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On November 11,
we will celebrate Veteran's Day to honor those Americans, both living
and dead, who have served with the United States armed forces during
wartime. The contributions of such people cannot be truly appreciated
until one realizes that the ranks of those who have served and died
are as diverse as this country is. Of the various ethnic groups, the
African Americans are no exception and, from the opening salvos of the
Revolutionary War to Operation Desert Storm, they have contributed
their fair share, frequently against a backdrop of segregation,
discrimination, and racism.
In the Revolutionary
War (1776-1783), 10,000 African Americans -- some of them slaves
-- served in the continental armies, participating in the defeat of
the British at several famous battles. In one case, a female African
American disguised herself as a man and served in the Fourth
Massachusetts Regiment. She was later cited for bravery. Black
Americans also helped defend American sovereignty in the War of 1812
and made up between ten and twenty percent of the fighting navy. On
January 8, 1815, as General Andrew Jackson met the British army
outside of New Orleans, six hundred Black soldiers in his ranks held
their end of the line under massive British attack, then surged
forward to help inflict a mortal blow on the enemy.
In the American Civil
War (1861-1865), the Confederacy declared that captured Black Union
soldiers would be hanged or pressed back into slavery. In spite of
that declaration, 186,000 soldiers of African descent served in 150
regiments of the Union army, making up about almost 13% of the Union
army's combat manpower. Another 30,000 were in the Navy. In four years
of fighting, it is believed that 37,000 African Americans died in
battle or from disease. Twenty Black soldiers were awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor for their services in the Civil War.
In the Indian Campaigns
(1866-1890), African-American soldiers took part in many of the
hostilities and twenty of them were awarded the Congressional Medal of
Honor for service above and beyond the call of duty. Several years
later, the Buffalo soldiers of the 9th U.S. Cavalry Regiment fought
side by side with Teddy Roosevelt's celebrated Rough Riders in Cuba
during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Eight Black soldiers were
awarded the Medal of Honor for their role in that war.
participation in World War I (1914-1918), 367,000 Black Americans
served their country both at home and overseas. Eventually they would
comprise 11% of the troops that went overseas. The two thousand
African-American soldiers of the 369th Infantry Regiment served in
France along the Western Front. The 369th won the respect and
admiration of their French comrades for their tenacity in fighting off
incessant German attacks. The men of the 369th called themselves the
Black Rattlers, but their German adversaries, in recognition of their
ferocity, called them the Hellfighters. Suffering heavy casualties
after 191 days in combat -- more than any other American unit -- the
369th was awarded 170 medals by the French for their courage and
In the years preceding
World War II, Black labor battalions in the Army were assigned to
loading ships and general maintenance. When war finally came in
December 1941, most African-American volunteers were initially placed
into segregated Army units and denied overseas combat duty. According
to Ulysses Lee of Howard University, author of "The Employment of
Negro Troops," Black Americans "asked with increasing frequency for
the opportunity that they believed to be rightfully theirs in the
first place: the opportunity to participate in the defense of their
country in the same manner ... as other Americans." Under pressure
from African-American leaders and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the
military was persuaded to change its policy and, by the end of the
war, 500,000 African-American soldiers had been sent to overseas duty.
In all, 1,154,720 Black soldiers served in the armed forces, 909,000
of them in the Army.
At the Tuskegee
Institute in Alabama, a group of highly-talented, college-educated
Black soldiers attended a special flying school. In April 1943, the
graduates of this school, later known as the Tuskegee Airmen, crossed
the Atlantic into the war zone. Flying escort for heavy bombers over
European skies, the pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group flew 15,533
sorties in the course of 1,578 combat missions. The Tuskegee Airman
destroyed 261 enemy aircraft and caused great damage to the enemy on
the ground. After gaining widespread recognition for their exploits,
they received a total of 900 medals, including a Presidential Citation
for the group.
In the Battle of the
Bulge (December 1944), Nazi forces launched a fierce winter
counterattack and broke through the Allied defenses in the area of
Belgium and Luxembourg. In desperation, the American military
recruited and sent 2,500 black soldiers into the First Army's
counterattack to replace lost soldiers. According to Colonel John R.
Ackor, these hastily-assembled platoons of African-American soldiers
"performed in an excellent manner at all times while in combat. These
men were courageous fighters and never once did they fail to
accomplish their assigned mission."
The all-Black 761st
Tank Battalion fought 183 consecutive days with General George S.
Patton's army in Europe and was credited with killing 6,266 enemy
soldiers and capturing another 15,818. During the Battle of the Bulge,
the 761st "entered combat with... conspicuous courage and success." In
April 1945, the 761st Battalion liberated the Nazi death camps at
Buchenwald and Dachau, where they were greeted as heroes by the
According to the noted
author William Loren Katz, 71% of African-American troops in World War
II were confined to quartermaster, engineer, or transportation duties
and denied combat experience. However, many of these troops also
performed their duties admirably and conscientiously. Ten thousand
Black troops constructed the 1,044-mile Ledo Road, which connected
China with India and proved vital to the American war effort.
Operating in hostile territory, where they came under constant fire by
Japanese snipers and had to contend with pounding rains, disease and
attack by wild animals, the soldiers completed the road in 25 months.
There was literally a fallen soldier's grave for each mile of road.
In World War II, 3,902
African-American women answered the call of their country and enrolled
in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WACS); another 68 joined the Navy
Auxiliary (WAVES). During the Cold War years, sixteen African-American
soldiers received the Congressional Medal of Honor for duties
performed in the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The exact number of
African-American troops who have served their country cannot be
determined with any degree of certainty. However, their record of
courage under fire was irrefutable proof of their loyalty to America.
|1. Chappell, Kevin.
Blacks in World War II. Ebony, Vol. 50, No. 11 (September 1995),
|2. Katz, William
Loren. A History of Multicultural America: World War II to the New
Frontier, 1940-1963. Austin, Texas: Raintree Steck-Vaughn
|3. Ploski, Harry A.
and Williams, James. The Negro Almanac: A Reference Work on the
Afro-American. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1983 (4th ed.).
|4. Time-Life Books.
African Americans Voices of Triumph: Perseverance. Alexandria,
Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1993.
|5. Wright, David K. A
Multicultural Portrait of World War II. New York: Marshall
Mr. Schmal is a senior editor
at a publishing company in Chatsworth, California. His hobby, and
passion, is that of a genealogist who specializes in
African-American Southern lineages as well as Puerto Rican and
Mexican lineages. He has written several articles about ethnic
contributions to American life, usually military contributions or
Copyright ©1999 by
John P. Schmal. Reprints require approval by the
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CICLing 2012, www.cicling.org/2012, will be held in New Delhi, India, on March 11–17, 2012. Submission deadline: October 31. Keynote speakers: Srinivas Bangalore, John Carroll, Salim Roukos, Bonnie Webber.
What is computational linguistics?
Computational linguistics is the scientific study of language from a computational perspective. Computational linguists are interested in providing computational models of various kinds of linguistic phenomena. These models may be "knowledge-based" ("hand-crafted") or "data-driven" ("statistical" or "empirical"). Work in computational linguistics is in some cases motivated from a scientific perspective in that one is trying to provide a computational explanation for a particular linguistic or psycholinguistic phenomenon; and in other cases the motivation may be more purely technological in that one wants to provide a working component of a speech or natural language system. Indeed, the work of computational linguists is incorporated into many working systems today, including speech recognition systems, text-to-speech synthesizers, automated voice response systems, web search engines, text editors, language instruction materials, to name just a few.
Popular computational linguistics textbooks include:
- Christopher Manning and Hinrich Schütze (1999) Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. MIT Press.
Also see the book's supplemental materials website at Stanford.
- Daniel Jurafsky and James Martin (2008) An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, and Speech Recognition, Second Edition. Prentice Hall.
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| 0.833837
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Republic Day: February 23
Republic Day is a public holiday in Guyana.
Guyana celebrates Republic Day or Mashramani (abbreviated as ‘Mash) on February usually on the 23rd. Guyanese citizens enjoy festive and colourful parades much like that of a carnival, music, and games. Guyanese cook on this special day to mark the birth of a new country.
Mashramani should not be confused with the country’s Independence Day on May 26. After it gained independence from the British in 1966, the Guyanese people established itself as an independent nation or a democratic sovereign country as stated in the British Commonwealth of 1970.
The word Mashramani is an Amerindian word which means to celebrate/celebrating a job well done. It is the most celebrated holiday in Guyana as floats, parades and masquerade party and dancing flood the street a scenery which reflects the country’s proud African heritage.
History of Guyana’s Republic Day
For most foreigners, the idea of celebrating Guyanese Republic Day might be construed with celebrating Independence Day. While the country’s Independence Day marks the act of the British in relegating the sovereignty Guyana have long been wanting for, it is the Republic Day where the Guyanese commemorates the establishment of a sovereign republic after being granted independence from the British rule.
Carnival-like celebration in Guyana has long been practiced in Mackenzie by local members of Junior Chamber International (JCI) or Jaycees. The celebration of Guyana’s Republic Day coincided with the establishment of Jaycees Republic Celebrations Committee headed by Basil Butcher but it was Jim Blackman was appointed to do the job because Butcher had to join the West Indies Cricket Team during that time. Blackman, along with other personnel, organized the first formal government-sponsored carnival activity to happen in Guyana.
Butcher was the one to initially suggest that the name of the festival be based on Amerindian word. Amerindian is a language spoken by indigenous people of the Americas who are sometimes called upon as Native Americans or American Indian. One of Butcher’s personnels, Mr. Allan Fietdkow, a native Amerindian, helped Butcher in coming up with a name for the festival through his consultation with his grandfather. Ultimately, the word Mashramani was suggested.
The first Mashramani in February 23, 1970 was a huge success and well-accepted by the locals; because of that, a government official named David Singh suggested that the festival be brought to the country’s capital – Georgetown. It later was given approval by the president of Guyana back then (President Forbes Burnham).
The celebration of Mashramani is done in various regions in Guyana including Berbice, Linden, and Georgetown but due the largest concentration of events usually happen in Georgetown due in part to sponsorship both from private and public institutions and individuals..
Guyana’s Republic Day: Traditions, Customs and Activities
Guyana’s constitutional milestone is celebrated with float parade, dancing and singing, and other fun activities. It aims to mobilize professionals, private individuals, and the youth in participating in the country’s celebration of the country’s political success. The three-day festival is joined by people from all walks of life coming from different regions in Guyana. The Mardi-Gras like celebration encourages both men and women to participate in street dancing and parade wearing colourful costumes. There is no other holiday to look forward to in Guyana other than the fun-filled carnival-like celebration of Republic Day.
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In the Case of Wholesale Food Distributors, It’s All About Location
Posted: December 11, 2013
“Our model addresses the problem of how to move food from producers to consumers efficiently,” said Hamideh Etamadnia, a member of the Distribution Team and lead author of the study. “In the case of farmers’ markets, producers bring their products directly to consumers themselves. But most products are trucked from processing facilities to wholesale distributors, and then on to retail stores. Our model will help identify the optimal locations of these intermediary distributors so as to minimize transportation costs and to maximize the number of producers and retailers that they serve.”
Etamadnia and her colleagues developed the mathematical model to consider transportation and distributor-construction costs, as well as several possible constraints that will allow them to look at various “what if” scenarios.
“The constraints that we built into our model allow us to understand how certain changes might affect the optimal locations of wholesale hubs,” she explained. “For example, officials who want to promote regional agriculture could place constraints on the distance food travels, to see how their region’s existing distribution structure would need to change for such a policy to succeed.”
To test their model, the researchers applied it to the meat supply chain in the Northeastern U.S., which comprises 433 counties. Using County Business Patterns data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, they identified which counties contain slaughtering or meat-processing facilities, and which counties contain retail meat markets. Inserting these data into their mathematical model, they conducted several simulations to determine the optimal locations for wholesale distributors connecting these slaughter and processing facilities with retail markets. Their results show how optimal distributor locations change based on a number of variables, including distributor size and capacity, road conditions, and gas prices.
“Our team can use this model to conduct simulations with other supply chains, such as those for fresh fruits and vegetables,” said Distribution Team Leader, Miguel Gomez. “These simulations will help us to identify the kinds of changes that would be required of the Northeastern U.S. food supply chain in order to support increased regionalization, and what kinds of economic effects such changes would have.”
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The mimicry of the Black-cowled Orioles (Icterus prosthemelas (AKA I.dominicensis prosthemelas)) is similar to the mimicry of the Hooded Oriole in North America.
Douglas Von Gausig (recordist; copyright holder), Naturesongs.com
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Help us improve the site by taking our survey.
To cite this page: Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2016. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed at http://animaldiversity.org.
Disclaimer: The Animal Diversity Web is an educational resource written largely by and for college students. ADW doesn't cover all species in the world, nor does it include all the latest scientific information about organisms we describe. Though we edit our accounts for accuracy, we cannot guarantee all information in those accounts. While ADW staff and contributors provide references to books and websites that we believe are reputable, we cannot necessarily endorse the contents of references beyond our control.
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by James R Booth and Tali Bitan, Science Direct
Research shows conclusively for the first time that there is a biological basis for gender differences in learning, particularly in language acquisition.
“Reconcilable Differences: What Social Sciences Show About the Complementarity of the Sexes & Parenting“
by W. Bradford Wilcox
Wilcox claims that social science shows that each sex has different strong points when it comes to parenting, and each should be allowed to fulfill the role in which they excel. Mothers are more adept at breast-feeding, understanding, and nurturing/comforting their children. Fathers are better at disciplining and playing with their children, as well as equipping them to face life’s challenges and opportunities. Research has shown that the structure of families and the roles played by parents do produce measurable results in children’s lives.
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ANSTO Publications Online >
Conference Publications >
Conference Publications >
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
|Title: ||Size of the West Antarctic ice sheet at the last glacial maximum: new constraints from the Darwin-Hatherton glacial system in the Transantarctic Mountains.|
|Authors: ||Storey, B|
|Issue Date: ||1-Jul-2009|
|Citation: ||Storey, B., Hood, D., Fink, D., Shulmeister, J., & Riger-Kusk, M. (2009). Size of the West Antarctic ice sheet at the last glacial maximum: new constraints from the Darwin-Hatherton glacial system in the Transantarctic Mountains. Annual Antarctic Conference 2009 - "Sustaining the Gains of the International Polar Year", 1st – 3rd July 2009. In Proceedings of the Annual Antarctic Conference 2009 (p. 14). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland.|
|Abstract: ||An understanding of how the Antarctic ice sheet has reacted to natural global warming since the last glacial maximum (LGM) 18 to 22 thousand years ago (kya) is essential to accurately predict the response of the ice
sheets to current and future climate change. Although global sea level rose by approximately 120 metres since the LGM, the contribution from and rate of change of the Antarctic ice sheets is by no means certain. Mackintosh et al (2007) have suggested that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) made
an insignificant contribution to global sea-level rise between 13 and 7 kya raising interesting questions about the initial extent and response of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) during that time frame. Terrestrial evidence of these changes is restricted to a few ice-free areas where glacial landforms, such as moraines, show the extent of former ice advances. One such area is the Darwin-Hatherton glacial system where spectacular moraines preserve
the advance and retreat of the glacial system during previous glacial cycles.
Previous researchers have suggested that the WAIS was more than 1000 metres thicker than it is today at this location at the LGM.
As part of the Latitudinal Gradient Project, we mapped the moraines of the Lake Wellman area bordering the Hatherton Glacier and collected samples for cosmogenic nuclide dating, a technique that is widely used to calculate the exposure history of the glacial landscape and the amount of time that
the glacial debris has been exposed to cosmic rays and not covered by ice or
other glacial debris. While the technique is very successful in mid latitudes, it is more challenging in Polar Regions. Our mapping has shown that ice in the past was at least 800 metres thicker than current ice levels in this area. Our cosmogenic data suggest that this was at least 2 million years ago but for the most part our data record, as
expected, a complex history of exposure and re exposure of the ice free regions in this area in accordance with advance and retreat of the ice sheets. However, a cluster of ages of 35 to 40 thousand years record a single exposure event and indicate that the ice in this area was not as thick as
previous estimates for the extent of ice at the LGM. These ages are recorded from moraine boulders that are located below a prominent moraine feature mapped as representing the LGM. These results raise further questions about the size of the Antarctic ice sheets at the LGM, their contribution to global sea level change and how the Antarctic ice sheets respond to global warming.|
|Appears in Collections:||Conference Publications|
Files in This Item:
There are no files associated with this item.
Items in APO are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.
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QUESTION: I want to build a super-energy-efficient house using building products that are made from recycled materials or are made by energy-efficient methods. What specific types of building products should I use?
ANSWER: If you shop carefully, you should be able to find recycled or low-energy-intensive building products to meet most your material needs. Many of these energy-efficient products use more than 50% recycled materials and require little additional energy for processing.
These new "earth-friendly" building products include structural framing, foundations, walls, roofs, sheathing, insulation, interior wall and floor coverings.
For exterior wall or roof framing, chose products that use as little lumber from old-growth trees as possible.
Instead of using 2x10 floor joists, you can use "I-joists," which require less wood for the same strength. Also glue-laminated lumber and laminated veneer lumber use smaller pieces from second-growth trees to make large defect-free lumber.
To even further reduce the amount of lumber, use super-insulated stress skin wall panels. These use only 5% wood as compared to 20% wood in a conventional studded wall.
Another new wall panel uses a super-strong and efficient honeycomb structure made from recycled resin-impregnated paper.
Producing cement for foundations and slabs is very energy intensive. ACC (autoclaved cellular concrete) uses small amounts of aluminum in the concrete. This creates small bubbles causing the concrete to expand and become less dense as it cures. It is still very strong, but requires less cement. Waste fly ash from power plants can replace about 20% of the cement.
Many organic asphalt shingles contain recycled mixed waste paper. Some of the residential aluminum "shake-looking" roofing is made from 100% recycled beverage cans. Metal roofing also can cut your cooling costs. If you like the look of wood shakes, select ones made from remanufactured wood fibers.
Many types of insulation are made from recycled and fireproof treated newsprint or waste mineral slag. One type of blowing wool fiber insulation is made from 100% recycled telephone books. Rigid insulating foam wall sheathing is now made from recycled foam containers.
You can use gypsum-like wallboard made from waste ryegrass straw. Another type is made from waste paper and rice hulls or peanut shells. Some resilient tile flooring is made from recycled car tires. One company makes solar ceramic tiles from recycled waste glass from a light bulb factory. Some attractive carpeting is made from recycled plastic bottles.
You can write for Utility Bills Update No. 355 listing addresses and telephone numbers of 70 manufacturers of "earth-friendly" building and home improvement products and descriptions of their products. Please include $1.50 and a self-addressed business-size envelope. Send to James Dulley, Los Angeles Times, 6906 Royalgreen Drive, Cincinnati, Ohio 45244.
Using Heat Escaping From Clothes Dryer
Q: During the winter, I moved my electric clothes dryer far from the window vent. This should have allowed some heat to transfer to the utility room before it blows outdoors. Was this a good idea?
A: In theory your idea is a good one. However, there are some potential problems. First check with your dryer manufacturer about the maximum duct length. A very long duct can cause excessive back pressure.
Another potential problem is a fire from accumulated lint. For a long duct, over 20 feet, always use an aluminum duct, not plastic.
Letters and questions to Dulley, a Cincinnati-based engineering consultant, may be sent to James Dulley, Los Angeles Times, 6906 Royalgreen Drive, Cincinnati, Ohio 45244.
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Self-Propelled Underwater Neutrino Cherenkov Radiation Observation Platform
Expansion of Observation Facilities: SPUNCROP
Total Capital Expenditures = $67,285.00 Total
Budget Request = $67,655.50
Currently one of the most controversial topics in solar astronomy is the so-called "solar neutrino problem." Experiments around the world set up to measure the flux of high energy neutrinos (a weakly interacting uncharged subatomic particle) have detected a flux of neutrinos lower than that which is predicted by the standard solar model. More data is required before an explanation of this discovery can be formulated. We believe that the proper position of the Ryerson Astronomical Society is at the forefront of this exciting new field. The Self Propelled Underwater Neutrino Cherenkov Radiation Observation Platform or SPUNCROP will not only make the Ryerson Astronomical Society the only amateur astronomy group actively engaged in the measurement of solar neutrino flux, but it will also make SG the first student government in the world to fund such an ambitious undertaking, a fitting honor for the University of Chicago. We propose to outfit a diesel submarine with photomultiplier tubes and lurk about the bottom of Lake Michigan late at night in an effort to detect the faint flashes (known as Cherenkov Radiation) that result from the collision of solar neutrinos with water molecules. By using Lake Michigan as a detector we will not only be effectively shielded from cosmic rays, but we will also avoid the expense of containing millions of gallons of fluid; a problem in several less innovative e xperiments currently being carried out by other research institutions A further advantage of our experiment is that we will be able to detect the direction of interacting neutrinos through the use of timing data from photomultiplier tubes, providing a crude imaging capability. We propose to purchase a used diesel-electric submarine from the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics. Because of the end of the Cold War combined with the poor Soviet economy, the U.S.S.R. is selling these submarines a t give-away prices. Not only is this an excellent opportunity to get a good buy on a submarine, but our support will also help the faltering economic reforms in the Soviet Union. The cost of a suitable submarine is $50,000. We will need anther $5,000 f or photomultiplier tubes and assorted electronics. $2,000 is needed to fly two members to Vladivostok to pick up the submarine and $10,000 worth of fuel will bring the submarine back to Chicago and support our first year of observations.
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Animal Species:Banded Pipefish, Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus (Bleeker, 1853)
The Ringed Pipefish can be recognised by its pattern of red to blackish bars. In Australia, it occurs in marine tropical waters of Australia.
Standard Common Name
The Ringed Pipefish has red to blackish bars, a distinct caudal fin, and a very long snout.
The species grows to a maximum length of 18 cm.
The map below shows the Australian distribution of the species based on public sightings and specimens in Australian Museums. Source: Atlas of Living Australia.
Distribution by collection data
The species lives in caves and crevices.
- Hoese, D.F., Bray, D.J., Paxton, J.R. & G.R. Allen. 2006. Fishes. In Beesley, P.L. & A. Wells. (eds) Zoological Catalogue of Australia. Volume 35. ABRS & CSIRO Publishing: Australia. parts 1-3, pages 1-2178.
Mark McGrouther , Collection Manager, Ichthyology
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Image: Black Marlin pectoral fin ray
The marginal (leading) ray of a billfish, probably a Black Marlin, found by Harry Rosenthal on Backwoods Beach, Cronulla (directly opposite Shark Island), New South Wales on 4 August 2012. The bone was found in its current 'clean' state. No other bones were found in the vicinity.
- Carl Bento
- © Australian Museum
Black Marlins have rigid pectoral fins that have a very limited range of movement. Part of this rigidity results from the flat basal surface of the leading pectoral fin ray which sits against the flat surface of the scapula. Other billfishes, such as the Blue Marlin, have a markedly convex pectoral fin base that allows the fin to be moved.
Wapenaar, M.-L. & F.H. Talbot. 1964. Note on the rigidity of the pectoral fin of Makaira indica (Cuvier). Annals of the South African Museum. 167-180.
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I have posted comments and pictures on this site of my son Conor waiting in anticipation for his ABA therapist to arrive. I have seen ABA help Conor learn skills, reduce problem behaviors and expand his ability to communicate. But as a mere parent my actual knowledge of ABA and its positive influence on my son's life is of no weight to the anti-cure, anti-treatment, anti-ABA ideologues who attack ABA despite their own lack of actual knowledge or experience with the intervention and despite the hundreds of studies and many credible professional reviews of those studies speaking to the effectiveness of ABA as an autism intervention.
Unlke some anti-ABA ideologues who accuse behaviourists of misbehaving and propogate unfounded, negative myths about ABA Mruzek and Mozing have actual experience with ABA. They have more than empty, heated rhetoric to offer - they have, as Board Certified Behavior Analysts talked the talk and walked the walk. Unlike most anti-ABA critics they actually know what they are talking about. They offer their comments on an article which perpetuated some of the ABA misconceptions:
Unfortunately, the essay perpetuated some all-too-common misconceptions about applied behavior analysis, particularly that it is "rooted in repetition" and focuses mainly on making "children with autism ... indistinguishable from their peers." In fact, the concept is a very flexible approach, with teaching methods and goals carefully tailored to the needs of each child.And they speak to ABA's effectiveness as a means of helping autistic children:
The first applied behavior analysis study specifically targeting autism was published in 1964. Since then, it has become the most-studied intervention for children with autism — the only one recommended by the New York State Department of Health. It includes a wide array of teaching methods grounded in scientifically derived principles of learning, especially those related to the powerful effect of positive reinforcement on behavior change.
Applied behavior analysis can help people with autism develop new skills (in academics, play, communication, social interaction) and support those who engage in challenging behaviors (severe tantrums, refusing food, injuring themselves).
Intensive, early intervention for young children with autism can be especially effective, although outcomes vary among individuals. A study under way at UR is investigating factors possibly implicated in these variable outcomes.
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A risk factor is something that increases your chance of getting a disease or condition.
It is possible to develop COPD with or without the risk factors listed below. However, the more risk factors you have, the greater your likelihood of developing COPD. If you have a number of risk factors, ask your healthcare provider what you can do to reduce your risk.
Risk factors include:
The most important risk factor for COPD is cigarette smoking. Almost all COPD cases are caused by cigarette smoking. However, not all smokers develop COPD. Factors in your environment or genetic make-up also contribute to the development of COPD.
Smoking more "exotic" forms of tobacco, such as Chinese waterpipes, are can be even more harmful. In some cases, these can increase your risk more than traditional cigarettes.
Research suggests that people who are chronically exposed to secondhand smoke (in any form) have an increased risk of developing COPD.
COPD usually develops in older persons with a long history of cigarette smoking. However, one form of emphysema has a genetic component. It runs in families. It is also more common in people of northern European descent. People with this form of COPD have a hereditary deficiency of a blood component. It is known as alpha-1-protease inhibitor (alpha-1-antitrypsin [AAT]). People with this defect can develop COPD at an earlier age. If you have close relatives who developed COPD in their 30s or 40s, your risk of this type of COPD may be elevated. A deficiency of AAT can be detected with blood tests.
You are more likely to develop COPD as you get older. This is partly related to the number of cigarettes smoked and the number of years as a smoker.
A history of frequent childhood lung infections increases your risk of developing COPD.
COPD is much more common in men than in women. But, this may be largely related to the higher rate of smoking among men. As the number of women who have significant smoking histories has increased, the number of COPD-related deaths in women has also risen.
Exposure to Environmental and Occupational Pollutants
Chronic exposure to dust, gases, chemicals, and biomass fuels increases your risk of developing COPD. These include smoke from burning wood, charcoal, and crop residue. Exposure to these can also worsen symptoms of the disease.
- Reviewer: Michael Woods, MD
- Review Date: 03/2016 -
- Update Date: 03/15/2015 -
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Two other studies found fish oil didn't work for an irregular heartbeat condition called atrial fibrillation, even though it is thought to help certain people with heart disease or high levels of fats called triglycerides in their blood.
The bottom line: Dietary supplements have varied effects and whether one is right for you may depend on your personal health profile, diet and lifestyle.
"Many people take vitamin supplements as a crutch," said study leader Dr. Howard Sesso of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "They're no substitute for a heart-healthy diet, exercising, not smoking, keeping your weight down," especially for lowering heart risks.
The studies were presented Monday at an American Heart Association conference in Los Angeles and the vitamin research and one fish oil study were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Multivitamins are America's favorite dietary supplement about one-third of adults take them. Yet no government agency recommends their routine use for preventing chronic diseases, and few studies have tested them to see if they can. A leading preventive medicine task force even recommends against beta-carotene supplements, alone or with other vitamins, to prevent cancer or heart disease because some studies have found them harmful. And vitamin K can affect bleeding and interfere with some commonly used heart drugs.
Sesso's study involved nearly 15,000 healthy male doctors given monthly packets of Centrum Silver or fake multivitamins. After about 11 years, there were no differences between the groups in heart attacks, strokes, chest pain, heart failure or heart-related deaths.
Side effects were fairly similar except for more rashes among vitamin users. The National Institutes of Health paid for most of the study. Pfizer Inc. supplied the pills and other companies supplied the packaging.
The same study a few weeks ago found that multivitamins cut the chance of developing cancer by 8 percent a modest amount and less than what can be achieved from a good diet, exercise and not smoking.
Multivitamins also may have different results in women or people less healthy than those in this study only 4 percent smoked, for example.
The fish oil studies tested prescription-strength omega-3 capsules from several companies in two different groups of people for preventing atrial fibrillation, a fluttering, irregular heartbeat.
One from South America aimed to prevent recurrent episodes in 600 participants who already had the condition. The other sought to prevent it from developing in 1,500 people from the U.S., Italy and Argentina having various types of heart surgery, such as valve replacement. About one third of heart surgery patients develop atrial fibrillation as a complication.
Both studies found fish oil ineffective.
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It’s hard to discipline children. You can’t hit them. Timeouts are not effective. Now, a study out of the University of Pittsburgh says yelling at teens and tweens — particularly when it involves cursing or insults — can be just as harmful as hitting. So what can you do?
Remember that the word “discipline” originally meant to teach, so look for opportunities to coach your child, not just punish him for a misstep.
“Discipline implies setting limits and boundaries,” said Vicki Hoefle, mother of six in Middlebury, Vt., and author of “Duct Tape Parenting.” “But the way we do it is, ‘I’m going to punish you when you do something I don’t like.’ It’s a completely wasted moment.”
No one wants to yell at their kids, and we usually feel bad when it happens. But most of us didn’t know it could be as damaging as the spankings we got when we were growing up.
The University of Pittsburgh study released in September looked at 967 middle school students over a two-year period. Those whose parents used “harsh verbal discipline” such as yelling, cursing and using insults were more likely to be depressed or have behavior problems. The study found it was also not effective in getting children to stop what they were doing, and that it was damaging even to children in homes that were generally warm and loving.
“If you yell at your child, you either create somebody who yells back at you or somebody who is shamed and retreats,” said Meghan Leahy, a mother of three and a parenting coach in Washington. “You’re either growing aggression or growing shame. Those are not characteristics that any parents want in their kids.”
There is a difference, of course, between being verbally abusive and using a sharply raised voice. Yelling alone is not always damaging, although the surprise of a sudden change in volume can cause a child to be fearful or anxious. It’s often what is said that is harmful, according to Deborah Sendek, program director for the Center for Effective Discipline (CED).
“When people raise their voices, the message typically isn’t, ‘Wow, I love you, you’re a great child,’ ” Sendek said. “You’re usually saying something negative, and ripping down their self-esteem.”
It’s nearly impossible to never yell at your child. It’s going to happen. Even if you’re not calling your child names or insulting him, though, there are more effective ways to deal with disciplinary problems than yelling, Leahy said.
“Teens and tweens, especially, find our sensitive underbellies, and when they are outright defiant and what they do flies in the face of expectations, we do yell,” said Leahy, whose oldest daughter, Sophia, will be 10 in January. “But it’s definitely not in the toolbox of what’s effective discipline.”
What can harried parents do to get through to that child who, despite being asked 10 times to brush his teeth, is still playing with the cat and about to be late for school? Here are suggestions from parenting experts on how to keep behavioral problems from turning you into a screaming lunatic, and how to recover from it on the (hopefully rare) occasions when you do yell.
Take a break
Sometimes you are better off pushing the pause button and revisiting the problem in 20 minutes or the next morning.
When Hoefle’s children, now ages 19 to 24, were younger and she felt herself losing her temper, she would put a hard candy in her mouth or look at a sweet picture of her child. That was often enough to make her consider her response more carefully.
She also took the unconventional approach of allowing her children to leave the room if she was yelling. Most parents might think seeing their child’s retreating back would escalate their anger, but Hoefle said it made her stop and think about what she was saying, and how it was making her child feel. It was enough of a pause, she said, for her to reconsider how she was handling her anger.
“If you find what I’m saying disrespectful, you have permission to leave, because nobody should be subjected to that,” said Hoefle, whose book advises parents to resist the urge to nag and control their kids. “It set up a dynamic where people could get up and walk away and the person yelling would stop and say, ‘I’m sorry.’ My kids would say, ‘I know we didn’t do what you asked, we got distracted, we’re sorry.’ Just the respect goes a long way in re-establishing order.”
Put a stop to recurring arguments
Figure out when, and why, you’re most often losing your temper, Hoefle said.
Do you yell at your son every morning because he’s dawdling in the shower when you are trying to get everyone out the door on time? Then talk to him about what you can do to make things go more smoothly.
Come up with a strategy that attacks the root of the problem, whether it’s using a timer to remind him when he needs to get out of the shower, or taking one the night before. If you involve your child in creating the plan, Hoefle said, he is more likely to participate in executing it.
“If you can anticipate that it’s going to happen, you can make a plan,” Hoefle said. “If it goes this way all the time, what are you going to do differently as the adult? You can say to your kids, ‘We have to create a morning routine that works for you. What can I do to be of assistance?’ “
Be clear and consistent with expectations
Kids want and crave limits and structure, so it’s important to set boundaries and stick to them, the CED’s Sendek said.
Don’t get into the habit of asking your child to do something multiple times. Instead, ask her to do something (say, brush her teeth), and tell her what will happen if she doesn’t. Be specific and follow through, even if she tries to bargain her way out of the consequence.
Leahy said she calmly refuses to be swayed by her daughter’s attempts to negotiate, recalling a time recently when she told Sophia she wouldn’t drive her to a choir concert at school because Sophia had been disrespectful.
“There was a lot of wailing, crying, deep breathing, and then she said, ‘I’m sorry,’ ” Leahy said. “I said thanks, and she looked at me, and I said, ‘I’m still not taking you.’ We don’t want to make our kids feel bad, but at the same time I [held] my boundaries without yelling.”
Give your child a say
The best way to get your child to buy into consequences is to involve him in creating them, said Jennifer Powell-Lunder, creator of the Web forums It’s a Tween’s Life and Talking Teenage.
If you have been struggling to get your child to finish his homework in the evenings, tell him that it has to be done and ready to be checked by 7 p.m. each day, Leahy said. Make it clear to him that if it’s not complete on time, there will be a consequence. Ask him what he thinks would be an appropriate punishment.
You might think he won’t take it seriously, and will suggest something along the lines of no broccoli for a week. More often than not, though, children are harder on themselves than you would be, Powell-Lunder said. Work together to figure out the most appropriate consequences for different rule violations.
Monitor your tone
When you yell, Sendek said, your child will not remember what you said. He will only remember that you yelled, and how upsetting that was.
“It’s a physiological response,” Sendek said. “When someone yells, your system goes on hyper-alert.”
Instead of yelling, Sendek said, use a stern tone of voice to get your child’s attention and let him know that what you are saying is important. Get face to face with him and make eye contact.
Stop arguing and reconnect
Take time out from whatever is angering you and spend time reading or playing a game with your child to reconnect, Leahy said. Or if you are fighting about her choice in music, tell her why you dislike it, then ask her what she likes about it. You can always revisit the source of conflict later.
“You’re modeling wonderful behavior to your teens, and teaching them that when you have a conflict there are other ways to resolve it and be successful,” Powell-Lunder said of taking the time to count to three and resisting the urge to yell.
In Hoefle’s house they called this policy “Stop. Apologize. Eat ice cream.”
“I would go into the freezer and get little tubs of sherbet, give everyone a spoon, and we would all take a bite and regroup,” Hoefle said. “Whatever is happening is not as important as the fact that we are family. When we come home tonight we can talk about the problem. But in that moment I want to clean up the mess. It resets the clock.”
Let go of the small stuff
We all want children with perfect table manners, impeccable hygiene and strong moral character. Sometimes, though, you need to pick what is most important to you, or to your child’s safety, and let some of the irritating, but less dire, behaviors slide, Sendek said.
“Decide what are those things that are very critical to you: drugs, sex, alcohol,” she said. “Those should have dire consequences. With other things, say, ‘Okay, you didn’t pick up your shoes and that drives me crazy, but I can live with it.’ “
Model good behavior by apologizing for yelling
Even the most patient parents yell occasionally. Kids are hard-wired to push our buttons, and we lose our tempers. If you do yell, the best thing to do is acknowledge the mistake, Leahy said.
Leahy said that when she has lost her temper with Sophia, she will write her a note after her daughter has gone to bed. In the note she apologizes for yelling and suggests that they meet the next day to talk about what happened and why she yelled.
“There’s nothing wrong with saying you’re sorry, ever,” Leahy said. “It doesn’t mean she’ll get what she wants, but it opens the door to communication, which is all I want to do.”
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According to researchers at Columbia University, people with high levels of HDL cholesterol (the “good” form) are 60 percent less likely to develop AD. The researchers followed 1,130 seniors with no history of memory loss or dementia and measured their cholesterol levels every 18 months for four years. When the researchers compared the cholesterol levels of study participants with and without Alzheimer’s, they found that those with the highest HDL counts, greater than 55 mg/dL, had about a 60 percent reduced risk of developing the disease compared to those whose levels were less than 39 mg/dL.
Their findings support the theory that high levels of HDL cholesterol are correlated with lower incidence of AD. The study was published earlier this week in the Archives of Neurology and sheds more light on the interactions between cholesterol and AD.
Apolipoprotein E (apoE), as readers of this blog will recall, participates in the mobilization and distribution of cholesterol among various tissues of the body, including the brain. In humans, there are three common isoforms of apoE: apoE2, apoE3 and apoE4. ApoE4 differs from apoE3, the most common isoform of apoE. A single e4 allele is sufficient to increase the risk of developing atherosclerosis, and also Alzheimer’s disease. The e4 allele results in slightly elevated plasma LDL cholesterol levels and a small but significant decrease in plasma HDL levels. HDL is one of the major carriers of protein in and out of the brain, and also binds to beta-amyloid.
This finding further advances the idea that the interplay between cholesterol, cholesterol-carrying proteins such as apoE and HDL, and beta-amyloid may be critical in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. This study has important strengths. It is a prospective cohort study designed for the diagnosis of cognitive decline that has complete clinical and neuropsychological evaluation at each interval.
Guidelines recommend that men raise HDL levels that are less than 40 mg/dL and that women increase HDL numbers less 50 mg/dL. An HDL of 60 mg/dL or higher is optimal.
* Association of Higher Levels of High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol in Elderly Individuals and Lower Risk of Late-Onset Alzheimer Disease. Christiane Reitz et al., Arch Neurol. 2010;67(12):1491-1497.
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The Education Trust, a Washington-based organization, released a paper highlighting the role of school counselors in preparing high school students for postsecondary education and careers.
According to the paper, school counselors play a vital role in setting up students for success; however, they are often overwhelmed and sidetracked by assigned tasks that distract from the goal of preparing college- and career-ready students. Despite this, many school counselors are taking extra steps – such as poring over data to spot struggling students, or identifying students who need additional services – to increase students’ performance and their postsecondary opportunities.
The authors stated that all school counselors should be positioned to “assume leadership in the movement for college and career readiness,” and states, districts, and schools can take action by making these changes:
1) Rework school counselors’ job descriptions to focus more on tasks that will result in college and career readiness for all students.
2) Refocus counselor education programs so that school counselors are trained in educational equity and college and career readiness.
3) Add more school-specific training and coursework on data usage to university counseling programs.
4) Support current school counselors through additional professional development.
5) Align school counselors’ evaluations with student outcomes.
Secondary students, including the many enrolled in Career Technical Education (CTE), would benefit from changes that allow school and career counselors to increase focus on college and career readiness for students.
Kara Herbertson, Education Policy Analyst
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NCLB called on public schools to close achievement gaps, and that focus is one thing that’s not likely to change whenever Congress gets around to reauthorizing ESEA. However, a new study by ACT shows how long the odds are for low-achieving 4th and 8th graders to eventually graduate college-ready, which should make us think about how to go about gap closing.
ACT has once again mined its considerable databases to track the progress of students as they moved from 4th to 12th grades in order to find out how many ended up “college ready.” ACT grouped students by three achievement levels: on track to college-readiness, off track, and far off track. Here’s what they found about 8th graders’ chances:
This table means that only 10 percent of students who were far off track in 8th grade were college ready in reading by 12th grade. The analysts further found that African American and Hispanic 8th graders were twice as likely to be “far off track” than their white classmates. Similar patterns were evident among 4th graders, too.
If there’s a silver lining in this news, it’s this: “Far off” students who attended the top 10 percent of schools were about three times as likely to become college-ready. In reading, for example, 28 percent of “far off” 8th graders in the top schools had become college-ready by the time they were seniors compared to the overall average of 10 percent.
This shows us that there are things schools can do to reverse the downward trajectory of low achievement. At the same time, though, it underscores how hard it is to break these trends after 4th grade. As if we still needed another argument for starting early with high-quality pre-k, ACT has surely given us one. But they also provide evidence for never giving up on kids and their capacity to learn to high levels, even in high school.
A note on methodology: ACT’s college-ready benchmark is the score at which students have a 75 percent chance of earning a C or better and a 50 percent chance of earning a B or better in the relevant college freshman course. Their database has data for students in a half dozen states who take the ACT series of aligned tests at 4th, 8th and end of high school. You can find their report “Catching up to college and career readiness” — and I encourage you to do so — at www.act.org.
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Former Lieutenant Governor of Texas, university professor, and Chancellor of the University of Houston System.
The following is from a presentation by former Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library on January 19, 2012.
Let’s start with Sam Houston. Sam Houston is a pretty good place to start any talk about American history. Sam fought in the War of 1812 and his descendants span our history from then to my own lifetime.
At the suggestion of his mentor Andrew Jackson, Houston, on his way to Washington for his first session as a Tennessee congressman in 1823, stopped at Monticello to meet Thomas Jefferson. So a veteran of the War of 1812 and an acquaintance of the third President of the United States, of the Marquis de Lafayette and Alexander de Tocqueville, was the father of a United States Senator from Texas who served when I was a child.
LBJ and Sam Houston
LBJ’s great-grandfather George Washington Baines baptized Sam Houston in Rocky Creek near Independence in 1854. When Brother Baines told Sam that the immersion would wash away all his sins, Sam said “I hope so, but if they were all washed away, the Lord help the fish down below.”
Brother Baines was later President of Baylor University.
Senator Andrew Jackson Houston, who knelt with his father at Andrew Jackson’s deathbed, briefly held the same seat his father had been the first to hold.
When Senator A. J. Houston, 87, died on schedule after two months in office (4/21-6/26, 1941) LBJ made his first run for the Houston seat. LBJ lost to Governor W. Lee “Pass the Biscuits Pappy” O’Daniel. LBJ won on his second try (1949), becoming a successor to both the Senators Houston.
My own family’s connection with the Johnson family began three generations ago when LBJ’s father Sam Ealy Johnson and my grandfather I. W. Culp served together in the Texas House in the 36th (1919-21) and 38th (1923-25) Legislatures.
In the next generation LBJ and my parents were connected through the television business, as well as through government and politics. Mrs. Johnson owned several radio and TV stations. The first was KLBJ (nee KVET) in Austin.
Jess Kellam managed her stations and Jack Harris managed ours. Tom Johnson, who later managed the Johnson stations, will tell you that Jack Harris was his mentor.
In the current generation, Lynda and Luci and I more or less grew up together and the friendship continues today.
The afternoon before President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas he and LBJ came to Houston to dedicate the Albert Thomas Convention Center. Jack Valenti, then a Houston Post columnist, and I greeted LBJ at the airport.
LBJ shanghaied Jack into going on to Fort Worth and Dallas with him. After JFK was shot the Secret Service took LBJ to Air Force One at Love Field. While LBJ and Mrs. Kennedy, still in her blood-stained dress, waited for JFK’s body to arrive from Parkland Hospital LBJ told Jack to get Attorney General Robert Kennedy on the phone. RFK advised LBJ to take the oath immediately and put somebody on the phone to dictate the oath to Jack.
LBJ then sent for Judge Sarah Hughes whom we see holding the Bible and administering the oath in this historic photo. Jack Valenti is farthest to the left. Congressman Albert Thomas is next to Jack. Congressman Jack Brooks is behind Mrs. Kennedy.
LBJ’s Last Inauguration
Dolph Briscoe and I were sworn in as Governor and Lieutenant Governor thirty-seven years ago last Monday. I called President Johnson the day before to tell him how much it would mean to my mother and Diana and me if he and Mrs. Johnson would come to the inauguration.
“When is it?”, asked LBJ.
“Tomorrow, Mr. President.”
“I know it’s tomorrow. What time?”
“Noon, Mr. President”
“Noon? That’s when I take my nap. You’re just trying to kill a sick old man!”, LBJ barked.
Nonetheless, the Johnsons came to the inauguration, where he was mobbed by well-wishers. It was his last public appearance. He died a week later.
—————————–William “Bill” Hobby
Former Lieutenant Governor of Texas,
university professor, and
Chancellor of the University of Houston System.
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http://blog.chron.com/insidepolicy/2012/01/lbj-and-the-threads-of-history/
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There are a lot of misconceptions about this vitamin. Get the facts about B-12.
What is it?
Less commonly known as “cobalamin” this water-soluble vitamin is almost always found in multi-vitamins and B-complex supplements. Unlike most other water-soluble vitaminss, B-12 requires stomach acid for absorption. It’s also stored within the body for many years, unlike others like riboflavin and thiamin that are quickly passed in the urine.
Why is it good for you?
Your body needs B-12 to help form DNA, to build your nervous system and keep red blood cells healthy. Since the body likes to store B-12, large amounts of supplements are often not necessary – there’s just one catch. B-12 is mostly found in animal products, so folks that follow a long-term vegan diet might need to consider a daily supplement. Since you need stomach acid for absorption, your ability to break it down decreases with age. Folks who take a lots of antacids will also need to up their intake to make sure they’re getting enough.
Where can you find it?
The daily requirement for B-12 is 6 micrograms per day and it can be found in all kinds of foods including daily, meat, fish, eggs and fortified breakfast cereals.
3-ounces cooked clams = 84 micrograms (1400%)
3-ounces cooked salmon = 5 micrograms (83%)
1 cup fortified cereal (such as bran flakes ) = 1.5 milligrams (25%)
1 cup low fat (1%) milk = 1.2 micrograms (20%)
1 ounce Swiss cheese = 0.9 micrograms (15%)
1 large egg 0.6 micrograms (10%)
3-ounces cooked turkey breast = 0.3 micrograms (5%)
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<urn:uuid:a09d4f85-9ec4-42a7-baa9-9d73794353fb>
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http://blog.foodnetwork.com/healthyeats/2012/06/05/nutrient-to-know-vitamin-b12/comment-page-23/
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This ink-on-paper sketch of Einstein (courtesy: Sigrid Freundorfer Fine Art LLC; click to view large) will go on public display for the first time tomorrow as part of an art show in New York City. It is the handiwork of Josef Scharl, a German artist who produced the work in 1950 while visiting his close friend Albert Einstein at Princeton University in the US.
Born in Munich in 1896, Scharl gained recognition in his time after being part of the “New Munich Secession” artists in the 1920s. He won various awards including the Albrecht Dürer Award from the city of Nuremberg, and the Prix-de-Rome. But Scharl was a vocal critic of the Nazi Party and by 1935 he was considered a “degenerate artist” and banned from painting.
Einstein, who by this time was already working at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, had met Scharl in 1927 in Berlin at the house of photographer Lotte Jacobi. Upon learning of the fate of his friend, Einstein offered to sponsor Scharl’s immigration to the US, which the artist accepted. Once in the States, Scharl used to visit Einstein regularly and when the artist passed away in 1954 Einstein wrote the eulogy that was read at the funeral.
“Scharl was an outspoken man, not shy with his opinions, often rather witty. Einstein appreciated Scharl’s candor and views on this or that, and their conversations were lively and informative for both,” says Sigrid Freundorfer, the fine-art dealer based in New York who owns the drawing. “It must have been refreshing for Einstein to have had somebody like Scharl to talk to once in a while, in German at that.”
Freundorfer bought the painting last year from someone in the field of manuscripts and rare books “Being an art dealer, I bought it first as a magnificent drawing by Josef Scharl, depicting this great man Einstein, signed by both men,” she said. The image will go on sale at the Master Drawings New York exhibition, which runs 26 January – 2 February and has a preview show on 25 January.
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http://blog.physicsworld.com/2013/01/24/einstein-portrait-to-appear-in/
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The November 11 issue of Science reports the sequencing of the sea urchin genome.
Every wader in a tide pool knows this spiky creature. What most people don't know is that we are more closely related to sea urchins than we are to worms or flies. Vertebrates and urchins share a common ancestor, 500 million years ago.
Now we have a complete readout of the 814 million base pairs (compared to the human 3 billion bases) that are the four-letter code for making an urchin, encoding approximately 23,300 genes.
Sea urchins have been standard laboratory animals for over a hundred years, a sort of marine white rat. A century ago Theodor Boveri demonstrated in a famous experiment that a complete set of chromosomes must be present in every cell of a sea urchin for embryonic development to occur normally. The same, of course, applies to us.
Expect now to see even more rapid progress in understanding basics of embryonic development, immunology, speciation -- and a more complete understanding of our place among the myriad creatures of Earth.
Who would have guessed that a history of life over hundreds of millions of years is written in every cell of our bodies, linking us across the eons with creatures that begin their larval lives as tiny bells of transparent jelly afloat in the sea.
This is what the naturalist Donald Culross Peattie called the "most unutterable thing" in evolution, "the terrible continuity and fluidity of protoplasm, the inexpressible forces of reproduction -- not mystical human love, but the cold batrachian jelly by which we vertebrates are linked to things that creep and writhe and are blind yet breed and have being."
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http://blog.sciencemusings.com/2006/11/strongylocentrotus-purpuratus.html
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Our opinion: Getting natural gas out of the ground turns out to be pretty dirty business. Energy shouldn’t come at the price of drinkable water and clean air.
The natural gas industry likes to portray its product as abundant, domestic and clean. Perhaps it thinks two out of three isn’t bad.
We don’t. Nor should Congress and the government agencies entrusted with protecting our drinking water and environment.
Time and again lately, we’ve received fresh warnings that mining this source of energy is far from a clean process, despite the industry’s often artfully parsed claim that the method of choice — horizontal hydraulic fracturing — is safe.
The process involves drilling deep underground, down and horizontally, and pumping in millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals under high pressure to crack the rock and release trapped gas. The industry is using fracking to tap portions of the Marcellus Shale, a gas-rich rock formation that lies under six states, including New York. The state has yet to issue permits while it drafts regulations.
Among the latest rebuttals to the industry’s claim of safety:
Thousands of gallons of chemical-laced water spewed into a stream last week from a well in Bradford County, Pa. Homeowners and farmers don’t know if their water is safe now for people and animals. This follows well contaminations elsewhere in the state, which embraced the rush to drill.
While the industry likes to note that chemicals are only a tiny fraction of the fracking mixture, a congressional investigation found that it added up to 866 million gallons, including hazardous and carcinogenic compounds, pumped into wells in at least 13 states from 2005 to 2009. And while underground, the water can become radioactive. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has told Pennsylvania to test drinking water for radium.
Pennsylvania officials have halted the disposal of drilling wastewater through treatment plants that discharge into rivers and streams that provide drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people. The plants, it turns out, aren’t equipped to remove the pollutants.
A Cornell University study concluded that fracking contributes to global warming even more than coal or oil burning by releasing methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The industry — which has sought to block release of methane emission data — dismissed the peer-reviewed study as lacking credibility.
New York has prudently held off issuing drilling permits at least until regulations are finished this summer. We urge the state, once again, to continue its moratorium until the EPA finishes a study into the safety of hydraulic fracturing, most likely next year. That study, focusing on water, should be expanded to air quality in light of the Cornell report.
Likewise, the interstate Delaware River Basin Commission, which controls a watershed that spans New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, and supplies water for millions including New York City residents, should wait for the EPA study, too, before issuing its own drilling regulations. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman should follow through on his threat to sue the commission if it doesn’t take the time for a proper environmental study.
Finally, Congress needs to fix mistakes it made in 2005 to exempt hydrofracking from federal clean air and water standards. Lawmakers need to let the agency charged with protecting the environment do its job in regulating an industry that has proven to be anything but clean.
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http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion/look-closer-at-this-clean-energy/10965/
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8 March 2012
Yesterday I posted a photo of the Tumbi Quarry site before the landslide. Today I thought I’d look at this image in a little more detail. The photograph was collected on 27th January 2010, i.e. almost two years before the landslide:
For reference, lets compare this with the post-landslide image:
So lets start with the quarry, and home in on the section of the new photo that shows the landslide source area (see image below). It is clear that the entirety of the workings in the pre-landslide photograph was destroyed in the landslide. The section of the quarry that survived (see the second photo) was upslope and across from the original workings – I have marked this as point a on the image below:
It is quite helpful to take a look at the Exxon-Mobil plans for the development of the project, as highlighted in an earlier post:
The dark grey area is the original quarry (as per the pre-landslide photo), the yellow is the new haul road up to the higher quarry section, and the light grey, light blue and green hatched areas are the new quarry, or lands to be cleared for quarrying. The plans appear to be more-or-less consistent with the configurations in the two photos. Note that the landslide appears to have destroyed most of the haul road, and it is somewhat unclear as to how much the new quarrying had expanded into the light grey area. A key question remains as to where the haul road was located, and where the quarry spoil was being dumped.
Going back to the new photo, in the older (weathered) section there is clearly a stream issuing from the quarry face (marked as b on the image) – this water course is also shown on the map above.
Let’s take a look at the land-use. The photo shows that most of the area that slipped was forested with mature trees, which agrees with the map above. There are some cultivated areas near to the main road, but these are for the most part not in the landslide area. The source area is densely forested, which suggests that it is unlikely that deforestation was the cause. I have previously noted that in such a deep-seated landslide, land-use change is unlikely to be a primary factor.
There are some features in the landscape that are almost certainly small (but certainly not trivial) landslides. Point c on the image above is almost certainly a slip, and point d is probably another. Note though that in both cases these appear to be slips in soil or regolith, not in bedrock as per the main landslide.
The most intriguing features remain these linear structures in the slope above the main quarry (point e). Superficially these look like either tension cracks or footpaths – from an image like this it is impossible to discriminate. I am erring slightly in favour of them being footpaths simply because it is hard to imagine a quarry being operated in an area with such tension cracks.
So what does this tell us? Well, we can in effect rule out land use change as being a major factor in this landslide unless there was catastrophic felling between the image being collected and the landslide (and even then I do not believe that it would be a major factor in such a deep landslide). The presence of the stream suggests that the limestone was well-drained, but of course blockage of the source might have serious implications for the slope. The landslide has removed most of the quarry plus the associated infrastructure. It is impossible to say that the landslide was caused by the quarry, but it is also clear that there is nothing in the image that would definitely indicate that the landslide was not associated with it.
The need for a proper independent inquiry
Of course all of this indicates that there is a need for a proper, independent assessment of this landslide. I know that there are now moves by some to either try to get a court order to undertake such an investigation, or to commission such a process independently. Clearly either route would be expensive, so those involved are trying to raise the funds to support these efforts. We must remember that at least 25 people died in this event, and maybe many more. Personally, I would have thought that it is in the interests of all parties, including the quarry operators, to understabd what has happened here. It could well be that those responsible for the quarry are completely exonerated by such an investigation.
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<urn:uuid:b3f0a77d-3f74-4fcd-b094-efde303b31e3>
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http://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2012/03/08/analysing-the-pre-landslide-image-from-tumbi-quarry/
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Let's think together: Every week the World Bank team in Tanzania wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a couple of questions. This post is also published in theTanzanian Newspaper The Citizen every Sunday.
About 70 per cent of the world’s 1.4 billion extreme poor rely on livestock to sustain their livelihood, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO, 2009). Not only does livestock provide meat and milk for consumption, it also helps increase agricultural productivity through manure which is an organic fertilizer and draft power.
Because it can be readily marketed to generate income, livestock also reduces the vulnerability of poor households to external shocks. But this crucial resource is also susceptible to many risks including drought, disease, and theft.
In Tanzania, as of October 2010, there were more than 17 million heads of large livestock (bulls, cows, heifers, steers), more than 21 million of medium-sized livestock (sheep and goats or shoats), close to 2 million pigs, and over 50 million heads of poultry. As a result, about 5 million Tanzanian households, or close to 58 per cent of them, reported owning at least one kind of livestock, with the larger proportion of them in rural areas (3 out of 4 households) than in urban areas (one out of 4). Approximately, 25 per cent of rural households owned a large livestock compared to less than 4 per cent of urban households.
Unfortunately, many Tanzanian households cannot fully benefit from their livestock because most of them are exposed to disease and theft. With less than 30 per cent of owners reporting having vaccinated their livestock over the previous 12 months, morbidity rates in 2010/11 were as high as 42, 29, 20 and 58 per cent for cattle, goats, pigs and poultry respectively.
In 2010/11, the toll on livestock from disease and theft was staggering:
- Diseases claimed more than 1.4 million cattle and 3.4 million shoats.
- More than 80,000 heads of cattle and half a million shoats were stolen.
- Poultry were even more exposed to diseases and theft with a loss of more than 30 million.
The total loss from disease and theft for all livestock was estimated at Sh649 billion of which Sh572 billion was just from disease. This amount is equivalent to about 2 per cent of GDP and 8.3 per cent of agricultural GDP. These two plagues hit poor rural households harder with more than 55 per cent of them having experienced loss compared to 37 per cent of households in the richest quintile. Livestock theft and disease cost more than 6 per cent of average total household consumption. In addition, 8.5 per cent of the poor in 2010/11 were pushed into poverty by the loss of livestock, adding more than 800,000 people into these ranks.
This raises a number of questions:
- What prevents farmers from investing more in the protection of their livestock, especially through vaccination programs? Should government invest more in veterinary services to tackle livestock disease?
- Should investment in new technologies, such as GPS, be considered to help track stolen livestock as experimented in Kenya? Or does this just require stronger law enforcement?
- What role can insurance products play in strengthening the livestock sub-sector?
- Should government subsidize livestock insurance or vaccination programs?
Note: These statistics are extracted from the 2009 FAO State of Food and Agriculture report and the Tanzania National Panel Survey 2010/11. Both are publicly available and can be readily replicated.
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<urn:uuid:99cec00c-9a69-4f6e-acbb-ba48c5d18d53>
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http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/where-is-my-cow-theft-and-disease-of-livestock-increase-poverty-in-rural-tanzania
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Environmental, biological and anthropogenic effects on grizzly bear body size: temporal and spatial considerations
© Nielsen et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013
Received: 3 April 2013
Accepted: 6 September 2013
Published: 8 September 2013
Individual body growth is controlled in large part by the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of, and competition for, resources. Grizzly bears (Ursus arctos L.) are an excellent species for studying the effects of resource heterogeneity and maternal effects (i.e. silver spoon) on life history traits such as body size because their habitats are highly variable in space and time. Here, we evaluated influences on body size of grizzly bears in Alberta, Canada by testing six factors that accounted for spatial and temporal heterogeneity in environments during maternal, natal and ‘capture’ (recent) environments. After accounting for intrinsic biological factors (age, sex), we examined how body size, measured in mass, length and body condition, was influenced by: (a) population density; (b) regional habitat productivity; (c) inter-annual variability in productivity (including silver spoon effects); (d) local habitat quality; (e) human footprint (disturbances); and (f) landscape change.
We found sex and age explained the most variance in body mass, condition and length (R2 from 0.48–0.64). Inter-annual variability in climate the year before and of birth (silver spoon effects) had detectable effects on the three-body size metrics (R2 from 0.04–0.07); both maternal (year before birth) and natal (year of birth) effects of precipitation and temperature were related with body size. Local heterogeneity in habitat quality also explained variance in body mass and condition (R2 from 0.01–0.08), while annual rate of landscape change explained additional variance in body length (R2 of 0.03). Human footprint and population density had no observed effect on body size.
These results illustrated that body size patterns of grizzly bears, while largely affected by basic biological characteristics (age and sex), were also influenced by regional environmental gradients the year before, and of, the individual’s birth thus illustrating silver spoon effects. The magnitude of the silver spoon effects was on par with the influence of contemporary regional habitat productivity, which showed that both temporal and spatial influences explain in part body size patterns in grizzly bears. Because smaller bears were found in colder and less-productive environments, we hypothesize that warming global temperatures may positively affect body mass of interior bears.
KeywordsBear Silver spoon Environmental effects GPS radiocollar Temporal and spatial heterogeneity
Understanding how spatial and temporal heterogeneity of environments affect life-history traits and the growth of individuals has been a central theme in ecology and population biology [1–3]. Among other measures of phenotype, body size for many species is highly variable across different spatial and temporal scales, which illustrates the importance of environmental heterogeneity on the growth of individuals and populations. Understanding how these spatial and temporal dynamics affect phenotypes is critical to helping identify and prioritize management actions for many species of special concern, especially in today’s rapidly changing world.
There is little argument that spatial heterogeneity of environments shape populations by affecting population density, fitness, dispersal and behaviour [4–6]. Indeed, such relationships are a cornerstone of landscape ecology [7, 8] and habitat selection theory [9, 10], and form the basis for natural-resource-management. Inter-annual variability in environments creates pulsed-resource dynamics that affect many animal populations [11–13] by affecting primary productivity [14–16] and the frequency and intensity of landscape disturbances [17, 18]. For example, climatic oscillations that impact plant productivity will in turn affect primary consumer populations [1, 19, 20] and thus other trophic levels dependent on primary consumers [21, 22]. For consumers that are specialized on fruit (frugivores), which often exhibit supra-annual variation in productivity [23, 24], climate conditions can have an important effect on population dynamics and the health of animals. For example, masting events or mast failures are often signalled by climatic conditions [25–28]. On Barro Colorado Island in Panama, warm ENSO events stimulate fruit masting in tropical trees resulting in population increases of frugivore species [14, 29]. Likewise, acorn production for many species of oaks in the USA and cones for spruce in Canada are known to mast synchronously across broad spatial scales [30–32] having profound effects on consumer populations [21, 33, 34].
Increasingly, it appears that such inter-annual variations have long-term effects on individuals, particularly for those experiencing boom or bust conditions during early life. In fact, conditions during in utero or natal periods can be as, or more, important than recent conditions on animal health and fitness [35–37]. This phenomenon is referred to as the “silver-spoon” effect as it emphasizes the importance of being born into “rich” environments . Since resource conditions vary among years for nearly all ecosystems, populations often exhibit cohort effects that structure population dynamics [1, 39]. For instance, cone production in white spruce during natal periods and temperature during in utero conditions had long-lasting effects on red squirrel reproductive success in the Yukon of Canada . Likewise, population growth of stoats in New Zealand beech forests is dependent on masting .
One species that inhabits highly variable environments with limited resources relative to their dietary needs and large body size are grizzly (brown) bears (Ursus arctos L.) . All the calories necessary to survive and reproduce are acquired in the approximately seven months that they are active prior to about five months of fasting in a den. The importance of limiting resources and phenotypic plasticity is further emphasized by nearly a 10-fold difference in adult body mass across the species’ range . Most often, grizzly bears rely on the seasonal or inter-annual pulsing of high-calorie resources, such as salmon in coastal ecosystems [42–44] or hard and soft mast in interior populations [45–47]. Not surprisingly, body size in bears varies accordingly [48, 49], having ramifications to both survival [43, 50, 51] and reproduction [48, 52, 53]. Given these resource demands and the existence of environmental uncertainty, grizzly bears have evolved a reproductive mechanism to compensate for these factors – the delayed facultative implantation of the fertilized egg dependent on autumn body condition [54–56]. Understanding body size-environment relations is therefore critical to understanding population processes in grizzly bears, particularly reproductive success and population growth.
Environmental variables used to measure hypothesized environmental drivers of body size patterns in grizzly bears within Alberta, Canada
Hypothesized environmental driver and measurement variable
A. Regional habitat productivity
Temperature (Winter, Spring, Summer)
Precipitation (Winter, Spring, Summer)
B. Inter-annual environments (deviations)
Temperature (Winter, Spring, Summer)
Bt-1, t 0, t+1 & Ct-1, t 0
Precipitation (Winter, Spring, Summer)
Bt-1, t 0, t+1 & Ct-1, t 0
C. Local habitat quality
Shrub habitat (quadratic)
Canopy cover (quadratic)
Variation in canopy cover
Deciduous canopy cover (quadratic)
Forest age (quadratic)
Forest age variation
Regenerating forest habitat (quadratic)
Variation in regen. forest age
Soil wetness (quadratic)
D. Human footprint & activity
Safe harbour habitat
Linear feature density
Distance to human feature
Distance to active energy well
E. Landscape change
Annual rate of habitat change
Grizzly bear observations
We used three measures of body size to represent short- to long-term measures of growth: mass; length; and body condition. Body condition was estimated using a body condition index where mass is measured relative to length . Although we had multiple capture events for some animals, we only used the most recent capture because it maximized the range of ages considered. All captures and handling were done on public lands with permits and the capture and handling procedures approved by the University of Saskatchewan’s Committee on Animal Care and Supply (Permit Number: 20010016) following guidelines provided by the American Society of Mammalogists’ Animal Care and Use Committee and the Canadian Council on Animal Care for the safe handling of wildlife.
Age, sex and reproductive status (with or without offspring) of each animal was recorded. Number of times captured and density were also considered as response variables for body size measures. The local-population density was indexed as the number of genetically identified individuals surrounding a radiocollared bear [48, 53]. Each bear was assigned a single geographic centroid based on their GPS telemetry locations and a buffer around this centroid based on the radius distance of the average daily movement rate of that animal’s sex-age class (4340 m to 10380 m radius). The number of detections of unique bears within each circular buffer was then estimated from DNA hair-snag information collected within 7x7km grids in 2004 to 2008. These counts were divided by the proportion of the buffer overlapping the DNA survey grid, and by the probability of capture (derived from data of the closest observed distance of GPS collared bears to known bait sites – see 67), which varied by the age, sex and reproductive status of the individual being detected, and the DNA survey stratum .
Regional environmental productivity was estimated for each bear at their home range centroid location based on monthly temperature and precipitation normal (or average) from 1971 – 2000 estimated with the software ClimateAB . ClimateAB measures of climate normals are downscaled ANUSPLIN-interpolated monthly normal data (2.5 x 2.5 arcmin) using local weather-station data and an elevation lapse-rate adjustment . Monthly climate normals for precipitation and temperature were considered for four seasonal periods (winter, spring, summer and growing season) and for the two individual months of March and July that represented late winter conditions affecting snowpack at high altitudes and peak primary productivity respectively (Table 1). We also considered ecosystem type (i.e., alpine, subalpine and foothills) as a surrogate of regional productivity based on habitat use (exposure at three possible zones of influence) measured from GPS radio-telemetry information. Zones of influence considered around each telemetry location included the local habitat-patch (HP) scale at the 30 m raster resolution, a flight-response (FR) scale of a 300 m radius representing exposure to direct human activity , and a landscape-encounter (LE) scale representing the average daily movement rate by sex group (scale or radius buffer).
We measured inter-annual variations in environments using ClimateAB by estimating temperature and precipitation by month at each animal’s home range centroid from the time (year) prior to birth (Bt-1) to the year of capture (Ct 0); due to missing data (i.e. locations prior to GPS collaring) and computational considerations, we are making the assumption that home range centroids have not changed over time or if changed that local variation in climates are small (see Discussion). The inter-annual variation (anomalies) was estimated as the absolute deviation in temperature and precipitation from 30 year (1971–2000) climate normals over the range of birth years observed in sampled bears for the same home range centroids again using ClimateAB . By using anomalies rather than actual climate observations, we separated effects associated with regional productivity (climate normal) from inter-annual fluctuations (anomalies). Inter-annual variability was measured for: (1) maternal conditions (one year prior to birth; B t-1 ); (2) in-utero and natal conditions (birth year and yearling; B 0 and B t+1 ); and (3) conditions during or prior to capture (Ct-1 and C0) (Table 1).
Local habitat quality was measured as habitat use (GPS telemetry) at the three scales of exposure (HP, FR and LE) for nine different measures of habitat quality reflecting the association of grizzly bears with disturbed and productive environments [72–74]: canopy cover, variation in canopy cover, deciduous canopy cover, amount of shrub habitat, forest age, forest age variation, amount of regenerating forest, variation in regenerating forest age and terrain soil wetness (Table 1). Non-linear effects were considered for canopy cover, deciduous canopy cover, forest age, amount of regenerating forest used and terrain soil wetness since intermediate amounts of these habitat conditions are normally preferred [72, 74, 75].
We used regional measures of human footprint and activity including the amount of habitat use associated with private lands (i.e., Alberta’s whitezone; see ), protected areas and high- or low-risk habitats based on a mortality risk and safe harbour habitat models , density of linear-access features, and distance to nearest human feature or recent energy wells (Table 1). Since we did not expect body size to be affected by human features and recent energy wells beyond local effects (distances), we developed exponential decay functions for each distance variable using parameters of 300 m, 1 km and 3 km. A cost-weighted distance to roads was also considered where cost was defined by terrain ruggedness (a continuous variables accounting for change in elevation) under the assumption that more rugged areas near roads would be less penetrable to humans and thus experience lower human activity. Annual rate of landscape change was measured as the annual change (%) in habitat composition using annual remote sensing of major habitat types and anthropogenic features including roads, clear-cuts and energy well-pads .
We used the HIREG module for the software STATA 11 to estimate hierarchical regressions of body size based on the six main hypothesized drivers of growth. This approach was taken in order to partition variances and test for differences among the main hypothesized factors, and account for multiple measurement variables within each hypothesized factor (block) using variable ‘blocking’ approaches. The order of hierarchical regression model considered was: (1) biology effects including density-dependence; (2) regional habitat productivity; (3) inter-annual variation in environments in the form of maternal [(year before birth), in utero (year of birth) and natal (year after birth)] and capture effects (year of and before capture); (4) local habitat quality; (5) human footprint; and (6) landscape change. This order reflects the need to first control for biology before examining residual variance due to environment. We chose more regional measures of environment before inclusion of local measures of environment in the hierarchical order of blocks. No interactions among blocks were considered. For each hierarchical category, we selected predictors (i.e. block of variables) based on a forward step-wise regression procedure of variable blocks using a p < 0.1 significance level . An F-test was used to determine whether changes to the coefficient of variation (R2) among the main hypothesized factors for each block were significant.
Standardized regression coefficients and significance ( p ) of model variables describing body mass (log scale), straight line length (log scale), and body condition measures of springtime grizzly bear captures in Alberta, Canada
Block (hypothesized) category and measurement variables
1) Biology and capture effects
Adult Females (AF)
Adult F w/ cubs (AFC)
Male x Age
Number of captures
2) Regional habitat productivity
Spring (May-Jun) temperature
Alpine habitat use (HP)
3) Inter-annual climate variability
Maternal effects (B t-1 ):
Summer (Jul-Aug) temperature
Natal effects (B t0 ):
Spring (May-Jun) temperature
Summer (May-Oct) temperature
Winter (Dec-Mar) precipitation
Capture effects (C t ):
4) Local habitat quality
Canopy variation (HP)
Regen. forest age variation (HP)
5) Human footprint
6) Landscape change
Biological and environmental factors explained 75.3% of the variation (R2, model F = 39.0, df = 7, 62, p < 0.001) in body length (Table 2, Figfure 3). Similar to body mass, age (as non-linear quadratic function) and sex explained a large amount (61.3%) of the variation in body length. Regional-habitat productivity explained an additional 6.6% of variation in body length (F = 13.3, df = 1, 65, p <0.001) based on average springtime (May-June) temperatures. Bears associated with warmer spring temperatures were more likely to be longer. Inter-annual climate variability – based on maternal and natal effects – explained an additional 4.2% of variance in body length (F = 4.7, df = 2, 63, p <0.001). Body length was positively related to warmer summer (July-August) temperatures during maternal periods and warmer spring temperatures during the year of birth (Table 2). Habitat quality and human footprint were not related to body length, but there was a positive association with landscape change (annual rate of change in habitats associated with human disturbances) adding an additional 3.2% of model variance explained (F = 8.1, df = 1, 62, p <0.001). Density, number of captures and human footprint did not influence body length.
Biological and environmental factors explained 60.0% of model variation (R2, F = 14.7, df = 7, 68, p < 0.001) in springtime body condition (Table 2, Figure 3). Although body condition represents a standardized mass by length of animal, a non-linear (quadratic) age relationship with body condition was still apparent. Adult females were more likely to have a lower body condition than subadult or adult male bears, and this relationship was more pronounced if a female had cubs. Bears captured multiple times were in lower body condition than bears captured only once. Overall, the biological (including capture effects) base model accounted for 47.7% of the variance in body condition. Unlike mass and length measures, regional productivity did not affect body condition. Effects of inter-annual climate variability were observed with higher-than-normal July precipitation during the year of birth inversely related to body condition (Table 2):, this accounted for an additional 4.5% of the remaining model variance (F = 6.5, df = 1, 69, p = 0.013). Local habitat quality, as measured by use of habitats containing greater variation in regenerating forest age, was positively related to observed body condition (Table 2) and explained an additional 7.8% of model variation (F = 13.3, df = 1, 68, p = 0.001). Density of bears, human footprint, and landscape-change were not related to body condition.
Biological factors and body size
Measurements of body mass and length of grizzly bears in Alberta were strongly dependent on intrinsic biological factors: age (positive, non-linear relationship) and sex (males > females). Age, sex and offspring dependence were important factors affecting body condition, which is a short-term measure of growth. Adult females, and especially adult females with cubs of the year, were likely to be in poorer condition than male bears. A negative effect of capture history (number of captures) was also observed for body condition measures which is consistent with previous observations . Although population density (density dependence) is known to inversely affect body-size patterns in animals [80–82], no density dependent effects on body size patterns of grizzly bears were observed in our study. Grizzly bear populations in Alberta are likely to be below carrying capacity given locally high rates of human-caused mortality [83, 84], and were recently classified by the province as ‘threatened’ given the low observed population densities . This is in contrast to brown bears in Sweden that are considered healthy , but where body sizes of adult female bears are inversely related to population density .
Temporal and spatial environmental heterogeneity
Environmental heterogeneity is an important mechanism by which animal populations are regulated . Here, we found that regional heterogeneity in habitat productivity was a moderate predictor of body size patterns of grizzly bears in Alberta. The smallest bears by mass and length occurred in the least-productive and coldest environments as measured by alpine habitat use and home ranges occupying both cool average spring temperatures and high average March precipitation (snowfall). In the Canadian Rocky Mountains, all three of these factors are associated with late timing of spring snowmelt and plant emergence, which are known to affect population dynamics of other alpine mammals . Since den emergence in grizzly bears in our area typically occurs in April to early May , the amount and timing of spring snowpack is likely a factor affecting the availability of early season food resources such as roots , and generally might restrict access to early spring food resources.
Inter-annual variations in climate during the years’ prior, during and/or just following birth (maternal, in-utero and natal environments, respectively) also affected adult body size. Such silver-spoon effects by which animals that are born into ‘rich’ conditions are favoured throughout life are consistent with observations in other mammals including polar bears , Soay sheep , red squirrels and caribou . Common among these studies is the importance of winter and spring climate during (natal environments) or just prior (maternal or in utero environments) to the year of birth, which we also observed in this study. Winter and spring climate is related to summer drought conditions in the Canadian Rocky Mountains , which suggests that the effect of winter and spring climate may not necessarily be directly associated with the denning period, but rather summer environments when water is limiting. We are unsure, however, how late summer precipitation affects cubs-of-the-year. It may be related to late summer food resources, such as fruit production, or affect food-resource abundance in the following year when bears are yearlings. Further, winter precipitation (December-March) anomalies during the natal birth year were positively related to body mass. We interpreted this as snow cover during winter denning providing energetic benefits (e.g. insulation) in the den for cubs of the year.
During the year prior to birth, late summer (July-August) temperature anomalies were negatively associated with body mass but positively associated with body length in grizzly bears. This late-summer environment may have affected maternal body condition prior to denning and thus subsequent condition of offspring [e.g. 53] or conversely, it may have affected the following years’ food supply during the cub-of-year period, since lag effects in fruit production are caused by weather conditions favourable to flower primordia in the mid-to-late summer period the year prior to fruiting . Although we cannot be certain which factor is more important, the fact that body mass is negatively associated with late-summer temperature anomalies, where as body length is positively associated with late-summer temperature anomalies suggests to us that maternal condition is less likely (as we would expect similar responses in body mass and length if it were solely a maternal effect). Further investigations of mid and late-summer weather on pulsing in food resource abundance the following year are needed, especially in regard to the apparent opposite effects on bear mass and length.
One important consideration to our purported silver spoon effect should be discussed: that is, we have no information on our study animals prior to their first capture. This has two important implications: 1) we cannot account for litter size effects, and 2) the centroid data used to determine natal climatic conditions may not be reflective of the actual natal location. In regards to the former, not accounting for litter size should inflate the variance around our estimates. For the centroid data, this would likely only influence dispersing males, as females are philopatric . For males, average dispersal distances in the province are under 50 kilometers , thus still largely reflective of the climate in the centroid of the current home range (differences in climates among bears are mainly regional in effect, not within populations). Further, for this limitation to bias our results, males would consistently have to disperse to poorer environments, again something we deem unlikely. Thus, we argue that the silver spoon pattern is unlikely to be altered by these factors in such away that the statistical pattern would disappear.
Human footprint did not directly relate to body size patterns of grizzly bears, but human activity indirectly affected body size by influencing habitats. The two most important measures of habitat quality were canopy closure and the age structure of forests. Bears that used habitats associated with higher canopy variability, such as forest/non-forest landscapes in the mountains or expanses of old growth forests with a recent, single-harvest sequence, had lower body masses. Conversely, bears that used forests with higher variability in regenerating forest age had higher body condition. Likewise, body length was positively related to annual landscape change. Taken together, these results suggest that human activities that fragment forests are positively associated with body size measures, although survival of bears in these environments is compromised due to high rates of human-caused mortalities [57, 84]. Early successional and highly variable forests are therefore important indicators of improved habitat quality for bears given the relationship to body size patterns reported here, habitat use studies and measures of food resource abundance [73, 74]. We hypothesize that positive associations between body size patterns and variability in regenerating forest age are due in part to local landscape patterns in protein availability. For instance, both ungulate and ant resource use in Alberta are associated with disturbed forests [46, 74].
While bear body size is largely dictated by age and sex, it only accounted for about 50% of the variation. More consideration of the spatial and temporal patterns of resource availability, including the conditions early in life, is needed to better understand individual performance of animals and population dynamics. For grizzly bears in Alberta, environmental effects on body size are most affected by regional environmental gradients (space) and the environmental conditions animals are born into (time). Local-habitat heterogeneity (particularly young, patchily disturbed forests), and landscape dynamics also had a small influence on body size. It is important to emphasize that while patchily disturbed forests positively affected body size, these areas also have high rates of mortality, which could negate any positive population-level effect.
Worldwide, relationships between carnivore body size and climate warming show ambiguous trends ; however, polar bears body sizes have recently declined, which has been attributed primarily to loss in habitat (i.e., sea ice as a platform for hunting; [96, 97]). Despite unequivocal global patterns , a 50 year examination of regional studies showed that carnivore body sizes have generally increased over the past half century . Given the short season associated with high-alpine environments, such as the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, we hypothesize that individuals with a limited growing season and temperature-limited ecosystems, such as interior grizzly bears, might actually benefit from increases in season length associated with climate change. This prediction is largely consistent with observed body size and seasonality patterns in grizzly bears across North America , but may be dependent on sufficient snow cover during the denning period. In conclusion, we have demonstrated a complex interplay of biological, spatial and temporal factors on body size that collectively explained between 60 and 84% of the variation seen in Alberta’s grizzly bears.
We thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, Alberta Innovates – Bio Solutions, and partners from the Foothills Research Institute Grizzly Bear Program for financial support. This manuscript was greatly improved from the comments of three anonymous reviewers.
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- Mysterud A, Yoccoz NG, Stenseth NC, Langvatn R: Effects of age, sex and density on body weight of Norwegian red deer: evidence of density-dependent senescence. Proc Biol Sci. 2001, 268: 911-919. 10.1098/rspb.2001.1585.PubMed CentralView ArticlePubMed
- Benn B, Herrero S: Grizzly bear mortality and human access in Banff and Yoho National Parks, 1971–98. Ursus. 2002, 13: 213-221.
- Nielsen SE, Herrero S, Boyce MS, Mace RD, Benn B, Gibeau ML, Jevons S: Modelling the spatial distribution of human-caused grizzly bear mortalities in the Central Rockies ecosystem of Canada. Biol Conserv. 2004, 120: 101-113. 10.1016/j.biocon.2004.02.020.View Article
- Zedrosser A, Dahle B, Swenson JE, Gerstl N: Status and management of the brown bear in Europe. Ursus. 2001, 12: 9-20.
- Ozgul A, Childs DZ, Oli MK, Armitage KB, Blumstein DT, Olson LE, Tuljapurkar S, Coulson T: Coupled dynamics of body mass and population growth in response to environmental change. Nature. 2010, 466: 482-485. 10.1038/nature09210.View ArticlePubMed
- Morrison SF, Hik DS: Demographic analysis of a declining pika Ochotona collaris population: linking survival to broad-scale climate patterns via spring snowmelt patterns. J Anim Ecol. 2007, 76: 899-907. 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2007.01276.x.View ArticlePubMed
- Ciarniello LM, Boyce MS, Heard DC, Seip DR: Denning behavior and den site selection of grizzly bears along the Parsnip River, British Columbia, Canada. Ursus. 2005, 16: 47-58. 10.2192/1537-6176(2005)016[0047:DBADSS]2.0.CO;2.View Article
- Coogan S, Nielsen SE, Stenhouse GB: Spatial and temporal heterogeneity creates a “brown tide” in root phenology and nutrition. ISRN Ecology. 2012, 2012: 10-View Article
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- Hegel TM, Mysterud A, Ergon T, Loe LE, Huettmann F, Stenseth NC: Seasonal effects of Pacific-based climate on recruitment in a predator-limited large herbivore. J Anim Ecol. 2010, 79: 471-482. 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2009.01647.x.View ArticlePubMed
- Meyn A, Taylor SW, Flannigan MD, Thonicke K, Cramer W: Relationship between fire, climate oscillations, and drought in British Columbia, Canada, 1920–2000. Glob Chang Biol. 2010, 16: 977-989. 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2009.02061.x.View Article
- Krebs CJ, Boonstra R, Cowcill K, Kenney AJ: Climatic determinants of berry crops in the boreal forest of the southwestern Yukon. Botany. 2009, 87: 401-408. 10.1139/B09-013.View Article
- Proctor MF, Mclellan BN, Strobeck C, Barclay RMR: Gender-specific dispersal distances of grizzly bears estimated by genetic analysis. Can J Zool. 2004, 82: 1108-1118. 10.1139/z04-077.View Article
- Meiri S, Guy D, Dayan T, Simberloff D: Global change and carnivore body size: data are stasis. Global Ecol Biogeogr. 2009, 18: 240-247. 10.1111/j.1466-8238.2008.00437.x.View Article
- Derocher AE, Stirling I: Temporal variation in reproduction and body mass of polar bears in western Hudson Bay. Can J Zool. 1995, 73: 1657-1665. 10.1139/z95-197.View Article
- Rode KD, Amstrup SC, Regehr EV: Reduced body size and cub recruitment in polar bears associated with sea ice decline. Ecol Appl. 2010, 20: 768-782. 10.1890/08-1036.1.View ArticlePubMed
- Yom-Tov Y: Body sizes of carnivores commensal with humans have increased over the past 50 years. Func Ecol. 2003, 17: 323-327. 10.1046/j.1365-2435.2003.00735.x.View Article
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Statics Mechanics of Materials, third Edition in SI units
Shared By Guest
This is a concise and well-illustrated introduction to the theory and application of statics and mechanics of materials used in many engineering disciplines. The Author of this Book is Russell C Hibbeler The Author of this Book is Russell C Hibbeler. Array ISBN . It boasts unique pedagogical features such as visualisation tools that help accelerate understanding and develop problem-solving skills in students. Statics Mechanics of Materials, third Edition in SI units available in English. Array ISBN . This four-coloured text in SI units is a combined abridged version of two of Hibbeler’s best-selling titles, namely Engineering Mechanics Statics 12th edition in SI Units and Mechanics of Materials 8th edition in SI Units. Statics Mechanics of Materials, third Edition in SI units available in English. The book’s hallmark remains the same as the unabridged versions, that is having a strong emphasis on drawing a free-body diagram, as well as selecting an appropriate coordinate system and an associated sign convention when the equations of mechanics are applied. Many realistic analysis and design applications are presented, which involve mechanical elements and structural members often encountered in engineering practice.
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I noticed this morning that on this date in 1934, there had been one of the huge dust storms that characterized the Dust Bowl. While reading that article, I got distracted by a link to the Llano Estacado region of West Texas, an area of wall-to-wall f^%k-all. Except for Palo Duro Canyon, from which Col. Ranald Mackenzie evicted the Kiowa and Comanche in an eponymous battle in the 1870s. Col. Mackenzie had been a general during the War of Northern Agression, including being wounded at the Battle of Cedar Creek, where he had commanded a unit under General Phil Sheridan.
Sheridan, of course, had a distinguished career, and the air-droppable M551 tank was named after him. The tank was deployed for both Operation Just Cause and Operation Desert Storm, but saw the most service in Vietnam, where it was used by the 11th ACR, the Black Horse, during the invasion of Cambodia. The 11th is now best known as the OPFOR at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, near Barstow in California. Barstow probably wouldn't be a blip on anyone's consciousness if it weren't for the fact that Route 66 passes through. Route 66 was part of the National Highway system, and in the 1930s, it was crowded with westbound Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl.
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Constitution: We the people own it
As we approach Sept. 17-23, 2013 Constitutional Week, let’s remember what has brought us, the state and the nation to where we are today. If at any time in history there is a need to remind ourselves what our forefathers sacrificed for all of us, it is now. In the past several years the Constitution has been challenged and disrespected by our news media, our state and federal governments, citizens and religious factions.
Let’s reflect on how our forefathers created such a document based upon Christian beliefs to preserve the country in their day and in the future in the mist of hostile forces, knowing if they failed, all would lose their families, fortunes and most of all, their lives.
Our forefathers (delegates from every colony) assembled in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention, chose to replace then revise the Articles of Confederation. The delegates held their meeting in secret to evaluate representation, slavery, taxes and procedures in the election of a president. For four months, debates, arguments and compromise dominated the meetings. Several state delegates created their own plans on how a new government should work.
After months of debating the delegates opinions, suggestions, thoughts and insights the first draft of the Constitution was accepted Aug. 6, 1787. With the first draft in place, delegates continued to discuss, debate, fine tune the final draft and vote on the Constitution. After the final vote, the Constitution was sent to the states where nine states where needed for success. The first state to ratify the Constitution was Delaware and the ninth state was New Hampshire, nine months after the process began.
The U.S. Constitution was signed Sept. 17, 1787, laying out the structure of the American government we know today and is the oldest written Constitution. The framers of the Constitution worried immensely about the dangers of concentrated power from their experiences dealing with Britain’s king and parliament. When designing the Constitution, the framers were careful to create a system of government which no individual or institution could obtain tyrannical power. They designed the United States government with the power to check and balance the others into three coequal branches - Legislative, Executive and Judicial.
This system of government for 226 years has propelled our nation to the heights no other civilization has achieved in history of the world and reminds you of the quote, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” It is never so prevalent with the latest attempts by our federal and state governments in the past year, to infringe on the people’s rights that were given to us by the men that were determined against all odds, sacrificing life and limb and with their deep faith in God, give us the life they could only dream of.
As we embark using the Constitution as our guide like are ancestors before us, strive for excellence that propels patriotism, principles and prosperity along with our faith in God.
We, the People of the United States take an oath and have the responsibility as citizens of this country to protect, defend and preserve The Constitution for our children and grandchildren’s future, because We the People Own It.
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Pope St. Martin I.
Martin I lay too sick to fight on a couch in front of the altar when the soldiers burst into the Lateran basilica. He had come to the church when he heard the soldiers had landed. But the thought of kidnapping a sick pope from the house of God didn't stop the soldiers from grabbing him and hustling him down to their ship.
Elected pope in 649, Martin I had gotten in trouble for refusing to condone silence in the face of wrong. At that time there existed a popular heresy that held that Christ didn't have a human will, only a divine will. The emperor had issued an edict that didn't support Monothelism (as it was known) directly, but simply commanded that no one could discuss Jesus' will at all.
Monothelism was condemned at a council convened by Martin I. The council affirmed, once again, that since Jesus had two natures, human and divine, he had two wills, human and divine. The council then went further and condemned Constans edict to avoid discussion stating, "The Lord commanded us to shun evil and do good, but not to reject the good with the evil."
In his anger at this slap in the face, the emperor sent his soldiers to Rome to bring the pope to him. When Martin I arrived in Constantinople after a long voyage he was immediately put into prison. There he spent three months in a filthy, freezing cell while he suffered from dysentery. He was not allowed to wash and given the most disgusting food. After he was condemned for treason without being allowed to speak in his defense he was imprisoned for another three months.
From there he was exiled to the Crimea where he suffered from the famine of the land as well as the roughness of the land and its people. But hardest to take was the fact that the pope found himself friendless. His letters tell how his own church had deserted him and his friends had forgotten him. They wouldn't even send him oil or corn to live off of.
He died two years later in exile in the year 656, a martyr who stood up for the right of the Church to establish doctrine even in the face of imperial power.
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Addition of two hex numbers program :(
hi i'm a newbie to C programming and got a homework that I couldn't even start...
It's about making a program that gets to hex numbers, add them and show the results.
It should look like
Enter the first number:
Enter the second number:
the thing is the results should be aligned to the right
and the number of '-' in the results should equal to the largest number of digits...
first number: A444444
second number: B1234567
A444444and the results should only contain capital letters
(7 '-') => --------
Can anyone help me making a program like this?
Thanks a lot....
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crisis of the 3rd century, the empire was already terminal. It continued on, but it was no longer the entity that it once was. When Emperor Diocletian established the Tetrarchy, it was an effort to try and make the empire more manageable, essentially splitting them up into separate entities (Imagine the US being split up into seperate administrative districts of Pacifica, New England, Dominion, Midwest, and Texas). The Roman empire had ceased to exist as a single entity, it was now an organization of seperate but cooperative empires, nominally it was one empire, but in practice many. The Roman empire was dead, only the still breathing corpse remained; it simply took a final push from outsiders to do her in.
I say this because Rome throughout history had been beset, bested by, and occasionally sacked by barbaric tribes, such as the celts and gauls, and earlier in their history by the Etruscans and Samnites. Each time the eternal city came back from defeat and soldiered on, eventually reigning victorious and subjugating their attackers. However, what had changed in the millenia was that Rome was no longer a vibrant society; an age old scourge that had beset societies throughout the ages consumed it from within; much like a cancer attacking a persons immune system or termites eating away at a wooden pillar. This cancer was bureaucracy. The empire had always been large, had always had to deal with an occasional uprising, had always been beset by the very problems that appeared to eventually fell it, but the empires ability to deal with these problems effectively and quickly had changed, not the problems themselves.
Where once defense of a region was left to the proconsul/propraetor (governor) of the province and the legionaries (Roman citizen soldiers) and auxiliaries (Non-citizen residents of the empire looking to obtain citizenship) under his command, occasionally with some help from Rome herself in the event of a major crisis. Over the centuries a large bureaucratic organization had sprung up hamstringing the governors ability to govern, and stealing away resources from more productive endeavour.
This bureaucracy had been implemented by the first emperors themselves, to help them assist governance of the empire, and had gradually been expanded as emperors attempted to avoid any extremely popular governor or general from laying claim to the imperial seat. Over the centuries successive coups and civil wars lead the emperor to believe that he needed to exert more direct authority over the empire rather than less (though some Emperors such as Hadrian bucked that trend). Now this is all conjecture, as all hypothesises of what caused Rome to fall are, but I use this example to state my case.
In 212 AD the emperor Caracalla issued an edict that fundamentally changed the empire. The edict was the Constitutio Antoniniana, which declared every freeborn person residing in the empire a Roman citizen with all the rights and responsibilities that it contained. This was a momentous occasion that one, symbolizes how bureaucratic the empire had become, and two, fundamentally changed its social system, and three, laid the seeds for the crises that would beset the empire in the next two centuries.
The reason Caracalla passed the new law was simple, he wished to increase the taxable base of his empire. The Roman empire was very complex and its taxation system equally so, but to summarize it: outside of a census tax and polling tax, each administered by a puppet king or provincial governor, non-Roman citizens were exempt from direct taxation by the empire, i.e Roman tax collectors representing the city of Rome and not the provincial governors who then passed the tax on after collection some of the revenue for their administrations. Roman citizens were subject to direct taxes from the Empire, but were spared the census tax and polling tax.
By passing the law, and making every person in the empire a citizen, he further strengthened an already large bureaucracy. But more importantly, it was why he did so, it was because the tax was to feed the behemoth itself. The bureaucracy had grown so large that the empire was having difficulty funding it with the revenue sources it had at its disposal. The emperor issued this edict, hoping that this move would solve the frequent funding problems that beset the empire during this time; I should also note that currency debasement was going on cocurrently as well. However, this short term solution had dire long term ramifications.
Firstly, it grew the very bureaucracy that was slowly killing the empire. This bureaucracy had gradually, over the centuries, shifted power of action away from the governors of the provinces and more towards the emperor, making the empire as a whole much more vulnerable to incompetence or corruption of the emperor and his aids. Corruption gradually became a widespread problem that left the organization that ran the empire unable to do its very job.
Secondly the edict continued the empires economic stagnation. Adding addition tax burdens to an ever strained productive middle class straing them even further, and as the middle class goes so goes society. When the middle class thrives and is productive society grows. When the middle class is squeezed and disappears a society stagnates. This edict created an additional massive tax burden, which the emperor made even more burdensome by raising the tax rates on the populace, and coupled with an ever debasing currency, made them unable to pay their dues to the state. This began the process of fuedalization of society because as the ability of the common man to pay his debts decreased the likelihood of seeking a wealthy benefactor rose. By the end of the empire the poor plebians had pledge themselves to the wealthy land owners, who had the power and ability to persuade or outright ignore imperial tax edicts, becoming serfs on land that they once had owned and worked for themselves.
Thirdly the new universal citizenship that every person in the empire enjoyed had a major unforeseen consequence on Romes military ability. The legions of Rome had always been the elite force of the military, not the backbone that we imagine them to be simpy because of numbers. Open to citizens of the empire only, it was a lucrative prospect despite the lengthy mandatory service of 25 years. The average lifespan of a legionnaire was greater than that of an average citizen. The pay was very good, and to top it off, retiring legionaries received generous grants of lands in the outer territories. The empire created colonies where retired legionaries would settle, which helped maintain peace and stability in the region, and more importantly for the legionnaire, created an area where they were members of the wealthy landed class. But as I stated, the legion wasn't the backbone of the miliary. Though the legions were numerous there were far too few of them to patrol all of the empire alone. That was the purpose of the auxiliary, which also served a societal reason for existing along with a military purpose.
During the principate and up to the middle of the 3rd century the auxiliary made up 3/5 of the Roman military forces. The pack mules and specialized soldiers of the military; a good analogy would be to think of the legions as construction engineers and the auxiliaries as the field crews. But most importantly, the auxiliary was comprised of non-citizens of the empire, and the auxiliary units were often stationed away from homeland of the soldiers who had enlisted. This helped prevent rebellions, by removing the armed subjects from their native lands, and increased integration amongst the auxiliaries into Roman societs as the reward for 25 years of auxiliary service was citizenship in the empire.
It may be difficult to understand how lucrative a prospect this was, but citizens enjoyed special economic rights and privilages over other subjects. A person could become rich and successful merely as a subjuct, but it was far easier to become rich when one was a citizen. Citizenship could be awarded by the emperor to upstanding subjects or foreigners who greatly helped the empire, but the most common way to earn it was through military service. As I have mentioned before, the Romans were brutally effective in subjugating a population with an iron fist. On the flip side, they created many opportunities for the excellent or ambitious peregrini (foreigners under Roman control) to become standing members of society. Citizenship in the empire opened doors, it allowed for free travel throughout the empire, and the possibility to hold positions of power. The ability to travel freely was especially a big deal. This is still true today, as I know individuals that have acquired American citizenship simply because it offers greater ability to travel into other countries. However, the Constitutio Antoniniana removed a major incentive for members of the empire to enlist into the auxiliary and from it a major source of military manpower.
This immediately created a man shortage problem. The legions alone were not enough to patrol the boundaries of the frontier lands, maintain peace in the inner empire, and build and maintain the vast roadworks that facilitated trade. This self inflicted crisis forced later emperors to seek out barbarian auxiliaries, though a better word would be mercenaries. Essentially the empire had put itself in a position where it was unable to raise its own army, it had to pay for protection.
And this is where it all comes together. The edict removed any real reason for non-citizens to sacrifice for the empire, since everyone was a citizen now, why would they join the auxiliaries? Men still joined the legions, but the legions were expensive to maintain relative to the auxiliary units, further straining the empire that was already spending every coin it had on its massive bureaucracy.
And as the bureaucracy grew, so did the corruption that comes with large organizations that answer to few individuals. It siphoned resources from the middle class, and actively forced out those who showed great ability for fear of losing their little fiefdoms. In the end those with ability, or simply the resources, stuck to their own fortunes and ignored the empire, carving out little fiefdoms of their own. When the west finally fell in 476 AD, the empire had long been dead, the usurping Germanic leader simply decided he did not want to play along with the farce any more.
This is something we ourselves need to think about. Massive influx of migrants, economic troubles, even incompetent leaders are all survivable. Rome had its fair share over the millenia but survived them all. It was only when the bureaucracy became so large that it cannibalized everything productive and valuable that the empire finally succumbed. That is the threat that America faces today. We have dozens of agencies and and departments that need not exist each one vying for money and influence, and each one looking out for its own interest.
It will not be the migrants, nor economic troubles, nor even a foreign power that will lay us low. It will be the very departments and programs that we create to help us rule our nation because the day is coming when we cannot even pretend to pay for our government as it exists now. And when that day comes, if we haven't fundamentally altered how the nation thinks, then we will see our own Constitutio Antoninana moment.
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Ever since the term "crowdsourcing" was coined in 2006 by Wired writer Jeff Howe, group activities ranging from the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary to the choosing of new colors for M & Ms have been labeled with this most buzz-generating of media buzzwords. In this accessible but authoritative account, grounded in the empirical literature, Daren Brabham explains what crowdsourcing is, what it is not, and how it works. Crowdsourcing, Brabham tells us, is an online, distributed problem solving and production model that leverages the collective intelligence of online communities for specific purposes set forth by a crowdsourcing organization -- corporate, government, or volunteer. Uniquely, it combines a bottom-up, open, creative process with top-down organizational goals. Crowdsourcing is not open source production, which lacks the top-down component; it is not a market research survey that offers participants a short list of choices; and it is qualitatively different from predigital open innovation and collaborative production processes, which lacked the speed, reach, rich capability, and lowered barriers to entry enabled by the Internet. Brabham describes the intellectual roots of the idea of crowdsourcing in such concepts as collective intelligence, the wisdom of crowds, and distributed computing. He surveys the major issues in crowdsourcing, including crowd motivation, the misconception of the amateur participant, crowdfunding, and the danger of "crowdsploitation" of volunteer labor, citing real-world examples from Threadless, InnoCentive, and other organizations. And he considers the future of crowdsourcing in both theory and practice, describing its possible roles in journalism, governance, national security, and science and health.
Retrieving notes about this item
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Daniel Maurer / AP
This 35,000-year-old bird-bone flute, held by the University of Tübingen's Nicholas Conard, is considered one of the world's oldest handcrafted musical instruments. But researchers say human musicmaking has much more ancient roots.
If you think about, there's no escape, really. Music holds humanity in a vise grip. Every culture you can think of has it, hears it and taps their feet to it. So how did music first take hold? A new analysis proposes that music hijacked our ancestors' ability to hear and interpret the movements of fellow human beings.
That claim is at the heart of “Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man,” a new book by neurobiologist Mark Changizi. Changizi analyzed the rises and falls in the rhythm and intonation of more than 10,000 samples of folk music from Finland and found that they bear a stamp — an auditory fossil of sorts — that can be traced back to the rises and falls and rhythms associated with the movement of people.
It’s the latest in a series of theories that have drawn upon evolutionary biology, developmental biology, psychology and neuroscience to explain how human beings came to cultivate music as a complex, expressive craft. Music has persisted in society, but it doesn't seem to come with any obvious survival benefit. If it wasn't essential to survival, why did it stick around?
"Harnessed," a new book by neurobiologist Mark Changizi, focuses on the origins of music - and how music helped shape humanity.
“Music really is the story about a person moving or doing something around you,” Changizi told me. “It’s just like listening to a story. We’re having an auditory story about people moving our midst.”
The appreciation for music grew and developed from this primal urge, monopolizing a natural faculty meant for human survival. Music essentially “harnessed” this urge, Changizi says, which also explains the title of the book.
“A lot of thinking is remote from the physical act of making music,” William Benson, a jazz musician and author of the book "Beethoven’s Anvil," told me. “And [Changizi] gets right to the physical aspect of making music.”
For one thing, it explains music's emotional appeal. In his book, Changizi described a study that looked at the foot patterns of people in different emotional states. When they were happy, sad or angry, their gaits betrayed their feelings.
“Music may not be marching orders from our commander, but it can sometimes cue our emotional system so precisely that we feel almost compelled to march in lockstep with music’s fictional mover,” Changizi writes. “And this is true whether we are adults or toddlers. When music is effective at getting us to mimic the movement it mimics, we call it dance music, be it a Strauss waltz or a Grateful Dead flail.”
The relationship between movement and music may come as a surprise for some, but not so much for others. In some African cultures, the word for "music" and "dance" are one and the same. In contrast, concert pianists or cellists sit still when they perform.
Why this difference? Blame the Gregorian chant, says Benson. Monasteries were the intellectual centers of Europe in the Middle Ages. Monks chanted tonal, arrhythmic verses daily, developed the Western musical notation, and set the pattern for the understanding and performance of Western music during the centuries that followed. “And if you think of that as the basis for music, then you’re not going to get the kind of music you get in Africa and India,” Benson told me.
Essentially, the Gregorian chant decoupled the ideas of movement and rhythm from music in the Western world. But Changizi's theory brings the ideas together once again, backed by a statistical approach that looks more deeply into the correlation between dance and movement and music.
Take a deeper look into the brain, and you may have an even more convincing case for music being an intrinsic characteristic of the human experience, says Edward Large, who studies how the brain processes sound and rhythm. While Changizi's musical analysis sounds reasonable, there may be an even deeper universality. "The paydirt is where you find the same patters in the brain that you find in the music," he told me.
So, the human brain was harnessed. A faculty that came into being for survival — recognizing the behavioral patterns in the movements of others — was tweaked, and music hitched a ride into the lives of modern humans.
We see such behavior all the time, Changizi explains. Just look at cats: “Although tuna is not what cat ancestors ate, tuna is sufficiently meat-ish in odor and taste that it fits right into a cat’s finicky diet disposition.” And music, it seems, is tuna for our finicky brains.
More about the science of music:
- Making music from weather data
- Music of spheres and the stars
- The geometry of music
- Music made for monkeys
- Music for cavemen
- The sounds of science
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Dawn Journal | November 26, 2008
The Dawn spacecraft is healthy and on course for its flyby of Mars early next year. The planet’s gravity will help boost the probe on its way to rendezvous with Vesta. While the spacecraft has its sights set on the asteroid belt (via Mars), its path is now bringing it closer to Earth. Meanwhile, from Earth’s perspective, Dawn appears to be approaching a blindingly close encounter with the Sun. With so much happening in the solar system, all readers, whether local or not, are invited to turn their attention here.
In the last log, we saw that Dawn was nearing the end of an extended period of thrusting with is ion propulsion system that began on December 17, 2007. When it left Earth on September 27, 2007, the Delta II rocket deposited the spacecraft into a carefully chosen orbit around the Sun. By October 31, 2008, the spacecraft had completed the thrusting it needed to change that orbit so it would encounter Mars at just the right time, location, and angle to sling it on its way to Vesta. During this interplanetary cruise phase, Dawn thrust for 270 days, or 85% of the time. Expending less than 72 kilograms (158 pounds) of xenon propellant, the spacecraft changed its speed by about 1.81 kilometers per second (4050 miles per hour).
Although controlling an interplanetary probe across hundreds of millions of kilometers (or miles) of deep space and guiding it accurately enough to reach its remote destination seems as if it should be a very simple task, readers may be surprised to know that it is not. Let’s consider just one aspect of the problem.
Suppose you want to shoot an arrow at a target. Unlike typical archers, you are so far from the target that you can only barely see it. In that case, aiming for the bull's-eye is essentially out of the question. Adding to the problem may be a variable breeze that could nudge the arrow off course. Shooting sufficiently accurately to get the arrow even to the vicinity of the target would be challenging enough; hitting the precise point you want on the target is just too difficult.
For readers who are principally interested in archery, this concludes our in-depth analysis of the sport.
Now let’s consider how to change the situation to make it more similar to an interplanetary mission. If the arrow had a tiny radio locator mounted on it, you would be able monitor its progress as it flew closer to the target. This would be like watching it on a radar screen. You might see your arrow miss the target entirely or, if you had made a particularly good shot, hit somewhere on it. Now if you could occasionally send a signal to the arrow, perhaps to change the angles of the feathers, you might not be able to alter its course drastically, but you could change it a little. So if your initial shot had been good enough, you could guide the arrow to the desired destination. (To buy your radio controlled archery set, visit the Dawn gift shop on your planet. The set may be found between the display case with xenon ion beam jewelry and the shelves and shelves and shelves and shelves of really cool new Dawn Journal reader action figures -- be sure to buy the one that looks just like you!)
Shooting the arrow is akin to launching a spacecraft, and its flight to the target represents the interplanetary journey, although operating a spacecraft involves far greater precision (and fun!). Our knowledge of where the spacecraft is and where it is heading is amazingly, fantastically, incredibly accurate, but it is not perfect. This point is essential. Keeping most spacecraft on course is a matter of frequently recalculating the position, speed, and direction of travel and then occasionally fine-tuning the trajectory through burns of the propulsion system.
Dawn’s near-constant use of its advanced ion propulsion system for most of 2008 changes the story, but only a little. The thrust plan was calculated before launch and then updated once our arrow was free of the bow. Throughout the interplanetary cruise phase, a new thrust plan was transmitted to the spacecraft about every 5 weeks, each time with slight updates to account for the latest calculations of Dawn’s orbit around the Sun. With this method, the small adjustments to the trajectory have been incorporated into the large, preplanned changes.
The mission control team requires about 5 weeks to design, develop, check, double-check, transmit, and activate a 5-week set of commands. By the time the spacecraft is executing the final part of those instructions, it is following a flight plan that is based on information from 10 weeks earlier. During most of the mission, when there are months or even years of thrusting ahead of it, subsequent opportunities to adjust the trajectory are plentiful. In contrast, for the last period of preplanned thrusting before Mars, controllers modified their normal process for formulating the commands, making a fast update for the final few days of thrusting. By including the latest navigational data in the computations for the direction and duration of the concluding segment of powered flight, the mission control team put Dawn on a more accurate course for Mars than it otherwise would have been.
Even with this strategy, navigators recognized long ago that subsequent adjustments would be required. The plan for approaching Mars has always included windows for trajectory correction maneuvers (which engineers are physiologically incapable of calling anything other than TCMs). Dawn’s first TCM occurred on November 20.
As navigators refined their trajectory calculations after thrusting finished on October 31, they determined that the spacecraft was quite close to the aim point they wanted, but still not exactly on target. In fact, rather than being on a course to sail a few hundred kilometers above Mars, the probe’s path would have taken it to the surface of the planet. Despite the power of the ion propulsion system, Dawn does not have the capability to bore through the rocky planet and continue on its way to Vesta.
Such a situation is not surprising. Suppose in the archery, the bull’s-eye were 30 centimeters (1 foot) in diameter, but we preferred to hit a point 2.2 centimeters (7/8 inch) outside the bull’s-eye, near the 11:00 position (corresponding to where we want Dawn to fly past Mars). As our arrow approached the target, it might turn out that it was going to miss the target entirely, it might be headed for some other point on the target, and it just might be that it was headed for the bull’s-eye itself. Dawn’s case was this last one, so TCM1 put it on track for the destination we desired.
Amazing sports analogies for the fantastic accuracy of interplanetary navigation usually fail to account for TCMs, as most arrows, balls, and other projectiles do not include active control after they are on their way. Your correspondent has presented his own simile for the astonishing accuracy with which a spacecraft can reach a faraway destination, but most such analogies neglect TCMs, without which deep-space missions could not be accomplished. (Note that the accuracy is impressive with or without TCMs. We shall extend our archery example in a future log, making it more quantitative. It will be important, however, to keep in mind that the ion propulsion system provides so much maneuvering flexibility that Dawn does not need to achieve the degree of accuracy in its gravity assist that a mission using conventional chemical propulsion might.)
For reasons we will not divulge, Dawn’s first TCM has been designated TCM1. On November 20, just as it had for all of its previous thrusting, the spacecraft pointed a thruster (TCM1 used thruster #1) in the required direction and resumed emitting the familiar blue-green beam of xenon ions to alter course. While typical thrusting during the mission has lasted for almost 7 days at a time (followed by a hiatus of 7 to 8 hours), in this case only a short burn was necessary. Propelling itself from about 4:31 pm to 6:42 pm PST was just enough to fine-tune its course and change its speed by a bit more than 60 centimeters per second (1.3 miles per hour). This adjustment was modest indeed, as at that time Dawn was traveling around the Sun at more than 22.5 kilometers per second (50,400 miles per hour). Dawn and Mars, following their separate orbits that will (almost!) intersect on February 17, 2009, were moving relative to each other at 3.17 kilometers per second (7100 miles per hour).
Dawn’s second TCM window (inexplicably named TCM2) is in January. Traveling two-thirds of the way from here to Mars, the navigational accuracy then will be still better, with smaller deviations from the planned target point being detectable, so another refinement in the trajectory then is likely. In the meantime, Dawn will follow its orbital path with its ion thrusters idle.
As Dawn travels through space on its own, its path has been essentially independent of Earth’s. We saw in a previous log that the weaker grasp exerted by the Sun at Dawn’s greater distance means that it travels more slowly around the solar system. While Earth has completed more than 1 full revolution (each revolution requiring 1 year) since launch, Dawn has not yet rounded the Sun once. After receding from the Sun until early August, the spacecraft began falling back, albeit only temporarily.
The probe attained its maximum distance from Earth on November 10. (For anyone who was on Earth on that date and plans to use this information in an alibi, it may be helpful to know that the greatest range was reached at about 3:07 am PST.) The spacecraft was more than 384 million kilometers (239 million miles) from its one-time home. Although it will make substantial progress on its journey in the meantime, Dawn’s distance to Earth will continue to decrease until January 2010, when it will be less than one-third of what it is today. In the summer of that year, however, as Earth maintains its repetitive annual orbital motion and the explorer climbs away from the Sun, it will surpass this month’s distance to Earth. (Readers are encouraged to memorize the contents of this log for reference in 2010 in case we fail to include a link to this paragraph.)
The complex choreography of the solar system’s grand orbital dance rarely calls for a circular orbit; rather, the dancers follow ellipses (ovals in which the ends are of equal size) around the Sun. Thanks to the details of the shapes of their orbits, the greatest separation between Earth and Dawn did not occur when they were precisely on opposite sides of the Sun, although the alignment was close to that.
On December 12, their dance steps will take them to points almost exactly on opposite sides of the Sun. For observers on Earth, this is known as solar conjunction, because the spacecraft and the Sun will appear to be in the same location. (Similarly, from Dawn’s point of view, Earth and the Sun will be almost coincident.) In reality, of course, Dawn will be much farther away than Earth’s star. It will be 147 million kilometers (91.5 million miles) from Earth to the Sun but 379 million kilometers (236 million miles) from the planet to its cosmic envoy.
Its apparent proximity to the Sun presents a helpful opportunity for terrestrial readers to locate Dawn in the sky. On December 9 - 15, the spacecraft will be less than 1 degree from the Sun, progressing from east to west and passing just 1/3 degree south of that brilliant celestial landmark on December 12. (As Dawn does not orbit in the same plane as Earth, it will not pass directly behind the Sun.) The Sun itself is 1/2 degree across, so this is close indeed; the spacecraft will sneak in to less than 1 solar diameter from the disk. To demonstrate how small the separation is, if you blocked the Sun with your thumb at arm’s length during this week around conjunction (and you are exhorted to do so), you also would cover Dawn.
For those interested observers who lack the requisite superhuman visual acuity to discern the remote spacecraft amidst the dazzling light of the Sun, conjunction still may provide a convenient occasion to reflect upon this most recent of humankind’s missions far into the solar system. This small probe is the product of creatures fortunate enough to be able to combine their powerful curiosity about the workings of the cosmos with their impressive abilities to explore, investigate, and ultimately understand. While its builders remain in the vicinity of the planet upon which they evolved, their robotic ambassador now is passing on the far side of the extraordinarily distant Sun. This is the same Sun that has been the unchallenged master of our solar system for 4.5 billion years. This is the same Sun that has shone down on Earth throughout that time and has been the ultimate source of so much of the heat, light, and other energy upon which the planet’s inhabitants have been so dependent. This is the same Sun that has so influenced human expression in art, literature, and religion for uncounted millennia. This is the same Sun that has motivated scientific studies for centuries. This is the same Sun that acts as our signpost in the Milky Way galaxy. This is the same Sun that is more than 100 times the diameter of Earth and a third of a million times the planet¹s mass. And humans have a spacecraft on the far side of it. We may be humbled by our own insignificance in the universe, yet we still undertake the most valiant adventures in our attempts to comprehend its majesty.
Solar conjunction means even more to Dawn mission controllers than the opportunity to meditate upon what magnificent feats our species can achieve. As Earth, the Sun, and the spacecraft come closer into alignment, radio signals that go back and forth must pass near the Sun. The solar environment is fierce indeed, and it causes interference in those radio waves. While some signals will get through, communications will be less reliable. Therefore, controllers plan to send no messages to the spacecraft from December 5 through December 18; all instructions needed during that time will be stored onboard beforehand. Deep Space Network antennas, pointing near the Sun, will listen through the roaring noise for the faint whisper of the spacecraft, but the team will consider any signals to be a bonus.
There is plenty of other work to do while waiting to resume communications after conjunction. In addition to preparing for the visit to Mars, engineers will continue to interpret the results of election day. On November 4, the Dawn team voted unanimously for more power. They commanded the spacecraft to execute a set of steps to yield data that will reveal the full potential of the enormous solar arrays to generate electrical power. The method was tested first on July 21, and then refined for a test on September 22. For this month’s measurement, the commands were identical to those used for the second test with one exception that had been planned from the beginning: the solar arrays were rotated to point 60 degrees away from the Sun instead of 45 degrees. The solar arrays are so powerful that when they are pointed directly at the Sun, the spacecraft could not draw enough power to measure their full capability.
The data collected show the electrical behavior of the arrays as the ion propulsion system was commanded through its start-up, drawing more and more power. Unlike the two tests, this calibration was designed so that with the arrays pointed so far from the Sun, they would not be able to provide as much power as was requested. Engineers wanted to find the point at which the arrays would no longer be able to satisfy the demands. They were not disappointed; power climbed up and up until no more was available. The prospect of having a spacecraft not be able to meet its own power demands may seem risky, but the procedure was carefully designed, analyzed, and simulated, and it executed perfectly. When the ion propulsion system asked for more power than the arrays could deliver, in the language of the trade, the solar arrays “collapsed.” Now to some (including even some engineers unfamiliar with the terminology), this suggests something not entirely desirable, such as 2 bent and twisted wings, each with 5 warped panels, and 11,480 shattered solar cells, the fragments sparkling in the sunlight as they tumbled and floated away from the powerless probe. In this case though, “collapse” is an electrical, not a mechanical, phenomenon and hence would be somewhat less visually spectacular and quite reversible -- a key attribute for a mission with well over 6 years of space exploration ahead of it. Once all the data are analyzed, controllers will have a better prediction for how much power the arrays will be able to generate for the rest of the voyage.
Dawn is 20 million kilometers (12 million miles) from Mars. It is 383 million kilometers (238 million miles) from Earth, or 950 times as far as the moon and 2.59 times as far as the Sun. Radio signals, traveling at the universal limit of the speed of light, take 43 minutes to make the round trip.
Dr. Marc D. Rayman
7:00 am PST November 26, 2008
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As @SQLChicken states, a good data model is a very important start to have for stable, consistent, extensible and scalable databases.
After you have a logical model, the next step is implementation of the logical model in the target RDBMS. There are many important considerations and actions that are required to do this. For example, depending on the anticipated size of your database, you may decide that certain structures should be de-normalized for performance reasons but this decision should be made carefully, with the implications fully considered. Other considerations:
- If you haven't done so already, decide on a naming standard/convention. Name your objects in a consistent way. Take time to define each object such as tables and columns in the database by adding a comment to each.
- Define your table primary keys, foreign keys, data constraints, and indexes. Indexes can be added later, so don't worry about getting them all up front. The need for them tends to become apparent over time ;-)
- Define views of data that may be useful for reports, ad-hoc queries, etc.
- Minimize trigger use - these can be expedient, but have many pitfalls.
By no means is this list exhaustive. Become familiar with the (voluminous) Oracle documentation.
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The plots in this Demonstration show precision error. The formula is true for all real . To plot for various , Mathematica correctly finds numerical values very close to 0. In the plot, these infinitesimal deviations are magnified a quadrillion-fold.
Various types of machine error—round-off, precision, accumulated—have led to the loss of lives and fortunes. For example, the Patriot missile system relies on a .1 second internal clock. The binary machine considers this as a 209715/2097152 second clock. In a 1991 incident during Operation Desert Storm, after being on for 100 hours, the missile tracking timing had accumulated a .34 second error. This rendered it unable to track an incoming missile, which subsequently fell intact on a barracks and killed 28 people.
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Consider a distillation column separating a binary mixture of methanol and water at
. This column has 10 stages, a total condenser, and a partial reboiler. Feed stage location is stage nine counting from the top. The feed composition is equimolar. The feed vapor fraction is
is the feed quality. The feed flow rate is set to
. The values of both the reboil (
) and the reflux (
) ratios are to be selected by the user. This Demonstration uses a rigorous approach (solving MESH equations) and displays the composition versus stage for both components (methanol in orange, water in blue), the temperature profile inside the column, as well as the vapor and liquid flow rates (magenta and blue, respectively). Comparisons with the results obtained with Aspen HYSYS
are shown for
. Finally, the Ponchon–Savarit graphical construction is shown and several checks of external overall and partial mass balances and condenser and external energy balances are performed.
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November Community Game Changer
MSU Denver’s April Hill makes science accessible to blind students
By Greg Henry
April Hill has been a faculty member at Metropolitan State University of Denver for just three years, but she’s already made a lasting impact.
Hill, an assistant professor of chemistry and director of forensic science, brought to the University a passion to help visually impaired students gain hands-on knowledge of science and to improve access to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education.
While doing post-doctoral work at Pennsylvania State University, she met Cary Supalo, a graduate student at the time, who was developing tools to give blind students a richer experience in the chemistry lab.
“Dr. Supalo was the first blind scientist I’d met, and I had honestly never had a reason to wonder how a blind person might complete a chemistry lab experiment,” says Hill, 33. “As someone who was planning to go into education, I realized that I could very well have a blind student in a course one day and it would be my responsibility to teach him or her science, including the important aspect of experimentation.”
A curriculum Hill helped create drew skepticism from sighted students.
“The immediate dismissal of a blind student’s ability — not to mention their right — to an education in science is frustrating for me,” Hill says. “And I can only imagine how hearing [skepticism] might affect a young person with a visual impairment who has an interest in science.”
She and Supalo ran several hands-on workshops and summer science camps, largely through collaboration with the National Federation of the Blind. Since joining MSU Denver in 2010, she has put on chemistry workshops for students who attend the Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton.
The use of adaptive technology helps even the playing field for visually impaired students. Vernier Software and Technology has worked closely with Independence Science (based at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and founded by Supalo) to develop the Talking LabQuest. Through Talking LabQuest students access tools like text-to-speech software and probes for measuring pH, temperature, conductivity, etc.
“There are a lot of schools for the visually impaired that do a good job of providing hands-on science experiments for their students, but they are limited by a lack of technology,” Hill says. “There is also a perception that allowing a blind student to handle chemicals is unsafe. This has led to the common practice in public high schools of simply pairing a blind student with a sighted partner who does all of the actual experimentation and simply provides a running commentary for the blind student. This is not an effective way to teach chemistry, and it is certainly not a good way to inspire a blind student to pursue chemistry as a career.”
Thomas Vogt, an assistant professor of chemistry at MSU Denver, shares Hill’s passion and introduced her to the Colorado Center for the Blind and its science fairs in the spring and fall.
“Using plastic baggies, the students mix chemicals that we provide to produce simple polymers which they can touch and handle after the reaction is completed.” Vogt says. “We have shown that blind students can do wet chemistry. It is exciting to see the excitement of the students.”
Content provided By Metropolitan State University of Denver
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Soil is a natural body consisting of layers (soil horizons) of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics.
Uses of Soil:
1. Soil is used in agriculture, where it serves as the primary nutrient base for the plants. Soil resources are critical to the environment, as well as to food and fiber production. Soil provides minerals and water to plants. Soil is used to make plants grow healthy. The types of soil used in agriculture (among other things, such as the purported level of moisture in the soil) vary with respect to the species of plants that are cultivated.
2. Soil is used in constructions and arts. Soil material is a critical component in the mining and construction industries. Soil serves as a foundation for most construction projects. Massive volumes of soil can be involved in surface mining, road building, and dam construction. Earth sheltering is the architectural practice of using soil for external thermal mass against building walls. Soil is used to make pots.
3. Soil play an important role in filtrating and purifying water. After coming down as precipitation, much of the rain water is percolated through the many horizons of a soil profile and renamed as groundwater. As the water moves through different areas such as wetlands, forests, and riparian zones many pollutants are removed. Pollutants such as viruses, oils, metals, excess nutrients, and sediments are filtered out by the soil and surrounding organisms.
4. Waste management often has a soil component. Landfills use soil for daily cover. Septic drain fields treat septic tank effluent using aerobic soil processes.
5. Organic soils, especially peat, serve as a significant fuel resource.
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https://bhikkhucintita.wordpress.com/ho ... -buddhism/
that Ven Gavesako linked to recently are an interesting, though somewhat rambling, discussion of Folk vs Essential Buddhism, and how they are necessary for each other. In particular, the theme is how Folk Buddhism involves integration of local culture.
And, of course, the key question (not fully developed in the series yet) is:
Which aspects of Western Buddhist practice are Folk Buddhism?
Here are a few random snippets.
https://bhikkhucintita.wordpress.com/20 ... uddhism-7/
A common factor in the way the Refuges are practiced and understood in American Folk Buddhism is free-thinking, captured for instance in the following quote:
“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” - “The Buddha”Free-thinking is related to the Protestant rejection of authority that we discussed last week, but more importantly to the post-(European-)Enlightenment regard for rational or critical thinking and the parallel disparagement of “faith,” and accounts for the popularity in the West of the quote above. This passage was however never spoken by the Buddha. I don’t know who made it up.
https://bhikkhucintita.wordpress.com/20 ... uddhism-9/
It is hardly surprising that individualism as a strong factor in American and Western culture should also be a strong factor in American and Western Folk Buddhism. Here, as with other aspects of Folk Buddhism, my interest will be in investigating to what extent its particular forms are friendly to, indifferent to or inimical to Essential Buddhism.
Our Authentic Self. A common Western Folk understanding is that Buddhism (or sometimes Zen) is about getting to know, trust and to free your authentic, inner or true self or nature, a self that has been suppressed by social conditioning and other inauthentic factors, but when unleashed is the source of creativity, spirituality, virtue and wisdom. Often the authentic self is identified with Buddha Nature, a pristine aspect of ourselves free from defilement, which is capable of awakening or even already awakened.
If these statements do not have a Buddhist origin, where did they come from? The answer is … European Romanticism and its later expressions.
As Bhante says, a characteristic of Folk Buddhism is drawing on local culture...
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