for ballot initiatives in Arizona. Nine citizen initiatives filed signatures to qualify for the November 2008 Arizona ballot by the state's July 3 petition drive deadline. In the end, only six of the initiatives were certified, with three initiatives disqualified as a result of an historically high number of problems with flawed petition signatures. When the November vote was held, of the six that qualified for the ballot, only one was approved.,
Criticisms of process
After 19 were proposed in 2006, legislators were worried about "ballot fatigue" or overuse of the initiative system. This led to legislators considering steps to limit or otherwise exert more control over the initiative process. Ironically, any attempt to alter the initiative and referendum process would require an amendment to the state constitution, and thus in itself be put forth as a referendum.
This article is significantly based on an article published by the Initiative & Referendum Institute, and is used with their permission. Their article, in turn, relies on research in David Schmidt's book, Citizen Lawmakers: The Ballot Initiative Revolution.
Also portions of this article were taken from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under the GNU license.
- ↑ Arizona Daily Star, "'Clown' takes some serious initiative", July 20, 2007
- ↑ Arizona Republic, "'Flawed' election petitions face review", September 13, 2008
- ↑ Phoenix New Times, "Citizen initiatives have been kicked off the ballot this year in record numbers, and the problems could go much deeper than invalid signatures", August 21, 2008
- ↑ Legislators seeking more control over initiatives, Arizona Republic, Feb. 13, 2007
- ↑ History of Arizona's initiative
- ↑ Citizen Lawmakers: The Ballot Initiative Revolution Temple University Press, 352 pp., ISBN-10: 0877229031, October 1991
History of I&R
Alaska · Arizona · Arkansas · California · Colorado · Florida · Idaho · Illinois · Kentucky · Maine · Maryland · Massachusetts · Michigan · Mississippi · Missouri · Montana · Nebraska · Nevada · New Mexico · North Dakota · Ohio · Oklahoma · Oregon · South Dakota · Utah · Washington · Wyoming
Direct Legislation by the Citizenship Through the Initiative and Referendum · Citizen Lawmakers: The Ballot Initiative Revolution · Direct Legislation: Voting on Ballot Propositions in the United States | <urn:uuid:a244d012-82a0-4c3c-8ce5-37d705085e34> | http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/History_of_Initiative_&_Referendum_in_Arizona |
General Chemistry/Periodicity and Electron Configurations
Blocks of the Periodic Table
The Periodic Table does more than just list the elements. The word periodic means that in each row, or period, there is a pattern of characteristics in the elements. This is because the elements are listed in part by their electron configuration. The Alkali metals and Alkaline earth metals have one and two valence electrons (electrons in the outer shell) respectively. These elements lose electrons to form bonds easily, and are thus very reactive. These elements are the s-block of the periodic table. The p-block, on the right, contains common non-metals such as chlorine and helium. The noble gases, in the column on the right, almost never react, since they have eight valence electrons, which makes it very stable. The halogens, directly to the left of the noble gases, readily gain electrons and react with metals. The s and p blocks make up the main-group elements, also known as representative elements. The d-block, which is the largest, consists of transition metals such as copper, iron, and gold. The f-block, on the bottom, contains rarer metals including uranium. Elements in the same Group or Family have the same configuration of valence electrons, making them behave in chemically similar ways.
Causes for Trends
There are certain phenomena that cause the periodic trends to occur. You must understand them before learning the trends.
Effective Nuclear Charge
The effective nuclear charge is the amount of positive charge acting on an electron. It is the number of protons in the nucleus minus the number of electrons in between the nucleus and the electron in question. Basically, the nucleus attracts an electron, but other electrons in lower shells repel it (opposites attract, likes repel).
Shielding Effect
The shielding (or screening) effect is similar to effective nuclear charge. The core electrons repel the valence electrons to some degree. The more electron shells there are (a new shell for each row in the periodic table), the greater the shielding effect is. Essentially, the core electrons shield the valence electrons from the positive charge of the nucleus.
Electron-Electron Repulsions
When two electrons are in the same shell, they will repel each other slightly. This effect is mostly canceled out due to the strong attraction to the nucleus, but it does cause electrons in the same shell to spread out a little bit. Lower shells experience this effect more because they are smaller and allow the electrons to interact more.
Coulomb's Law
Coulomb's law is an equation that determines the amount of force with which two charged particles attract or repel each other. It is , where is the amount of charge (+1e for protons, -1e for electrons), is the distance between them, and is a constant. You can see that doubling the distance would quarter the force. Also, a large number of protons would attract an electron with much more force than just a few protons would.
Trends in the Periodic table
Most of the elements occur naturally on Earth. However, all elements beyond uranium (number 92) are called trans-uranium elements and never occur outside of a laboratory. Most of the elements occur as solids or gases at STP. STP is standard temperature and pressure, which is 0° C and 1 atmosphere of pressure. There are only two elements that occur as liquids at STP: mercury (Hg) and bromine (Br).
Bismuth (Bi) is the last stable element on the chart. All elements after bismuth are radioactive and decay into more stable elements. Some elements before bismuth are radioactive, however.
Atomic Radius
Leaving out the noble gases, atomic radii are larger on the left side of the periodic chart and are progressively smaller as you move to the right across the period. Conversely, as you move down the group, radii increase.
Atomic radii decrease along a period due to greater effective nuclear charge. Atomic radii increase down a group due to the shielding effect of the additional core electrons, and the presence of another electron shell.
Ionic Radius
For nonmetals, ions are bigger than atoms, as the ions have extra electrons. For metals, it is the opposite.
Extra electrons (negative ions, called anions) cause additional electron-electron repulsions, making them spread out farther. Fewer electrons (positive ions, called cations) cause fewer repulsions, allowing them to be closer.
|Ionization energy is the energy required to strip an electron from the atom (when in the gas state).
Ionization energy is also a periodic trend within the periodic table organization. Moving left to right within a period or upward within a group, the first ionization energy generally increases. As the atomic radius decreases, it becomes harder to remove an electron that is closer to a more positively charged nucleus.
Ionization energy decreases going left across a period because there is a lower effective nuclear charge keeping the electrons attracted to the nucleus, so less energy is needed to pull one out. It decreases going down a group due to the shielding effect. Remember Coulomb's Law: as the distance between the nucleus and electrons increases, the force decreases at a quadratic rate.
It is considered a measure of the tendency of an atom or ion to surrender an electron, or the strength of the electron binding; the greater the ionization energy, the more difficult it is to remove an electron. The ionization energy may be an indicator of the reactivity of an element. Elements with a low ionization energy tend to be reducing agents and form cations, which in turn combine with anions to form salts.
Electron Affinity
|Electron affinity is the opposite of ionization energy. It is the energy released when an electron is added to an atom.
Electron affinity is highest in the upper left, lowest on the bottom right. However, electron affinity is actually negative for the noble gasses. They already have a complete valence shell, so there is no room in their orbitals for another electron. Adding an electron would require creating a whole new shell, which takes energy instead of releasing it. Several other elements have extremely low electron affinities because they are already in a stable configuration, and adding an electron would decrease stability.
Electron affinity occurs due to the same reasons as ionization energy.
Electronegativity is how much an atom attracts electrons within a bond. It is measured on a scale with fluorine at 4.0 and francium at 0.7. Electronegativity decreases from upper right to lower left.
Electronegativity decreases because of atomic radius, shielding effect, and effective nuclear charge in the same manner that ionization energy decreases.
Metallic Character
Metallic elements are shiny, usually gray or silver colored, and good conductors of heat and electricity. They are malleable (can be hammered into thin sheets), and ductile (can be stretched into wires). Some metals, like sodium, are soft and can be cut with a knife. Others, like iron, are very hard. Non-metallic atoms are dull, usually colorful or colorless, and poor conductors. They are brittle when solid, and many are gases at STP. Metals give away their valence electrons when bonding, whereas non-metals take electrons.
The metals are towards the left and center of the periodic table—in the s-block, d-block, and f-block . Poor metals and metalloids (somewhat metal, somewhat non-metal) are in the lower left of the p-block. Non-metals are on the right of the table.
Metallic character increases from right to left and top to bottom. Non-metallic character is just the opposite. This is because of the other trends: ionization energy, electron affinity, and electronegativity. | <urn:uuid:7ab562e2-c61b-4988-9c51-24c5b3cb1d20> | http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/General_Chemistry/Periodicity_and_Electron_Configurations |
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