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Q: A pressing question for these hard economic times: How much money do you need to be happy? A: That's the wrong way to look at it, say happiness experts. While it's true the wealthy are happier than the poor and wealthy countries are happier than poor ones, money actually buys little happiness, reports the University of California, Berkeley "Wellness Letter." "That's because people don't spend it right," according to a recent study in the "Journal of Consumer Psychology." The authors offer tips on spending money for happiness: n Buy more experiences -- vacations, adult-education classes, concert tickets and fewer material goods. Any pleasure from possessions quickly wears off. n Consider how purchases might affect your day-to-day life, aiming for more "uplifts" and fewer hassles. n Buy many small pleasures rather than one large one, especially if money is limited. n Delay consumptions and prolong anticipations. Looking forward to an event is a great source of pleasure, even if the event ends up being a letdown. n Spend money on others. Giving money or gifts strengthens social bonds by amplifying the happiness of others, which in turn amplifies our own happiness. Q: From a Cleveland, Ohio, reader: "Why are bad doctors called ‘quacks'"? A: The term comes from the Dutch "quacksalver," which is cobbled together from "quack" (to make a sound like a duck) In bygone days, a quacksalver was a snake-oil doctor who traveled about "hawking" (quacking) all the maladies his salves could cure. Adds Anu Garg in "Another Word a Day": It's that duck-like staccato sound of the snake oil peddler that gave us this colorful synonym for a charlatan. Q: To get your money's worth on a roller coaster, which seat should you avoid? A: The different cars of a multi-car coaster provide some unique experiences, says Louis A. Bloomfield in "How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life." The front cars go over the crest of a hill slowly and reach high speed only well down the hill. The last cars accelerate upward dramatically as they crest the first hill, yielding a strong sense of weightlessness. In fact, the track engineers must be careful not to make the acceleration too rapid or rear-car riders could be flung right out of their seats. So where you sit in a roller coaster does matter. The first seat offers the most exciting view but with less-than-spectacular weightless feelings, which are generally best in the last car. "Probably the dullest seat is the second; it offers a relatively tame ride and an unchanging view of the people in the front seat. That's the seat you might want to avoid." Q: What's a wise-cracking linguist apt to ask (and answer) upon turning up in Twinsburg, Ohio on Halloween? A: Two questions: "What do you call a town full of twins?" ("Call it Duplicity!") and "What do you ask twin witches?" ("Which witch is which?") Though Twinsburg can't claim any real witches, every August thousands of twins converge there for "Twins Days Festival" -- so many in fact you might think you had an acute case of diplopia (di-PLO-pee-uh), or double-vision, from Greek "diplo" (double) + "opia" (vision). (From Anu Garg's "Another Word a Day").

What is iron deficiency anemia? The most common cause of anemia worldwide is iron deficiency. Iron is needed to form hemoglobin. Iron is mostly stored in the body in the hemoglobin. About 30 percent of iron is also stored as ferritin and hemosiderin in the bone marrow, spleen, and liver. What causes iron deficiency anemia? Iron deficiency anemia can be caused by: Diets low in iron. Iron is obtained from foods in our diet, however, only 1 mg of iron is absorbed for every 10 to 20 mg of iron ingested. A child unable to have a balanced iron-rich diet may suffer some degree of iron deficiency anemia. It can happen in infants around one year of age. Body changes. An increased iron requirement and increased red blood cell production is required when the body is going through changes such as growth spurts in children and adolescents. Gastrointestinal tract abnormalities. Malabsorption of iron is common after some forms of gastrointestinal surgeries. Most of the iron taken in by dietary route is absorbed in the upper small intestine. Any abnormalities in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract could alter iron absorption and result in iron deficiency anemia. Blood loss. Loss of blood can cause a decrease of iron and result in iron deficiency anemia. Sources of blood loss may include GI bleeding, menstrual bleeding, or injury. What are the symptoms of iron deficiency anemia? The following are the most common symptoms of iron deficiency anemia. However, each child may experience symptoms differently. Symptoms may include: Abnormal paleness or lack of color of the skin Lack of energy or tiring easily (fatigue) Increased heart rate (tachycardia) Sore or swollen tongue A desire to eat peculiar substances such as dirt or ice (also called pica) How is iron deficiency anemia diagnosed? Iron deficiency anemia may be suspected from general findings on a complete medical history and physical examination of your child, such as complaints of tiring easily, pale skin and lips, or a fast heartbeat (tachycardia). Iron deficiency anemia is usually discovered during a medical examination through a blood test that measures the amount of hemoglobin, or number of red blood cells, present and the amount of iron in the blood. In addition to a complete medical history and physical examination of your child, diagnostic procedures for iron deficiency anemia may include: Additional blood tests for iron. Bone marrow aspiration and/or biopsy. A procedure that involves taking a small amount of bone marrow fluid (aspiration) and/or solid bone marrow tissue (called a core biopsy), usually from the hip bones, to be examined for the number, size, and maturity of blood cells and/or abnormal cells. Treatment for iron deficiency anemia Specific treatment for iron deficiency anemia will be determined by your child's physician based on: Your child's age, overall health, and medical history Extent of the anemia Cause of the anemia Your child's tolerance for specific medications, procedures, or therapies Expectations for the course of the anemia Your opinion or preference Treatment may include: Iron-rich diet. Eating a diet with iron-rich foods can help treat iron deficiency anemia. Good sources of iron include the following: Meats (beef, pork, lamb, liver, and other organ meats) Poultry (chicken, duck, turkey, (especially dark meat), liver) Fish (shellfish, including clams, mussels, and oysters, sardines, anchovies) Leafy greens of the cabbage family, such as broccoli, kale, turnip greens, and collards Legumes, such as lima beans and green peas; dry beans and peas, such as pinto beans, black-eyed peas, and canned baked beans Yeast-leavened whole-wheat bread and rolls Iron-enriched white bread, pasta, rice, and cereals Iron supplements. Iron supplements can be taken over several months to increase iron levels in the blood. Iron supplements can cause irritation of the stomach and discoloration of bowel movements. They should be taken on an empty stomach or with orange juice to increase absorption. They are much more effective than dietary interventions alone. In cases of malabsorption or intolerance, IV iron may be needed. The following is a list of foods that are a good source of iron. Always consult your child's physician regarding the recommended daily iron requirements for your child.

THURSDAY, Dec. 29 (HealthDay News) -- Following mothers' advice may have played a big role in averting a major health crisis. Fears of the H1N1 flu virus reached a fever pitch last winter, with public health officials fearing a widespread outbreak caused by short supplies of the needed vaccine. But an epidemic was averted, and some health experts believe that's because more people than ever before regularly washed their hands. Hand-washing in the United States has become a widespread habit, according to the American Society for Microbiology and the American Cleaning Institute. They released a study in September finding that 85 percent of people washed their hands in public restrooms in 2008, the highest levels observed since they began researching hand-washing habits in 1996. And though there's no direct scientific evidence that hand-washing fended off H1N1 long enough for a vaccine to be developed and distributed, the head of the American Public Health Association said he believes that good hygiene very likely played a prominent role in the virus never catching fire in the United States. "Hand-washing is really the cornerstone of good sanitation and good hygiene," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, the group's executive director. "Prior to having a vaccine, the things we had to rely on were covering up your nose and mouth when you sneeze, washing your hands as frequently as you could and avoiding hand-to-hand contact." People's hands regularly pick up bacteria and viruses when they come in contact with other surfaces, said Jeff Dimond, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Someone else may have handled a doorknob, a keyboard, a cup, a handrail -- you don't know," Dimond said. "And the flu virus can live up to five hours on these surfaces. Your eye itches and you scratch your eye and bingo, that's how you get the virus into you." All rights reserved

Welcome to biology-online.org! Please login to access all site features. Create account. Log me on automatically each visit | Page history | Printable version (Science: chemistry) A lactone obtained by reduction of phthalyl chloride, as a white crystalline substance; hence, by extension, any one of the series of which phthalide proper is the type. Alternative forms: phthalid. Origin: Phthalyl _ anhydride. Please contribute to this project, if you have more information about this term feel free to edit this page This page was last modified 21:16, 3 October 2005. This page has been accessed 1,866 times. What links here | Related changes | Permanent link © Biology-Online.org. All Rights Reserved. Register | Login | About Us | Contact Us | Link to Us | Disclaimer & Privacy

A high proportion of patients with high blood pressure are failing to take their medication properly and would benefit clinically from a course of ‘adherence therapy,’ according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA). High blood pressure – or hypertension – is one of the major cardiovascular diseases worldwide. It leads to stroke and heart disease and costs more than $300 billion each year. Around a quarter of the adult population is affected – including 10 million people in the UK. Around half of patients with hypertension fail to reduce their blood pressure because they are not taking their prescribed medication correctly. Some cease taking their medication altogether, others only take some of it, and others do not follow the instructions to take their medicine after food, for example. The reasons for this non-adherence are complex and include ambivalence about taking drugs, concerns over side effects, and complexity of treatement regimes. Previous attempts to improve adherence with information leaflets, monthly outpatient visits, reminders, and self-monitoring have been shown to be mostly ineffective. The UEA resesarchers studied 136 patients with high blood pressure in three outpatient clinics in Jordan. Half were given a course of seven weekly ‘adherence therapy’ sessions and half continued with their usual treatment. The 20 minute face-to-face sessions allowed a trained clinician to provide tailored information about the illness and treatment, and explore the patient’s individual beliefs, fears, and lifestyle. Published today in the Journal of Human Hypertension, the results show that the patients given adherence therapy took 97 per cent of their medications (compared with only 71 per cent for those given treatment as usual) and, on average, reduced their blood pressure by around 14 per cent – taking it to just above the healthy range. Lead author Prof. Richard Gray of UEA’s School of Nursing and Midwifery said: “Our findings suggest a clear clinical benefit in these patient-centred sessions. High blood pressure affects millions of people in both the developed and developing world and the problem is likely to increase dramatically over the next 15 years. Tackling the widespread failure to take medication correctly would lead to a major reduction in stroke and heart disease. If adherence therapy were a new drug it would be hailed as a potentially major advance in hypertension treatment.” Adherence therapy was originally developed by Prof. Gray for patients with mental health problems who failed to take their medication correctly. The total cost of delivering a course of seven weekly sessions is calucated to be approximately £80 per person. Although the UEA study was not designed to formally evaulate cost effectiveness, other studies predict that a long-term reduction of blood pressure would lead to a reduction in stroke of 56% and a reduction in chronic heart disease of 37% – suggesting that adherence therapy would likely be a cost-effective intervention. Material adapted from University of East Anglia. ‘Adherence therapy for medication non-compliant patients with hypertension: a randomised controlled trial’ by Fadwa Allalaiqa, Katherine Deane, Ahmed Nawafleh, Allan Clark and Richard Gray is published by the Journal of Human Hypertension on February 17 2011.

Navigation of a boat requires that you know the regulations for all of the waterways. Boat navigation is typically done by using a combination of buoys and daymarks. However, when a waterway you want to navigate is unfamiliar a navigation chart can be used. Familiarize yourself with the waterway that you want to navigate. This can be a river channel, an inland lake or out in the ocean. Learn the types of markers that you can use to find your bearings. Markers that are used on bodies of water include buoys and daymarks A buoy is a navigation aid that is designed to float on water. They are available for navigation, mooring and fishing. Only navigation buoys are used to aid the navigation of your boat. When you return from a trip to the dock or port the position of the buoys is important. You will need to stay to the port side of a green buoy and to the starboard side of a red buoy A daymark is a numbered marker that is mounted on a piling. A red colored daymark is a triangle shape with an even number. A green colored daymark is a square shape with an odd number. These are placed in shallower water than buoys. Daymarks have the same navigation rules as buoys. A red daymark needs to be on the port side or your boat and a green daymark on the right. The symbols found on a navigation chart are used to indicate degrees, minutes and seconds for latitude and longitude. The top and bottom of a navigational chart will have the latitude and longitude. Degrees in latitude are found on the left and right sides of the chart. One minute of latitude on a navigational chart is equal to 1 nautical mile.

CLEAN GARBAGE PROJECT Written by Paul F. Stapel Binghamton, N.Y. from Mauricio Mayorga’s memoranda The Clean Garbage Project (CGP) was developed by Mauricio Mayorga in 2008 to generate action to eliminate damage done by world garbage. Mayorga places special emphasis on teaching young children and students to understand that they can stop being part of the problem created by not recycling, thus heavily reducing if not eliminating the severe environmental damage to our planet reasonably quickly. To date at least 12,000 people in 27 different locations throughout Colombia, Switzerland, Spain and Mexico have seen and participated in at least one of Mayorga’s “garbage’ art creations. All of them were in connection with EARTH DAY NETWORKS and more recently on WORLD WATER DAY celebrations. Mayorga helps us to understand that the majority of garbage problems occur in third world countries where the people may not understand the damage being done by garbage and trash infecting our Earth. Mayorga invites principals of schools to organize the students to make a “game” of collecting recyclable garbage at home, clean it and then bring it to school to create art sculptures of their own design, in small or large formats. After appropriate exhibition time the garbage can then be recycled for cash at a local recycling center which is donated to help families in the area. The principal is asked to create a system to teach the students to learn about The importance of recycling and how to do it at home. The created system should be-on going for all future generations, a dedicated program of the school. Mayorga’s hope is, with the United Nations guidance, to help the world adopt this or similar programs.

JAMESTOWN, Va. -- Scientists' hopes that DNA testing would identify a nearly 400-year-old skeleton found at Jamestown have been dashed, but they remain confident that the remains are those of an unsung founder of North America's first English settlement. American and British scientists had hoped DNA they believe to be of Bartholomew Gosnold, who explored the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts, would match with that of a woman buried in England who they had thought was his sister. Tests, however, found the woman wasn't a blood relative of Gosnold, the nonprofit Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities announced yesterday. Since researchers know of no Gosnold relative who can provide suitable DNA for testing, ''we will continue to rely on archeological and forensic evidence, which . . . strongly indicates that we have found Gosnold's grave," Bill Kelso, the association's director of archaeology at Jamestown, said in a statement. Gosnold, a former privateer, discovered and named Massachusetts' Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard in 1602, and captained one of three ships that carried settlers from England to Virginia in 1607. He died three months later, at 36. Historians, who relied on written accounts of Jamestown's founding from Captain John Smith and other settlers, largely overlooked Gosnold. Smith, however, described him as ''the prime mover behind the settlement." A nearly intact skeleton of a European man in his mid- to late 30s was found in 2002 near the site of the Jamestown fort. Evidence such as a coffin -- usually reserved at the time for people of higher status -- and a decorative captain's staff on its lid have led researchers to believe the remains are Gosnold's. ''We have never found any other ceremonial objects in Jamestown burials, so we know this was someone very special," Kelso said. In June, researchers led by Kelso took a bone sample from an unmarked grave under the floor of a church in Shelley, England, that had been thought to be the likely location of the remains of Gosnold's sister Elizabeth Gosnold Tilney. It was the first time the Church of England had authorized such research for scientific purposes. Microscopic analysis, however, found that the woman was about 24 years too young to be Gosnold's sister, said Douglas Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution Museum of Natural History.

Introduction: Why Americans Fear the Wrong Why are so many fears in the air, and so many of them unfounded? Why, as crime rates plunged throughout the 1990s, did two-thirds of Americans believe they were soaring? How did it come about that by mid-decade 62 percent of us described ourselves as "truly desperate" about crime-almost twice as many as in the late 1980s, when crime rates were higher? Why, on a survey in 1997, when the crime rate had already fallen for a half dozen consecutive years, did more than half of us disagree with the statement "This country is finally beginning to make some progress in solving the crime problem"? In the late 1990s the number of drug users had decreased by half compared to a decade earlier; almost two-thirds of high school seniors had never used any illegal drugs, even marijuana. So why did a majority of adults rank drug abuse as the greatest danger to America’s youth? Why did nine out of ten believe the drug problem is out of control, and only one in six believe the country was making progress? Give us a happy ending and we write a new disaster story. In the late 1990s the unemployment rate was below 5 percent for the first time in a quarter century. People who had been pounding the pavement for years could finally get work. Yet pundits warned of imminent economic disaster. They predicted inflation would take off, just as they had a few years earlier-also erroneously-when the unemployment rate dipped below 6 percent. We compound our worries beyond all reason. Life expectancy in the United States has doubled during the twentieth century. We are better able to cure and control diseases than any other civilization in history. Yet we hear that phenomenal numbers of us are dreadfully ill. In 1996 Bob Garfield, a magazine writer, reviewed articles about serious diseases published over the course of a year in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and USA Today. He learned that, in addition to 59 million Americans with heart disease, 53 million with migraines, 25 million with osteoporosis, 16 million with obesity, and 3 million with cancer, many Americans suffer from more obscure ailments such as temporomandibular joint disorders (10 million) and brain injuries (2 million). Adding up the estimates, Garfield determined that 543 million Americans are seriously sick-a shocking number in a nation of 266 million inhabitants. "Either as a society we are doomed, or someone is seriously double-dipping," Garfield appears to have underestimated one category of patients: for psychiatric ailments his figure was 53 million. Yet when Jim Windolf, an editor of the New York Observer, collated estimates for maladies ranging from borderline personality disorder (10 million) and sex addiction (11 million) to less well-known conditions such as restless leg syndrome (12 million) he came up with a figure of 152 million. "But give the experts a little time," he advised. "With another new quantifiable disorder or two, everybody in the country will be officially Indeed, Windolf omitted from his estimates new-fashioned afflictions that have yet to make it into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association: ailments such as road rage, which afflicts more than half of Americans, according to a psychologist’s testimony before a congressional hearing in The scope of our health fears seems limitless. Besides worrying disproportionately about legitimate ailments and prematurely about would-be diseases, we continue to fret over already refuted dangers. Some still worry, for instance, about "flesh-eating bacteria," a bug first rammed into our consciousness in 1994 when the U.S. news media picked up on a screamer headline in a British tabloid, "Killer Bug Ate My Face." The bacteria, depicted as more brutal than anything seen in modern times, was said to be spreading faster than the pack of photographers outside the home of its latest victim. In point of fact, however, we were not "terribly vulnerable" to these "superbugs," nor were they "medicine’s worst nightmares," as voices in the media warned. Group A strep, a cyclical strain that has been around for ages, had been dormant for half a century or more before making a comeback. The British pseudoepidemic had resulted in a total of about a dozen deaths in the previous year. Medical experts roundly rebutted the scares by noting that of 20 to 30 million strep infections each year in the United States fewer than 1 in 1,000 involve serious strep A complications, and only 500 to 1,500 people suffer the flesh-eating syndrome, whose proper name is necrotizing fasciitis. Still the fear persisted. Years after the initial scare, horrifying news stories continued to appear, complete with grotesque pictures of victims. A United Press International story in 1998 typical of the genre told of a child in Texas who died of the "deadly strain" of bacteria that the reporter warned "can spread at a rate of up to one inch per hour." When we are not worrying about deadly diseases we worry about homicidal strangers. Every few months for the past several years it seems we discover a new category of people to fear: government thugs in Waco, sadistic cops on Los Angeles freeways and in Brooklyn police stations, mass-murdering youths in small towns all over the country. A single anomalous event can provide us with multiple groups of people to fear. After the 1995 explosion at the federal building in Oklahoma City first we panicked about Arabs. "Knowing that the car bomb indicates Middle Eastern terrorists at work, it’s safe to assume that their goal is to promote free-floating fear and a measure of anarchy, thereby disrupting American life," a New York Post editorial asserted. "Whatever we are doing to destroy Mideast terrorism, the chief terrorist threat against Americans, has not been working," wrote A. M. Rosenthal in the New York Times. When it turned out that the bombers were young white guys from middle America, two more groups instantly became spooky: right-wing radio talk show hosts who criticize the government-depicted by President Bill Clinton as "purveyors of hatred and division"-and members of militias. No group of disgruntled men was too ragtag not to warrant big, prophetic news stories. We have managed to convince ourselves that just about every young American male is a potential mass murderer-a remarkable achievement, considering the steep downward trend in youth crime throughout the 1990s. Faced year after year with comforting statistics, we either ignore them-adult Americans estimate that people under eighteen commit about half of all violent crimes when the actual number is 13 percent-or recast them as "The Lull Before the Storm" (Newsweek headline). "We know we’ve got about six years to turn this juvenile crime thing around or our country is going to be living with chaos," Bill Clinton asserted in 1997, even while acknowledging that the youth violent crime rate had fallen 9.2 percent the previous year. The more things improve the more pessimistic we become. Violence-related deaths at the nation’s schools dropped to a record low during the 1996–97 academic year (19 deaths out of 54 million children), and only one in ten public schools reported any serious crime. Yet Time and U.S. News & World Report both ran headlines in 1996 referring to "Teenage Time Bombs." In a nation of "Children Without Souls" (another Time headline that year), "America’s beleaguered cities are about to be victimized by a paradigm shattering wave of ultraviolent, morally vacuous young people some call ‘the superpredators,’" William Bennett, the former Secretary of Education, and John DiIulio, a criminologist, forecast in a book published in 1996. Instead of the arrival of superpredators, violence by urban youths continued to decline. So we went looking elsewhere for proof that heinous behavior by young people was "becoming increasingly more commonplace in America" (CNN). After a sixteen-year-old in Pearl, Mississippi, and a fourteen-year-old in West Paducah, Kentucky, went on shooting sprees in late 1997, killing five of their classmates and wounding twelve others, these isolated incidents were taken as evidence of "an epidemic of seemingly depraved adolescent murderers" (Geraldo Rivera). Three months later in March 1998 all sense of proportion vanished after two boys ages eleven and thirteen killed four students and a teacher in Jonesboro, Arkansas. No longer, we learned in Time, was it "unusual for kids to get back at the world with live ammunition." When a child psychologist on NBC’s "Today" show advised parents to reassure their children that shootings at schools are rare, reporter Ann Curry corrected him. "But this is the fourth case since October," she said. Over the next couple of months young people failed to accommodate the trend hawkers. None committed mass murder. Fear of killer kids remained very much in the air nonetheless. In stories on topics such as school safety and childhood trauma, reporters recapitulated the gory details of the killings. And the news media made a point of reporting every incident in which a child was caught at school with a gun or making a death threat. In May, when a fifteen-year-old in Springfield, Oregon, did open fire in a cafeteria filled with students, killing two and wounding twenty-three others, the event felt like a continuation of a "disturbing trend" (New York Times). The day after the shooting, on National Public Radio’s "All Things Considered," the criminologist Vincent Schiraldi tried to explain that the recent string of incidents did not constitute a trend, that youth homicide rates had declined by 30 percent in recent years, and more than three times as many people were killed by lightning than by violence at schools. But the show’s host, Robert Siegel, interrupted him. "You’re saying these are just anomalous events?" he asked, audibly peeved. The criminologist reiterated that anomalous is precisely the right word to describe the events, and he called it "a grave mistake" to imagine otherwise. Yet given what had happened in Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Oregon, could anyone doubt that today’s youths are "more likely to pull a gun than make a fist," as Katie Couric declared on the "Today" show?

Brief History and Constitution: The history of Constitution of India reveals that the concept of conducting competitive examination for appointment to certain posts came into consideration way back in the year 1853 and a committee for giving shape to that was constituted under the chairmanship of Lord Macaulay in the year 1854. Later on the Federal Public Service Commission and the State Public Service Commissions were constituted under the Government of India Act, 1935. The Bihar Public Service Commission came into existence from 1st April 1949 after its separation from the Commission for the States of Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, in accordance with sub-section (1) of section 261 of the Government of India Act, 1935, as adapted. Its constitutional status was pronounced with the promulgation of Constitution of India on 26th January, 1950. It is a Constitutional Body under Article 315 of the Constitution of India. The Bihar Public Service Commission initially began its functioning for the State of Bihar with its headquarters at Ranchi. The State Government decided to shift the headquarters of the Commission from Ranchi to Patna and it was finally shifted to Patna on 1st March 1951. The first Chairman of the Bihar Public Service Commission was Shri Rajandhari Sinha. Shri Radha Krishna Choudhary was the first Secretary to the Commission. The list of Chairmen of the Commission since 1949 is as follows: ||Sri Rajandhari Sinha ||Dr. Amarnath Jha ||Sri Bhagwat Prasad ||Sri K.S.V. Raman ||Sri B. N. Rohtagi ||Sri Jagat Nandan Sahay ||Dr. H. N. Yadav ||Dr. Ramawatar Shukla ||Dr. Kumar Vimal ||Sri A. K. M. Hasan ||Sri S. S. Dhanoa ||Sri Kritbhu Dev ||Sri K. K. Srivastava ||Dr. (Prof.) Ram Ashray Yadav ||Dr. (Prof.) Laxmi Rai ||Dr. (Prof.) Razia Tabassum ||Dr. (Prof.) Ram Singhasan Singh ||Sri N. K. Agrawal ||Sri A. K. Choudhary ||Sri R. J. M. Pillai ||Sri K. C. Saha The Bihar Public Service Commission (Conditions of Service) Regulations, 1960 was framed by the State of Bihar in exercise of the powers conferred by Article 318 of the Constitution of India and in supersession of the Regulation published with the Appointment Department's notification no. A-2654 dated 31st March 1953. Under Rule 3 of the Regulations, 1960 the Commission was constituted with a Chairman and 10 (ten) other members. The strength of members was reduced to 6 (six) after bifurcation of the State of Bihar and the State of Jharkhand vide notification no. 7/PSC-1013/95 (Part-3) Per 8262 dated 9th October 2002 of the Personnel & Administrative Reforms Department, Bihar. The Mandate of Bihar Public Service Commission: Article 320 and 321 of the Constitution of India prescribes the mandate of the State Public Service Commissions, which is - - Recruitment by conduct of Competitive Examinations/ through interviews to the services of the State Government. - Advising the State Government on the suitability of officers on appointment on promotion as well as transfer from one service to the other. - Advising the State Government on the matters related with recruitment to various services and posts, framing and amendment of recruitment Rules. - Advising the State Government in all disciplinary cases relating to different civil services. - Advising the State Government in the matter of grant of extraordinary pension, reimbursement of legal expenses, etc. - Advising the State Government on any matter referred to the Commission by the Governor of Bihar. Recruitment is made by two methods - - Direct Recruitment – Direct recruitment is made mainly by way of conducting competitive examination in which the selection is done on the basis of either of the following procedures: - Main (Written) Examination and Interview of the successful candidates of the Preliminary Test prescribed under rules. - Written Examination and Interview. - Promotion – Promotion is granted to civil servants through the Departmental Promotion Committee (under the chairmanship of the Commission) constituted for the same and in accordance with the rules framed by the State Government. Article 323 of the Constitution of India prescribes for the submission of annual report of the work done by the State Public Service Commission to the Governor of the State. The Bihar Public Service Commission accordingly submits annual report of the work done by the Commission to the Governor of Bihar.

Passo FundoArticle Free Pass Passo Fundo, city, northern Rio Grande do Sul estado (state), southern Brazil. The city lies near the headwaters of the Passo Fundo River at 2,326 feet (709 metres) above sea level. It was founded in 1857 and given city status in 1890. Passo Fundo is a service centre for an agricultural and livestock-raising area featuring soy, corn, wheat, and cattle. In addition to flour mills and plants processing meat and maté (tea), there is some lumbering and sawmilling, as well as the manufacture of farm machinery. A hydroelectric plant serves the city. The University of Passo Fundo (1968) is located there. Passo Fundo lies 140 miles (225 km) northwest of Porto Alegre, the state capital, and is accessible by railway, road, and air. Pop. (2010) 184,826. What made you want to look up "Passo Fundo"? Please share what surprised you most...

SSArticle Free Pass SS, abbreviation of Schutzstaffel, (German: “Protective Echelon”), the black-uniformed elite corps of the Nazi Party. Founded by Adolf Hitler in April 1925 as a small personal bodyguard, the SS grew with the success of the Nazi movement and, gathering immense police and military powers, became virtually a state within a state. From 1929 until its dissolution in 1945, the SS was headed by Heinrich Himmler, who built up the SS from fewer than 300 members to more than 50,000 by the time the Nazis came to power in 1933. Himmler, a racist fanatic, screened applicants for their supposed physical perfection and racial purity but recruited members from all ranks of German society. With their sleek black uniforms and special insignia (lightning-like runic S’s, death’shead badges, and silver daggers), the men of the SS felt superior to the brawling brown-shirted Storm Troopers of the SA, to which initially they were nominally subordinate. When Hitler, with SS help, purged the SA in 1934 and reduced it to political impotence, the SS became an independent group responsible, via Himmler, to Hitler alone. Between 1934 and 1936 Himmler and his chief adjutant, Reinhard Heydrich, consolidated SS strength by gaining control of all of Germany’s police forces and expanding their organization’s responsibilities and activities. At the same time, special military SS units were trained and equipped along the lines of the regular army. By 1939 the SS, now numbering about 250,000 men, had become a massive and labyrinthian bureaucracy, divided mainly into two groups: the Allgemeine-SS (General SS) and the Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The Allgemeine-SS dealt mainly with police and “racial” matters. Its most important division was the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA; Reich Security Central Office), which was made up of the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo; Order Police) and the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo; Security Police), which, in turn, was divided into the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo; Criminal Police) and the dreaded Gestapo under Heinrich Müller. The RSHA also included the Sicherheitsdienst (SD; Security Service), a security department in charge of foreign and domestic intelligence and espionage. The Waffen-SS was made up of three subgroups: the Leibstandarte, Hitler’s personal bodyguard; the Totenkopfverbände (Death’s-Head Battalions), which administered the concentration camps; and the Verfügungstruppen (Disposition Troops), which swelled to 39 divisions in World War II and which, serving as elite combat troops alongside the regular army, gained a reputation as fanatical fighters. SS men were schooled in racial hatred and admonished to harden their hearts to human suffering. Their chief “virtue” was their absolute obedience and loyalty to the Führer, who gave them their motto: “Thy Honour is Thy Loyalty.” During World War II the SS carried out massive executions of political opponents, Gypsies, Jews, Polish leaders, Communist authorities, partisan resisters, and Russian prisoners of war. Following the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allies, the SS was declared a criminal organization by the Allied Tribunal in Nürnberg in 1946. What made you want to look up "SS"? Please share what surprised you most...

engineer - Here are some of the things that civil engineers do. They design and build water systems, dams to hold back reservoirs, roads strong enough to carry heavy traffic, bridges and buildings, railway tracks, tunnels and stations, jetties and harbours for ships and ferries. If you want to find out more about what civil engineers do, visit the Institution of Civil Engineers web-site, click on "School Zone".

Be someone’s stroke of luck High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, increases the risk for stroke. (Photo: James Gathany/CDC) When a car crashes, everything goes by in a flash — glass loudly breaking, metal bending, worlds turning upside down. Folks within earshot immediately dial 9-1-1 for help. Now imagine the same wreck occurring inside the mind of someone near you — a stroke. There are no screeching tires, no shattering glass. Who will call for help? Sadly, fewer than one in five Americans recognize stoke symptoms. And up to 80 percent of strokes are preventable. Strokes represent the third leading cause of death and the leading cause of adult disability in America. High blood pressure remains the number one cause of strokes. Have it checked regularly. For most adults, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises normal blood pressure should be 120/80 (systolic/diastolic) millimeters of mercury (mmHg). High blood pressure consists of a systolic of 140 mmHg or more, or a diastolic of 90 mmHg or more. Other controllable factors include cholesterol, transient ischemic attacks (mini-strokes), diabetes, smoking, alcohol consumption, obesity, and heart diseases such as a trial fibrillation. A stroke, or "brain attack," occurs when blood and oxygen flowing to the brain is interrupted by a blood clot or a broken blood vessel. This kills brain cells in the immediate area, often causing disabilities including speech problems, memory loss and paralysis. Recognizing stroke symptoms and immediately seeking emergency medical attention are critical. Emergency treatment with a clot-buster drug called t-PA can help minimize or completely eliminate disabilities, but the drug must be given within three hours of the onset of symptoms. Recovery can be a lifelong journey but five, 10 or even 20 years post-stroke, many stroke survivors regain the use of limbs and reacquire skills they thought were lost forever. N.C. ranks high for stroke deaths, disability Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability in North Carolina, and the state ranks seventh highest for stroke death rates in the nation, according to the North Carolina Stroke Association. The coastal plain of North Carolina particularly (as well as the coastal plains of South Carolina and Georgia) is also in the nation's "Stroke Buckle," where death rate from stroke is at least twice as high as the national average. The incidence of strokes is higher for American Indians and African Americans. Risk factors also include a diet high in fried foods, including fried fish. Stroke can occur at any age–more than one-third of all stroke hospitalizations in North Carolina occur in people younger than 65. To learn more and to locate local caregiver resources, call the North Carolina Stroke Association at (336) 713-5052 or visit www.ncstroke.org. You can also call the National Stroke Association at 1-800-STROKES or visit www.stroke.org.

A Jesuit missionary to Brazil, b. 18 September or 6 December, 1689, at Menaggio, in Italy ; d. 21 September, 1761, at Lisbon. He entered the Jesuit order at Genoa in 1711. He set out from Lisbon in 1721 and arrived on the Island of Maranhào towards the end of the same year. Thence he proceeded to Brazil, where for twenty-eight years he underwent numerous hardships in the Christianization of the natives. In 1749 he was sent to Lisbon, where he was received with great honours by the aged King John V. In 1751 he returned to Brazil, but was recalled to Lisbon in 1753 upon the request of the queen dowager, Marianna of Austria, mother of Joseph, who had succeeded to the throne upon the death of his father, John V. The great influence which he exerted at the Court of Lisbon was a thorn in the side of Pombal, the prime minister. By intrigues and calumnies he induced the young king, Joseph I, to banish Malagrida to Setubal (November, 1756) and to remove all the Jesuits from the Court. An attempt upon the life of the royal chamberlain, Teixeira, during which the king was accidentally wounded, was amplified by Pombal into a conspiracy headed by Malagrida and other Jesuits. Without proof, Malagrida was declared guilty of high treason, but, being a priest, he could not be executed without the consent of the Inquisition. Meanwhile the officials of the Inquisition, who were friendly towards Malagrida, were replaced by tools of Pombal, who condemned him as a heretic and visionary, whereupon he was strangled at an auto-da-fé , and his body burnt. The accusation of heresy is based on two visionary treatises which he is said to have written while in prison. His authorship of these treatises has never been proved, and they contain such ridiculous statements that, if he wrote them, he must previously have lost his reason in the horrors of his two and a half years' imprisonment. That he was not guilty of any conspiracy against the king is admitted even by the enemies of the Jesuits. A monument in his honour was erected in 1887 in the parochial church of Menaggio. More Catholic Encyclopedia Browse Encyclopedia by Alphabet The Catholic Encyclopedia is the most comprehensive resource on Catholic teaching, history, and information ever gathered in all of human history. This easy-to-search online version was originally printed in fifteen hardcopy volumes. Designed to present its readers with the full body of Catholic teaching, the Encyclopedia contains not only precise statements of what the Church has defined, but also an impartial record of different views of acknowledged authority on all disputed questions, national, political or factional. In the determination of the truth the most recent and acknowledged scientific methods are employed, and the results of the latest research in theology, philosophy, history, apologetics, archaeology, and other sciences are given careful consideration. No one who is interested in human history, past and present, can ignore the Catholic Church, either as an institution which has been the central figure in the civilized world for nearly two thousand years, decisively affecting its destinies, religious, literary, scientific, social and political, or as an existing power whose influence and activity extend to every part of the globe. In the past century the Church has grown both extensively and intensively among English-speaking peoples. Their living interests demand that they should have the means of informing themselves about this vast institution, which, whether they are Catholics or not, affects their fortunes and their destiny. Browse the Catholic Encyclopedia by Topic Copyright © Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company New York, NY. Volume 1: 1907; Volume 2: 1907; Volume 3: 1908; Volume 4: 1908; Volume 5: 1909; Volume 6: 1909; Volume 7: 1910; Volume 8: 1910; Volume 9: 1910; Volume 10: 1911; Volume 11: - 1911; Volume 12: - 1911; Volume 13: - 1912; Volume 14: 1912; Volume 15: 1912 Catholic Online Catholic Encyclopedia Digital version Compiled and Copyright © Catholic Online

During a visit to the Washington, D.C. Holocaust Museum Monday, President Barack Obama restated his commitment to Israel saying he'll "always be there" for the Jewish state. The president's comments came a few days after Holocaust Remembrance Day. He also announced a series of steps to promote human rights and prevent genocide around the world. Obama was introduced by Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel, who said that as the nation's chief executive and a father, the president's duty is to remind future generations that the Holocaust happened. "We must tell our children about a crime unique in human history, the one and only Holocaust," Obama said. "Six million innocent people -- men, women, children, babies -- sent to their deaths just for being different, just for being Jewish." He added that these "seeds of hate" cannot be allowed to take root again. The president said an individual commitment to the Jewish people extends to American support for Israel. "When attempts are made to delegitimize the state of Israel, we oppose them," Obama continued. "When faced with a regime that threatens global security and denies the Holocaust and threatens to destroy Israel, the United States will do everything in our power to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon," he said. In his speech, President Obama also mentioned South Sudan as one success story in his administration's fight against genocide. As a result of diplomacy, South Sudan is the world's newest nation. Still, an ongoing fight between Sudanese Muslims and the primarily Christian South is growing. Hospital officials are trying to cope with the aftermath of bombings and shootings from a brewing war that threatens to wipe out a cease-fire with the Sudanese government. "The situation is now much, much alarming. We are now stretched to the limit," said Joseph Panyon, administrative director of Bentiu Hospital. "We are receiving all the military casualties and the civilians alike on top of our normal patients that we have been dealing with," he said. President Obama tried to intervene over the weekend, calling both sides in the largely Muslim-Christian conflict to account. "We know what needs to happen," Obama said. "The government of Sudan must stop its military actions -- including aerial bombardments -- and must give aid workers access they need to save lives, and it must end its support for armed groups inside the South." "Likewise, the government of South Sudan must end its support of armed groups inside Sudan, and it must cease its military actions across the border," he added. Also Monday, Obama issued a new executive order that will allow the United States to impose sanctions on foreign governments that use modern technology, such as the Internet, to commit human rights abuses.

WebMD Medical News Louise Chang, MD March 8, 2012 -- Women with failing hearts survive longer than men, according to the largest analysis ever to examine the impact of gender on heart failure deaths. When researchers analyzed data from 31 studies involving nearly 28,000 men and 14,000 women, they found male gender to be an independent risk factor for death from heart failure. About 5.7 million Americans suffer from heart failure. Women tend to develop heart failure later in life than men, and there has been a suggestion that they also survive longer once they have it. But because far fewer women than men have been enrolled in heart failure trials over the years, little else is known about the impact of gender on treatment and outcomes in heart failure patients. In an attempt to remedy this, an international team of researchers examined three years of follow-up data on more than 40,000 heart failure patients in the study, published in the European Journal of Heart Failure. The analysis revealed that: Heart failure occurs when the heart is unable to pump enough blood to meet the body’s demands. Common symptoms include shortness of breath, swelling, and tiredness, primarily a result from failure of the left side of the heart, or ventricle, which pumps blood to the rest of the body. The extent of failure to the left side of the heart is measured with a test known as “ejection fraction.” A reduced ejection fraction means that the left side of the heart is not able to pump as forcefully as it should. In the newly published analysis, reduced ejection fraction was associated with a higher risk of death, and men were more likely to have reduced ejection fraction than women (81% vs. 62%). But the difference in ejection fraction did not fully explain the better survival among women, says researcher Manuel Martinez-Selles, MD, of Madrid’s Gregorio Maranon University Hospital. The researchers concluded that more study is needed to understand why the risk of death from heart failure is lower among women than men. Women enrolled in the trials were prescribed fewer standard treatments for heart failure than men, including ACE inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, and beta blockers. Cardiologist and heart failure researcher Ileana L. Pina, MD, of the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y., says there has long been a critical need to enroll more women in heart failure trials, but she adds that the reason this has not happened is complex. She says not as many women as men are asked to participate in such trials, and women may be less willing to participate when they are asked. “We need a representative number of women to be included in heart failure trials, but that isn’t happening,” she says. SOURCES: Martinez-Selles, M. European Journal of Heart Failure, March 8, 2012.Ileana L. Pina, MD, cardiologist, professor of medicine and epidemiology, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, N.Y.News release, European Society of Cardiology. Here are the most recent story comments.View All The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of KGPE CBS47 TV The Health News section does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See additional information.

CDC Guidance for Responses to Influenza for Institutions of Higher Education during the 2009-2010 Academic Year This website is archived for historical purposes and is no longer being maintained or updated. For updated information on the current flu season, see the CDC Seasonal Flu website. February 22, 2010 11:00 AM ET This document provides guidance to help decrease the spread of influenza (flu) among students, faculty, and staff of institutions of higher education (IHE) and post-secondary educational institutions during the 2009-2010 academic year. The guidance expands upon earlier guidance for these settings by providing a menu of tools that IHE and health officials can choose from based on conditions in their area. It recommends actions to take now (during this academic year), suggests strategies to consider if the flu starts causing more severe disease than during the April through December 2009 outbreak of 2009 H1N1 flu, and provides a checklist for making decisions. Based on the severity of 2009 H1N1 flu-related illness thus far, this guidance also recommends that students, faculty, and staff with flu-like illness remain home until 24 hours after resolution of fever without the use of fever-reducing medicines. For the purpose of this guidance, IHE will refer to public and private, residential and nonresidential, degree-granting and non-degree-granting institutions providing post-secondary education in group settings regardless of the age of their students. Portions of this guidance pertaining to dormitories and residence halls may serve as a useful supplement to residential (boarding) schools providing primary and secondary education, with adaptations as needed for their younger population. This guidance represents CDC’s current thinking on this topic. It does not create or confer any rights for or on any person or operate to bind the public. A more in depth explanation of the strategies and suggestions presented in this CDC Guidance may be found in the Technical Report on CDC Guidance for Responses to Influenza for Institutions of Higher Education during the 2009–2010 Academic Year. The purpose of this document is to provide updated guidance for reducing the spread of flu in IHEs. We provide recommendations assuming that severity of illness is similar to what was seen during April through December 2009 of the 2009 H1N1flu outbreak, as well as recommendations that could be added if the severity of illness worsens. Flu is unpredictable. CDC is working with state and local health departments to continue to monitor the spread of flu, the severity of the illness it is causing, and changes to the virus. If this information indicates that flu is causing more severe disease than during April through December 2009 of the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak, or if other developments require more aggressive mitigation measures, CDC may recommend additional strategies. Since severity may vary from community to community, IHEs should also look to their state and local health officials for information and guidance specific to their location. The guidance is designed to decrease exposure to regular seasonal flu and 2009 H1N1 flu at IHEs. CDC will continue to monitor the conditions and update the current guidance as more information is obtained on 2009 H1N1 flu. IHEs should tailor the guidance to account for the size, diversity, and mobility of their students, faculty, and staff; their location and physical facilities; programs; and student and employee health services. Decisions about strategies should balance the goal of reducing the number of people who become seriously sick or die from flu with the goal of minimizing educational and social disruption. Flu Symptoms, Transmission, and Risk: Symptoms of flu can include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills, and fatigue, and sometimes diarrhea and vomiting. People may be infected with the flu, including 2009 H1N1 flu, and have respiratory symptoms without a fever. Like seasonal flu, 2009 H1N1 flu infection in humans can vary in severity from mild to severe. Visit http://www.cdc.gov/H1N1flu/qa.htm for more information on flu symptoms. Like seasonal flu, the 2009 H1N1 flu virus is spread mainly from person to person through coughs or sneezes of infected individuals. People may also become infected by touching something – such as a surface or object – with flu virus on it and then touching their mouth, nose, or eyes. Some people are at higher risk than others for serious complications from flu. These people include: - children younger than 5 years old, but especially children younger than 2 years old - people aged 65 years or older - pregnant women - adults and children who have: - neurological and neurodevelopmental conditions - chronic lung disease - heart disease - blood disorders - endocrine disorders (such as diabetes) - kidney, liver, and metabolic disorders - weakened immune systems due to disease or medication - people younger than 19 years of age who are receiving long-term aspirin therapy For more information on people at high risk for flu complications, visit http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/highrisk.htm. IHEs should examine and revise, as necessary, their current crisis or pandemic plans and procedures; develop contingency plans to cover key positions when staff are absent from work; update contact information for emergency contacts and staff; and share their plans with families, staff, and the community. IHEs should review and revise, if necessary, their sick leave policies to remove barriers to staff staying home while sick or to care for a sick family member. A healthcare provider’s note should not be required for students or staff to validate their illness or to return to the IHE or classroom. IHEs should frequently remind students, their families, and staff about the importance of staying home when sick; early treatment for people at higher risk for flu complications; respiratory etiquette; and hand hygiene. Educational materials (for example, posters) to enhance compliance with recommendations should be visible in the IHE. Examples of these materials are available at http://www.cdc.h1n1flu/flyers.htm. Furthermore, Preparing for the Flu: A Communication Toolkit for Institutions of Higher Education also provides many materials for use. The recommendations that follow are divided into two groups: 1) recommendations to use now, during this academic year, assuming a similar severity to the flu outbreak seen during April through December 2009, and 2) recommendations to consider adding if a more severe flu season occurs. Recommended strategies to use now, for flu conditions with severity similar to April through December 2009 of the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak - Encourage vaccination against the flu: The best way to protect against the flu – seasonal and 2009 H1N1 – is to get vaccinated. - The five primary target groups for vaccination against 2009 H1N1 flu include pregnant women, people who live with or care for children younger than 6 months of age, healthcare and emergency medical services personnel, people age 6 months through 24 years, and people age 25 through 64 years who have underlying medical conditions that put them at higher risk of complications from flu. Due to increased vaccine availability, everyone, including those over age 65 years, can now be vaccinated. - Some students and staff will fall within these groups and should be among the first to receive the 2009 H1N1 flu vaccine. Visit http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/vaccination for more information. - Facilitate self-isolation of residential students with flu-like illness: Those with flu-like illness should stay away from classes and limit interactions with other people (called “self-isolation”), except to seek medical care, for at least 24 hours after they no longer have a fever, or signs of a fever, without the use of fever-reducing medicines. They should stay away from others during this time period even if they are taking antiviral medicines for treatment of the flu. (For more information, visit http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/guidance/exclusion.htm.) - Review and revise, as needed, policies, such as student absenteeism policies and sick leave policies for faculty and staff, that make it difficult for students, faculty, and staff to stay home when they are sick or to care for a sick family member. Do not require a healthcare provider’s note to confirm illness or recovery. - If possible, residential students with flu-like illness who live relatively close to the campus should return to their home to keep from making others sick. These students should be instructed to do so in a way that limits contact with others as much as possible. For example, travel by private car or taxi would be preferable over use of public transportation. - Students with a private room should remain in their room and receive care and meals from a single person. Students can establish a “flu buddy scheme” in which students pair up to care for each other if one or the other becomes sick. Additionally, staff can make daily contact by e-mail, text messaging, phone calls, or other methods with each student who is in self-isolation. - If close contact with others cannot be avoided, CDC recommends people with known, probable, or suspected flu or flu-like illness to use a facemask if available and tolerable, or otherwise to cover their noses and mouths with a tissue when coughing or sneezing (or an elbow or shoulder if no tissue is available). Close contact includes caring for or living with the sick person. For those caring for people with flu-like illness, CDC has recommendations for use of personal protective equipment. Visit http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/masks.htm for information on appropriate personal protective equipment. - For those who cannot leave campus, and who do not have a private room, IHEs may consider providing temporary, alternate housing for sick students until 24 hours after they are free of fever, or signs of a fever, without use of fever-reducing medicines. - Instruct students with flu-like illness to seek medical attention promptly if they have a medical condition that puts them at higher risk for flu complications, are concerned about their illness, or develop severe symptoms such as increased fever, shortness of breath, chest pain or pressure, or rapid breathing. - Promote self-isolation at home by non-resident students, faculty, and staff: - Non-residential students, faculty, and staff with flu-like illness should be asked to self-isolate at home or at a friend’s or family member’s home until at least 24 hours after they are free of fever, or signs of a fever, without the use of fever-reducing medicines. - Review, and revise if needed, sick leave policies to remove barriers to faculty and staff staying home when they are sick or caring for a sick family member. For students, consider altering policies on missed classes and examinations and late assignments so that students’ academic concerns do not prevent them from staying home when sick or prompt them to return to class or take examinations while still symptomatic and potentially infectious. - Do not require a healthcare provider’s note for students, faculty, or staff to validate their illness or to return to work. - Distance learning or web-based learning may help students maintain self-isolation. - Visit http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/guidance/exclusion.htm for more information on staying home while sick. - Emphasize respiratory etiquette and hand hygiene by both people who are well and those who have any symptoms of flu: - Encourage students and staff to cover their noses and mouths with a tissue when coughing or sneezing (or an elbow or shoulder if no tissue is available) and to wash their hands frequently with soap and water when possible; students and staff should keep hands away from their noses, mouths, and eyes. - If soap and water are not available, alcohol-based hand rubs can also be used. However, hand rubs should not be used when hands are visibly soiled. - Visit: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/covercough.htm for more information on respiratory etiquette and www.cdc.gov/cleanhands for more information on hand hygiene. - Perform routine environmental cleaning: - School staff should routinely clean frequently touched surfaces with the cleaners they typically use. - Provide disposable wipes so that commonly used surfaces can be wiped down by students before each use. - CDC does not believe any additional disinfection of environmental surfaces beyond the recommended routine cleaning is required. - Promote early treatment of students and staff at higher risk for flu complications: - People at higher risk for flu complications who become sick with flu-like illness should speak with their healthcare provider as soon as possible to determine if they need antiviral treatment. - It’s very important that antiviral drugs be used early to treat flu in people who are very sick (for example people who are in the hospital) and people who are sick with flu and have a greater chance of getting serious flu complications. Other people may also be treated with antiviral drugs by their doctor this season. - Discourage attendance at campus events by sick people: Events such as football games or concerts that bring large groups together may pose a high risk of exposure and transmission of flu. - Use a variety of communication methods such as e-mail, posters, flyers, and media coverage to discourage people with flu-like illness from attending these events until they have been free of fever, or signs of fever, for at least 24 hours without use of fever-reducing medicines and to encourage respiratory etiquette and hand hygiene. - Explore ways to modify events to reduce close contact and increase distances between participants. IHEs may need to consider cancelling some events if modification is not possible and there is a high level of flu activity in the community. - Consider specific student populations: - Review policies for study abroad programs, including accessing health services abroad and reporting illness to the IHE. - Communicate plans, policies, and strategies to partner K-12 schools regarding “early/middle college” students, prospective student tours, and other K-12 students regularly on campus. - Determine if special communication strategies are needed to meet the needs of students with disabilities. - Review policies for sports teams, bands, and other large groups of students who spend a lot of time together in close quarters. IHE may need to consider cancelling travel to off-campus activities. - Remind healthcare profession students to follow infection control guidance for healthcare workers. Visit http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/clinicians for guidance for healthcare settings. Recommended strategies to add in the event of increased flu severity compared to April through December 2009 of the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak CDC may recommend additional strategies to help protect IHE students, faculty, and staff if global, national, or regional assessments indicate that flu is causing more severe disease. In addition, local health or IHE officials may choose to use additional strategies. Although the following strategies have not been scientifically tested in the IHE setting, they are grounded on basic principles of infection control. Implementation of these strategies is likely to be more difficult and to have more disruptive effects than the previously described strategies. These strategies should be considered if flu severity increases and are meant for use in addition to the strategies outlined above. - Permit students, faculty, and staff at higher risk for flu complications to stay home: - If flu severity increases, people at higher risk for flu complications may consider staying home while a lot of flu is circulating in their community. Such people should make this decision after consulting with their healthcare provider. - IHEs should plan now for ways to continue educating students who stay home through distance learning methods. IHEs should also examine policy accommodations that might be necessary, such as allowing students at higher risk for flu complications to withdraw for the semester, tailoring sick leave policies to address the needs of faculty and staff, or modifying work responsibilities and locations. - Increase social distances: Explore innovative ways to increase the distances between students (for example, moving desks apart or using distance learning methods). Ideally, there should be at least 6 feet between people at most times. - Consider postponing campus events: Consider whether to suspend or modify public events such as films, sporting events, or commencement ceremonies. - Extend the self-isolation period: If flu severity increases, people with flu-like illness should stay home for at least 7 days after the onset of their symptoms, even if they have no more symptoms. If people are still sick after 7 days, they should stay home until 24 hours after they have no symptoms. See information above for self-isolation in different types of housing. - Consider suspending classes: - IHE and health officials should work closely to balance the risks of flu in their community with the disruption that suspending classes will cause in both education and the wider community. - Use multiple channels to communicate a clear message about the reasons for suspending classes and the implications for students, faculty, staff, and the community. - Reactive class suspension might be needed when IHEs cannot maintain normal functioning, for example when a significant number and proportion of students have documented fever. - To decrease the spread of flu, CDC may recommend preemptive class suspension if the flu starts to cause severe disease in a significantly larger proportion of those affected than occurred during April through December 2009 of the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak. - If classes are suspended, large gatherings (for example, sporting events, dances, commencement ceremonies) should be cancelled or postponed. - IHEs should consider whether they can allow faculty and staff to continue use of their facilities while classes are not being held. This may allow faculty to develop lessons and materials and engage in other essential activities. - IHEs with residential students should plan for ways to continue essential services such as meals, custodial services, security, and other basic operations for students who remain on campus. When possible, dismiss students who can get home – or to the home of a relative, friend of the family, or host family – by private car or taxi. International students and others without easy access to alternative housing should stay on campus, but increase the distance between people as much as possible. - The length of time classes should be suspended will vary depending on the goal of class suspension as well as the severity and extent of illness. IHEs that suspend classes should do so for at least 5 to 7 calendar days. Before the end of this period, the IHE, in collaboration with public health officials, should reassess the epidemiology of the disease and the benefits and consequences of continuing the suspension or resuming classes. - Local and state health, education, and homeland security agencies - Campus health services and mental health services - Campus emergency managers and security staff - Student affairs and residential life staff - Communications staff - Physical plant staff - Food services staff - Community representatives - Students’ families - Numbers of and trends in outpatient visits, hospitalizations, and deaths from flu-like illness - Percent of hospitalized patients requiring admission to intensive care units (ICUs) - Groups being disproportionately affected - Ability of local healthcare providers and emergency departments to meet increased demand - Availability of antiviral medicines, hospital beds, staff, ICU space, and ventilators for flu patients - Student, faculty, and staff absenteeism rates - Number of visits to the campus health service - Bed availability for student self-isolation - Severity of illness among affected staff and/or students - Legal authority or policy requirements - Communication channels - Public concern about flu - People who do not feel empowered to protect themselves - Lack of public support for the strategy - Secondary effects of strategies (for example, job security, financial support, health service access, and educational progress) CDC recommends a combination of strategies applied early and simultaneously. Strategies should be selected a) based on trends in the severity of disease, virus characteristics, feasibility, and acceptability and b) through collaborative decision-making with public health agencies, IHE faculty and staff, students, students’ families, and the wider community. CDC and its partners will continuously look for changes in the severity of flu-like illness and will share what is learned with state and local agencies. However, states and local communities can expect to see a lot of differences in disease patterns from community to community. Every IHE has to balance a variety of objectives to determine the best course of action to help decrease the spread of flu. Decision-makers should identify and communicate their objectives, which might be one or more of the following: (a) protecting overall public health by reducing community transmission; (b) reducing transmission in students, faculty, and staff; and (c) protecting people at higher risk for flu complications. Some strategies can have negative consequences in addition to their potential benefits. In the particular case of IHE class suspension, decision-makers also must consider and balance additional factors: (a) how to ensure students continue to learn; (2) how to provide an emotionally and physically safe place for students; and (3) how to reduce demands on local healthcare services. The following questions can help begin discussions and lead to decisions. Decision-Makers and Stakeholders Are all of the right decision-makers and stakeholders involved? Information Collection and Sharing Can local or state health officials determine and share information about the following? What does the IHE know about the following? Do you have the resources to implement the strategies being considered? Have you determined how to address the following challenges to implementing the strategies? Get email updates To receive weekly email updates about this site, enter your email address: - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 1600 Clifton Rd Atlanta, GA 30333 TTY: (888) 232-6348 24 Hours/Every Day

Catalog • 2011-2012 Criminal Justice Courses CRJ 101 The Legal System - 3 credits The Legal System introduces the student to the concept of crime; explaining and defining the legal system from the point when a crime is committed through to the disposition, or sentencing. It examines how the individual components of the system; law enforcement; the courts; and corrections, influence society’s overall response to crime. An understanding of the legal process is one of the building blocks of developing an understanding of the social causes, consequences, and responses to dysfunctional behavior. CRJ 106 Criminology - 3 credits This course is designed to introduce the student to the systematic study of crime and the criminal justice system, including the police, courts and prisons. This course will examine ideas such as social control, the social causes and social definitions of crime as well as society’s reaction to crime and criminal behavior. It also focuses on the impact issues such as race, gender, ethnicity and social class have on crime. Policy decisions regarding the police and law enforcement, the courts, juvenile offenders, crime victims, and the various functions of punishment including retribution, social protection, rehabilitation and deterrence are also examined. The course is designed to be taught in three distinct units. The first unit will examine what is crime; how is it defined; why is it measured; and how is it measured. The second unit will deal with the study of crime theory. We will discuss the origins of crime theory, and evaluate the major biological, psychological, sociological and environmental theories. The third and final stage will examine crime typologies and the profiling of criminal offenders. CRJ 201 Addictions, Psychopathology and Crime - 3 credits The primary objective of this course is to identify the influence substance use, abuse, and addiction has on behavior. Specific content areas will compare and contrast the behaviors observed in children, adolescents, and adults; misconceptions of substance abuse; the challenges associated with the measurement of substance use and abuse; and the classifications of drugs. CRJ 206 Class, Race, Gender and Crime - 3 credits This course explores the social relationship between class, race, gender and crime. It attempts to account for differences in crime social boundaries, social make-up and social status. It further examines the behavior of law itself and how the making of laws is influenced by class, race, and gender. CRJ 211 Criminal Justice Ethics - 3 credits There is perhaps no more appropriate place for the study of ethics than in the criminal justice profession. In order for a society to have a system of enforcement of social rules and norms, it must first establish a standard measure of ethical behavior. This course will examine how a society establishes moral and ethical behavior; the challenges faced by the establishment of a system of enforcement; and the dilemmas faced by those charged with enforcement. It will examine the ethical issues raised by things such as Megan’s Law; hate crimes; gun control; legalization of drugs; DNA testing; and racial profiling. It will also examine the individual ethical dilemmas faced by the people who are considered criminal justice professionals. CRJ 301 Juvenile Justice - 3 credits Mass media coverage of some of America’s most violent episodes, perpetrated by the youth of our society, has renewed the debate over the adequacy of the juvenile justice system. This course will examine the juvenile justice system at great length, focusing on; the major differences between the adult and juvenile systems; the rehabilitative nature of juvenile justice; the balance of treatment versus punishment; the legal framework for the juvenile justice system; evaluating juvenile misbehavior; and the effectiveness of court intervention and punishment. Students will be exposed to concepts and issues most often debated by criminal justice advocates and opponents and analyze the appropriateness of both ends of the debate. CRJ 306 Corrections - 3 credits The American corrections system is currently incarcerating individuals at unprecedented rates, despite the fact that crime has decreased over the past decade. With over 13 million Americans admitted to the nation’s jails and prisons each year the effect on society is significant. This course, taught from an environmental criminology perspective, examines how incarceration influences behavior, and identifies the most effective methods to control inmate behavior. Content areas include: how architecture, expectations, conditions of confinement, classification, and situational crime prevention measures impact inmate behavior. CRJ 311 Crime and Place - 3 credits This course focuses on the social ecology of crime in that it examines the relationship between crime, victimization and the environment. Ecological theory examines spatial and temporal patterns of criminal conduct and victimization. This course also examines community and environmental strategies which have been developed to reduce the likelihood of criminal behavior. CRJ 316 Crime and Public Policy - 3 credits This course explains how crime; the public perception of crime; and the political reaction to crime influence public policy in the United States. Each component of the criminal justice system will be examined, including; the courts; police; the prosecutor; and corrections; evaluating how public policy effects each component. CRJ 321 Criminal Justice Field Experience - 3 credits The field experience is designed to provide the student an opportunity to integrate and reconcile theoretical concepts and principles learned in other social science and criminal justice courses and apply them in work environments within the criminal justice profession. The field experience initiates the beginning of the lifelong professional learning process through which the student must learn to navigate. CRJ 325 Criminal Justice Research Methods and Design - 4 credits Provides criminal justice professionals with the understanding of a scientific, analytical approach to knowledge building. Examines the concepts of theory development, conceptualization and hypothesis formulation across criminal justice fields of practice. The content includes research design, sampling, instrumentation, methods of data collection and analysis as well as descriptive inferential statistics and critical analysis of empirical research. The student will develop an original research project. CRJ 326 Criminal Justice Field Experience Seminar - 3 credits The Field Experience Seminar is designed to assist the student in processing the experiences one has at the field experience assignment. The seminar is taken concurrently with the field experience and provides an opportunity to integrate and reconcile theoretical concepts and principles learned in other social science and criminal justice courses and apply them in working within the criminal justice profession. As students enter the field as interns their concerns will be more on practical issues. As a result, the course is designed as an open discussion forum allowing the professor and students to examine practical issues and discuss their integration with classroom concepts. The integration of these concepts is the central purpose of the course. Students will be asked to link professional events to theoretical concepts and will be asked to examine these events within the context of professional and personal ethics. CRJ 331 Leadership in Criminal Justice - 3 credits The Cedar Crest curriculum has been carefully designed to produce female graduates who are well prepared to assume leadership roles in the criminal justice profession. This capstone course for the criminal justice major is the culmination of that experience and is intended to allow each student to develop a greater understanding of the challenges faced by the women who choose to pursue these positions. During the course of the curriculum, careful attention is given to developing the student’s critical thinking and problem solving skills in an attempt to better prepare them for a role in criminal justice management. A student’s preparation would be incomplete, however, without an understanding of the challenges and barriers faced by women in this profession. To accomplish this goal, students will be required to produce a research paper examining the unique challenges faced by women who attempt to pursue management positions in any given sector of the profession. Each student will be asked to choose a specific occupation of interest and conduct a literature review examining the role women assume in that profession and the obstacles they must overcome to excel. Additionally, each student must perform field research designed to validate the literature review by discussing with professionals the challenges they have faced in their pursuit of managerial responsibility. By requiring such a project, Cedar Crest strives to produce professionals that understand the challenges posed by such a demanding profession, and by doing so, will better prepare them to assume higher levels of responsibility.

- THE MAGAZINE The many analytical instruments available today for obtaining information about materials properties and characteristics are as diverse as the materials used and the applications for ceramics themselves. The latest advances in instrumentation allow the observation and measurement of smaller features, achieve better detection limits and determine more accurate chemical and structural parameters than ever before. The use of advanced ceramic materials has increased dramatically during the past few decades. For example, ceramic-based materials have become widely accepted for use in medical applications, particularly for orthopedic and dental implants. These bioceramics represent a diverse class of materials divided into the following three major categories: bio-inert ceramics such as alumina- and zirconia-based high-strength ceramics; bioactive glass or glass/ceramic composites that can form direct chemical bonds with living tissue; and ceramics that mimic natural bone, such as calcium phosphate-based ceramics. Although most synthetic bioceramics offer physical and/or chemical properties that meet or even exceed their natural counterparts, they can result in a number of adverse physiological reactions. Thus, the biocompatibility and mechanical strength of implant materials is becoming an important focus area. Examples include the development of composite materials and the use of specialty coated base materials. Choosing the Right TechniqueThe right analytical tool must be used for the cost-efficient problem solving and characterization of ceramic materials, (i.e., one that has the correct measurement capabilities and characteristics to address the problem at hand). Measurement-related factors include depth of analysis, detection range and analytical spot size. The type of information desired (or available from a given measurement) should also be considered. Information of interest can include bulk elemental composition, the presence of trace contaminants or dopants, chemical bonding information, crystallographic information (e.g., grain size and orientation), and roughness. Figure 2 shows the typical depths of analysis for various analytical techniques. The depths of analysis range from only the top few atomic layers to many micrometers into the sample. Matching the problem or characterization need with a technique that has an appropriate depth of analysis is critical to providing results that are relevant, useful and meaningful. If a tool with a large (i.e., deep) analysis depth is used to characterize a very thin film or contaminant, the chances are very low that the contaminant or thin film will actually be identified, correctly characterized or even detected. Similarly, trying to characterize the bulk of a material with a surface sensitive technique may be misleading, as outer surfaces are often substantially different than the inner bulk of a material due to segregation, contamination and other processes. Specific TechniquesVarious types of analyses can be of importance to ceramic materials developers and users, and can be organized as follows: - Visualizing a sample (e.g., microscopy) - Determining the composition (major elements) of a sample - Determining trace elements (< 1%) present in a sample - Determining the crystallographic properties of a sample - Determining the thermal stability of a sample (e.g., weight loss or phase changes) - Investigating the surface of a sample or a sample that has a thin film on its surface Microscopy techniques provide high- magnification images of samples to observe topography and features of interest. Microscopy can also be performed on cross-sectioned samples to image buried features, layers, interfaces and crystalline structures. The previously mentioned SEM and TEM are essential for applications where resolutions greater than those provided by optical microscopy are required. SEM is one of the most popular analytical tools because of its ability to provide high- resolution images with excellent depth of field. Figure 3 shows SEM images of various ceramic nanoparticles at different magnifications. Detailed information about the surface morphology and particle size can also be obtained. Beyond particle size and morphology, another important aspect of materials analysis is elemental composition and the potential presence of trace elemental contaminants. An accurate survey analysis of all elements present may be a requirement to identify all of the constituents present, from matrix elements to trace levels. Unwanted trace level impurities can be introduced into ceramics from various sources, such as raw materials, reactors, catalysts, transferring pipelines, molding components and other equipment used in manufacturing. Techniques available for multi-element analyses with trace level sensitivities include inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), and glow discharge mass spectrometry (GDMS). Another aspect of this test method is the determination of the Ca:P ratio using ICP-OES. Pure hydroxyapatite has a Ca:P ratio of 1.67. Table 2 illustrates the compositional data of major elements (P, Ca, O) and trace elemental impurities of As, Cd, Hg and Pb for several raw materials, as determined by ICP-MS and instrumental gas analysis (IGA) for light elements (carbon and oxygen, in this case). X-ray diffraction (XRD) is a powerful nondestructive technique for characterizing crystalline, polycrystalline and microcrystalline materials. It provides information on crystalline structure and phase; preferred crystal orientation (also known as texture); and other structural parameters such as average grain size, degree of crystallinity, strain, and crystal defect density. XRD peaks are produced by the constructive interference of a monochromatic beam of X-rays scattered at specific angles from the lattice planes in a sample. XRD is an extremely valuable tool for the analysis of ceramics, providing basic phase identification to more complex analyses such as determining percent crystallinity and crystallite size, and monitoring phase change processes. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential thermal analysis (DTA) are essential tools to examine the thermal behavior and stability of ceramic materials. These techniques find particular application in the field of nanomaterials, where the properties of nanoscale materials are not necessarily the same as those of bulk materials. Hydroxyapatite is often applied as a coating on an inert metallic implant such as Ti-6Al-4V. A typical deposition method is to use thermal spraying to coat the amorphous hydroxyapatite nanopowder precursors onto the metallic implant. TGA/DTA is vital in investigating the morphological stability of the precursors and in helping to develop the heat treatment protocols for forming hydroxyapatite coatings of the required density or porosity. Figure 5 shows the TGA (left axis) and DTA (right axis) of bulk and nanostructured calcium phosphate samples. Nanopowder calcium phosphate exhibits a slight weight loss (~ 1.6 wt%) up to 800øC, likely due to surface desorption. The DTA data of this nanopowder form sample reveals an intense crystallization peak around 680°C, compared to the bulk material. The modern use of ceramics and nanomaterials may involve the construction of layered laminated materials or the creation of a coating. In both of these scenarios, the surface chemistry of the particle or material may play a considerable role in its behavior. In order to address this possibility, tools must be used that have a shallow information depth (see the left-hand side of Figure 2). Two tools that fit this requirement well and are able to analyze ceramic materials include time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). These techniques have information depths within the 10-100A range, meaning that they are not suitable for bulk analysis without some means of penetrating deeper into the sample (such as with an ion beam), but they do give highly specific surface information. TOF-SIMS generally provides excellent sensitivity for species adsorbed on surfaces and can obtain elemental, organic and some inorganic information. XPS has the ability to determine the chemical states of the various elements present on the surface. These characteristics make these techniques excellent choices for the analysis of residues on a surface, such as on ceramic circuit boards. In Table 2, it can be seen that the hydroxyapatite nanopowder has a substantial carbon content (7500 ppm by weight), as determined by IGA. IGA is a bulk analysis technique that provides the total carbon concentration only. It does not provide any chemical information or depth-specific information. In order to obtain additional information about the carbon, XPS analysis was used, as shown in Figure 6. The XPS survey spectrum shows the presence of the expected O, Ca and P, along with almost 12 atomic% carbon at the surface (i.e., much higher than the bulk amount measured by IGA). Some hydrocarbon contamination would be expected due to atmospheric exposure; however the high-resolution XPS carbon spectrum shows that a significant percentage of the carbon was present as a carbonate within the upper 100A of the sample. This observation also explains the higher-than-expected Ca:P ratio observed on this sample (1.86 compared to 1.67, see Table 2). These results strongly suggest that a thin CaCO3 surface layer was covering the hydroxyapatite. Small amounts of carbonate are sometimes substituted in hydroxyapatite to make them more "bone like," but this particular sample was designed to be pure hydroxyapatite with no calcium carbonate. From a biocompatibility point of view, the bone cells exposed to this sample would see CaCO3 only and not hydroxyapatite. Only a surface-sensitive technique such as XPS would be able to detect such a thin surface layer and characterize it. ConclusionsWhile it is important to understand the physical and mechanical properties of ceramic materials used in all types of demanding environments, only a full understanding of the surface and bulk compositions of those materials allows one to understand why they may behave in a particular manner in a given test or environment. A full understanding of surface and bulk composition also enables better prospects for modifying a material to achieve even better performance. The examples presented in this article only partially demonstrate the current breadth and depth of modern techniques available for ceramic characterization. Increasing our knowledge and understanding of new and previously established materials can help improve performance and enhance the product development cycle. For additional information, contact Evans Analytical Group at 810 Kifer Rd., Sunnyvale, CA 94086; (408) 530-3500; fax (408) 530-3501; e-mail [email protected]; or visit www.eaglabs.com.

|Traditional portrait of Rambam, and authentic signature of the Rambam Rambam was born on the fourteenth day of Nissan – the day before Passover – in the year 1135, in Cordova, Spain. He was a descendent of a distinguished and scholarly family tracing its ancestry to Rabbi Yehudah HaNassi, the compiler of the Mishnah, and even further back to the royal house of King David. At the conclusion of his Commentary on the Mishnah – the confiscation of the Oral Tradition of the Torah (tractate Uktzin 3:12), Rambam enumerates his ancestry eight generations back, indicating that all were distinguished Dayanim, Rabbis and scholars. His father served as Dayan – a judge in the Jewish court of law – of the Jewish community of Cordova and was famous not only for his vast Torah knowledge, but also for his general scholarship, especially in mathematics and astronomy. Rabbi Maimon himself taught his prodigious son Scripture, Talmud, and every aspect of the Jewish religion and tradition, and provided him also with a multifaceted education and a thorough training in worldly sciences. It was at the suggestion of his father that the young Moshe immersed himself in the study of philosophy and medicine – fields in which he was to later attain world renown. |Cordova, Spain: Maimonides Square; above, monument honoring the Rambam The young Moshe was barely Bar Mitzvah when the fanatical Almohades conquered Cordova in 1148. These ruthless, savage Moslems tolerated no other religion than their own and offered the Jewish population the choice of conversion to Islam, death, or expulsion from their native land. Thus the Jews were given the excruciating alternative of either surrendering their eternal faith or their very life, or abandoning their homeland where they had lived for many centuries, leaving behind all their possessions, to seek a haven of refuge in a hostile world where they were nowhere welcome. The vast majority of the Jews, among them the Dayan and his family, chose exile and left Cordova. Of those who could not leave, many met a martyr's death, sanctifying the Name of G-d, and some became insincere converts to Islam, merely outwardly, all the while, secretly, in their hearts and in the privacy of their homes, observing and practicing all the precepts of the Torah, never abandoning their inherited religion. Rabbi Maimon and his family wandered about from city to city in Southern Spain, without being able to stay in any one place for a long period, for the conquering Almohadian hordes swept all across Southern Spain. After ten years of a nomadic life, they joined a group of fugitives who headed toward North Africa and eventually settled, in 1159, in Fez, then the capital of Morocco. But they were still not destined to enjoy peace and security. After a five year stay in Fez they had to leave because of religious intolerance and persecution. They again became wandering Jews, without a home. By way of Jerusalem and Hebron, the Maimon family made their way to Egypt. The Holy Land, desolate and unpopulated, ravaged by the Crusaders, did not afford them a permanent place of residence. They spent three days in Jerusalem in prayer at the Western Wall, and one day in Hebron praying at the graves of the Patriarchs at the Cave of Machpelah. From there they proceeded to Egypt. In Fostad, near Cairo, the seat of the Caliphate, the family of Rabbi Maimon at last found a haven. Unlike other Moslem countries, the Jews in Egypt, under the tolerant and enlightened rule of the Fatimide caliphs, were granted complete religious and civil freedom. They were allowed to develop their religious, cultural and communal life, as well as to engage in commerce without any restrictions or interference. It was here that Rabbi Moshe was to create the masterworks for which the Jewish people are forever indebted to him. They had barely settled in their new domicile, and were just beginning to enjoy the long sought life of freedom and peace, when misfortune struck the Maimon family. A few months after their arrival in Fostad, Rabbi Maimon, the former Dayan of Cordova, passed away. Rabbi Moshe deeply mourned the loss of his great father, who was to him not only a father but also his foremost teacher and most important influence Rabbi Maimon wrote a commentary on the Talmud, which his son Rabbi Moshe mentions in his introduction to the Mishnah and which he used as a source in the preparation of his own work. His younger brother, David, took upon himself the responsibility of providing financial support for the entire family, in order to enable his gifted brother, Moshe, to devote himself to his studies without financial worry. David became a jewel merchant, importing gems and precious stones from India. He succeeded in this business and the family lived very comfortably. Unfortunately, the family was struck again by tragedy with the untimely death of their provider. On a business trip to India, the ship on which David was sailing was caught in a storm, shipwrecked in the Indian Ocean, and David drowned, carrying with him the entire family fortune. It devolved upon Rabbi Moshe to become the breadwinner of the family. However, as a result of his incessant study and his grief over his brother's death, he became seriously ill. Bedridden for several months, he was unable to provide support for his family. When he finally recovered, he began to practice medicine. Rambam did not deem it proper to obtain monetary benefits or receive financial remuneration from his vast Torah knowledge. Torah should be studied and taught, he maintained, only for the sake of Heaven and not for earning a livelihood Hence he devoted himself to the vocation of medicine. He was so successful in this profession, and in the course of time gained such a reputation, that Grand Vizier Alfadhil, and eventually Sultan Saladin as well, appointed him to be their personal physician. It is incumbent upon us to love and fear the glorious and awesome G‑d, as it is written, "You shall love the L‑rd your G‑d" (Deut. 6:5), and "You shall fear the L‑rd your G‑d" (Deut. 6:13). How does one attain love and fear of G-d? When a person reflects upon His great, wondrous deeds and creatures, and from them perceives His infinite, unbounded wisdom, he will immediately be aroused to love, extol and glorify Him, and he will yearn with an exceeding yearning to know the Almighty G‑d... By [further] meditating on these matters he will recoil, awe-stricken, resolving that he is a small, insignificant creature, endowed with limited, meager intelligence, who stands in the presence of the One who is perfect in knowledge... Mishneh Torah, Yesodei HaTorah, 2:1-2

Programming Microsoft Windows with C# is a tutorial for programmers wishing to write applications for Windows using the C# programming language and the Windows Forms class library. C# is a new object-oriented programming language based on C, and Windows Forms is part of the Microsoft .NET framework. Knowledge of the C or C++ programming language is required; some familiarity with object-oriented programming is helpful but not This book has been translated into Visual Basic .NET and is available as Programming Microsoft Windows with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET" ISBN: 0-7356-1370-2; Microsoft Press; December, 2001; 1290 pages. Alternatively, you can purchase Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, which also includes .NET versions of C++, J#, and Visual Basic, as well as other features. Various versions of Visual Studio .NET cost about $1,000 and up; upgrades to previous versions of Visual Studio cost about $500 and up. It's also possible to use the book without Visual C# or Visual Studio. You need to download the 131-megabyte Microsoft .NET Framework Software Development Kit, which is final as of January 16, 2002. The .NET Framework SDK includes a command-line C# compiler that you can use in conjunction with a text editor such as the Windows Notepad. Programming Microsoft Windows with C# includes information and tips on compiling your Windows Forms programs on the command line. The only real problem is that many of the programs in Chapter 11 (and a few programs in some later chapters) include a hard-coded directory path that assumes a directory structure created by Visual Studio .NET; that path would have to be altered slightly. The following pages also discuss known problems in the book: © Charles Petzold, 2003 This page last updated June, 2003

As part of a physics lab practical exam, you are dropped off in the woods with an EM field meter and a compass. Your task is to find your way to a radio beacon (broadcasting with P=10 kW) somewhere to the north of you. You set your EM field meter to pick up the beacon frequency f=2 kHz. (a) You are dropped off a distance R1 from the beacon where the EM meter reports the signal’s intensity as . After a short walk, the meter reports the signals intensity as I2=(2.25 I1). In terms of your current position R2, what was your original distance from the beacon R1? (b) The short walk you took in part (a), was really a bit of a hike. Specifically, you hiked a=3 km due north and then b=5 km due west. Also, your first signal intensity measurement was I1= 5.53 uW/m^2. Assuming that the beacon broadcasts like a point source, what are R1 and R2 as measured in kilometers? (c) At what compass bearing is the beacon relative to your position at R2? (Measure your angles from due east.)

To use all functions of this page, please activate cookies in your browser. With an accout for my.chemeurope.com you can always see everything at a glance – and you can configure your own website and individual newsletter. - My watch list - My saved searches - My saved topics - My newsletter Convective instability (also known as potential instability or thermal instability) occurs when dry mid-level air rises (usually caused by mountains or hills) over very warm, moist air in the lower troposphere. The differences saturation cause changes adiabatic lapse rates, and can result in the air layer becoming unstable and possibly overturning. Convective instability is also termed static instability, because the instability does not depend on the existing motion of the air; this contrasts with dynamic instability. High convective instability can lead to severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. This is because the moist air which is trapped in the lower layer; eventually a rising bubble of humid air breaks through the dry layer triggering the development of a cumulonimbus cloud. |This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Convective_instability". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.|

To use all functions of this page, please activate cookies in your browser. With an accout for my.chemeurope.com you can always see everything at a glance – and you can configure your own website and individual newsletter. - My watch list - My saved searches - My saved topics - My newsletter A homeobox is a DNA sequence found within genes that are involved in the regulation of development (morphogenesis) of animals, fungi and plants. Genes that have a homeobox are called homeobox genes and form the homeobox gene family. They were discovered independently in 1983 by Walter Jakob Gehring and his colleagues at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and Matthew Scott and Amy Weiner, who were then working with Thomas Kaufman at Indiana University in Bloomington. Homeobox genes encode transcription factors which typically switch on cascades of other genes. The homeodomain binds DNA in a specific manner. However, the specificity of a single homeodomain protein is usually not enough to recognize only its desired target genes. Most of the time, homeodomain proteins act in the promoter region of their target genes as complexes with other transcription factors, often also homeodomain proteins. Such complexes have a much higher target specificity than a single homeodomain protein. A particular subgroup of homeobox genes are the Hox genes, which are found in a special gene cluster, the Hox cluster (also called Hox complex). Hox genes function in patterning the body axis. Thus, by providing the identity of particular body regions, Hox genes determine where limbs and other body segments will grow in a developing fetus or larva. Mutations in any one of these genes can lead to the growth of extra, typically non-functional body parts in invertebrates, for example antennapedia complex in Drosophila, which results in a leg growing from the head in place of an antenna and is due to a defect in a single gene. Mutation in vertebrate Hox genes usually results in miscarriage. The homeobox genes were first found in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and have subsequently been identified in many other species, from insects to reptiles and mammals. Homeobox genes were previously only identified in bilaterians but recently, cnidarians have also been found to contain homeobox domains and the "missing link" in the evolution between the two have been identified. Homeobox genes have even been found in fungi. For example the one-cellular yeasts, and plants. The well known homeotic genes in plants (MADS-box genes) are not homologous to Hox genes in animals. Plants and animals do not share the same homeotic genes, and this suggests that homeotic genes arose once in the early evolution of animals and once again in the early evolution of plants. Humans generally contain homeobox genes in four clusters: There is also a "distal-less homeobox" family: DLX1, DLX2, DLX3, DLX4, DLX, and DLX6. "HESX homeobox 1" is also known as HESX1. Short stature homeobox gene is also known as SHOX. Mutations to homeobox genes can produce easily visible phenotypic changes. Two examples of homeobox mutations in the above-mentioned fruit fly are legs where the antennae should be (antennapedia), and a second pair of wings. Duplication of homeobox genes can produce new body segments, and such duplications are likely to have been important in the evolution of segmented animals. Interestingly, there is one insect family, the xyelid sawflies, in which both the antennae and mouthparts are remarkably leg-like in structure. This is not uncommon in arthropods as all arthropod appendages are homologous. The regulation of Hox genes is highly complex and involves reciprocal interactions, mostly inhibitory. Drosophila is known to use the Polycomb and Trithorax Complexes to maintain the expression of Hox genes after the down-regulation of the pair-rule and gap genes that occurs during larval development. |This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Homeobox". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.|

Grounding Knowledge: Environmental Philosophy, Epistemology, and Place cloth, 161 p., $34.95 According to ancient Greek philosophers, the study or the theory of the basis of knowledge was completely separate from external influences. In this scholarly book, philosopher Christopher Preston traces the evolving history of this traditional approach to truth and describes its challenges over the years. He also adds to the arguments, contending that man’s thought processes can not be separated from his physical environment in the exploration of the relationship of social and cultural factors that influence mental activity. His thesis is that there are situated accounts of knowledge, such that, for example, a particular physical environment will affect theory. He concludes that mankind must protect a full range of environments in their natural condition in order to provide a complete grounding to knowledge. Despite the fact that it is a bit of a slog through various philosophers’ theories, readers will be rewarded with an epistemic reason for the protection of natural habitats. — Marilyn K. Alaimo, garden writer and volunteer, Chicago Botanic Garden - enjoy your visit - at the garden - your garden - support us

Baby fever? Don't delay! Wednesday, April 25, 2012 A fever in an infant can represent something as simple as a mild virus to something serious like meningitis. A baby with a serious infection can start off looking good, but can get worse fast, so any fever in an infant during the first three months of life requires immediate attention. Parents may first notice that their baby feels warm. That's called a "tactile temperature" and while a parent's suspicions are sometimes correct, it's important to take the baby's temperature using a thermometer. According to Dr. Dan Johnson, associate professor and specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Chicago, parents should avoid the use of thermometers that take the temperature on the forehead or in the ear because they can be inaccurate. Instead, Johnson recommends a digital thermometer under the arm or in the rectum. Parents should call their doctor if the infant's temperature is 100.5 degrees or more in either location. Most doctors will want to examine any infant less than 4 weeks old with a fever because infections in very young babies may be more serious than they first appear. After office hours and on weekends, the doctor may send the family to an emergency department for evaluation. Figuring out the cause of a fever can require extensive testing. The doctor may need to draw blood, collect urine, get a chest x-ray or even do a spinal tap. In some cases, the baby will need to be admitted to the hospital and put on IV antibiotics for a few days. For babies between 4 and 12 weeks old, some doctors will monitor the child at home and ask the parents to check back in at a specified time. If there is any question about the baby's well-being, the doctor will ask the parents to bring the baby in. Parents should not give an infant acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) or any other fever-reducing medication unless they are directed to do so by their doctor. Johnson has a few other key pieces of advice for parents. First, don't hesitate to call your doctor if you have any concerns about your baby's temperature. Your pediatrician is your partner in caring for your baby and won't mind. Second, be sure to follow your doctor's advice. If you don't understand your doctor's plan, ask questions until you do. Lastly, an infant under the age of 3 months with a fever can't wait too long. Editor's note: This article is only for your information and is not medical advice.

Imperial Court Cuisine As Beijing was the capital of several dynasties over seven hundred years, Imperial Court Food is a branch of Beijing Cuisine. Food of this kind was once only prepared for the members of the imperial court and was not accessible to ordinary people. Now, money permitting, you can have a taste of the Royal Feast of Complete Manchu-Han Courses, a most bounteous feast of Imperial Court Food. The greatest achievement of Imperial Court Food is the Royal Feast of Complete Manchu-Han Courses, which is representative of Chinese food. As the name suggests, the grand meal was formed on the basis of the Manchu and Han cuisines. It contains one hundred and thirty-four hot dishes and forty-eight cold ones, not counting fruit and desserts. In total there should be at least one hundred and eight courses. It is so great a feast that it is divided into six meals which last three days or so. It assembles eight kinds of rare raw materials from the mountain, eight rare terrestrial ones and eight rare marine ones. Up to now, only two restaurants are able to serve this grand banquet: Fangshan Restaurant in Beihai Park and Tingliguan Restaurant in the Summer Palace . Food of this kind combines all kinds of delicacies that stress fresh, light and tender flavor. During the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the varieties increased to two hundred. Other famous dishes, apart from the Royal Feast of Complete Manchu-Han Courses, include Silky Chicken Breast, Lotus Leaf Pork Fillet, Pea Cake and Steamed Corn Bread. As the Royal Feast of Complete Manchu-Han Courses is expensive, it is also a good idea to enjoy some palatable dishes such as distinctive snacks or desserts. The elaborate dishes typically contain superb raw ingredients, have elegant color and shape, and are very nutritious. The raw material is selected according to its habitat, quality, size and exact parts. The whole dish has a pleasing presentation, applying ingenious means of molding. The course must be made from at least two kinds of materials, which is a common rule of the imperial cuisine. The material is cut or sliced to the right size, neither big nor small. The imperial food also attaches great importance to the dishware which is luxurious, classical and elegant. The numerous dishes are made of gold, silver, jade, hawksbill, ivory or fine china. Imperial Court Cuisine, another important part of Beijing Cuisine, originates from royal kitchens where dishes and food were only cooked for the royal family. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Imperial Court Cuisine began to be popular among the common people with its original features that the raw material and the ingredients are carefully selected and the dishes are exquisitely prepared and delicately decorated in different colors with light taste and sufficient nutrition. Many Restaurant serve Court Cuisine in Beijing today, such as Fangshan Restaurant and Tingliguan Restaurant being the most famous ones. Fangshan Restaurant is in Beihai Park and the most famous dish of it is Man-Han Banquet (a dinner of Man and Han national food) which includes "eight treasures from the mountains", "eight treasures on land" and "eight treasures from the sea", such as bear's paws, humps and shark's fins, and lots of rare things, but some of them are not available on table today. There are so many dishes (one hundred and thirty four hot ones and forty eight cold ones, besides many desserts) that you have to have them in six different meals in several days. Tingliguan is in the Summer Palace and it used to be the place where Empress Dowager Ci Xi enjoyed her opera, which, of course, is as beautiful as a painting. It is famous for its "All-Fish Feast" of over fifty kinds and this is the only one in China. When the fish is served on the table, its mouth can be still opening and closing and its gills flapping. Sometimes the fish's mouth keeps moving even when it has been eaten to bones. But you don't have to be frightened; it is just falsely alive. You want to know its secret? Just go and try it! Imperial official cuisine is particular to Beijing. In the past, Beijing officials were all very picky about what type of food they ate. The most famous type of Official food is Tan Family Food, available in the Beijing Hotel. This is the preferred food of the Qing Dynasty (1644 -1911) official Tan Zongling, and was later introduced into restaurants. Another type of food is described in the classic novel, Dream of Red Mansions. The author, Cao Xueqin, described a number of dishes in the book and now there are several restaurants that serve this style of dish. The most famous place is the Beijing Grand View Garden Hotel next to the Beijing Grand View Garden modeled after the garden described in the Dream of Red Mansions. Other restaurants featuring this novel type of food are the Jinglun Hotel and Laijinyuxuan Restaurant in Zhongshan Park. Imperial Official Cuisine and Medicinal Cuisine In the past, feudal officials were quite picky about their food, so their bland cuisine is usually exquisite and its material is always carefully selected. Tan Jia Cuisine and Hong Lou Cuisine are known as Imperial Official Cuisine. Tan Jia Cuisine, coming from Tan family, is especially famous. Today it is a local authorized dish only served at Beijing Hotel. Hong Lou Cuisine, the one that was described in Dream of Red Mansion, is served at Beijing Grand View Garden Hotel, Jinglun Hotel and Zhongshan Park. Medicinal Cuisine is also special in Beijing. Its dishes are made with rare ingredients such as ginseng, antlers, bear's paws, soft-shelled turtles etc. It is not only valuable in terms of traditional Chinese medicine but also nourishing in terms of delicacy. Restaurants of Imperial Cuisine Located in Beihai Park, Fangshan Restaurant is the most famous one offering the luxurious Imperial Court Cuisine. The restaurant was opened in 1925 by imperial chefs of the former Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and caused a great sensation at that time. Fangshan means 'imitate the imperial court cuisine' in Chinese. The restaurant is made up of three parts and it can hold 500 people eating at the same time. It is decorated in imperial style with the design of dragon and phoenix. Here is the best place to experience the life of the Chinese emperors in former days. Now, it serves nearly 800 kinds of Imperial Court Dishes. Among them, Man-Han Banquet is the most famous. Average cost per person: CNY200 - CNY300 Hours: 11:00-13:30 17:00-19:30 Location: No.1, Wenjin Jie, inside Beihai Park Bus Route: 5, 13, 101, 103, 109, 810 (get off at Beihai Stop) Li Jia Cai Restaurant Located in a courtyard of Yangfang hutong in Beijing, there is a special restaurant named Li Jia Cai Restaurant (Li Family Restaurant) which is devoted to Imperial Court food. The initiator of Li Jia Cai is Li Shanlin, a retired professor of mathematics, who also has great interest in cooking genuine Beijing Imperial Court Food. The restaurant has no employees. The Li family are owner and employees of the restaurant; and dinner is by set menu. That is to say, a guest can not order the dishes but must wait for whatever they serve; furthermore, one banquet daily, if you want to have a dinner here, you should make a reservation (at least two weeks ahead of time); finally there are no chemical materials in the dishes, all flavorings are natural. This restaurant has welcomed many celebrities including the former U.S. president Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, the former premier of Britain, John Major, and Chinese superstar Jackie Chan. Professor Li speaks English and can discuss Chinese culture while you enjoy your dinner and good wine. If you are a real gourmand, try to find this restaurant hidden in a Beijing hutong. Address: No.11, Yangfang hutong, Denei Dajie Ting Li Guan Restaurant The table delicacies in Ting Li Guan Restaurant absorb the essence of the Eight Cuisines in China and combine the Han Cuisine with the other cuisines of minority groups such as Man, Mongol and Hui. Average cost per person: CNY70 - CNY200 Hours: 11:00 - 14:00 16:30 - 19:00 (Make your dinner reservations at least an hour before your dinner time.) Location: at the south of Wanshou Hill, inside the Summer Palace Bus Route: 332, 374, 716, 817 (get off at Xin Jianguomen Stop) The layout of the restaurant follows the imperial palace with luxurious decoration. When eating in the restaurant, diners are served by waitresses in traditional imperial costumes. Average cost per person: CNY80 - CNY120 Hours: 16:30 - 19:30 Location: No.87, Tiantan Lu, Chongwen District Bus Route: 34, 35, 36, 106, 6 (get off at Tiantan North Gate Stop) Yan Yi Shan Zhai Restaurant The restaurant is located in a compound courtyard that was the residence of a princess in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). So the courtyard is commonly called Gege Fu (Princess Mansion House). It offers the best dishes of imperial cuisine and imperial stew is the special dish there. Comparing with other imperial restaurants, Yan Yi Shan Zhai Restaurant is a perfect combination of imperial cuisine and Sichuan hotpot. Diners put vegetables and meat into the soup, similar to creating the hotpot of Sichuan Cuisine. Hours: 11:00 - 14:00 17:00 - 22:00 Location: No.9, Daqudeng Hutong, Backstreet of Art Gallery, Dongcheng District Tan Jia Cai Restaurant Average Cost per Person: CNY200 - CNY800 Hours: 11:30 - 14:00 17:30 - 21:30 Location: 7/F, Unit C, Beijing Hotel, 33, Dong Changan Jie, Dongcheng District Bus Route: 1, 4, 10, 52, 103 (get off at Wangfujing Stop) With all this grandeur, one expects equally impressive food. Unfortunately, though Tiandi Yijia's menu seemingly offers all manner of heaven and earth, a recent meal was uneven, the sum of its parts adding up to an unsatisfactory whole. Location:140 Nanchizi Dajie, Dongcheng District Tel:8511 5556 This lavish restaurant harkens back to a dynastic era, simulating a Beijing courtyard experience with its variety show and palace cuisine, which includes bitter douzhi and bone marrow soup. Imperial Location:A20, Guoxingjaiyuan, Shoutinan Lu, Haidian District Tel:8835 6687/9 Average Cost per Person: CNY50 - CNY200 Hours: 09:00 - 22:00 Location: 58, Jiaodaokou Bei Santiao, Dongcheng District Average Cost per Person: CNY100 - CNY300 Hours: 10:00 - 22:00 Location: 32, West Street, Xuanwumen, Xuanwu District Tai Shang Gong Restaurant Hours: 11:00 - 14:30 17:00 - 22:00 Location: No.15, Anding Road, Chaoyang District Hui Zhen Lou Restaurant Hours: 11:00 - 14:30 17:00 - 22:00 Location: No.8, Beichen Road (East) Beijing Imperial Court Cuisine Restaurant: See all Beijing Food See all Beijing Hot Pot

Day One Publications London, 1817. The Italian statesman Count Pecchio was present for the start of a new session of Parliament. As he watched, one event fastened itself upon his memory: the arrival of William Wilberforce. ‘When Mr. Wilberforce passes through the crowd,’ Pecchio observed, ‘every one contemplates this little old man, worn with age, and his head sunk upon his shoulders, as a sacred relic; as the Washington of humanity.’ Wilberforce had led the twenty year fight to end the British slave trade. It was a victory known the world over. He had persevered despite death threats, chronic illness and the long war against Napoleon’s France. Yet Wilberforce was no dour, stodgy icon. Rather, friends and family were hard put to adequately describe his winsome personality. Historian Sir James Mackintosh perhaps said it best: ‘I never saw anyone who touched life at so many points.’ Mackintosh was commenting three years before Wilberforce’s death. He had, along with so many others, witnessed Wilberforce’s unceasing charitable interests. A conservative estimate puts the number of these at seventy. Educational reform, better working conditions in factories, legislation for the poor and public health initiatives – these and many more had been the focus of his parliamentary life. Mackintosh had also known the character of the man – as at ease with children as with statesmen – and whose natural eloquence was described by Prime Minister William Pitt as ‘the greatest I have ever known.’ Wilberforce’s last victory came two days before his death. At long last, slavery itself would be abolished throughout Britain’s colonies. His legacy lives on today. Colleges and universities bear his name. For kings, presidents and many others, his life remains a beacon – representative of a persistent and genuine commitment to principled leadership. What makes for a great social reformer? Wilberforce’s youth, at times troubled, was marked by contrasts. He found a boyhood hero and knew heart-rending losses. Yet all the while, as he later said, ‘a gracious hand leads us in ways that we know not’ William Wilberforce could proudly trace his ancestry back to the 12th century. Under King Henry II, Ilgerus de Wilberfoss had served in the Scottish wars, and successive generations resided in the township of Wilberfoss, eight miles east of York, from which the family had taken its surname. A branch of the family moved to Beverley around the middle of the 16th century, and some years later, at the opening of the great rebellion against Charles I that led to the English Civil War, a William Wilberfoss served as mayor of Beverley. The same office was filled twice in the city of Hull in the north of England, by his great-grandson, also named William Wilberfoss, or, as he fixed its spelling, Wilberforce. Alderman Wilberforce, as he was known, had inherited a sizable family fortune derived from the Baltic trade. He was also heir to a considerable landed property. The younger of his two sons, Robert, served as a partner in the family merchant house in Hull. It was here that Robert’s son William, the future reformer, was born on 24 August 1759. 1759 is a year now remembered as Britain’s annus mirabilis, or year of wonders. It had been a year of victories during the conflict with France known as the Seven Years’ War. Battles had been won on land at Quebec and Minden, and at sea off Lagos and at Quiberon Bay. Forces under the leadership of General Wolfe and Admiral Hawke had achieved victories that seemed to verge on the miraculous. Culturally speaking, this was the year in which the British Museum opened its doors to the public for the first time, and in which the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, was born. It was also the year which witnessed the birth of William Pitt the Younger, later to become Prime Minister. In the years to follow, Pitt and Wilberforce would develop a deep and lasting friendship, one of great significance for Britain. The Wilberforce family lived in a red-brick Jacobean mansion located on High Street, Hull. Although Wilberforce’s grandfather, the Alderman, owned land in the regions around Hull and the estate of Markington near Harrogate, the family had no great country house. The High Street mansion was the centre of family life. Finely cooked meals were served in the elegant oak panelled dining room, and guests would pass through a handsome archway that allowed passage from the front to the rear of the residence; there were attractive walled gardens in the front and rear of the house for a boy to play in. Midway down the archway on the right, was the main entry into the mansion. Upon entering, the visitor immediately saw a wide, grand and graceful staircase that led to the home’s most prominent rooms. Overhead was a beautiful Wedgwood blue ceiling, with white bas relief sculpted edgings. Just below this ceiling was the great black eagle that served as the family crest. Exquisite taste and refined gentility were the lasting impressions that all this conveyed. Here lived a family that had attained prominence and wealth. And it was from here that young Wilberforce, starting at the age of eight, would walk to the Hull Grammar School. It was a school of distinction, numbering among its former students the 17th century poet and politician Andrew Marvel. As an only son and future heir to his father’s substantial fortune, Wilberforce’s education was undertaken with care. His relationship with his father in particular was close. William attended the Hull Grammar School as a day-boy for two years. Though small, he took an active part in sports, and showed signs of having a first-rate mind. Even at such a young age, his elocution so impressed his seventeen year old tutor, Isaac Milner, that he was made to stand on a table and asked to read aloud, as an example to his fellow students. Holidays were special times, too. He would then visit Alderman Wilberforce in Ferriby, a village seven miles distant, along the River Humber. Tragically, in the summer of 1768, just before his ninth birthday, Wilberforce’s father died. It was the second death of a loved one in a year, the first being that of his eldest sister Elizabeth, aged fourteen. His mother, also named Elizabeth, was expecting another child, and following the death of her husband Robert, she became gravely ill; fearing the worst, it was decided (very likely by the Alderman) that Wilberforce would go to live with his father’s elder brother, another William, who lived in London at St. James’s Place. A touching account of Wilberforce’s boyhood sensitivity has survived. It dates from about the time of his father’s death. A family friend who frequently stayed at the High Street mansion, and was once taken ill whilst there, observed that, ‘An unusual thoughtfulness for others marked his youngest childhood. I shall never forget how he would steal into my sickroom, taking off his shoes lest he should disturb me, and with an anxious face look through my curtains to learn if I was better.’ Uncle William and his wife Hannah were childless, and so they lavished love on their grieving nephew and made him their heir. Wilberforce developed a particular fondness for their country home in Wimbledon at Lauriston House. When he came of age some years later, their Queen Anne-style villa was bequeathed to him. It was an elegant home, situated on five and half acres on the south side of Wimbledon Common and within easy walking distance of Rushmere Pond. Architecturally, it was distinguished by tall windows on both of the main floors. Inside, the staircase walls and ceiling were graced with murals painted by the noted Russian artist Angelica Kauffman. It was an altogether welcoming place. Sadly, the villa no longer exists, but its handsome coach house remains. A blue plaque has been placed there in Wilberforce’s memory. Standards for private education often varied widely in the late 1700s, and the school in Putney at which Wilberforce was now placed was said to have been ‘of the meanest character.’ It left a vivid impression on young William: ‘Mr. Chalmers the master, himself a Scotchman, had an usher of the same nation, whose red beard—for he scarcely shaved once a month—I shall never forget. They taught writing, French, arithmetic, and Latin... with Greek we did not much meddle. It was frequented chiefly by the sons of merchants, and they taught therefore everything and nothing. Here I continued some time as a parlour boarder: I was sent at first amongst the lodgers, and I can remember even now the nauseous food with which we were supplied, and which I could not eat without sickness.’ Wilberforce remained two years at this school. Holidays were spent at Lauriston House, with occasional visits to Nottingham and Hull. His time at the Putney school left him with no bonds of lasting affection, but the faith of his aunt and uncle did. Both had been deeply influenced by the popular evangelical preacher, George Whitefield. This was the period of English history that has become known as the Great Awakening. A spiritual revival was sweeping across the land, fuelled by the preaching of men like George Whitefield and the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, and in Wales, Howell Harris. There is little doubt that this widespread revival of true Christian faith not only held back England from the revolution and anarchy that plagued France towards the end of the century, but prepared the ground for the two great causes that Wilberforce would later take up as his life’s work. All the available evidence suggests that Wilberforce never met the great evangelist, Whitefield, but he grew close to someone who had been greatly influenced by Whitefield, and who would have a great influence on his life: the former slave-ship captain, turned parson, John Newton. It was Newton’s practice regularly to visit the Wilberforce home to conduct what he called ‘parlour preaching.’ During one series of parlour sermons, Newton is known to have expounded John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress to William and Hannah Wilberforce and their guests. Young William listened at length to stories of Newton’s days at sea, and he was deeply drawn to the warm character of the former captain. Newton’s kindness, along with the love and attention he received from his uncle and aunt, had its effect upon the young Wilberforce. His letters home to his recovering mother began to show a distinctly religious tone. But his mother and grandfather would have none of that. ‘If Billy turns Methodist, he shan’t have a sixpence of mine,’ his grandfather declared. His mother, meanwhile, was dispatched to Wimbledon to bring her boy home. Wilberforce remembered, ‘I deeply felt the parting, for I loved them as parents. Indeed, I was almost heartbroken at the separation.’ He wrote to his uncle: ‘I can never forget you as long as I live.’ When mother and son returned to Hull, she and the Alderman set about scrubbing his soul clean of Methodism, which was considered in polite society to be nothing more that excessive enthusiasm. Newton’s parlour sermons were replaced with a constant round of visits to the neighbouring gentry. Wilberforce recalled that the theatre, balls, great suppers and card-parties were the delight of the principal families in the town. The usual dinner hour was two o’clock, and at six they met for sumptuous suppers. This kind of life was at first distressing to him. His religious impressions continued for a considerable time after his return to Hull but since, as he put it, ‘no pains were spared to stifle them’, they slowly ebbed away. Gradually, distress gave way to acceptance, and acceptance gave way to a great interest in all that was held out before him. It could hardly have been otherwise, for he was ‘everywhere invited and caressed.’ Wilberforce had also been placed, soon after his return to Hull, with the Rev. Kingsman Baskett, master of the endowed grammar school of Pocklington. Baskett had formerly been a Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and was described as ‘a man of easy and polished manners – an elegant though not profound scholar.’ As grandson to one of the principal inhabitants of Hull, Wilberforce was treated at Pocklington with unusual liberality. He boarded in the master’s house and generally led a life of idleness and pleasure. Nevertheles, signs of the man he would later become were not wholly absent. He was said to have inherited his mother’s intellectual gifts. Despite his lack of discipline, he cultivated a taste for literature, and committed passages of English poetry to memory. His favourite poem was The Minstrel by James Beattie, which he learned by heart during his morning walks. Poetry and walks would always provide him with much pleasure and encouragement. Wilberforce also proved to be a good writer. And though, as one classmate remembered, he seldom began writing his compositions till the eleventh hour, he always excelled the other boys. Kingsman Baskett’s ties to St. John’s College very likely proved the deciding factor in Elizabeth Wilberforce’s decision to send her son there. Since she and the Alderman cherished hopes that William would further increase the family fortune and its prestige, it would be no bad thing that he turned out more or less like Baskett: a man of easy and polished manners – an elegant though not profound scholar. Such a man would certainly retain the family’s eminence among the great families of Hull, and perhaps he might even obtain a position in Parliament. Either way, Elizabeth was leaving nothing to chance. She had decided upon St. John’s, and St. John’s it would be. But if Elizabeth Wilberforce thought her son safely on course for the future that she and the Alderman planned for him, events would soon prove that he was very nearly diverted from it. By the time he went up to university in October 1776 William was a thorough religious sceptic. He had no strong sense of moral principles to guide his course, and by the death of his uncle he had been left ‘the master of an independent fortune.’ This would prove fateful. ‘On the very first night of my arrival’, he recalled, ‘I was introduced to as licentious a set of men as can well be conceived. They drank hard, and their conversation was even worse than their lives. I lived amongst them for some time.’ Wilberforce’s first days at St. John’s College, Cambridge, were spent by his own admission, in ‘shapeless idleness.’ He gambled, drank and danced the nights away. On the other hand, during that first year at St. John’s, Wilberforce confessed that he was often horror-struck at the conduct of his companions. He resolved to shake off his connexion with them and decided to spend more time among the Fellows of the college, perhaps owing in part to the friendship he shared with Kingsman Baskett. The kind of life he had known at Pocklington was more familiar, and very likely a good deal more comfortable because it was a known quantity. There was something about the lives of his early, dissolute friends that was unsettling. Though drawn to it at first, he now instinctively shied away from it. This decision separated Wilberforce from friends who might have encouraged him to become a rake, but it was not an about-face. Rather, it was a decision to resume the kind of holding pattern he had done at Pocklington: a bit more polish to his manners, and occasional forays into English literature, or the Greek and Roman classics, as his fancy dictated. The Fellows at Cambridge did nothing to discourage this tendency. Wilberforce recalled, ‘Their object seemed to be to make and keep me idle. If ever I appeared studious, they would say to me, “Why in the world should a man of your fortune trouble himself with fagging [tedious study]?”’ Wilberforce could later claim, ‘I acquitted myself well in the college examinations; but mathematics, which my mind greatly needed, I almost entirely neglected, and was told that I was too clever to require them. Whilst my companions were reading hard and attending lectures, card parties and idle amusements consumed my time. The tutors would often say within my hearing, that “they were mere saps, but that I did all by talent.” This was poison to a mind constituted like mine.’ Wilberforce was also ambitious, keenly so, and this was a further reason why he applied himself to reading literature and the Greek and Roman classics. His sense of ambition was fired also in the last year or so of his time at Cambridge by newer friendships he made with young men like William Pitt, the son of Lord Chatham who was the former prime minister known as the ‘Great Commoner’. Other friends were sons of the nobility or of members of Parliament. Gradually, Wilberforce began to see himself taking a place in the House of Commons with them. It was not unthinkable, since one of his cousins had already secured election to Parliament, and William thought it a great thing. He now made sure he applied himself enough to his studies so as to avoid being disgraced should he embark on a career in public life. If he chose this path, he had no need to work to gain a substantial income. Inherited wealth had seen to that. So, by the time Wilberforce concluded his studies at St. John’s, he had decided what he wanted. He would not be a partner in his family’s merchant house. Quite another course beckoned: a career in politics. Hull is a city with a rich and varied heritage. For centuries, it has been a maritime centre and her citizens have served Britain and the world. The 17th century poet and politician Andrew Marvell had ties to Holy Trinity Church, where his father served as lecturer, and to the Hull Grammar School, where he was educated. And of course, Hull was the birthplace of William Wilberforce. Just across from Wilberforce Drive is the grand memorial column that the citizens of Hull raised to his memory. Any visit to Hull should begin with a tour through the Wilberforce House Museum, located at 23 High Street. There one can see the room in which Wilberforce was born, the handsome oak-panelled dining room in which he and his family entertained guests, many works of art and historical displays that bring the story of this peerless reformer to life. There are other places in Hull that make a visit memorable as well. Other museums include the Hull and East Riding Museum (on 36 High Street) website: http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/museums/hulleast/index.php which features natural history and archaeological displays. The Maritime Museum (in Queen Victoria Square), with its noted collection of paintings, artefacts and models. Website: http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/museums/maritime/index.php The Streetlife Transport Museum (also on High Street), which houses a new motor car gallery, carriage gallery, a larger street-scene with several new shops, and a hands-on interactive exhibition area. website: http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/museums/streetlife/index.php To experience Hull’s maritime culture as it is now, one should visit the Hull Marina, situated amidst a picturesque setting on the Humber estuary (adjacent to Albert Dock and just upstream of the River Hull). Website: http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/visithull/hull_marina.php The Hull town centre is only a short walk across the road. It features many shops and stores, as well as restaurants, cafés and licensed premises providing food. Cambridge was a place endeared to Wilberforce for the years he spent there as an undergraduate at St John's College (1776–80). Founded in 1511 by Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII, its alumni include not only Wilberforce, but the classicist Roger Ascham, the poet William Wordsworth, the physicist Paul Dirac and the athlete Christopher Brasher. Cambridge was also endeared to Wilberforce for the friendships he forged there, most notably with his friend and spiritual mentor Isaac Milner, who moved from Hull Grammar School and was now President of Queen’s College, and Charles Simeon, the evangelical clergyman who served Holy Trinity Church for over fifty years. It was Simeon who famously had carved on the inside of the church pulpit, where only the preacher could see, the words ‘Sir, we would see Jesus.’ Cambridge is a place rich in Christian history. The Round Church, the second most visited site in Cambridge, is dedicated to the presentation and preservation of the Christian heritage of Cambridge. Visitors there can view a specially produced video, Saints & Scholars, see compelling wall displays, and join guided tours of the city and university. No visit to Cambridge is complete without a tour of the Round Church. Whilst visiting the Round Church, the visitor is only a street or two away from many fine shops, restaurants and cafés. The same is true for those wishing to have an overnight stay – there are many hotels (covering a range of accommodation prices) within easy walking distance of the Round Church. For website information on shops, restaurants and cafés, see: http://www.cambridgeshirechamber.co.uk/

College with Routes into Languages East Year 7 pupils at a successful mixed comprehensive school in Cambridgeshire were the first to benefit from this project, which is now reaching 30,000 learners The project encourages Year 7 students to learn key vocabulary in another language and to practice and improve their spelling and memory skills whilst having fun. It also raises the profile of language learning within and beyond the school through class, school and regional Originally devised in Spanish for schools in the Eastern region, the project has now been replicated across all nine English regions and in Wales, and has included Spanish, French, German and Welsh. The Spelling Bee is run in three competitive stages. The first stage is a class competition. Year 7 pupils learn fifty words from the Year 7 curriculum, which they have to translate from English and spell correctly in the target language. Words are presented in a random order, and pupils are given one minute to spell correctly as many words as possible. A further fifty words are added at the subsequent whole school and regional stages. The top two students from each class go forward to a whole school competition, and four representatives from each school take part in the regional final, at which the top four students in the region for each language, and their schools, all receive trophies. Winners at each stage of the competition are rewarded with certificates. The competition is supported by a teacher’s pack and a wiki. All 300 Year 7 learners of Spanish at Comberton Village College are involved in the class competition, with the winners joining others from schools across the Eastern region. Now in its second year, the project has involved over 30,000 pupils from all regions of England and Our judges found that students enjoyed taking part and felt that it helped them to learn to memorise. For one girl it was the key that opened the door to good grades. Older pupils felt that mentoring gave them leadership skills, independence and the opportunity for creativity. Project Coordinator Jane Driver said: “We have been overwhelmed by the success of the Bee. Designed as it is to fit easily into the curriculum without adding to workload, it seems to have struck a chord with busy teachers everywhere. It also transcends school divisions, with Year 8 and 9 language leaders helping Year College is a large, successful mixed comprehensive school five miles from the centre of Cambridge. It covers the age range 11-16, with a sixth form centre opening in September 2011. The school encourages all pupils at KS4 to continue with languages through a variety of different courses. More information: A detailed write-up of the project with downloadable documentation is available on http://www.rachelhawkes.com/

As the free pool of IPv4 addresses reaches its end, we looked at the evolution of the amount of unassigned IPv4 address space over time. By 'unassigned', we mean address space not yet allocated to a Local Internet Registry (LIR) or assigned to an end user. LIRs are typically Internet Service Providers or enterprises operating an IP network. See our findings in the graph below. The graph shows that the decline of IPv4 has been mostly linear. This means that the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) have been allocating roughly ten /8s1 each year since 2004. There was a small decrease in allocations in 2008 — due undoubtedly to the economic crisis — before accelerating again in mid-2009. Thirty-three unassigned /8's of IPv4 addresses remain as of 1 October 2010. An overly simplistic extrapolation would mean that the RIRs still have three years left to hand out IPv4 address space. This is no reason to relax. We have clearly entered the last phase of available IPv4 address space. In 2010 the need for IPv4 addresses exceeded the long term average. RIRs handed out thirteen /8s in the last twelve months. If this trend continues or accelerates, the lifespan of the unassigned IPv4 address space will be significantly shorter. Also, due to the difference in the regional communities, it is likely that one region will run out of IPv4 space while another may still have more than one /8 left. Three years is really the upper limit. An exact run-out date is difficult to forecast because it doesn't only depend on mathematical modeling but also on address policies. One might wonder: 'Why has the number of allocations been so stable over time when the number of LIRs has been increasing at the same time?'. There is no clear answer to this question. The reason is likely to be a combination of the increased deployment of Network Address Translations (NATs) and the increased relevance of IPv4 conservation within the RIR communities over time. For more information about the method used, please refer to "Interesting Graph — IPv4 Unassigned” 1 One /8 of IPv4 address space contains 128 networks (27). Each of these networks contains 16.777.216 addresses (224).

Searching for virus phylotypes Motivation: Large phylogenies are being built today to study virus evolution, trace the origin of epidemics, establish the mode of transmission and survey the appearance of drug resistance. However, no tool is available to quickly inspect these phylogenies and combine them with extrinsic traits (e.g. geographic location, risk group, presence of a given resistance mutation), seeking to extract strain groups of specific interest or requiring surveillance.Results: We propose a new method for obtaining such groups, which we call phylotypes, from a phylogeny having taxa (strains) annotated with extrinsic traits. Phylotypes are subsets of taxa with close phylogenetic relationships and common trait values. The method combines ancestral trait reconstruction using parsimony, with combinatorial and numerical criteria measuring tree shape characteristics and the diversity and separation of the potential phylotypes. A shuffling procedure is used to assess the statistical significance of phylotypes. All algorithms have linear time complexity. This results in low computing times, typically a few minutes for the larger data sets with a number of shuffling steps. Two HIV-1 data sets are analyzed, one of which is large, containing >3000 strains of HIV-1 subtype C collected worldwide, where the method shows its ability to recover known clusters and transmission routes, and to detect new ones.Availability: This method and companion tools are implemented in an interactive Web interface (www.phylotype.org), which provides a wide choice of graphical views and output formats, and allows for exploratory analyses of large data sets.Contact: [email protected], [email protected] information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Where Will the Money Come From? Public Citizen Health Letter As different health reform bills wend their way through assorted congressional committees, policy-makers of every ilk are looking into possible sources of monies. Ideally, the mechanisms used to finance the health care system should meet the following criteria: - Collectively, they should be sufficient to cover costs for the foreseeable future. Strategies that yield one-time savings may make the package more politically attractive, but cannot be relied upon as a continuing source of support if the system is to be sustainable. - They should follow principles of basic justice, those with greater incomes contributing proportionately more than those with lesser resources. This means that the financing should be progressive rather than regressive. It would then have a redistributive effect, narrowing the prevailing income inequalities that have widened over time. - They should encourage efficient and effective delivery of care. - They should promote appropriate health-seeking behaviors. This means avoiding noxious practices and encouraging prevention and prompt care. There are several options, but none is able to meet all the above requirements. In addition, each one affects different groups in various ways. This differential impact on key stakeholders means that there will always be winners and losers. Many interests have therefore mobilized to insure that they will not bear the brunt of paying for care. These are therefore intent on defeating any measure that is not kind to their particular interests. Not surprisingly, many of the discussions to date are more memorable for their level of decibels than for the clarity and quality of the dialogue. The possible sources of funds are finite. We therefore summarize what some of the possibilities are, as well as what they mean for different groups and for health reform in general. This is the most easily-understood source of funds, involving people paying out-of-pocket for the care they get. This usually takes the form of co-payments or deductibles. Those who advocate the use of cost-sharing argue that it promotes responsible consumption of health care: because individuals see the connection between what they pay and what they get, they avoid over-utilizing services. “Cost consciousness” is also seen as a way for people to value the health care services they receive. There is no evidence, however, that the medical market necessarily promotes desirable health behaviors. While it is true that cost-sharing tends to constrain consumption, patients often lack a way to distinguish essential from unnecessary care. When RAND did an experiment on this topic in the early 1970s, the researchers found that cost-sharing reduced the use of both highly effective and less effective services in roughly equal proportions. While cost-sharing had no adverse effects on participant health overall, free care led to improvements in the areas of hypertension, dental health, vision, and selected serious symptoms, particularly among sicker, poorer patients. Extrapolating the findings of this study to the current health reform debate, RAND researchers indicate that cost-sharing should be minimal of nonexistent for the poor, especially those with chronic disease. Cost-sharing is regressive in its effect: its burden is heavier for those with low incomes who have limited resources and tend to have greater health needs. A standard co-pay (say, $10 a visit) that may seem marginal to a middle-income person may be a major barrier to someone who is poor and/or needs a lot of care. Taxing health insurance benefits to pay for extending coverage This measure is one of the most hotly debated strategies. It emerged as a contentious issue during the presidential campaign, with McCain suggesting it as a way to raise revenues and Obama opposing it. But both the broader political discussion and the estimated price tag for enhanced coverage have re-opened the topic, and taxing benefits has not been discarded as a possibility. At present, employers’ contributions to employee health benefits are treated as tax-free to both employers and employees. This benefit represents a major source of foregone revenue to the government; indeed, it is estimated by the joint Congressional committee on taxation that in 2008 alone the government gave up $226 billion as result of the tax exemption. And this figure is expected to reach $300 billion by 2012, which is more than would be needed to cover everyone’s health care. Like many features of our quirky health care system, this tax break has a unique history. It came about in 1943, when wage controls were in effect. Because employers could not attract workers on the basis of higher salaries, they relied on benefits as a way to retain their competitive advantage in recruiting labor. Circumstances changed, and the labor market changed with it. Nevertheless, in 1954 the Internal Revenue Act exempted employee benefits (e.g., pensions, health care) from income taxes. Once embedded in the tax code, the exemption was difficult to eliminate or even modify: entrepreneurs factored it into their business plans, workers expected it, and unions have fought hard to retain it. Most economists agree that the tax exemption is regressive: avoiding taxes is worth more in absolute dollars to those with higher salaries that have higher marginal income tax rates. In addition, those with higher wages are more likely to get health insurance benefits through their employers and are therefore more likely to benefit from the tax break. Backing down from their original opposition to phasing out the tax exemption, some are advocating that the exemption not be eliminated altogether, but rather capped. This is similar to a 2005 proposal that called for limiting the tax exclusion for health benefits to $5000 for individual coverage and to $11,500 for family coverage. More expensive policies would be taxed for the amount exceeding the cap (see “Taxing Cadillac plans” below). The rationale for this is that it would encourage both employers and employees to choose lower-priced policies; correct some of the regressive effects of the tax exemption; and allow the government to recoup some of the revenues that it now foregoes. At the same time, any cap could lead employers to lower their contributions to match the cap level, limit the scope of benefits, and/or increase cost-sharing, all of which may have negative societal effects. The full effects of this measure would greatly depend on the cap levels and how much of the bill they are likely to cover. Also unknown is how insurers would react to the cap. Another question mark concerns the effect of the tax reform on technological innovation. The U.S. justifiably prides itself in being a leader in the area of research and development (R&D) in health care, and some economists have argued that even the threat of cost-containment related to tax reform could dampen efforts to develop new technologies: manufacturers could shift their investments from health care technologies to innovations in non-health fields, and thus affect the types of R&D undertaken. The viability of this measure is fraught with political uncertainty because of the many interests involved. Moreover, inertia is important in decision-making, with many stakeholders fearing anything that may change their current position and profitability. But the option of taxing health benefits cannot be dismissed because it represents the most significant potential source of revenues to provide universal health care for the U.S. population. Taxing ‘Cadillac’ plans During the presidential campaign John McCain proposed taxing high-end insurance plans as a way to raise revenues for health care. One rationale for this is that it would have a redistributive effect, taking money from the “over-insured” to enable those of modest means to afford insurance. In addition, the measure could slow the rate of growth of health insurance and health care costs by discouraging insurers from offering (and employers from purchasing) extremely generous coverage that encourages excessive health care utilization. The proposed tax would be applied only to premiums payments above a given threshold, which ranges between $8,000 and $10,000 for an individual and $21,000 to $25,000 for a family policy. Referring to these more-generous policies as “Cadillac” plans suggests that they are excessive and include “frills” such as massages and cosmetic treatments. While such plans exist, they are very rare. Goldman Sachs executives had a plan with family premiums of $40,453; these covered expensive, seldom-used procedures, including sex reassignment surgery. More often, the higher-priced plans include a broader array of more often-used health services, such as prescriptions and vision and dental care. They also have low or no co-payments and deductibles. And it is not a select group of “fat cats” that tend to have these plans, but union members who have forgone wage increases in exchange for more generous medical benefits. Interestingly, both unions and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are strongly against the tax on these benefits. Their cause has been championed by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who argues that the miners he represents are high-risk and therefore need the broadest possible coverage. Taxing health-related industries This mechanism, included in the proposal submitted by the Senate Finance Committee, would impose a 10-year fee on certain drugs and medical devices. The pharmaceutical industry would pay $2.3 billion per year, while medical device manufacturers would pay $4 billion. The rationale for this is that both industries stand to benefit from health reform, which would increase the market for their products. The fees would be apportioned by a company’s market share, with those with the most business paying the highest fees. The pharmaceutical industry currently has a high profit margin, and has been relatively acquiescent concerning the imposed fees. Device manufacturers, however, have protested the measure. To a large extent, the effect on these industries will depend on whether or not they can pass on these increases to consumers, and on whether or not buyers can leverage their purchasing power to press for lower prices. Taxing products that are hazardous to health is a hardy perennial in all discussions of revenue sources. Over 230 years ago, Adam Smith, father of economics, wrote the following in his famous opus, The Wealth of Nations (1776): “Sugar, rum, and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life… and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.” The idea of “sin” taxes therefore has a long history, although its rationale and targets have changed over time. While Adam Smith stressed the fact that the targeted commodities were “frills,” current proponents of “sin” taxes argue that these are activities or products that cause damage and inflict costs, and should therefore be discouraged or penalized in some way. These taxes are therefore seen as a way to reduce the objectionable behavior. Because of the connection between smoking and health, cigarettes are currently taxed. Both the anti-smoking lobby and public health advocates tend to favor a further tax increase on tobacco products, and devoting these revenues to health expenses, including smoking-prevention measures. Because the consumption of tobacco products is sensitive to price, the tobacco tax is therefore seen as a “two-fer”: it would raise revenues while also curtailing tobacco use. In addition, it would enhance overall health status by reducing the number 1 cause of preventable death in the U.S. Two researchers and health practitioners, Yale professor Dr. Kelly Brownell and Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have argued for a soda tax as a way to help pay for expanded health insurance. This would apply to sugar-sweetened beverages, the idea being to reduce obesity, which is associated with several chronic diseases. The targets would include Coke, Pepsi, Gatorade and Red Bull, among other beverages. Proponents of the soda tax point out that the average person now consumes 190 calories a day from sugary drinks, up from 70 calories 30 years ago. Moreover, as Brownell has indicated, of all foods and beverages, “the science is most robust and most convincing on the link between soft drinks and negative health outcomes.” While this alone does not account for the rise in obesity, it does contribute to it. A soda tax would therefore promote healthier eating while contributing revenues that could be earmarked for health coverage. Alcoholic beverages are also a likely target for additional taxes. These are already taxed, but alcohol taxes have fallen, relative to inflation, since the early 1990s. This is because alcohol taxes are based on volume rather than price. As a result, the tax does not automatically rise with the price of the product. Because Congress has adjusted liquor taxes only twice in the past 55 years, the tax on distilled spirits has shrunk by 84 percent since 1951. The Congressional Budget Office has calculated that setting alcohol taxes at a uniform $16 per proof gallon would raise $60 billion over 10 years. For the average drinker, this tax increase would represent a nickel-and-dime raise in the price of liquor: an additional 9 cents on a bottle of beer, 10 cents on a glass of wine. While these taxes may seem eminently logical, they have a number of effects that lessen their attractiveness. First, such taxes are regressive: they affect those with lower incomes more than the affluent. In addition, to the extent that they reduce the “sinful” behavior (which is an explicit, desirable goal), they also reduce generated revenues. The government would therefore be facing a dwindling source of revenues, on which it would not be able to count over time. Moreover, these taxes place government in the anomalous situation of having two conflicting interests: desiring to curtail certain behaviors while reaping the financial benefits that accrue from those same behaviors. Finally, some libertarians object to any public “police” that would monitor what they eat, drink, and smoke. This latter argument, however, seems to overlook the fact that there already are a number of private interests that do just that, although their object is to promote rather than control the consumption of certain products. Taxing flexible spending accounts A flexible spending account (FSA) is an employer-sponsored benefit that allows employees to set aside a fixed amount of pre-tax wages for a particular purpose (in this case, health care). The money is deducted from the employee’s paycheck and is exempt from federal income taxes. There is an annual maximum that can be contributed for health care (e.g., $4000- $5000); this is set aside to cover health care expenses that are not covered by employer-sponsored insurance. As the beneficiary spends down from this total, he or she is reimbursed by the account. These reimbursements remain tax-free when they are paid out. A holder of an FSA needs to calculate how much he or she expects to spend out-of-pocket and budget according. Because of the tax benefit that an FSA provides, the IRS has guidelines on how the money can be used and requires the beneficiary to forfeit any money that is not used in the course of the year. The plan is thus a “use or lose” proposition and may therefore stimulate overutilization of certain elective health services, especially at the end of the year. (Beneficiaries may therefore have an incentive to schedule elective services or stock up on eligible health supplies in order to spend down their allotted benefit.) Unused funds go into the plan and may be used to cover the plan’s administrative costs. The FSA covers expenses incurred for medical, dental and vision care. In some cases, proof of medical necessity may be required. Taxing these benefits is likely to make FSAs a lot less attractive and will therefore reduce both the number of employers offering them and the employees opting for them. Revenues from this source will therefore tend to taper off over time. The VAT tax is an indirect tax applied to the value added to an item in each stage of its production, and functions much like the sales tax paid in the United States. It is used in 130 countries (including the European Union, Japan, and some South American countries) and varies between 5 and 25 percent. Canada and New Zealand have a variation on this tax: Canada assesses a 7 percent Goods and Services Tax (GST) on most goods and services provided in the country; New Zealand has a GST of 12.5 percent. Supporters for the method of raising revenues like it because it would make every consumer a direct stakeholder in health care, since the VAT could be earmarked for health services. Presumably, this would make the resulting increase in goods and services more politically palatable and give everyone much-vaunted “skin in the game” in the delivery and payment of health care. Moreover, a VAT is flexible and has the potential to generate much revenue: it is estimated that a VAT of 10 percent would cover every American in a health plan with no deductibles and minimal co-payments. But the VAT is highly regressive, affecting practically all prices and therefore making the “crunch” evident to all. And because wages are unlikely to increase at the same rate as the VAT, everyone except the very wealthy would feel poorer as a result. Retailers object to the tax because it would be costly to administer and potentially burdensome to businesses. In addition, they argue that this type of taxation would fuel inflation, discourage consumption, and dampen economic growth. The VAT is therefore a tough sell, and would have to be accompanied by other measures to offset its harshest effects. As the table summarizing the potential sources of revenues indicates, there is no ideal way to achieve all the key objectives laid out at the beginning of this article. Moreover, the full impact of these measures depends on the level at which they are set, what services people receive in return, and how the link between the two is made. Any revenue-producing strategy will involve definite trade-offs, affect different persons in different ways, and have varying effects on the economy as a whole. As with all policy decisions, the key question is cui bono? — to whose benefit? Whatever strategies we use to pay for services should create a satisfactory health system, whose essence, in the words of Aneurin Bevan, “is that the rich and the poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability, and wealth is not advantaged.” Comparison of Proposed Measures to Finance Health Reform Effect on Income Distribution Impact on Delivery of Care Effect on Health-seeking behavior Contingent on levels of co-pays, deductibles Tends to curtail services; may increase administrative costs Discourages prevention and early care unless some services are exempted Increases cost-consciousness on part of consumer Taxing health-insurance benefits Could represent major source of funds May lead employers to reduce contributions Could lead to less comprehensive care May dampen investment in technological innovation Taxing ‘Cadillac’ plans Revenues likely to dwindle as plans become less attractive May reduce higher-end plans with comprehensive benefits; insurers would have incentive to offer lower-priced plans Could lead to reduced benefits, and therefore to greater cost-sharing and lower utilization May rein in costs if buyers shop around for lower-priced plans; could have differential impact on businesses with older employees or in higher-cost regions Taxing health-related industries Depends on level of tax, consumption of goods and services, and length of application Likely to raise prices, decrease consumption Would discourage use of products affected May have inflationary effect on health care overall Revenues likely to taper off over time No direct effect Tends to discourage unhealthful behaviors Seen as ‘policing’ of individual behaviors Revenues will decrease over time as fewer employers offer the option Regressive now, so anything to curtail FSAs may be somewhat progressive May reduce payments for providers who currently benefit Will decrease consumption of elective services Lower administrative costs Potentially high, with much flexibility No direct effect No direct effect May link overall consumption and health care; may be cumbersome to administer

Feeding Cleveland: Urban Agriculture Harvey Rice students thinning vegetable plant rows in the downtown Cleveland, Ohio mall victory garden as adults look on, June 1943 . View image. During times of war, particularly World War II it was considered patriotic to plant food to help in the war effort. Vegetable gardens were planted in many different sites in the city, including on the Mall in downtown Cleveland. Chickens were raised in the city as well. There were contests and exhibits sponsored by private corporations. Growers and sellers at surplus produce sale in Cedar housing project victory garden, Cleveland, Ohio, July 1943. View image. Kindergarten students at work on their victory garden plots at the Benjamin Franklin Elem. School Garden, May 1942. View image.

A new methodology of engineering design, Biomimicry Design, introduces a completely logical and intriguing way of thinking. Its foundation, rooted in nature’s ingenious system of biomimicry, is both innovative and unique. The word biomimicry can be broken down into the words “bio,” which means life, and “mimesis,” or to imitate. Biomimicry Design (BD) aims to explore, understand, and replicate the cutting-edge designs found in natural existence. After all, design in nature has been experimented, tested, and retested for thousands and millions of years by evolution. And what better testing ground is there than Earth itself? Velcro, for example, was inspired by the way burrs stick to fur – the scratchy side representing the burr and the soft side representing the fur. Termite mounds that demonstrate an impressive method of passive cooling which keeps their homes at a stable temperature year-round, withstanding external fluctuations that range from 37 °F to 107 °F (3 °C to 42 °C), have become an inexpensive model for building design. The super-adhesion of “Gecko Tape” has been modeled after geckos’ innate ability to climb a range of surfaces due to nanoscopic, flexible hairs found on their feet. The architectural pattern of the Galapagos shark’s skin keeps bacteria from landing and adhering, and thus technology mimicking this pattern allows for cleaner, safer surfaces for hospitals rather than overusing anti-bacterial chemicals. BD allows for the principles of nature to be transformed into sustainable design strategies – a relationship between humans and nature based on partnership rather than exploitation. The Biomimicry Institute, founded in 2005, has been internationally recognized for its new approach to design referred to as the “system” and “process” level. Founder and president Janine Beynus summarizes biomimicry’s core ideas of using nature in a three word philosophy: model, measure, and mentor. “Biomimicry [design] uses an ecological standard to judge the sustainability of our innovations. After 3.8 billion years of evolution, nature has learned what works and what lasts.” Janine Beynus By using nature as a model, measure, and mentor, BD asserts that sustainable innovation will result and even allow for sustainable processes of manufacturing and disassembly. As Janine recognizes that organisms, or “life’s geniuses”, have been inventing the similar things humans needs, she encourages inventors and innovators to ask themselves, “How would nature solve this?” Researcher A. K. Geim (University of Manchester) pioneered the sustainability potential of gecko tape to be used in the assembly of products instead of using adhesive-contaminated glue. This allows new pathways of product dis-assembly made easier for environmentally-safe recycling. Additionally, nature provides a model of processes beyond products. UPS delivery truck tracks model off of the behavior of ant colonies. The optimization of natural selection has been mimicked by several companies developing efficient computer software tools. In short, sustainable design strategy is epitomized by nature’s self-sufficiency and efficiency, with millions of years to prove its efficacy. BD has gained popularity over the last few years with hundreds of companies and organizations recognizing its innovation. Proclaimed as “sustainable innovation inspired by nature”, the Biomimicry Institute also launched an online database of “nature’s solutions” at AskNature.org. Photo Credit: Matthijs Rouw.

I am not asking anyone to do my assignment for me, I just have no clue what I am suppose to do. I don't know where to start or what exactly the program is looking for. If someone would kindly explain or would help me out with this, I will definitely appreciate all the help I can get. So my assignment is to write a program that used while loops to perform 6 different things. 1. prompt the users to input two integers: firstNum and secondNum (firstNum must be less than secondNum). 2. output all the odd numbers between firstNum and secondNum inclusive 3. output the sum of all the even numbers between firstNum and secondNum inclusive 4. output all the numbers and their squares between 1 and 10 5. output the sum of the squares of all the odd numbers between firstNum and secondNum inclusive 6. output all the uppercase letter. and lastly there is a hint: if currentNum % 2 = 0, then the currentNum is an even number. Otherwise it is an odd number. Once again, I am not expecting or asking anyone to do a whole code or my entire assignment for me. I just really need help because I am so confused with the whole program. Thank You.

GeoIO lib is a simple geometry library that encapsulates the drawing of various geometrical entities (like lines, circle, arc, text etc), storing them in a list with support for undo/redo operations. There is a sample application called Cad2D attached which exposes some of the basic drawing and serilaization functionality of the GeoIO library. Couple of developers/programmers have come across a situation to develop simple application to draw 2-Dimensional geometry entities. However they are blocked due to many reasons like lack of time, unwilling to explore OpenGL, develop the module from base etc. The MFC set of classes ( DeviceContext) gives some good functionality to draw simple entities like lines, circles, rectangles etc, but a first timer may take sometime to learn, understand and experiment it. GeoIO library has encapsulated the complete functionality of MFC into set of core geometry classes. All that you have to do is add this module into your project and start with it. The module also supports drawing, dragging operation OnMouseMove handler and serialization. Using the code GeoIO is simple MFC DLL. Add this as dynamic-linked or static-linked to your project. Initially the usage of this module might look difficult, but once you read the below fundamental concepts you should sail through easily. Open the sample project Cad2D (SDI MFC application) which uses GeoIO to draw 2D basic geometry objects. Please explore this sample project to learn and understand the usage of GeoIO. NOTE: The project has .vcproj and .vcxproj files so it should open in VS2010 and earlier versions of Visual Studio. Geometry classes in GeoIO: CPrimitive - the principle base class for all the below mentioned classes. CGeoArc - class to draw and serialize an arc CGeoCircle - class to draw and serialize a circle CGeoLine - class to draw and serialize a line CGeoPolybezier - class to draw and serialize a polybezier - class to draw and serialize a polygon CGeoRectangle - class to draw and serialize a rectangle CGeoText - class to draw and serialize a string Note: Some drawing logic have been inspired from various online articles. CEntityList - class to hold objects of CLayerList - class to hold objects of CLayer - class stores an instance of CLayer object is identified by a layer ID. So, in your application follow the below procedure: CLayer *pLayer = new CLayer(); CPrimitive *pEntity = new CGeoLine(); pEntity->m_StPnt = CPoint(10, 10); pEntity->m_EndPoint = CPoint(100, 100); pEntity->m_clr = RGB(255, 255, 255); pLayer->AddEntityToLayer(pEntity); OnDraw(CDC *pDC) method of your window class, call the Also note that in the example above I have hard-coded the pEntity->m_EndPnt to some random CPoint values. Ideally this should be done in the OnLButtonDown handler which gives you the CPoint data as a parameter. Concept of layers In your application, you can create 'N' number layers and maintain them in the CLayerList class. In the OnDraw() method of your window class, you can select which CLayer to be drawn. If you wish to draw all the layers then iterate each layer in the CLayerList and then call DrawLayer() method of the Initial upload: 14 July

Steve is a 59-year-old active man who has developed an inguinal (groin) hernia that needs repairing. Steve hasn’t had surgery before, doesn’t have a relationship with a surgeon and is anxious about the whole matter. Having heard about both open and laparoscopic surgery, he would like to visit the surgeon he was referred to armed with some knowledge of the benefits and drawbacks of the choices he faces. Choosing the best surgical approach for Steve involves carefully integrating the best medical evidence (about the techniques) with the clinical expertise of the surgeon and Steve’s personal preferences about trade-offs involving safety, anesthesia, inpatient versus outpatient, recovery time, likelihood of recurrence and such. This decision-making starts with the evidence and is termed, “evidence-based medical practice.” Isn’t all medicine based on evidence? In fact, no. Many common practices are rooted in long-standing traditions and beliefs. Health care providers and patients alike may believe, for example, that knowing is always better than not knowing, or that early detection and early treatment always improve health outcomes. For many conditions these practices have not been tested. MEDICAL DECISION-making based on evidence is relevant for less urgent health questions than the ones mentioned above. You may have heard that antioxidants are good for you, but that how you prepare broccoli or garlic affects the antioxidant content. Or you may have heard that antioxidants can be harmful and wonder about emphasizing them in your regular diet. You may have heard that various foods or supplements can raise or lower your risk of cancer and other diseases. Nutritional recommendations for prevention of aging and disease abound in our culture — and yet, the evidence for much of this is shaky. Which ones should you follow? Many consumers want to participate in their own health care by learning about the current recommendations for prevention and treatment. They want to know what the evidence (scientific literature) actually supports. Hearing about the latest research finding on the radio or reading about prevention measures in a magazine is not enough for those who want to make informed decisions and choices. Regrettably, not all the recommendations touted are based on good evidence. The overall level (quality) and strength of the evidence is key. Evidence has differing meaning depending on its form and strength. Evidence is not the same as proof. It can be weak or point in the wrong direction. It’s not enough to hear, “evidence indicates that…” It’s very important what kind (level) of evidence it is, how strong it is and how consistent it is. SOME TYPES of scientific studies are not intended to yield conclusive evidence, but, rather, to provide clues or support about what warrants further study. These studies are published so that other researchers in the field can benefit from the results, but their “evidence” is not at a level for guiding patient care or public health policy. So, consider all the evidence. Lots of new reports of research findings are carried in the media — both broadcast and printed sources. However, rarely can a single medical research study, even if new or large, be definitive all by itself. Research results must be considered in the light of what is known, not known, or controversial in that field in order to understand what the new research outcomes mean. The scientific literature is large, complex, growing fast and not organized. Understanding the meaning of a new report without knowing the whole field is difficult for anyone, even physicians and scientists. So how can the health nut or interested consumer get the most complete information about health measures such as screening for colon cancer, taking aspirin to prevent cardiovascular disease, or dietary measures for preventing cancer? One way is starting with sources that gather and review all the available evidence about a particular topic and that then issue a report, statement, recommendation or guideline based on that analysis. WHERE TO GO for evidence-based information about prevention and treatment. On the Internet, you can find evidence reviews, recommendations based on evidence or other documents (sometimes called guidelines, clinical practice guidelines, practice parameters, clinical policies, position statements, reports). They are posted by the original source of the work, or are available through second parties who compile lists of evidence-based documents. Some sources use systematic evidence reviews, which are the most formal, comprehensive, unbiased ones and have the highest standards. We expect these reviews to provide the most valid product that the evidence justifies. Some of these documents are intended for health-care professionals, others for patients/consumers or both. You may not find a systematic review of the effects of different ways to cook broccoli, but you can find reviews of acupuncture for migraine headaches and for depression, postmenopausal hormone therapy, screening for prostate cancer, diet and risk of heart disease, prevention of breast cancer, St John’s Wort for depression, or techniques for repairing hernias. A readily available source of information on a variety of topics is the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ, an agency of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (www.ahrq.gov). It has a wealth of information oriented to either health care professionals or interested consumers, though all of it is available to everyone. The home page has a heading entitled, “Consumers and Patients.” Another heading, “Clinical Information,” has several sources of information, including evidence reports and technology assessments. Selecting “Preventive Services” will take you to the U. S. Preventive Services Task Force, an “independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention that systematically reviews the evidence of effectiveness and develops recommendations for clinical preventive services.” Also under “Clinical Information” at the AHRQ site is a link to the “National Guideline Clearinghouse” (NGC, www.guideline.gov), a “comprehensive database of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and related documents.” This very extensive compilation of documents from many sources has a glossary of terms and is updated weekly. While all guidelines listed by the NGC must meet specific criteria to be included, it includes only those submitted to it. Though it is available to the public, the content is intended for expert audiences. ANOTHER IMPORTANT source is the Cochrane Collaboration (www.cochrane.org), an international, not-for-profit organization that carefully reviews health care issues. Its main product is a database of regularly updated, evidence-based, systematic reviews of interventions including preventions. The database is available through the Cochrane Library that makes abstracts of its systematic reviews available to the public (www.cochrane.org/reviews/index.htm or www.thecochranelibrary.com). Full text is available by subscription, or free to the public in some countries. Of the many reviews in the Cochrane database, nearly 200 address complementary/alternative medicine interventions. For those people who would like to see the complementary/alternative medicine topics separated out from the others, a list (no text) is at www.compmed.umm.edu/Cochrane/index.html. The National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) maintains PDQ (Physician Data Query), which is a comprehensive cancer database containing peer-reviewed summaries on cancer prevention, treatment and other topics. Though it evaluates the evidence, it does not make recommendations (www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cancerdatabase). NCI’s PDQ provides separate information for health professionals and for patients. INVESTIGATING HEALTH information on the Internet or elsewhere may raise two issues. One is how current the information is, and the other is how to look at inconsistencies among different sources. Is the information up to date? You will usually find dates accompanying the evidence summaries, recommendations and practice guidelines found at these and other websites. Inevitably, some time will have passed since they were issued. Though some sources like PDQ, AHRQ, NGC, and Cochrane work actively to update their postings, some delay is likely even there. Consumers may wonder whether these documents are still relevant, especially if several years have passed. Should you worry? The answer is, “It depends.” Medical knowledge generally advances slowly and in small steps. Even when newer information becomes available, it may not warrant revision of an earlier statement or summary. For a single new study to dramatically alter the public health approach to an issue is unusual. It may take quite a bit of newer, high quality evidence to change a recommendation or guideline. Sometimes, where evidence is lacking or conflicting, the issues are controversial and opinions may be diverse. In that setting, when a new, long-awaited study is completed, the results may indeed provide a clearer picture, leading to important revisions in thinking. Then, new statements are likely to be issued. For example, currently there is controversy about whether screening for prostate cancer with serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) leads to longer life. Two very large, carefully designed clinical trials, one in the U. S. and one in eight countries in Europe, have been underway for over 10 years. Results from these trials are expected to clarify this controversy, and revisions of existing statements and recommendations are likely to follow. When this happens, considerable publicity is likely even before formal recommendations are revised. How consistent are the recommendations? One group may recommend regular screening for a disease, while another may say that evidence doesn’t support regular screening at this time. One source may state that increased consumption of certain foods or supplements may increase or decrease risk of a particular cancer, while another source does not agree. Which is correct? Inconsistent recommendations may occur because some sources haven’t used a systematic review of the evidence as a basis for the statement. It can also happen because the evidence itself is inconsistent, flawed, or just unclear. Furthermore, honest differences of opinion among experts do occur. For example, some may judge that the evidence for benefit is good, while others may hold that the size of the health benefit is too small compared to the risk of harm. WHICH SOURCES should you use? The ones mentioned above offer high quality, evidence-based statements about important health issues. Many evidence-based documents exist, but be aware that not all published guidelines are based on an unbiased, systematic evidence review. Some may be based on less thorough considerations of the evidence. Some help with this variation in quality is available. EBMsources Directory of Evidence-Based Information Websites (Laval University Department of Family Medicine, Quebec, Canada) is a list of over 100 websites that is updated periodically (http://machaon.fmed.ulaval.ca/medecine/repertoire/repertoire.asp?acces=ebhc). A special feature of the EBMsources directory is that each site is described as well as scored for quality using a formal appraisal process. This directory provides quick, direct access to many sites with some information about both content and quality. Steve went to the Internet seeking evidence about the risks and benefits of various approaches to hernia repair. The Cochrane Library has at least three reviews about techniques for hernia repair and one about antibiotic prophylaxis for repair. The National Guideline Clearinghouse lists several reviews about surgical repair. The EBMsources directory has ASERNIP-S, a Royal Australasian College of Surgeons site with two versions of a recent review addressing laparoscopic versus open repair. This is just a sampling. These resources may make your decision-making easier and more informed. Hope this helps — and happy hunting.

Parmenides of Elea (ca. 520 BC - ca. 450 BC) was a Greek Presocratic philosopher. He was the founder of the Eleatic school (Some scholars think that his teacher Xenophanes of Colophon (born about 570 BC), the father of pantheism, was the real founder). Plato acknowledged that he had magnificent depths; Plato also named one of his dialogs with his name. Parmenidean idea of the nature of reality would become the basis of Plato's thinking. Through Plato, Parmenides' thoughts influenced all western philosophy. Some of Parmenides's arguments are set out in his poem entitled "On Nature", where "thought and knowledge encounter themselves head on for the first time". A fragment of this poem says: "That which is not, is not. "What-is-not" does not exist. Since anything that comes into being must arise out of what-is-not, objects, states of affairs and so on cannot come into being. Likewise, they cannot pass away, because in order to do so they would have to enter the realm of what-is-not. Since it does not exist, what-is-not cannot be the womb of generation, or the tomb of that which perishes. The no-longer and the not-yet are variants of what-is-not, and so the past and future do not exist either. Change, then, is impossible. Equally, multiplicity is unreal. The empty space necessary to separate one object from another would be another example of what-is-not. And since things cannot be anything to a greater or lesser degree—this would require what-is to be mixed with the diluting effect of what-is-not—the universe must be homogeneous". Zeno of Elea (ca. 490 BC - ?) was a follower of Parmenides. For Theophrastus, Parmenides had a "twofold truth"; the standpoint of truth and the standpoint of popular opinion. "Dialog" by Plato. While Socrates was speaking, Pythodorus thought that Parmenides and Zeno were not altogether pleased at the successive steps of the argument; but still they gave the closest attention and often looked at one another, and smiled as if in admiration of him. When he had finished, Parmenides expressed their feelings in the following words: Socrates, he said, I admire the bent of your mind towards philosophy; tell me now, was this your own distinction between ideas in themselves and the things which partake of them? and do you think that there is an idea of likeness apart from the likeness which we possess, and of the one and many, and of the other things which Zeno mentioned? I think that there are such ideas, said Socrates. Parmenides proceeded: And would you also make absolute ideas of the just and the beautiful and the good, and of all that class? Yes, he said, I should. And would you make an idea of man apart from us and from all other human creatures, or of fire and water? I am often undecided, Parmenides, as to whether I ought to include them or not. And would you feel equally undecided, Socrates, about things of which the mention may provoke a smile?-I mean such things as hair, mud, dirt, or anything else which is vile and paltry; would you suppose that each of these has an idea distinct from the actual objects with which we come into contact, or not? Certainly not, said Socrates; visible things like these are such as they appear to us, and I am afraid that there would be an absurdity in assuming any idea of them, although I sometimes get disturbed, and begin to think that there is nothing without an idea; but then again, when I have taken up this position, I run away, because I am afraid that I may fall into a bottomless pit of nonsense, and perish; and so I return to the ideas of which I was just now speaking, and occupy myself with them. Yes, Socrates, said Parmenides; that is because you are still young; the time will come, if I am not mistaken, when philosophy will have a firmer grasp of you, and then you will not despise even the meanest things; at your age, you are too much disposed to regard opinions of men. But I should like to know whether you mean that there are certain ideas of which all other things partake, and from which they derive their names; that similars, for example, become similar, because they partake of similarity; and great things become great, because they partake of greatness; and that just and beautiful things become just and beautiful, because they partake of justice and beauty? Yes, certainly, said Socrates that is my meaning. cf: Parmenides, Dialogues by Plato.

Connecting with Canadians Teaching Aids for Civics Education in Canadian Schools Who better to tell us how to engage our younger generation in democratic institutions than young people themselves? In workshops and dialogues, young participants have told CPRN that one of the best ways of hooking them into the democratic process is to provide a comprehensive civics education starting in the early grades. These young people also told us they want school to be a safe place to openly discuss challenging issues, learn about different points of view and develop skills for critical analysis and problem solving. CPRN's landmark National Youth Dialogue and Summit brought together 144 young Canadians to talk about participation and citizenship. Two workbooks were prepared for the event to support discussion and to guide the dialogue. They are written in a style that is appealing to young people, and teachers appreciate them as a useful tool for their civics classes. Click the download button at the left to access the introduction that explains how to use the workbooks. To access the workbooks, click below: National Dialogue for Young Canadians – Workbook – Section 1: Background National Dialogue for Young Canadians – Workbook – Section 2: Dialogue Issues Release Date: 17 May 2007 E-network: Taking the Civics Kit to Schools

EDUCATION GOALS OF AMERICA'S GOVERNORS 1. By the year 2000, all children in America will start school ready to learn. 2. By the year 2000, the high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90 percent.Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the Monitor 3. By the year 2000, American students will leave grades four, eight, and 12 having demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, history, and geography. In addition, every school in America will ensure that all students learn to use their minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our modern economy. 4. By the year 2000, US students will be first in the world in mathematics and science achievement. 5. By the year 2000, every adult American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. 6. By the year 2000, every school in America will be free of drugs and violence and will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning. Adopted Feb. 25, 1990, by the National Governors' Association.

Germany's costly decision to give up nuclear power Germany will abandon nuclear power by 2022. That helps Chancellor Merkel politically, but will probably cost her country economically, environmentally, and even strategically. Germany’s stunning decision this week to switch off nuclear power by 2022 may prevent a political meltdown for Chancellor Angela Merkel and her party. But for Germans, who live in Europe’s largest economy, it will likely generate costs – economic, environmental, and even geopolitical.Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the Monitor Pure and simple, politics drove Chancellor Merkel to this unwise policy reversal. She has ardently supported nuclear power, which generates 23 percent of Germany’s electricity. Earlier, she had decided to extend the life of Germany’s atomic plants until 2036, more than a decade longer than a scheduled phaseout agreed to in the previous center-left government. But when Japan’s earthquake and tsunami caused a partial meltdown of nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March, that also triggered earth-moving protests against nuclear power in Germany. In local elections, the issue caused Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrat party to lose political control of a state that it had historically dominated. Her nuclear “nein, danke” now opens the way to a possible coalition with the popular Green party after the next national election. Since the calamity at Fukushima, countries have rightly launched safety reviews of this energy industry. Given the threat of global warming and dependence on foreign oil, the proper course is to update and improve nuclear design and safety, not abandon a clean energy source. [Editor's Note: The headline in an earlier version listed the incorrect year of the planned phase-out.] Most of the world appears to agree with this, though Italy and Switzerland have moved away from plans for new plants. Japan has abandoned its goal of substantially increasing nuclear power and scrapped plans for 14 plants – an understandable pause considering its location in an extreme earthquake and tsunami zone. But even Japan is not dialing down to zero in a decade. For Germany, the costs are already foreseeable: Electricity prices are certain to rise as the government pushes more expensive and less reliable renewables to make up for the nuclear gap. The manufacturing sector – which relies heavily on electricity – could lose its competitive edge. German industry and utilities have reacted strongly against the policy change. One utility has filed a legal suit against the government; another one plans to sue. They seek billions in damages now that the 2036 date is off. Of course, energy prices were going to rise anyway, given fees related to reducing carbon emissions and the world’s increasing demand for fossil fuels. But Merkel’s move will compound the problem. The no-nuclear policy will also take an environmental toll, at least in the short term. Analysts wonder how the transition will be possible without relying more heavily on coal and especially natural gas. The latter may be cleaner than coal, but it still emits some greenhouse gases – and new fracturing technology to extract gas is controversial. Reuters reports that the switch will add an extra 40 million tons of carbon emissions per year as the country adjusts. And where will Germany get that extra gas? The answer could make it even more heavily dependent on Russia, which has used gas exports and pipelines to blackmail and divide greater Europe. On the other hand, Germany’s needs could spur on the construction of the Nabucco pipeline from Azerbaijan, which is designed to circumvent Russia. With her decision, Merkel is committing Germany to doubling its reliance on renewable energy in 10 years, increasing it to 35 percent of Germany’s energy mix from its current 17 percent. “We can be the first industrial country to make the transition into an age of highly efficient and renewable energy,” she said. The government, she promised, would ease red tape and help spur the renewables build-out, including networks to move wind energy from the breezy north to other parts of Germany. Despite all of its likely costs, despite its political motivation, there’s also something exciting about this leap into the future. The Germans are a can-do people. They doubled their use of renewable energy in the past decade. A jump of this scope is not advisable, but now that it’s been decided, the world will be watching to see if it can be done – and what the consequences will be.

It was an opportunity of a lifetime for six students from the North Hollywood High School Zoo Magnet. Most of them had never traveled outside the country. So the chance to spend some of their summer break studying exotic animals in the Amazon rain forest was not just an adventure - it was also a peek into what they hope will be their futures. "For a lot of us, this was experience for our careers," said Ana Kirk, 17, of Los Angeles, who wants to be a field biologist. "A lot of us want to be research biologists, and this is kind of like preparation for us later in life." The students spent 10 days in July taking part in the field study program funded by the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association. They fished for piranha, watched dolphins in the river and got to study a native village. In its fifth year, the Duttenhaver Animal Conservation Field Study program sent the students abroad from July 16-25 to help the Earthwatch Institute survey different species of animals in the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve in Peru. Previous expeditions took place in Brazil, Ecuador and South Africa. To qualify, the six students went through a rigorous application process, including a three-page essay and interview. The survey consisted of documenting the population of specific species of animals that live in the reserve, said Stacey Hagreen, a GLAZA official and one of three mentors on the trip. After its conversion into a The reserve is also closed to tourists except with permission of the Peruvian government. Some of the animals in the survey included various species of macaw, primates and river dolphin. Cian Hettrick, 18, of Los Angeles, was particularly interested in the pink river dolphin - one of two freshwater dolphins that live in the Amazon - because of the "way it's evolved and adapted to the Amazon River." For Ariana Marangakis, 18, of West Los Angeles, the chance to measure the length and weigh a caiman - a smaller relative of the crocodile - at night was a memorable moment for her. "I've never had any experience with a wild animal, in that sense, where I've been able to interact with it in a safe environment," she said. The group's guide, Roberto Gonzales, came from a native group of people called the Cocama. The students visited one of their villages and learned the significance of sustainability. "You expect extreme poverty. In a way it was, but it wasn't because they don't need our corporate (items)," Kirk said. "All they need is the forest and they can live off that." The Cocama are reliant on the environment around them, hunting animals they find in the forest and river, and harvesting their own crops, Hagreen said. The students said Gonzales was able to identify a specific species of macaw just by the noise it made and knew where the best fishing spots were along the river. After visiting the Cocama village, Brandon Honjio, 17, of Valley Village, learned that the natives' way of life was one that would make an impact on his own. "It made me appreciate what I have here a lot more," he said. Anna Suskin, 18, of Studio City, who starts her freshman year studying environmental science at Boston College in the fall, said the trip gave her an insight to what it feels like to work in the field. "I wish I can go back and do that all over again," she said. "It's exactly what I want to do."

The Colorado River District commends the Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study as a thorough and detailed call to action for Colorado River stakeholders to address a gap between human and environmental demands on the river system and the amount of water it produces annually. "The study confirms what we already understand: the Colorado River is already fully used," said Colorado River District General Manager Eric Kuhn. "In the very near future, the demand for the river's resources will far exceed the available supply. In order to meet the needs of people and aquatic-dependent species and habitats, new ways of thinking and doing business will be essential." The study demonstrates that demands in the seven basin states and the Republic of Mexico frequently exceed the system's estimated annual supply, a gap that is projected to widen to 3.2 million acre-feet by 2060 when the population that depends on the river system is estimated to double. (An acre-foot is a measurement standard for water volume. It is equal to 325,851 gallons, enough water to submerge an acre of land with one foot of water and supply the needs of two average families of four for a year.) This prospect targets agricultural communities because large metropolitan areas often view irrigated agriculture as a source of water to meet future municipal demands. The study also demonstrates the need to find new sources of water from outside of the Colorado River Basin — a difficult, expensive and potentially contentious task. The study analyzes various combinations of possible future river supply and demand scenarios. Under the 1922 Colorado River Compact and the 1944 Water Treaty with Mexico, 17.5 million acre-feet of water was allocated for annual consumption. The Lower Basin (California, Arizona and Nevada) is apportioned 8.5 million acre-feet, the Upper Basin (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico) 7.5 million acre-feet and Mexico 1.5 million acre-feet. When the 1922 Compact was negotiated, it was assumed that the natural flow (unused by man) of the river at the mouth of the Colorado River near Yuma, Ariz., exceeded 20 million acre feet a year. Unfortunately, as the study shows, the natural flow of the Colorado River averages about 16.4 million acre-feet per year at this location. "We are surviving the imbalance by drawing down storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The situation is complicated by the reality that the Lower Basin is using more than its share of the river, relying on surpluses and water that flows from the Upper Basin's undeveloped share of the river," Kuhn said. The problems are exacerbated when one considers the impacts of climate change. Under the study's robust analysis of climate change, the average natural flow of the Colorado River at Lee Ferry, Ariz., (about 85-90 percent of the river's flow originates above Lee Ferry) is projected to decrease to an average of 13.7 million acre-feet per year. This is a decrease of approximately 9 percent from the long-term average flow at Lee Ferry of nearly 15 million acre-feet. Kuhn said that based on almost three decades of observations and measurement, 13.7 million acre-feet may be optimistic. "In the last 25 years, the average natural flow at Lee Ferry has only been 13.4 million acre-feet a year," Kuhn said. "In other words, the last 25 years have actually been worse than the average flow projected under the study's climate-change scenario." The study points to the fact the Upper Basin is not fully using its compact entitlement and predicts that more water development will occur in the Upper Basin. However, Kuhn cautioned that the study also points to serious problems for the Upper Basin. Under the climate-change scenario depicted in the study, without additional action the Upper Basin may experience a future deficit of its compact obligation as often as one in five years by 2040. "The Upper Basin is currently unprepared for this possibility," Kuhn said. "To address an uncertain future, Upper Basin users will need to develop new risk-management strategies including improved aggressive conservation, optimal use of storage and water banking options." Although the study is based on a solid technical platform, it is subject to significant limitations. It incorporates substantial assumptions and reflects a compromise of many legal and policy interpretations. Depending on how numerous issues might be decided in the future, the risks to the Upper Basin presented by overdevelopment and a reduced supply could be significantly increased. "Planners should be cautious in using the study as a risk-analysis tool without further examination," Kuhn said. "While many in the Upper Basin may believe that water remains to be developed, the reality may be that new development simply threatens existing supplies or that new development may only be available during increasingly rare wet cycles."blog comments powered by Disqus

As Colorado governments ponder regulation of medicinal marijuana, a glance backward shows how we got to this point. Once upon a time all drugs were legal, there was no Drug Enforcement Agency and a million people were not behind bars on drug charges. Drug laws initially were, at least in part, an attempt to rebuke minorities. The Chinese, probably the hardest working people in 19th century Colorado, were the target of some of the first laws that took aim at opium. The Chinese quarters were centered on the alley between Market and Blake from around 17th to 21st streets. This place, known as Hop Alley, housed many of the city's opium dens where some would get "hopped up" on the poppy plant product. During the Anti-Chinese Riot of Halloween 1880, rioters and looters justified themselves by claiming that the Chinese, who did much of Denver's laundry, housekeeping and gardening, were "dirty" heathens who smoked opium. Psychoactive drugs were originally legal and common in Colorado, including opium derivatives such as morphine. Long before the aspirin age, physicians and their patients relied on such drugs to relieve pain, induce sleep, and cure everything from diarrhea to lost manhood. Patent medicines often contained liberal doses of opium. Smoking opium, as the Chinese did, however, was stigmatized. The day after Denver's Anti-Chinese riot, the Rocky Mountain News exulted: "Chinese Gone! Chinatown Now a Mass of Ruins! The Opium Dens razed to the Ground by an Enraged and Infuriated Populace." When the progressive reform movement of the 1890s began targeting drugs as well as alcohol, Denver passed an 1898 ordinance banning the "selling, exchanging, bartering, dispensing and giving away of morphine, opium and cocaine unless prescribed by a reputable physician." The law was largely unenforced and pharmacies continued to sell opium and other narcotics. In 1905, Denver health commissioner and future mayor William H. Sharpley claimed the city's "greatest evil ... is the loose and careless way in which Denver druggists sell cocaine and morphine to dope addicts." Despite growing city, state and national legislation aimed at eliminating various drugs, use persisted. The federal government's 1914 Harrison Act required sellers to keep record of all sales in opiates and cocaine but left prohibition and enforcement to state and local governments. In 1922, Denver passed its first ordinance prohibiting the sale, possession or use of cocaine, opiates or "marihuana." Anti-foreigner sentiment, epitomized by the Ku Klux Klan's rise to power in 1920s Colorado, helped inspire drug laws aimed at certain minorities. To stop Mexicans from using marijuana, the Colorado legislature passed law outlawing the growing of "cannabis Sativa" in 1917. The same year Colorado outlawed peyote, which was used primarily by Native Americans and incorporated into some of their religious ceremonies. Now that Coloradans are once again wrestling with marijuana laws, it is important to balance personal liberties with legitimate control of therapeutic substances. Tom Noel welcomes your comments at drcolorado.auraria.edu

Gray to grayish-brown, clayey silt to silty clay interbedded with gray to light-gray silty to fine to coarse quartz sands. Discontinuous beds of shell are common in the sands and in the clayey silts. Found in the subsurface throughout Kent County. Interpreted to be a marine deposit. Rarely the surficial unit on the uplands in northwestern Kent County where the Columbia or Beaverdam Formations are absent. Outcrops are patchy and are too small to be shown on this map. Three major aquifers are found within the Calvert Formation in Kent County: the Frederica, Federalsburg, and Cheswold, from top to bottom, respectively (McLaughlin and Velez, 2006). Ranges up to 425 feet thick. Light gray to blue gray, fine to medium, shelly, silty, quartz sand and clayey silt. Discontinuous beds of fine sand and medium to coarse quartz sand are common. Base of the unit is marked by a coarse to granule sand that fines upwards to a medium to fine silty sand. This sand is the Milford aquifer (Ramsey, 1997; McLaughlin and Velez, 2006). In southern Kent County, can be subdivided into upper and lower units. Lower unit consists of the fining-upward sequence from the basal sand to a hard clayey silt to silty clay that ranges in color from grayish brown to bluish gray. Upper unit consists of clean to silty, fine to medium, moderately shelly sands with thin silty clay beds. Rarely found in outcrop in the upper reaches of some of the more deeply incised streams. Outcrops are too small to be shown on this map. Found in the southern half of Kent County. Up to 140 feet thick in the southernmost part of the county. Bioturbated, dark-greenish-gray silty clay, banded light-gray, white, and red silty clay, and glauconitic, shelly, very fine sandy silt. In the Georgetown Quadrangle, the St. Marys Formation is capped by about 5 to 15 ft of bioturbated, dark-greenish-gray silty clay. A distinct burrowed horizon separates the clay from the underlying banded clay that consists of a 10- to 15-ft thick, compact, color-banded silty clay with scattered white clayey concretions. The banded clay has a sharp contact at its base with underlying glauconitic, very fine, sandy silt. The sandy silt contains shells of the gastropod Turritella. The entire thickness of the St. Marys Formation is less than 100 ft in the Georgetown Quadrangle, thinning from its thickest in the southeast corner to about 50 ft thick in the northwest corner of the map area. Interpreted to be a marine deposit of late Miocene age (McLaughlin et al., 2008). Heterogeneous unit ranging from very coarse sand with pebbles to silty clay. Predominant lithologies at land surface are white to mottled light-gray and reddish-brown, silty to clayey, fine to coarse sand. Laminae and beds of very coarse sand with pebbles to gravel are common. Laminae and beds of bluish-gray to light-gray silty clay are also common. In a few places near land surface, but more commonly in the subsurface, beds ranging from 2 to 20-ft thick of finely laminated, very fine sand and silty clay are present. The sands of the Beaverdam Formation commonly have a white silt matrix that gives drill cuttings a milky appearance (Ramsey, 2001, 2007). This white silt matrix is the most distinguishing characteristic of the unit and readily differentiates the Beaverdam Formation from the adjacent clean sands of the Turtle Branch Formation. Interpreted to be a fluvial to estuarine deposit of late Pliocene age on the basis of pollen assemblages and regional stratigraphic relationships (Andres and Ramsey, 1995, 1996; Groot and Jordan, 1999; Groot et al., 1990). Ranges from 50 to 120 ft thick in the Georgetown Quadrangle. Yellowish- to reddish-brown, fine to coarse, feldspathic quartz sand with varying amounts of gravel. Typically cross-bedded with cross-sets ranging from a few inches to over three feet in thickness. Scattered beds of tan to reddish-gray clayey silt are common. In places, the upper 5 to 25 feet consists of grayish- to reddish-brown silt to very fine sand overlying medium to coarse sand. Near the base, clasts of cobble to small boulder size have been found in a gravel bed ranging from a few inches to three feet thick. Gravel fraction primarily quartz with lesser amounts of chert. Clasts of sandstone, siltstone and shale from the Valley and Ridge, and pegmatite, micaceous schist, and amphibolite from the Piedmont are also present. Fills a topographically irregular surface, is less than 50 feet thick, and is interpreted to be primarily a body of fluvial glacial outwash sediment (Jordan, 1964; Ramsey, 1997). Pollen indicate deposition in a cold climate during the middle Pleistocene (Groot and Jordan, 1999). One to five feet of gray coarse sand and pebbles overlain by one to ten feet of tan to gray clayey silt to silty clay that is in turn overlain by three to five feet of fine to medium sand. Laterally, finer beds are less common away from Marshyhope Creek and the deposit is dominated by fine to medium sand with scattered beds of coarse to very coarse sand with pebbles. Sands are quartzose with some feldspar and laminae of opaque heavy minerals. Underlies a terrace with elevations ranging from 35 to 50 feet and is interpreted to be fluvial to estuarine in origin. Found in the Marshyhope Creek drainage basin in Kent County and more extensively along the Nanticoke drainage basin in Sussex County. Thickness ranges up to 20 feet closer to the valley of the Marshyhope and thins away from the river. Heterogeneous unit of light-gray to brown to light-yellowish brown, medium to fine sand with discontinuous beds of coarse sand, gravel, silt, fine to very fine sand, and organic-rich clayey silt to silty sand. Upper part of the unit commonly consists of fine, well-sorted sand. Small-scale cross-bedding within the sands is common. Some of the interbedded clayey silts and silty sands are burrowed. Beds of shell are rarely encountered. Sands are quartzose and slightly feldspathic, and typically micaceous where very fine to fine grained. Unit underlies a terrace parallel to the present Delaware Bay that has elevations between 50 and 30 feet. Interpreted to be a fluvial to estuarine unit of fluvial channel, tidal flat, tidal channel, beach, and bay deposits (Ramsey, 1997). Overall thickness ranges up to 50 feet. Onshore and offshore geological and geophysical data were used to investigate the lithostratigraphy, seismic stratigraphy, and depositional history of the late Tertiary age post-Choptank Chesapeake Group rocks in Sussex County, Delaware and adjacent counties in Maryland. The results of this investigation suggest that the St. Marys (?) Formation and the sandy interval of which the Manokin aquifer is a part, are distinct lithostratigraphic units. The Manokin formation is proposed as an informal lithostratigraphic unit that refers to the sandy interval of which the Manokin aquifer is a part. On a regional scale, the section containing the Ocean City and Pocomoke aquifers and adjacent and intervening confining beds is best treated as a single undifferentiated lithostratigraphic unit. The Bethany formation is proposed as an informal lithostratigraphic unit that refers to this section. Heterogeneous unit of light-gray to brown to light-yellowish-brown, coarse to fine sand, gravelly sand and pebble gravel with rare discontinuous beds of organic-rich clayey silt, clayey silt, and pebble gravel. Sands are quartzose with some feldspar and muscovite. Commonly capped by one to two feet of silt to fine sandy silt. Laminae of opaque heavy minerals are common. Unit underlies a terrace parallel to the present Delaware River that has elevations less than 25 feet. Interpreted to be a transgressive unit consisting of swamp, marsh, estuarine channel, beach, and bay deposits. Climate during the time of deposition was temperate to warm temperate as interpreted from fossil pollen assemblages (Ramsey, 1997). Overall thickness of the unit rarely exceeds 20 feet. The Generalized Geologic Map of Delaware is a brief summary for general use indicating the major types and locations of rocks present throughout the State, and their interrelationships. The map is preliminary as it is a first step in a continuing program of detailed geologic mapping. It is based upon many existing sources of data; additional detail may be found in the references listed. In Delaware some linear features recognized on the Landsat image can be related to known faults. Others are interpreted as possible faults; the causes of some lineations are not yet known. Circular features are more difficult to interpret but they are similar to the domal structures and erosional features recognized in the Gulf Coast region, for example. These and the linear features of uncertain origin can be investigated by drilling and geophysical techniques after being localized by clues provided by the satellite images. Detection by satellite images and confirmation by other geologic techniques is an efficient and effective means of geologic investigation. RI37 Stratigraphic Nomenclature of Nonmarine Cretaceous Rocks of Inner Margin of Coastal Plain in Delaware and Adjacent States Rocks of Cretaceous age deposited in continental and marginal environments, and now found along the inner edge of the northern Atlantic Coastal Plain, have historically been classified as the Potomac Group and the Potomac, Patuxent, Arundel, Patapsco, Raritan, and Magothy formations. Subdivisions of the Raritan and Magothy formations have also been recognized. Lithologic characteristics and spatial relationships of the units indicate that only the Potomac Formation and the Magothy Formation can be differentiated in northern Delaware. The complex nonmarine deposits originated on an aggrading coastal plain. Their projections into the deeper subsurface on- and offshore will be important in future studies. No changes in terminology are recommended, but careful use of stratigraphic nomenclature is urged in order to avoid confusion, especially in hydrologic applications. This Bulletin presents the subsurface stratigraphy of the post-Potomac Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks of the Atlantic Coastal Plain of central Delaware, between the Chesapeake and Delaware (C & D) Canal and Dover. Geophysical log correlations supported by biostratigraphic and lithologic data from boreholes in Delaware and nearby New Jersey provide the basis for the report. The stratigraphic framework presented here is important for identifying subsurface stratigraphic units penetrated by the numerous boreholes in this part of Delaware, particularly those rock units that serve as aquifers, because such knowledge allows for better prediction at ground-water movement and availability. Also, accurate stratigraphy is a prerequisite for interpreting the geologic history of the rocks and for the construction of maps that depict the structure and thickness of each unit. B18 Clay and Clay-Size Mineral Composition of the Cretaceous-Tertiary Section, Test Well Je32-04, Central Delaware This study complements Delaware Geological Survey Bulletin No. 17 and deals exclusively with clays and clay-size minerals. The cored section at the location of Je32-04 has been subdivided into 25 clay zones on the basis of major changes in trends and degree of crystallinity of clay minerals. The composition of clay minerals varies from zone to zone. These clay minerals have been identified: kaolinite, berthierine, chlorite, illite, smectite, chlorite/smectite, illite/smectite, glauconite/smectite, and glauconite pellets. Other minerals present in the section include: zeolites (clinoptilolite-heulandite), gypsum, and elemental sulfur. A cored well 1,422 feet (433 meters) deep drilled two miles southeast of Dover is the basis for this integrated study of the lithology and paleontology of the Cretaceous-Tertiary section in central Delaware. The section is subdivided into lithostratigraphic, biostratigraphic, chronostratigraphic, and heavy mineral units. Data and results are presented on a common base in three plates. In the Coastal Plain of Delaware, the non-marine Cretaceous sands and clays are separated from the Tertiary formations by a series of marine formations of Upper Cretaceous age. The sedimentary and hydrologic characteristics of these formations deserve detailed study because some of them are water-bearing beds. whereas others act as confining beds. A clear understanding of their relative age. and the presence or absence of unconformities is needed for proper correlation with formations found in wells throughout the State. as well as in Maryland and New Jersey. Emphasis is placed herein on the years of Dr. Groot's leadership of the Survey. The remarkable work of James C. Booth in the last century is acknowledged but has elsewhere been entered in history. Some continuing activities of the Survey after 1969 are noted together with comments of an experienced observer; this current period may someday receive the attention of a recorder having the enhanced perspective of time.

|— Inhabited island —| |Geographic atoll||Miladhummadulhu Atoll| |Administrative atoll||Southern Miladhunmadulu| |Distance to Malé||176 km (109 mi)| |• Length||1.650 km (1.025 mi)| |• Width||0.950 km (0.590 mi)| |Time zone||MST (UTC+05:00)| The Island The island of Manadhoo measuring approx 92.2 hectares (228 acres), which has a natural harbor surrounded by natural seawalls. The island lies the south east of the atoll. According to formation of the atoll. Since the Island is the capital of the South Miladhunmadulu (Noonu atoll) and the 3rd largest population of the atoll and most of the government offices have been establish, the major available land is uninhabited. Main livelihood of the population depends on construction carpentry work civil service, tourism, fishing and private business. The Secretariat of the South Miladhummadulu Atoll Council, Secretariat of the Manadhoo Council, Noonu Manadhoo Magistrate court, Atoll Development COouncil Guest House, NHSC Pharmacy, Noonu Atoll School, Noou Atoll Hospital,Bank of Maldives Manadhoo Branch, Noonu Atoll Family and Children Service Center,Noonu Manadhoo Post and Maldivian Redcrescent Noonu Branch Office contributes to the infrastructure of the island. The people Little information is available on the ancient people and their way of life. Evidence suggests that Manadhoo has been populated and thriving as early as the 4th century BC. It is argued[by whom?] that the earliest settlers migrated from Arabia, eastern Africa and the Indian subcontinent among other places. Today, the Manaduans are a mixed race as in any part of the Maldives. Traditionally education in the Manadhoo, was limited to the basic literacy skills; namely the recital of the Quran, reading and writing the Dhivehi language. The modern system of English medium education was introduced in 1997. Dhivehi is a language spoken in Manadhoo. Spoken only in Maldives, Dhivehi belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It has numerous loanwords from Tamil, Malayalam, Sinhalese, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Portuguese and English. The Manadhoo has recorded significant achievement in human development. Religion and Beliefs Islam is the official religion of the Republic of Maldives. Manadhoo view |This Maldives location article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.|

Native Plant Profile...Gray Birch (Betula populifolia) Grows to 30 foot tall, often with multiple trunks. Widely distributed in northeastern woodlands in sunny sites. sterile sites and dry to wet soils. The bark does not peel as much as Paper (Betula papyrifera) but used by birds as nest materials. fields and burned– over sites. Provides cavity sites. Common Names: poverty birch, fire birch, old field Flowers/Fruits: Small flowers on catkins mid – April to May. Small flat nutlets inside cones early September to mid-October. Nutlets persist into winter. Landscape Notes: Beautiful yellow autumn color and interesting bark patterns similar to paper birch though not as white. Hardy, fast growing and graceful in form. Trunks resilient to breakage from snow and ice. Tends to grow multiple trunks divided at the base. Best planted in the spring. Do not prune in the spring when the sap is running. Gray Birch Tree Gray Birch Flower Gray Birch Twig Paper Birch Bark Gray Birch Bark Gray Birch Leaf Other Birches: River Birch (Betula nigra) tolerates wet soil conditions and is common throughout the southeast. Sweet Birch (Betula lenta) may live to be 200 years old, while most birches are short lived. Was also the source of flavoring for birch beer prior to artificial flavorings for the soda. Birches are larva host plants for: Mourning Cloak, Tiger Swallowtail and Compton Tortoiseshell butterflies and a host of moth larva including Io, Polyphemus, Promethea and Cecropia moths. Birches are shelter for: American Woodcock, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Solitary Vireo, Baltimore Oriole. Birches are nesting sites (S) or provide nest materials (N) for: Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (S) Hairy and Downy Woodpecker (S), Tufted Titmouse (S), White-breasted Nuthatch (S), Solitary, White-eyed, and Philadelphia Vireos (N_, American Redstart (N), Baltimore Oriole (S), Scarlet Tanager (N) Birches provide food for many species of wildlife: Green winged Teal, Wood Duck, Bufflehead, Turkey, Ruffed Grouse, Ring- necked Pheasant, Great Blue Heron, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Blue jay, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted and Red-breasted nuthatch, Cedar Waxwing, Northern Cardinal, Rose- breasted Grosbeak, Purple Finch, Common Redpoll, Pine Siskin, American Goldfinch, Red and White –winged crossbill, Northern Junco, Tree and Fox sparrows, Beaver, Deer, Eastern Cottontail Rabbit, Porcupine. Cultivars of Gray Birch you may find commercially: “Laciniata”, ”Pendula”- has drooping branches, “Purpurea”- Young leaves are purple Range: Flying squirrels are found in forests of Eastern North America, with the Northern Flying Squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus) found in coniferous forests and Southern Flying Squirrels (Glaucomys volans) in deciduous forests. The two species overlap in some parts of the Northeastern U.S. When this occurs, the southern species is more aggressive and will dominate. Home range averages from one to five acres. Habitat: Southern Flying Squirrels require mast-producing trees such as oaks and hickories for food, They also need tree cavities in dead or live trees for shelter and to raise their young. Woodpeckers originally make cavities that flying squirrels often use. Flying squirrels prefer entrance holes larger than 1” in diameter. The nest is lined with shredded bark or leaves, sometimes feathers or moss are included. Flying squirrels often have two nest sites: one that is used constantly and one used as a refuge if the first nest is being disturbed. Southern flying squirrels will also use leaf nests in the southern part of their range. Appearance: The Southern flying squirrel is identified by its small size. Both species of squirrels have a fold of skin that extends from the wrist of the front leg to the ankle of the hind leg. When the legs are extended, this allows the creature to glide from tree to tree. The furry, flattened tail acts a rudder during the glides. Eyes are large, which aids its nocturnal habits. Whiskers and ears are prominent. Northern flying squirrel is slightly larger. Its fur is a darker brown, with its belly fur gray at the base compared to the Southern flying squirrel ‘s belly fur, which is white at the base. Southern flying squirrels are about 9” from the nose to tip of the tail. The upper body is brown to grayish grown, with creamy –white belly fur. It weighs 2 to 4 ounces. Fur of both species is soft and silky. Habits/ Behavior: Northern flying squirrels mate in late winter, while the Southern flying squirrel mates in early spring. The Northern species has one litter per year while its southern counterpart will have a second litter in August/September. Both species give birth to 2 –5 young after a 10 to 11 day gestation. Newborns are weaned after 60 days and will stay with the female until she breeds again. The Southern flying squirrel will remain in its nest I very cold weather and will enter a sleep – like state called torpor, but not hibernation. The squirrels will glide from one tree to another. Northern flying squirrels will spend time on the ground feeding, but not the southern species. Both species of squirrels will chirp, which sounds like warblers. Southern flying squirrels will often use a specific den site for defecation. In the winter flying squirrels will den together in groups to conserve warmth. flying squirrels feed on lichen and fungi as well as nuts, seeds insects and will store food for the winter. The Southern flying squirrel feeds on nuts, seeds, berries, small birds, their young, eggs and insects. They will also gnaw maple trees and drink their sap. Known for putting away large quantities of nuts for winter. fox, weasels and house cats are the primary predators. Because flying squirrels are nocturnal and secretive, they have not been studied as extensively as daytime squirrels. Flying squirrels will use nest boxes designed for gray squirrels and often songbird nest boxes. Songbirds In Your Meadows Maryland has only nine species of truly grassland birds: We all enjoy watching colorful songbirds like Cardinals and Blue Jays that come to our bird feeders and fly about our yards, but the birds found in Maryland meadows can be equally worth the watching. These birds typically live in large grasslands (usually greater than ten acres) and nest on the ground. In fact Maryland has only nine species of truly grassland birds: The Upland Sandpiper, Horned Lark, Eastern Meadowlark, Dickcissel, Bobolink, and several sparrows including the Savannah Sparrow, Grasshopper sparrow, Henslow’s Sparrow, and Vesper Sparrow. You may not see these birds in your backyard but you might find them in your local school’s playground, at the airport, on a nearby farm, or along a Grassland birds are unique and interesting in their own right. The Bobolink looks like it is wearing a tuxedo on backwards singing a bubbling call while in flight. The Grasshopper Sparrow ‘s insect –like call accounts for its name. And, the Vesper Sparrow is known for its evening song, at vesper time. Grassland birds usually are hard to spot because of their brown coloration and ability to melt into their grassy background. But one, the Eastern Meadowlark, has a vibrant yellow chest and throat set off by a black necklace, and its tail flashes white when it flies atop a fencepost to emit its call. Some species are very rare like the Henslow’s Sparrow and the Upland Sandpiper, while others are widespread in Maryland like the Horned Lark. The Horned Lark and Vesper Sparrow like short, sparsely vegetated fields and pastures, while the Savannah and the Grasshopper Sparrows and Meadowlarks and Bobolinks like moderately tall thick meadows. Some of our grassland birds have been declining in numbers in recent years, particularly the Meadowlark, Grasshopper Sparrow, and Vesper Sparrow. The reasons for these declines are related to the loss of habitat to development, the decline of the dairy industry and its associated hayfields and the increase of intensive row crop agriculture with its dependence on stronghold for grassland birds was in the Midwest prairies, not Maryland forests. However the loss of prairie habitat has forced grassland birds to push into new areas. Reclaimed strip mines in western Maryland represent extremely important habitat for Maryland ‘s grassland bird Landowners can help these birds by maintaining large areas of meadow habitat on their properties. If you are an urban or suburban landowner this may be impossible, but smaller meadow habitats can be extremely beneficial to butterflies. Be sure to investigate town and county mowing ordinances in the planning stages of your meadow as laws vary. Another way concerned landowners can help grassland birds is by urging county governments to leave roadsides unmown. Farmers can also help by delaying the mowing of hayfields until mid-July to give these ground nesting birds time to raise their young. Or better yet, farmers can retire an area of cropland and plant it in native warm season grasses and wildflowers, which is aesthetically pleasing to us and highly beneficial to wildlife species. So take some time in the spring and summer to listen and look for these unique birds of our Note: Habichat thanks Scott A. Smith, a biologist with DNR's Heritage Program, who originally wrote on this subject. Helping Migrant Songbirds Survive Bird migration can be inspirational and mysterious. In Maryland, this biannual event can feature “kettles” of hawks soaring over mountains or swirling masses of shorebirds on Assateague Island. Few events, however, can compare to songbird Each year, beginning in mid July, millions of songbirds in North America head southward. Neotropical migrants, birds that breed in North America but winter in the Caribbean or Central and South America, represent by far, the largest group of songbirds that nest or occur in Maryland during migration. Common Maryland backyard nesters include Gray Catbird, Yellow Warbler, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Barn Swallow, Baltimore Oriole, Chipping Sparrow, and Indigo Bunting. However most neotropical migrants are forest dwellers that need large, unbroken forests. Sadly, these birds and their habitat on their breeding, migratory stopovers and wintering areas are disappearing. In addition to offering fruit, seed and suet at feeders, a yard landscaped for wildlife can help these birds while on migration. Planting trees and shrubs of varying heights to mimic forest conditions in your yard is a good way to appeal to many birds. Blackburnian Warblers are treetop feeders that glean insects from the tops of tall trees. Red-eyed Vireos glean insects on foliage in the middle, while Black-and-White Warblers find insects on tree trunks and large branches. Planting pitch or loblolly pine trees may attract Pine Warblers or Bay-breasted Warblers. Insects attracted to wildflower meadows may provide food for Palm Warblers or Common Yellowthroats. A Purple Martin house or a clothesline may provide a feeding perch for flycatching birds like the Eastern Phoebe and Eastern An excellent method of attracting neotropial migrants includes water, which can be as easy as hanging a drip bucket over a bird bath. Be sure to place a lid over the drip bucket to prevent drownings. See: Drips for Wild Places In a residential sea of treeless, manicured lawns , a yard that provides at least some of these habitat ingredients can be an oasis to an exhausted migrant. However, it is important to remember that suburban areas can never replace the undeveloped habitat that once existed for songbirds during migration. We tend to think of neotropical migrants as “our” birds since they raise their young here, Yet, a typical neotropical migrant spends less than half of its life in North America and the remainder in their tropical winter homeland. They are in fact part of our international wildlife heritage and remind us that local actions can have global effects. Note: Habichat would like to thank Jim McCann , zoologist with our Heritage Program for the original work on this. If you enjoyed this issue of Habichat, you might want to check out our online back issues and clickable listing of Habichat articles. Click here for online back issues. Photographs of Gray Birch Tree, Flower, Twig, and Bark courtesy of Dr. John Seiler, Virginia Tech Forestry Department, Photograph of Gray Birch Leaf, courtesy of Penn State Photograph of Paper Birch Bark, courtesy of Joseph O'Brien, USDA Forest Service, Photograph of Northern Flying Squirrel, courtesy of the National Park Photograph of Southern Flying Squirrel in flight, courtesy of UWSP Student Chapter of the Wildlife Society, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point Photograph of Southern Flying Squirrel on branch, courtesy of John White Photograph of Southern Flying Squirrel on ground, courtesy of UWSP Student Chapter of the Wildlife Society, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point Photograph of Eastern Meadow Lark courtesy of USGS Photograph of Dickcissel, courtesy of Steve Maslowski, USFWS Photograph of Bobolink courtesy of Pennsylvania Game Commission Photo/Joe Kosack Photographs of Migrant Songbird Habitat, courtesy of USDA, Here is a listing of phone numbers, web sites and organizations that you might find helpful or interesting in your search for ideas to manage your wild acres. DNR Online... Inspired by nature! Project FeederWatch is a winter-long survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locales in North America. FeederWatchers periodically count the highest numbers of each species they see at their feeders from November through early April. FeederWatch helps scientists track broadscale movements of winter bird populations and long-term trends in bird distribution and abundance. Project FeederWatch is operated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in partnership with the National Audubon Society, Bird Studies Canada, and Canadian Nature Federation. http://birds.cornell.edu/pfw National Wildlife Federation - Details on their backyard habitat program www.nwf.org or call them at 1-800-822-9919. Native plants - The Maryland Native Plant Society offers information dedicated to protecting, conserving and restoring Maryland's native plants and habitats, visit them at Maryland Cooperative Extension offers home and garden information, tips publications, plant problems, Bay issues, and other links at Their Home and Garden Information number is statewide and can be reached at 1-800-342-2507, and from outside Maryland at 1-410-531-1757. Bioimages, a project of Vanderbilt University, provides educational information to the public on biologically related topics, as well as a source of biological images for personal and non-commercial use. Maryland's "Becoming an Outdoors - Woman Program "- One of the topics covered in the three-day workshops is Backyard For a free wildlife & native plant newsletter, visit the WindStar Wildlife Institute at and subscribe to the WindStar Wildlife Garden Weekly e-newsletter. You can also visit this website to learn how you can become a certified wildlife habitat For more information on butterflies - visit the North American Butterfly Association at Warm season grasses and wild meadows for upland nesting birds visit Pheasants Forever at www.pheasantsforever.org or e-mail: We want to hear from you! Letters, e-mail, photos, drawings. Let us know how successful you are as you create wildlife habitat on Write to Me! Natural Resources Biologist II Maryland Wildlife and Heritage Service MD Dept of Natural Resources 580 Taylor Ave., E-1 Annapolis MD 21401 Access For All Click here for online back issues. Habichat, the newsletter for Wild Acres participants, is published by the Wildlife and Heritage Service, Maryland Department of Natural Resources. The facilities and services of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources are available to all without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, physical or mental disability. This document is available in alternative format upon request from a qualified individual with a disability.

Introduction Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the most common life-limiting genetic disease in the Caucasian population and is also found in other ethnic groups. It is a multisystem disorder, although the main cause of morbidity and mortality is respiratory failure. The median life expectancy has increased significantly over the last two decades and is currently in the mid-thirties. A factor in the improvement of life expectancy is an increase in the range and intensity of treatments including nutritional support, physiotherapy, antibiotics, and other medications (Daniels,2010). Over the last few years, new physiotherapeutic interventions in CF have moved away from stand-alone therapy to a patient-tailored, individualized treatment regimen, consisting of inhalation therapy, airway clearance, exercise and education about the disease and treatment (Van Ginderdeuren et al.,2008). Definition Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a disease of abnormal ion transport. Specifically, abnormalities in the expression and function of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) result in abnormal salt and water transport across epithelial surfaces in the gastrointestinal and hepatobiliary systems, respiratory tract, reproductive system, and sweat glands(Allen et al.,2010). Manifestations CF affects the mucus production of exocrine glands, which become thick and obstruct the channels in which it is secreted. This manifestation can occur in numerous epithelial cells including sweat, pancreatic and bile ducts, airways, intestinal and deferent vessels (Maiworm et al.,2011). Although CF is characterized by disease in many organs, respiratory disease is currently the leading cause of morbidity and mortality. In the CF lung, airway obstruction is a common finding. Both pulmonary function tests and chest X-ray computed tomography (CT) have revealed evidence of air trapping and impaired airway function early in the course of the disease. With disease progression, reduced airflow rates become almost universal. These abnormalities in airway function plus the defects in airway epithelium and submucosal glands have focused attention on airways in investigating CF pathogenesis (Meyerholz et al.,2010). The primary clinical manifestations usually occur in the lungs include cough, excess sputum, shortness of breath and respiratory muscle fatigue, resulting in progressive lung dam-age and eventual death from respiratory failure(Maiworm et al.,2011). Cystic fibrosis-related symptoms appear throughout life, with great overlap and variability of symptoms and timing from patient to patient. Patients with CF have common signs and symptoms like; family history of cystic fibrosis, salty-tasting skin, clubbing of fingers and toes, Cough with sputum production, hypochloraemic metabolic alkalosis, and mucoid Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from airway secretions(O’Sullivan & Freedman,2009). Hemoptysis is common in patients with CF; it was reported that 9.1% of patients had hemoptysis in a 5-year period. The bleeding, most commonly, is scant to moderate, but massive, life-threatening bleeding can occur. Approximately 4.1% of all patients with CF will suffer massive hemoptysis during their lifetime, and the average annual incidence is less that 1%. Approximately 3.4% of individuals with CF will experience a pneumothorax during their lifetime. Both of these complications occur more commonly in older patients with advanced disease (Flume et al.,2010). Musculoskeletal and postural disorders, which are common in people with CF are secondary to pulmonary disease, with a complex relationship between posture and respiration. Thoracic kyphosis and vertebral wedging are prevalent in people with CF and are related to worsening lung function and clinical symptoms. There is also evidence of decreased thoracic mobility and muscle weakness. These changes in soft tissue and spinal geometry are likely to be attributed to an increased work of breathing and the hunched posture assumed during excessive coughing (Wedzicha et al.,2009). References 1- Allen J.L., Penitch H.B., Rubenstien R.C. “Cystic Fibrosis” Lung Biology in Health and Disease.Volume 242. Chapter 2. Pages 11-23.2010. 2- Daniels T. “ Physiotherapeutic management strategies for the treatment of cystic fibrosis in adults” Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare. Volume 3. Pages 201- 212. 2010. 3- FlumeP.A., Mogayzel P.J.,et al “Cystic Fibrosis Pulmonary Guidelines Pulmonary Complications: Hemoptysis and Pneumothorax” American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.Volume 182. Pages 298-306. 2010. 4- Maiworm A.I., Monteiro M.B. et al. ” Cystic fibrosis and the relevance of the whole-body vibration exercises in oscillating platforms: a short review” Health. Volume 3.Number 3. Pages 656-662. 2011. 5- Meyerholz D.K., Stoltz D.A.,et al“Loss of Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator Function Produces Abnormalities in Tracheal Development in Neonatal Pigs and Young Children” American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Volume 182. Pages 1251-1261.2010. 6- O’Sullivan B.P. & Freedman S.D.” Cystic Fibrosis” The Lancet. Volume 373. Pages 1891-1904.2009. 7- Van Ginderdeuren F., Verbanck S., et al “Chest Physiotherapy in Cystic Fibrosis: Short-Term Effects of Autogenic Drainage Preceded by Wet Inhalation of Saline versus Autogenic Drainage Preceded by Intrapulmonary Percussive Ventilation with Saline” Respiration. Volume 79. Pages 175-180.2008. 8- Wedzicha J.A., Johnston S.L.,et al “Guidelines for the physiotherapy management of the adult, medical, spontaneously breathing patient” Journal of the British Thoracic Society. Volume 64. Pages 18-25. 2008. 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By U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Howard Bromberg, Commanding General, Fort Bliss The goal of Fort Bliss, the military and surrounding communities is to become champions of renewable energy in production generation, efficiency and conservation. One of the installation’s goals is to achieve Net Zero, or producing as much energy as consumed, in the near future. The region is in a strategic location with wind, solar, biomass and geothermal resources. Initiatives are already ongoing in many areas to reach the goal of energy independence by 2015. An original investment of $56 million dollars is the beginning with a projected cost between $250 million and $300 million to reach Net Zero in 10 years. The annual savings estimate starts at $10-15 million then increases exponentially based on how and when we achieve Net Zero. In 2025 these savings could be as high as $90 million if we are truly Net Zero. Becoming energy efficient, using renewable and alternative sources is the right thing to do. Fossil fuels will not always be available to provide for all of the nation’s energy needs. In addition, using renewable and alternative energy resources will result in a much cleaner and safer environment. Maybe not all, but some of these methods can be used in any area of the world. Military can lead the way in clean energy as they have in many other successful ventures. Army leadership points to the “Five S’s” as metrics for success: - Surety: preventing loss of access to power and fuel sources; - Survivability: ensuring resilience in energy systems; - Supply: accessing alternative and renewable energy sources available on installations; - Sufficiency: providing adequate power for critical missions; and - Sustainability: promoting support for the Army’s mission, its community, and the environment. By adopting this long-term goal to produce solar farms, wind farms, a geothermal plant and a solid-waste co-partnership with surrounding communities, we will meet all the metrics and succeed in making the entire area a clean and safe place for generations to come. For more information about achieving “Net Zero” listen to the Army Bloggers Roundtable with U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Dana J. H. Pittard, Deputy Chief of Staff, G3, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Monroe and U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Howard Bromberg, Commanding General, Fort Bliss for Wednesday, July 7 at 1130 ET. The incoming and departing commanding generals at Fort Bliss – Maj. Gen. Pittard and Maj. Gen. Bromberg, respectively – will provide a current update on Fort Bliss’s comprehensive and path-breaking efforts to achieve energy independence and to become a “net-zero” installation -– that is, an installation which produces as much energy as it consumes.

The Long and Short of Dog Grooming History A dog grooming contest takes place somewhere in the United States just about every month. Virginia Parker Guidry Professional groomers have joined the show circuit, traveling state to state, even abroad, to shows where they compete for cash prizes, prestige and vacations. Groomers are judged on their technical abilities to work on specific breeds. Although you may not be aware of it, a grooming contest takes place somewhere in the United States just about every month. It's wonderful to see groomers take such pride in their work and challenge themselves to do their best. Owners, too, can benefit from their competitive efforts by bringing home healthy, good-looking pets from the grooming salon. But grooming hasn't always been competitive or business-oriented. In fact, it probably started for very practical reasons. By most accounts, the first dogs to be groomed were Curly-Coated Retrievers, clipped short by their 16th century European hunter-owners. The dense-coated water dogs, believed to be the ancestors of today's Poodle, were popular with hunters. But they had one drawback: Their thick coats hindered them in the water. To make swimming and dashing in and out of water after quarry easier, hunters clipped the coats shorter. It became standard practice to shave the dog's hindquarters; small tufts of hair covered the joints to keep them warm. The coat was left long over the neck, shoulders, ribs and chest for warmth and buoyancy. The hair on the head - the topknot - was tied up with brightly colored ribbon to enable the dog to see better. It was a very sensible solution to a problem. In 1621, Gervase Markham commented on this in Hunger's Prevention, or The Art of Fowling, his book describing the use and training of water dogs. The water dogs "are ever more laden with hair on the hinder parts and in the summertime by the violence of the heate is very noysome and troublesome, and make him sooner faint and give over his sport. So, likewise, in matter of water, it makes a very heavy burthen to the dogge and maketh him to swim less nimbly. Now for the cutting or shaving from the navell downwards, and backwards, is two ways well to be allowed; that is, for the summer hunting. But for the shaving of a dogge quite all over from foot to nostrill, that I utterly dislike, for it brings such a tendernesse and chillnesse over all his body that the water will grow irksome to him." It wasn't long before "practical" became "style," French style. The Poodles, which had grown popular with the public throughout Europe, were primped and scissored into elaborate coat patterns by French groomers. During the reign of Louis XVI (1774—92), groomers worked their magic along the banks of the Seine and in Paris streets, according toThe Complete Poodle Clipping and Grooming Bookby Shirlee Kalstone (Howell Book House, 1981). The French public was crazy over the Poodle and trimming its coat into outrageous patterns. Although grooming initially began with the Poodle, it eventually interested many other canine enthusiasts. In 1861, author John Meyrick (House Dogs and Sporting Dogs) spelled out general bathing advice.The Book of the Dogby Vero Shaw (1879) stresses the importance of a well-kept appearance. In 1891,The American Book of the Dogby G.O. Shields included an illustrated pattern for clipping a Poodle. Blanche Saunders, trainer, breeder and handler who died in 1964, is credited with popularizing pet grooming in the United States. According toThe Stone Guide to Dog Grooming for All Breedsby Ben and Pearl Stone (Howell Book House, 1981), Saunders worked to popularize Poodle pet trims through writing and personal appearances. She wrote a booklet called "The Poodle Chart." It is undated but believed to be first published in the 1940s. Today, grooming is a sophisticated profession keeping an estimated 25,000 groomers busy bathing, fluffing and trimming the nation's dogs. They style all breeds of dogs precisely and accurately using state-of-the-art technology. You won't find groomers alongside riverbanks, but you will find them working in private salons, veterinary clinics, pet supply stores and kennels. It's amazing to look back at grooming's history — the changes, fads and advances. But what's most amazing is that grooming a dog, regardless of its breed, is still as sensible and practical today as it was to 16th century hunters. Give us your opinion on The Long and Short of Dog Grooming History Login to get points for commenting or write your comment below Get New Captcha

|Uploaded:||July 6, 2011| |Updated:||July 6, 2011| Oh boy, I can’t believe that I’m actually submitting a tutorial on "how to draw a shrimp", step by step. To me this is actually a pretty ridiculous critter to be making a lesson out of, but I guess someone will find a use for this tutorial. Anyways you all know that shrimp are both fresh and salt water crustaceans that can be found almost anywhere in the world. Like a lot of water dwelling animals, shrimp tend to live in schools, and when they become adults, they stay close to the bottom of the sea because they are what you call filter, or bottom feeders. One of the most common things that shrimp are popular for is consumption. One of the major reasons why I am uploading this tutorial is because I thought that a lesson on drawing a shrimp would be cool because summer is here is this is the season that people tend to feast on lots of seafood, which includes shrimp, prawns, crabs, lobster, and all sorts of fish and other shellfish. One of the things I sometimes wonder is how their curled or arched bodies are able to swim through water. The fact is, shrimp swim, and they can swim pretty fast in a backwards motion. No matter if you eat shrimp or not this is an interesting lesson showing you "how to draw shrimp". Thanks for joining me today guys, and remember to keep those pencils moving. Adios mi amigos and good day!

Data Structure Audits Last week , I suggested using the operating system to help you put firewalls around parts of a system that might fail. I want to continue by discussing how to clean up after such subsystem failures. White PapersMore >> - Informed CIO: SDN and Server Virtualization on a Collision Course - InformationWeek 2013 IT Spending Priorities Survey Many data structures can be divided into two parts, which we might call the data part and the structure part. The idea is that a data structure contains a collection of data, together with additional information that can be used to access those data particularly easily or quickly. For example, the data in a typical filesystem are the contents of the disk blocks that constitute the filesystem. Each file has a corresponding part of the filesystem that keeps track of the blocks that constitute it. Directories (also known as folders) store collections of name/value pairs that make it possible to locate particular files. Moreover, there is usually an additional data structure that keeps track of all of the disk blocks that are not part of any file, so that when a user program wants to create a file, or add to a file that already exists, it is easy to find space on disk to do so. It is not hard to imagine an invariant for a filesystem. It might specify that every disk block is part of a file, a directory, free space, or one (and only one) of the auxiliary data structures that keep track of the files, directories, or free space. Because this property is an invariant, operating-system code that manipulates the filesystem can assume that it is true, and such code is responsible for ensuring that the invariant remains true whenever user code is executing. Just about anyone who has spent much time working with filesystems has learned two things about them: - Despite the best of intentions, it is not always possible to maintain the invariant in the face of a hardware crash or power failure. - Accordingly, most modern operating systems come with some kind of filesystem verifier that can be used to ensure that the underlying data structures — and associated invariants — are valid when required. Filesystem checkers are tremendously useful. Not only can running such a program after a crash repair any damage that the crash might have caused (or that might have caused the crash!), but it also reports whether damage was present. Such reports are particularly useful to filesystem designers, because the designers may be able to redesign their filesystems to make them more robust against particularly common kinds of failure. This benefit to designers comes in addition to the benefit to users that an ordinary crash need not cause extensive data loss. A filesystem checker is an example of a data-structure auditing program. Such a program typically verifies or reconstructs the structure part of a data structure from the data part. Such a program has two prerequisites: - The data has to be stored in a way that even if the structure becomes corrupted, it is still possible to reconstruct it. - Someone has to spend the time to write the auditing program and figure out when to use it. I first learned about data-structure audits from a fellow I met at a conference. He had spent many years working on telephone switching systems at a time at which processors were so expensive that a typical telephone central office had only two of them — despite a requirement of no more than eight hours of down time for any reason over 40 years. He said that this level of reliability required three separate strategies.

How to Knit a Child’s Hat Using the master pattern here, this hat knits up very quickly and makes a great small gift. It has a paper-bag top that requires no decreasing. Simply knit the tube as long as you want, bind off, and close the top of the hat with a simple tie. Size: Child’s S (M, L) Brim circumference: 16 (18, 20) inches Yarn: Desired yarn in the amount specified. Hat A: Schaefer Yarns Chris (80% extra-fine merino wool superwash/20% nylon, 215 yd. per skein), 1 skein in color Julia Morgan. This hat, knit in size M, was worked at a gauge of 5 stitches per inch on a US 5 needle. Hat B: Valley Yarns Valley Superwash (100% extra-fine merino superwash, 97 yd. per skein), 1 skein in color Blue Mist. This hat, knit in size S, was worked at a gauge of 5 stitches per inch on a US 5 needle. Needles: You can use any one of the following needles in the size needed to obtain your desired gauge: One 32- to 40-inch circular needle Two 16-inch circular needles If you are working a rolled stockinette brim, you will need another needle of the same type, one size smaller than that used to obtain your desired gauge. |Gauge in Stockinette||Approximate Yardage| |3 sts/inch||60–90 yards| |4 sts/inch||85–125 yards| |5 sts/inch||100–160 yards| |6 sts/inch||135–225 yards| |7 sts/inch||165–250 yards| You can work this project using any of the circular knitting methods. However, the smallest size may be difficult to work on a 16-inch circular because the stitches may be stretched out along the needle. It is easiest to knit small hats using the magic-loop method with one long circular needle. Determine the desired circumference for the hat. Most hats should be knit with negative ease. Measure around the widest part of the intended wearer’s head and subtract 1⁄2–1-1⁄2 inches from that measurement to calculate the hat circumference. A hemmed brim is not as stretchy as a rolled or ribbed brim, so it’s best not to include too much negative ease when using this hem. Choose a yarn that is both machine washable and soft against the skin. Superwash yarns save moms some work, and softer yarns make hats that kids will wear. If a child has allergies or sensitivities to animal fiber, choose a cotton or acrylic yarn that meets the criteria above. If the hat will be worn in colder weather, stick with heavier yarns: bulky, worsted, or DK weight. Because this project is so simple to knit with very little patterning, it’s a great place to use a variegated or self-patterning yarn. After choosing your yarn, make a swatch in stockinette to determine your gauge and needle size and make you hat: Arrange your stitches on the needles according to your chosen circular knitting method. Join for working in the round, being careful not to twist the cast-on around the needles. Place a marker to indicate the end of the round. |Gauge||Number of Stitches to Cast On| |3 sts/inch||48 (54, 60)| |4 sts/inch||64 (72, 80)| |5 sts/inch||80 (90, 100)| |6 sts/inch||96 (108, 120)| |7 sts/inch||112 (126, 140)| Follow the directions here for the ribbed brim. Other rib patterns that are good for the bottom of a hat are 2 ×2, 2 ×1, and 3 ×1. Remember that your chosen rib pattern must fit evenly into your number of cast-on stitches. Continue working in rib for 1-1⁄2 inches or the desired length from the cast-on edge. Follow these directions for the rolled stockinette brim: Using a needle one size smaller than the one you will use for the body of your hat, knit for 2 inches. Change back to the larger needle and work the remainder of the hat. You can also make a hemmed brim: Purl 1 round to create a turning ridge. Work 1 more inch of stockinette stitch. No matter which brim you chose, the instructions are the same for the remainder of the hat: Work in stockinette stitch until the hat measures 6-1⁄2 (7, 7-1⁄2) inches from the edge of the brim. If using a hemmed brim, measure from the purled turning round. If using a rolled brim, measure from the bottom of the rolled brim. If using a ribbed brim, measure from the cast-on edge. Bind off loosely. Weave in yarn ends. If you worked a hemmed brim, fold the bottom edge up inside the hat along the purled turning round. Loosely whipstitch the hem in place on the wrong side. Cut two or three strands of yarn about 12 inches long. Holding these strands together, tie them tightly around the top of the hat about 1-1⁄2 inches from the bound-off edge. Using a seaming needle, take the yarn ends to the inside and weave them in.

|| A - B - C -D | E - F - G - H | I - J - K - L | M - N - O - P | Q - R - S - T | U - V - W - X - Y - Z| Too low exposure, resulting in a dark photo. A Use Case is a real photographic scenario that describes the requirements for a camera or a lens to shoot a certain type of photograph. DxOMark defines six Use Cases for scoring lenses and camera sensors (five for lenses, four for sensors): Travel & Family, Portrait & Studio, Landscape & Architecture, Reportage , Sports & Wildlife, and a general purpose use case to report sensor overall performance. Read more about Lens Use Cases or Sensor Use Cases definitions. The fundamental quality characterizing a photon, equivalent to its energy. Differing visible wavelengths are perceived as different colors.

Energizing Environments - e2 a Global learning project for k12 students Your students know it is important for the entire world to be healthy - it is never too soon to make a plan to conserve, protect, and energize their environment, specifically their own school. This is an ongoing International project that can follow individual classroom lessons on ecosystems, or function as a stand alone project. The entire project may take 1 – 2 weeks depending on the date selected to implement final plans. Students from around the world share ideas to make their school environments healthier. The global collaboration between students contributes to their final goal, which is to make their school a healthy place. We call this Energizing Environments. Contact Us: [email protected] © 2010 Energizing Environments

Nearly 20 years after the Earth Summit, nations are again on the Road to Rio, but in a world very different and very changed from that of 1992. Over the last two years, the concept of a “green economy” has moved into the mainstream of policy discourse. Heads of state and finance ministers increasing speak about the green economy; it is referred to in the text of G20 communiqués and discussed in the context of sustainable development and eradicating poverty (United Nations General Assembly 2010). This recent interest in a green economy has been intensified by widespread disillusionment with our prevailing economic paradigm, emanating from the many concurrent and recent crises – particularly the recession of 2008-2009. At the same time, increasing evidence is pointing to an alternative paradigm, in which increased wealth does not lead to growing environmental risks, ecological scarcities and social disparities Towards a Green Economy is among UNEP’s key contributions to the Rio+20 process and the overall goal of addressing poverty and delivering a sustainable 21st century. The report makes a compelling economic and social case for investing two per cent of global GDP in greening ten central sectors of the economy in order to shift development and unleash public and private capital flows onto a low-carbon, resource-efficient path.

Healthy Kids Diet Quick Tips 1. Stock Up What you stock your kitchen with will influence your children’s food choices. Leave high-fat, salty and sugary snacks off your grocery list. Instead, fill your cart with fruits and vegetables, particularly portable ones like apples, bananas and carrots. Other healthful snacks include low-fat yogurt, natural peanut butter and celery, and whole-grain crackers and low-fat cheese. Choose water or milk over soda. Next: 2. Get The Family Involved » More Healthy Kids Diet Tips and Recipes:

The New York Times recently published an article linking red meat to cancer and heart disease. Fast Company posted an infographdepicting the same. Pink slime has caused a national outcry. Yet it’s not all red meat that we should fight, but meat from poorly raised animals. It used to be that cows could roam freely, feeding on grass and taking their time and space to grow. When the animals matured, farmers would walk them to the local butcher shop where we would pick up our daily protein needs. Then came refrigerated transportation, meatpacking factorization (think The Jungle), corn subsidies, and antibiotics that made the entire process cheaper, faster, bigger, and less about the quality of the food we eat. It brought cheap meats to Americans, but at what cost? Beef transformed from a locally-sourced seasonal food to something we make from mixing foodcoloring and mush (and no matter how happy it looks, it’s not right). Here are 10 reasons why we should go back to sustainably raised, grassfed beef.

The Leading eBooks Store Online for Kindle Fire, Apple, Android, Nook, Kobo, PC, Mac, Sony Reader... Moving On With Reading This resource provides a sequence of lessons that a teacher can use to assist students learn and retain 100 basic sight words that many find difficult to remember. This resource follows on from Getting Started In Reading where the first 20 most basic sight words are covered. Excellent for all young learners but particularly useful for: ? students who have made limited progress in the first year at school ? students who are non-english speaking ? students with a short attention span. The 100 basic sight words are divided into 10 graded groups and exercises practice and repractice the words in each group. The exercises cover a range of modes and include active learning methods (games etc) to give students frequent exposure to the words so that they begin to recognize these very important words instantly. The words are used in short paragraphs and build gradually into short stories using vocab and picture clues to ensure students can read them successfully and some of the exercises have a reading comprehension component. Extensive teacher notes are included to assist the teacher implement this program in their classroom with groups or individuals or on a one-to-one remedial basis. Developed by the author from extensive work in this area with a variety of children this program is a lifesaver for teachers of young students in the important early reading years or older students experiencing learning difficulties. 120 pages; ISBN 9781877395123 , or download in

BOOK IV, CHAPTER III PERSONAL AND WAGES TAXES § 1. Older than the taxes that we have been engaged in considering, but now of little importance, are the capitation or poll taxes, so familiar to students of mediæval finance. Their origin is evidently found in the idea that persons, as such, should contribute to the wants of the public power. Capitation and property taxes were the two great categories of receipts in early times. When the greater part of a community possessed little accumulated wealth, the method of taxing each adult for a fixed sum was natural. What is very suitable in a rude state of society is altogether unfitted for a progressive and civilised one. No modern State could employ a capitation tax as a substantial source of revenue. Its inequality and directness combine to make it unpopular. The remains of this form of personal taxation are, however, very general, though their interest is rather historical or political than financial. The equal taxation of persons by poll taxes or capitations generally develops by some form of graduation into an income tax,*61 or, as happened widely in the seventeenth century, is replaced by an excise on the necessaries of life. The sense of proportion accounts for the former, as the great dislike to the capitation tax does for the latter. But several countries, notwithstanding, retain a small charge on the person of each contributor. § 2. English history supplies us with some illustrations of the poll tax. The first was in 1377, followed immediately by those of 1379 and 1380 (the latter the proximate cause of the Peasant Revolt). The two latter were graduated according to rank. At intervals the graduated poll tax reappears, as in 1453, 1513, and 1641. Its last employment was under William III. in the French war, and it ceased completely after 1698.*62 The French capitation was first levied in 1695, and continued with changes up to the Revolution. It was graduated; at first twenty-two classes were formed, but this part of the system was altered in 1701. The constituent Assembly created the personal tax (1791), which consisted of the value of three days' labour, and added it to the mobilier. The price of the day's labour is determined for each commune by the Council of the department, within the limits of 5d. and 1s. 3d. No addition can be made for local charges, and where an octroi is levied, the personal tax may be paid out of it. So far as can be ascertained, the total yield is between £600,000 and £700,000.*63 The Italian States possessed complicated capitation taxes which have not survived the establishment of the present kingdom. So did many of the German States;*64 of which, the class tax of Prussia was the most noticeable. The poll tax of 1811 was replaced by the class tax of 1820 by which the mass of the population was grouped in four classes, paying various rates, from £1 16s. to 9d. The income tax and the class tax were separated in 1851, and the latter, confined to incomes under £150, was divided into twelve classes, which, under the law of 1875, paid from 3s. to £3 12s., incomes under £21 being exempt. By the law of 1891 the class tax was absorbed in the income tax, and incomes under £45 are exempted. The Saxon income tax in its lower part is practically the same as a capitation tax. The poll tax also survives in Switzerland, where it is chiefly employed for local purposes, and not in all the cantons. Russia, which had long preserved the capitation, abandoned it in 1887. The nobility had been always exempt, and, since 1866, the commercial classes. While it was in force the rate varied from district to district, and its amount was about £9,000,000 (taking the rouble at its nominal value). In the United States poll taxes have been used from the colonial period. At present, more than half of the States have them in force, mostly for the state or commonwealth revenue, but, in some cases, for the counties, and in others for education, or road making. In some commonwealths the payment of the poll tax is a condition of the suffrage.*65 In addition to the taxes already noticed, we should mention the services demanded by the State from its citizens. Military service is the most prominent, and it is a large part of the real, as distinguished from the nominal, cost of Continental armies. The real nature of this service, as a tax, is best shown by the compensatory tax (Wehrsteuer), imposed on those who do not serve, which has given rise to so much controversy in Germany. The method of Prestations in France for the repair of roads is another example, and there too the alternative of working or paying is open. The mediæval system of finance availed itself more extensively of this direct method of procuring resources; the surviving instances in modern times are—with the exception of military duty—more curious than important. § 3. The poll or capitation tax is far from being a pure tax on wages: the taxation of professions through Schedule D of the English Income Tax, and by the fourth division (Table D) of the Patente, is a nearer approach to that point. Attempts to reach the great body of wage-earners are generally made by means of indirect taxation. The enforcement of a capitation tax is certain to meet with, at least, passive opposition, and in any case its productiveness cannot be great. The method of using it as a necessary condition to acquiring full political rights may be admissible if the receipts are given to local bodies, but this regulation is political rather than financial. The general result is that this form of taxation is decaying. Its persistence is due to the financial conservatism that is so strong in most countries. It is altogether out of place in the modern financial system, and though it may for a time survive in some Swiss cantons or American States, its importance will, we believe, steadily diminish. The incidence of personal taxes, especially in the form of capitations on day labourers, has been regarded by many writers as wholly on the employers, or through them ultimately on the consumers of the products they turn out, but this conclusion is not by any means certain. It is far more probable that a small tax on the poorer classes will lower, or prevent a rise in, their mode of living. Its action on population is far too indefinite to be used for laying down an absolute rule. Much will depend on the exact form of the tax, whether uniform or graduated, confined to the head of the family or extended to its other adult members. No proposition in finance has been more dangerous in its application than that which declares that the labourer cannot permanently suffer from taxation.*66 Notes for this chapter It is significant that Adam Smith discusses the income tax under the title 'capitation taxes,' Wealth of Nations, 367. Dowell, iii. 3-7. Vignes, i. 40-1. De Parieu, i. 139-151. Seligman, Finance Statistics of American Commonwealths, 53; cp. Ely, Taxation, 209 11. This was the case in Massachusetts until the amendment of the Constitution in 1891, Massachusetts Tax Commission Report (1897), 5. Lord Avebury (Statistical Journal, lxiv. 567) regards this passage as 'an admission which amounts almost to a surrender' of the position taken with respect to the theory of equal diffusion in an earlier part of this work (see Book iii. ch. 5, § 4). It is, however, merely a criticism of the exaggerated form of the doctrine held by the Physiocrats and Ricardo. To hold that labourers do not always, or even generally, shift capitation taxes is quite consistent with believing that taxes are not equally diffused. Book IV, Chapter IV End of Notes Return to top

Most kids aren't aware of the cultural customs that have molded Halloween. Here's a hidden history of this spooky holiday. Ever wonder why we wear green on St. Patrick's day, or where the leprechaun came from? Find out with this worksheet on St. Patty's Day history! Irish dance has a rich history. Celebrate this wonderful piece of Ireland's culture with this festive coloring page. Teach your little leprechaun about the various St. Patrick's Day traditions and other fun parts of this special Irish heritage day. Celebrate the contributions of famous Irish Americans with this worksheet. Read a bit about each famous figure and complete a comprehension exercise. Celebrate Irish-American history with this printable about four founding fathers from Ireland! Let your kindergartener show someone she really cares by coloring this Irish symbol of love for a friend or relative. Here are some great ideas for celebrating Celtic culture with your family this Saint Patrick's Day. Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a beautiful Celtic knot coloring page. Your child can get a taste of ancient Irish symbols as she colors.

The baseline temperature in an electronic system is a very important parameter for thermal design and must be carefully considered. But the term ambient temperature has developed a lot of ambiguity in its usage as well as its value. System and component designers can greatly improve the accuracy of their thermal considerations by clearly communicating what the baseline temperature truly is for their implementation, and finding a way to estimate the temperatures at or close to the components of interest. What is Ambient Temperature? Thermal analysis is an essential part of nearly all electronic system designs these days. We have to make sure that the components do not heat up so much as to affect their functionality or make the system practically unusable. And for most of us, it’s a delicate dance of environmental factors, system design, component power dissipation, and a range of usage conditions. We must establish some baseline temperature conditions, then figure out through modeling, calculations, rules of thumb, and ultimately measurements – how much will things heat up above that temperature. So what if that baseline temperature and the assumptions around it could vary so wildly, that all the other calculations are rendered as noise, and the results of such a calculation could be off by 100 percent or more? In other words, what is ambient temperature? The interesting thing is that while it is a very common term, there seem to be different assumptions on what “ambient temperature” really means. Here are some interpretations used by some of us day in and day out, as also illustrated in Figure 1: - The temperature of the system, unaffected by the temperature rise of the system itself (either far enough away or before the system is turned on). The equivalent of a true thermal ground. - The temperature of the air inside the system when it is running. Often measured far away from the component of interest so as not to be too much affected by it. - The temperature of the air moving over a component. - The temperature of the board or chassis of the system, which is considered to never rise above a certain maximum temperature. - The temperature of the air (usually driven by fans) at the entry or exit of the system. - The temperature of the room when a component or system is tested on the bench, on an evaluation module (EVM) or a real system board (with or without an enclosure). - The temperature setting of the oven when a component or system is tested at high temperature (with or without an enclosure). - The temperature to which a system is preheated for an operational test (of unspecified duration). Figure 1: Eight potentially different ambient measurement points. (Click on image to enlarge) For example, an end system designer will probably use 2, 4, or 5, because this is the temperature they have experience with from previous systems and will ultimately be able to measure on the system in the field. While a system test engineer will probably use 6, 7, or 8, since they need to focus on the temperature they can control during testing. Alternatively, a component supplier will probably use 1 or 3, since these are conducive to component modeling and the component suppliers are generally not privy to the level of detail needed to consider the entire system effects. There are two common misconceptions when using ambient temperature alone for calculations of component temperatures. The first is that each component can be viewed in isolation. You simply go to the datasheet for the component of interest, get the theta-JA value (or maybe even a fancy table or curve or derating factor), drop in your ambient temperature and power dissipation, and there is your component temperature. But this calculation assumes only one component on the board, and that it therefore has the entire board (or at least a 3x3 inch square of it, if using a JEDEC board) dedicated to cooling it. I’ve not seen many systems where this is the case. In reality the other components around that one will be heating it up and skewing that calculation. The second is that the ambient in one system is equivalent to the ambient in another. Specifically, that the ambient in a JEDEC system, a one cubic foot box with only one component inside, is equivalent to the ambient in a real system such as a cell phone, base station, or even a car. Looking at the comparison in Figure 2, it’s pretty clear that this is not what real systems look like, and yet that is the implicit assumption when a JEDEC theta-JA (ΘJA) value is used to calculate component temperature rise above ambient. In fact, the very definition of theta-JA (JEDEC standard JESD51-2) states that the parameter is intended for comparison only! Figure 2: System comparison. (Click on image to enlarge) If ambient temperature means different things to different people, and the basic calculation of component temperature rise above ambient temperature has some flaws in it, what is a system or component designer to do? Here are three suggestions. First: agree on terms when working through the design stages. Don’t accept a simple specification of (for example) 65°C ambient temperature or industrial temperature rating, but dig into such details as where is the baseline temperature measured, under what operation conditions, and for what period of time? Second: find a way to get closer to the components than the ambient. This will make the estimates much more accurate, because of the implications of each system’s uniqueness as well as the surrounding components. One good method is to use the board or case temperature as the reference specification, rather than ambient. Third: take case temperature measurements on the actual system to confirm the analysis. A good way to bring these data earlier into the design cycle is to use measured data on similar systems (often a previous generation) to get an estimate and calibrate, and then simply consider the changes rather than doing thermal analysis of a new system from scratch. So ultimately, what is ambient temperature? It is a commonly used term. It carries the risk of ambiguity because it is not clearly defined. It carries the risk of inaccuracy because it suggests that junction temperature calculations can be oversimplified. When carefully defined, it can help to start the conversation on thermal design. But, ultimately, it is probably not the best place to end the conversation because there are better options available. Download a datasheet: “IC Package Thermal Metrics”, Darvin Edwards, Texas Instruments, SPRA953A–June 2007: http://focus.ti.com/lit/an/spra953a/spra953a.pdf. About the Author Matthew Romig currently serves as the Packaging Technology Productization Manager in the Analog organization at Texas Instruments, where he is responsible for packaging technology development and implementation for TI’s broad range of Analog product lines and packaging technologies. He has developed specialties in thermal analysis, flip chip packaging, and power management packaging. He is also a member of TI’s Group Technical Staff. Matt received his BSME from Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. He can be reached at [email protected].

Skip to main content More Search Options A member of our team will call you back within one business day. Colorectal cancer (cancer in the colon or rectum) is a leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. But it doesn’t have to be. When this cancer is found and removed early, the chances of a full recovery are very good. Because colorectal cancer rarely causes symptoms in its early stages, screening for the disease is important. It’s even more crucial if you have risk factors for the disease. Learn more about colorectal cancer and its risk factors. Then talk to your doctor about being screened. You could be saving your own life. Your risk of having colorectal cancer increases if you: Are 50 years of age or older. Have a family history or personal history of colorectal cancer or adenomatous polyps. Have a personal history of colorectal polyps, Crohn’s disease, or ulcerative colitis. Have a family history of multiple concurrent solid-tumor cancers. Waste from food you eat enters the colon from the small intestine. As it travels through the colon, the waste (stool) loses water and becomes more solid. Intestinal muscles push it toward the sigmoid—the last section of the colon. Stool then moves into the rectum, where it’s stored until it’s ready to leave the body during a bowel movement. Polyps are growths that form on the lining of the colon or rectum. Most are benign, which means they aren’t cancerous. But over time, polyps can become malignant (cancerous). This occurs when cells in these polyps begin growing abnormally. In time, malignant cells invade more and more of the colon and rectum. The cancer may also spread to nearby organs or lymph nodes or to other parts of the body. Finding and removing polyps can help prevent cancer from ever forming. Screening means looking for a medical problem before you have symptoms. During screening for colorectal cancer, your doctor will ask about your medical history, examine you, and do one or more tests. Medical History: Your doctor will ask about your medical history. Mention if a family member has had colon cancer or polyps. Also mention any health problems you have had in the past. Digital Rectal Exam (DRE): During a DRE, the doctor inserts a lubricated gloved finger into the rectum. The test is painless and takes less than a minute. Fecal Occult Blood Test: This test checks for occult blood in stool (blood you can’t see). Hidden blood may be a sign of colon polyps or cancer. A small sample of stool is tested for blood in a laboratory. Most often, you collect this sample at home using a kit your doctor gives you. Follow the instructions carefully for using this kit. Avoid certain foods and medications before the test, as directed. Barium Enema with Contrast: This test uses x-rays to provide images of the entire colon and rectum. Bowel prep is also needed the day before this test. You will be awake for the test, but you may be given medication to help you relax. At the start of the test, a radiologist (a doctor who specializes in imaging tests) inserts a soft tube into the rectum. The tube is used to fill the colon with a contrast liquid (barium). The liquid helps the colon show up clearly on the x-rays. Virtual colonoscopy: This exam uses a series of x-ray photographs to create a three-dimensional view of the colon. During the procedure, you will lie on a table that is part of a special x-ray machine called an MRI machine. A small tube will be inserted into your rectum. Then, the table will move into the machine and photos will be taken of your colon. A computer will combine these photos to create a three-dimensional picture. Colonoscopy: This is the best test doctors have for finding and removing colorectal polyps. The day before the test, you will do a bowel prep to cleanse your colon. You will be given instructions for this. Just before the test, you are given a medication to make you sleepy. Then, a long, flexible, lighted tube called a colonoscope is gently inserted into the rectum and guided through the entire colon. Images of the colon are viewed on a video screen. Any polyps that are found are removed and sent to a lab for testing. If a polyp can’t be removed, a sample of tissue is taken and the polyp is removed later during surgery. Sigmoidoscopy: This test is similar to colonoscopy, but focuses only on the sigmoid colon and rectum. As with colonoscopy, bowel prep must be done the day before this test. You are awake during the procedure, but you may be given medication to help you relax. During the test, the doctor guides a thin, flexible, lighted tube called a sigmoidoscope through your rectum and lower colon. The images are displayed on a video screen. Polyps are removed, if possible, and sent to a lab for testing. A puncture or tear in the colon Risks of anesthesia Failure to detect a polyp Call your doctor if you have any of the following after any screening test: Fever over 101°F

Skip to main content More Search Options A member of our team will call you back within one business day. Transmission-based precautions help prevent the spread of certain infections. Contact precautions are one type of transmission-based precaution. Always use contact precautions in addition to standard precautions. Most germs are spread through touch. They are often spread by hands. They can also be spread by patient care equipment and other objects. Use contact precautions with patients known to have or suspected of having certain infections as outlined by your facility, including: Scabies and other skin infections Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) Clostridium difficile infection The infected patient should be given a private room and bathroom. If this can’t be done, check with your facility’s infection control department. Also: Put gloves on before entering the room. Change your gloves if they have touched body fluids or substances. Remove gloves and wash your hands before leaving the patient’s room. Wear a gown when working directly with the patient or if your clothing will touch surfaces or other objects in the room. Have family members and other visitors wear a gown and gloves as outlined by your facility. Transport the patient only when necessary. Change the patient’s gown and linens before moving him or her. Alert the receiving department. Change gloves as soon as possible after they become contaminated. Change them before you go on to another task. Avoid touching objects, surfaces, or the patient with contaminated gloves or other contaminated objects. Avoid sharing patient care equipment. If an item must be shared, clean it with disinfectant between patients. Help patients wash their hands as often as possible. Clean all surfaces in the patient’s room and bathroom daily with approved disinfectant. Remove gloves and other PPE carefully before leaving the room.

February 16, 2011 -- The realization of self-powered microsystems for medical implants, drug delivery, remote monitoring, or safety-driven applications forms the basis behind a new project being run at the UK's NPL by the Functional Materials Group. The goal is to replace batteries in these applications with an energy-scavenging power supply. This energy harvesting power supply would eliminate the environmental hazards and costs associated with battery technologies. Energy harvesting covers the scavenging of many low-grade energy sources such as environmental vibrations, human power, thermal sources, wind energy and their conversion into useable electrical energy. This project is concerned mainly with environmental vibrations and human power, where the transformation of mechanical to electrical energy is used to power small autonomous devices. The conversion can be achieved by various methods; however, the most promising options for MEMS devices include magnetic, piezoelectric and magnetostrictive transformation. Example applications might include airborne particle detection in massively parallel autonomous sensing systems (motes), medical condition monitoring with embedded active drug delivery systems, and the development of structural health monitoring systems that scavenge innate vibrations for self power. The global market for microsystems technology is estimated at $35 billion (2002 - Nexus: Market analysis for MST 2000-2005), with biomedical applications estimated at EU12B.There are a wide range of UK companies that would benefit from this understanding of this technology, from healthcare to transport, the energy sector, aerospace and defense sectors, where MST is given a high priority. The expected time frame during which this technology will be demonstrated extends from 2 to 5 years for defense applications associated with the Smart Soldier concept to 3-7 years for domestic appliances (MP3 players with built-in energy scavengers for example). Knowledge will be shared with all partners onboard the project, whilst the wider community will enjoy open access to the generic metrology output in the form of web-based tools, new pre-normative standards documents, and the work will be further assessed for quality through the peer-reviewed publication process. Case studies will demonstrate the concepts so that organizations not in the materials supply market will gain a better understanding of the benefits associated with energy harvesting. Read more in the recent edition of NPL's Environmental Measures at http://www.npl.co.uk/publications/newsletters/ The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the UK's National Measurement Institute and is a world-leading centre of excellence in developing and applying the most accurate measurement standards, science and technology. Read about NPL's Functional Materials research at http://www.npl.co.uk/advanced-materials/materials-areas/functional/

Cart is empty Highly Energy-efficient CMOS Logic Systems Developments in low power, high performance CMOS logic technology are vital to the future of microprocessors and system-on-Chip (SoC) devices for personal computers, servers, and mobile/smart phones. Much of the processing in these computing systems is carried out using a volatile hierarchical memory system in which bistable circuits such as static random access memory (SRAM) and flip-flop (FF) play an essential role for fast data-access. However, the power to these bistable circuits cannot be switched off without losing their data. This inability to turn off power is a fundamental problem for energy consumption in CMOS logic systems. The method for saving energy in CMOS logic systems, called power-gating, uses architecture to cut the supply voltage to idle circuit domains, effectively putting them to power shut-off state to avoid leakage and thereby save static energy. Satoshi Sugahara and his team at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have proposed a new architecture of power-gating using non-volatile SRAM (NV-SRAM) and non-volatile FF (NV-FF) circuits, called non-volatile power-gating, so that the size of logic circuit domains for power-gating is optimally designed, supply voltages to the domains are cut at the optimum times, and the energy cost of the logic circuits is worthwhile. Over the past few years, Sugahara and his team have been developing non-volatile bistable memory circuits (NV-SRAM and NV-FF) required to establish non-volatile power-gating systems with better overall performance and energy efficiency than conventional power-gating systems . In particular, the researchers have built pseudo-spin metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (PS-MOSFETs) for use in the non-volatile bistable memory circuits. The PS-MOSFET can be configured with an ordinary MOSFET coupled with a spin-transfer torque magnetic tunnel junction (STT-MTJ), and it can reproduce the functions of spin-transistors – in which different electrons spin states or magnetization configurations of the ferromagnetic electrodes are used to control transistor output1. Spin transistors can also store non-volatile information1. In a typical bistable memory circuit, an inverter loop consisting of cross-coupling two CMOS gates is used to store each memory bit. In the new non-volatile bistable circuits, PS-MOSFETs are added to the inverter loop. Previous attempts to build non-volatile bistable circuits with STT-MTJs have resulted in performance degradation, because the STT-MTJs interfere with their fundamental circuits of the inverter loops. To overcome this problem, the team designed NV-SRAM and NV-FF circuits using PS-MOSFETs. In these circuits, the STT-MTJs can be electrically separated from the inverter loops by the PS-MOSFETs and thus have no degradation effects on the bistable circuit performance. The NV-SRAM and NV-FF circuits built by Sugahara’s team have performed well under tests so far, compared to conventional SRAM/FF circuits. They also developed architectures for minimizing break-even time (that is an important performance index of power-gating) of the NV-SRAM and NV-FF circuits, including a ‘store-free’ shutdown, wherein existing data is not rewritten, thereby dramatically saving energy. These new transistor and circuit designs could be pivotal in the development of faster, more energy-efficient processing in future CMOS logic systems. Most importantly, as the researchers state in a recent publication2-5, “Proposed architectures have excellent compatibility with present Microprocessor/SoC technologies”, and “Proposed non-volatile bistable circuits using PS-MOSFETs can dramatically reduce the energy issues caused by static power dissipation in advanced CMOS logic systems” S. Sugahara, and J. Nitta, Proceedings of the IEEE, “Spin-Transistor Electronics: An Overview and Outlook”, vol.98, no. 12, 2010, pp. 2124-2154. Fig. 1 (a) Circuit configuration of PS-MOSFET, in which the STT-MTJ connected to the source of the MOSFET feeds back its voltage drop to the gate, and the degree of negative feedback depends on the resistance state of the STT-MTJ.(b) Simulated output characteristics and current-induced magnetization swiching (CIMS) behavior of the PS-MOSFET. Miwako Kato and Yukiko Tokida, Center for Public Informatio Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1, Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8550, Japan Tel: +81-3-5734-2975, Fax: +81-3-5734-3661 About Tokyo Institute of Technology As one of Japan’s top universities, Tokyo Institute of Technology seeks to contribute to civilization, peace and prosperity in the world, and aims at developing global human capabilities par excellence through pioneering research and education in science and technology, including industrial and social management. To achieve this mission, we have an eye on educating highly moral students to acquire not only scientific expertise but also expertise in the liberal arts, and a balanced knowledge of the social sciences and humanities, all while researching deeply from basics to practice with academic mastery. Through these activities, we wish to contribute to global sustainability of the natural world and the support of human life. Learn more about CMOS logic systems market and publications that provide informed perspective and relevant analysis of emergent technologies.

Materials Science for Engineering StudentsBy - Traugott Fischer, Professor Emeritus, Department of Materials Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, USA Materials Science for Engineering Students offers students of introductory materials science and engineering, and their instructors, a fresh perspective on the rapidly evolving world of advanced engineering materials. This new, concise text takes a more contemporary approach to materials science than the more traditional books in this subject, with a special emphasis on using an inductive method to first introduce materials and their particular properties and then to explain the underlying physical and chemical phenomena responsible for those properties. The text pays particular attention to the newer classes of materials, such as ceramics, polymers and composites, and treats them as part of two essential classes, structural materials and functional materials, rather than the traditional method of emphasizing structural materials alone. Second and third year engineering students taking a required one- or two-semester sequence in introductory materials science and engineering, including students majoring in materials, mechanical, civil, chemical, aerospace, biomedical and environmental engineering; graduate-level students in materials, electrical, chemical and manufacturing engineering who need to take this as a core pre-requisite. Hardbound, 600 Pages Published: October 2008 Imprint: Academic Press - Part I. The Classes of Materials 1. Types of Materials - Electron Energy Bands and Chemical Bonds Part II. Structural Materials 2. The Strength of Materials 3. Deformation of Metals and Crystal Structures 4. How to Strengthen Metals 5. Alloys and Phase Diagrams 6. Thermal Processing and the Use of Reaction Kinetics 7. Ferrous and Non-Ferrous Alloys 8. Ceramics 9. Polymers 10. Composites Part III. Functional Materials 11. Conductors, Insulators and Semiconductors 12. Fabrication of Integrated Circuits and MEMS 13. Optical Materials 14. Magnetic Materials 15. Batteries Part IV. Environmental Interactions 16. Corrosion and Wear 17. Biomaterials Part V. Nanomaterials and the Study of Materials 18. Nanomaterials 19. The Characterization of Materials

Robert Ferry Jr., MD, is a U.S. board-certified Pediatric Endocrinologist. After taking his baccalaureate degree from Yale College, receiving his doctoral degree and residency training in pediatrics at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA), he completed fellowship training in pediatric endocrinology at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD, is a U.S. board-certified Anatomic Pathologist with subspecialty training in the fields of Experimental and Molecular Pathology. Dr. Stöppler's educational background includes a BA with Highest Distinction from the University of Virginia and an MD from the University of North Carolina. She completed residency training in Anatomic Pathology at Georgetown University followed by subspecialty fellowship training in molecular diagnostics and experimental pathology. Infants and children with constipation are treated differently than adults, because patterns of bowel movements change from the time they are born until they reach the age of 3 or 4 years. The majority of children with constipation do not have a medical disease or disorder causing the constipation. Rarely, a disorder causes infants and children to have significant problems moving their bowels. Many things can contribute to constipation. The most common cause in a child older than 18 months is their willful avoidance of the toilet (for various reasons). For example, toddlers are often so involved in their play that they lack time or patience for toilet breaks. At school they may be concerned with lack of privacy or the cleanliness of the bathroom. They may have had a prior painful or frightening experience that makes them want to avoid the bathroom. Over time, their brain learns to ignore repeated urges by the colon to visit the bathroom. As stool remains in the colon, the colon will absorb water out of the stool, making it hard and dry. This hard stool is even more difficult or painful to pass, which causes the child to continue "holding it." Changes in diet, or a different diet affect bowel habits. In adults, high-fiber diets have been shown to improve bowel function. In children, however, high-fiber diets have not been proven to improve constipation. Infants and children who eat well-balanced meals typically are not constipated. Breastfed infants will generally have more stools per day. Their stools vary more in frequency when compared to bottle-fed infants. For example, breastfed infants produce anywhere from 5-40 bowel movements per week; whereas formula-fed infants have 5-28 bowel movements per week. Switching the type of milk (or formula) can also cause constipation. Teenagers and toddlers who eat a lot of sugar and desserts are prone to difficult passing of their stools. Any intense changes in a child-such as illnesses causing fever, becoming bedridden, eating less, or dehydration may decrease the frequency of stools or may harden stools. A number of medical disorders can cause chronic constipation. Hypothyroidism (reduced activity of the thyroid gland) is a condition that causes decreased activity of the intestinal muscles along with many other symptoms. All newborns should be tested for hypothyroidism as part of the newborn screening blood test (heel prick or Guthrie test). This condition is usually diagnosed when a baby is very young but can occur at any age. True constipation in infants and children that has been present since birth may be from Hirschsprung's disease. In this rare congenital condition, a segment of the colon lacks ganglion cells (a type of nerve cell). The affected colon cannot receive directions from the brain to work properly. Most infants with Hirschsprung's disease display symptoms within the first few weeks of life. They may be underweight or small for their age. They may vomit and pass small stools, which are described as ribbon-like. Hirschsprung's disease is generally more common in boys and in babies with Down syndrome. If Hirschsprung's disease is suspected, you need to take your child to a specialist (gastroenterologist or pediatric surgeon) for further tests. Diabetes is common medical problem associated with constipation. Alterations in blood mineral and (especially calciumor potassium) can change the bowel habits. Although other symptoms of lead poisoning should be more obvious, children with chronic lead exposure may have constipation. Children with disorders of the nervous system (such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, or spinal cord problems) display a high rate of constipation because they spend prolonged time in one position, experience abnormal colon movement, or lack coordination in moving their bowels.

Aligned to Idaho ’s Content Standards Great ISAT Review! Easy to implement as pre-lesson refresher. Spool Racer (Energy Lesson) The students will be able to build models that will show potential and kinetic energy. The Solar Bag (Solar Lesson) The students will be able to work in groups and show how solar energy can change the air temperature. Weather Station (Wind Lesson) Students will be able to describe weather and understand how the weather affects their daily lives, observe and record weather related data, construct instruments for measuring weather, be able to explain how each instrument is used to measure weather and make predictions about weather using averages. Solar Energy Radiometer (Solar Lesson) Students will be able to define energy sources, define the concept of renewable energy and explain the concept of solar energy using a Radiometer.

You are right Fathie, I mean the other day I became a semi-expert on loft insulation after just a hour of research online! How on earth would we have done that in the days before internet. I've just been helping someone out who was looking for stories for teens and a quick search led me to some fabulous teen magazine sites - other than the girlie ones on fashion and boys that is! - so the internet alone is a great resource for students to use for homework assignments and finding texts and info to bring into class. It's a way to make the kids responsible for their learning as well as participating in the lesson topics so they are likely to be more interested during class activities. Technology isn't just the internet though. In many parts of the world teens are equipped with mobile phones and cameras so joint video projects would be possible, photographic projects to illustrate a story or to give presentations or design projects using some of the free design download kits out there. As far as learning with software goes, it's good, it works, but it still doesn't compare with good old human beings!

|Uluru is the largest monolith in the world. This program looks at the geological history of the rock and its features. It also covers the traditional Aboriginal view of the rock's features as explained in creation stories. The program then looks at the handing over of the rock to traditional owners, and the subsequent joint management program which is focused on preservation of the rock for all Australians. This series explores eight significant geographic features of the Australian landscape. The primary focus of each episode is the physical geography of the features, including their geological history. The programs also look at the interaction of people within these environments and issues relating to the care of these geographical and bilogicaly significant places. To assist students to: describe places according to their location and natural built features; describe how natural features affct the ways people live in particular places and; identify issues about the care of places arising from the different ways in which they are valued.

Record Arctic ozone hole appears A huge hole that appeared in the Earth's protective ozone layer above the Arctic in 2011 was the largest recorded in the Northern Hemisphere, triggering worries the event could occur again and be even worse, scientists said in a report on Monday. The ozone layer high in the stratosphere acts like a giant shield against the Sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which can cause skin cancers and cataracts. Since the 1980s, scientists have recorded an ozone hole every summer above the Antarctic at the bottom of the globe. Some years, the holes have been so large they covered the entire continent and stretched to parts of South America, leading to worries about a surge in skin cancers. During extreme events, up to 70 percent of the ozone layer can be destroyed, before it recovers months later. A matching hole above the Arctic was always much smaller, until March this year, when a combination of powerful wind patterns and intense cold high in the atmosphere created the right conditions for ozone-eating chlorine chemicals to damage the layer. The findings, reported on Monday in the journal Nature, show the hole opened over northern Russia, parts of Greenland, and Norway, meaning people in these areas were likely to have been exposed to high levels of UV radiation. "The chemical ozone destruction over the Arctic in early 2011 was, for the first time in the observational record, comparable to that in the Antarctic ozone hole," say the scientists, led by Gloria Manney of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Scientists say man-made chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons destroy ozone in the stratosphere. Sunlight breaks up the complex chemicals into simpler forms that react with ozone. While some of the chemicals are covered by a U.N. treaty that aims to stop their use, it will be decades before they are fully phased out of production. Photo shows climate activists Lesley Butler and Rob Bell (R) ''sunbathing'' on the edge of a frozen fjord in the Norwegian Arctic town of Longyearbyen April 25, 2007. Credit: Reuters/Francois Lenoir

Milton Banana wrote: Just trying to provide some perspective. Man's carbon is not the only carbon going in this system. But it is the majority of what is being added to the system. There is plenty of carbon before we arrived on the scene. Yes, I was refering to the total carbon budget. Which is a blatent attempt at misleading since the carbon cycle IS the system which is being discussed. Man's contribution is not insignificant, but it is trival really. No, it is no if one has at least a basic understanding of science. You see the carbon cycle represents a system which is in near equilibrium and the carbon transfers from one part of the system to the other. Not much carbon is added by nature and not much is removed, which is why it takes so long for the atmospheric concentration to be lowered by nature. Anyone reading just google "total carbon budget" and educate yourself. Or let me provide a NASA study. If you educated yourself you need a better teacher. Here is a look at a NASA carbon study. Clearly showing nature provides much more carbon into our system. No question about it. Basically it breaks down as follows. No, it is showing the system through which carbon flows in out biosphere. The items being mislables as emissions tell the tale of misrepresentation you confirmed in the use of "exchange" and "emit" for what is in the carbon cycle and what is added to it. Surface Ocean contains about 1,000 Gigatons of CO2 Intermediate and deep ocean contains about 38,000 Gt of CO2 In contrast to the atmosphere containing about 750 GT of CO2 Vegetation, Soils, and Detritus contains about 2,200 GT of CO2 Each year, the surface ocean and atmosphere exchange an estimated 90 GT C; vegetation and the atmosphere, 60 GT C; marine biota and the surface ocean, 50 GT C; and the surface ocean and the intermediate and deep oceans, 100 GT Note that the system EXCHANGES carbon. Mankind emits about 8.5 GT of CO2 per year. While mankind ADDS to the system. The atmosphere CO2 is cycled out in less than 8 years. No, the individual molecules will be exchanged in about that timeframe, but the concentration in the atmosphere will be unaffected. This is where you are confused about the carbon cycle. CO2 is NOT pollution. Yes, it is. 770,000 mmt of CO2 is from NATURAL SOURCE Moving within the system. 23,100 mmt of CO2 is from MAN MADE SOURCE Being added to the system. 770,000 + 23,100 = 793,000 TOTAL Faulty logic presented as math. Absorption is 781,400 mmt The other part of the cycle, which has a built in buffer to handle the small amount of carbon nature normally will add to the system. This would include weathering, volcanic action, tectonic action and the like. So as I have clearly demonstrated nature produces 96 percent of the carbon in our system. No the carbon is not produced, but only exchanged. There is a huge difference between the two. That difference is why the amount humans have added to the system has increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and changed the pH of the oceans. It doesn't matter really CO2 just cannot do what the climate change advocated say it does. No way it is just not possible. Given the espressed lack of basice science knowledge here, I would not take your word on it, sorry. Here is another carbon study in case your on the fence. Carbon budgets are to be avoided at all costs if you want to conceal the true nature of climate. Only to those who either cannot or do not wish to understand the basic science being discussed. It is no a problem for those who understand science and do not have an agenda they are desparate to support.

Arctic shipping routes open Satellite measurements show we are heading for another year of below-average ice cover in the Arctic. As sea ice melts during the summer months, two major shipping routes have opened in the Arctic Ocean. In 2008 satellites saw that the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route were open simultaneously for the first time since satellite measurements began in the 1970s – and now it has happened again. While the Northern Sea Route above Russia (also known as the Northeast Passage) has been open to shipping traffic since mid-August, recent satellite data show that the most direct course in the Northwest Passage now appears to be navigable as well. Located in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the Northwest Passage can be a short cut for shipping between Europe and Asia – but with the opening of the sea route comes the potential for both sovereignty claims and marine species migration across the Arctic Ocean. In 2007, Arctic sea ice hit a record low since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years before. That same year, the historically impassable Northwest Passage opened for the first time. Unusual weather contributed to 2007’s record ice loss: skies opened over the central Arctic Ocean and wind patterns pushed warm air into the region, promoting a strong melt. Weather patterns have been different this year, but the early opening of the passages indicates that we could be about to hit a new record low in ice cover. “The minimum ice extent is still three to four weeks away, and a lot depends on the weather conditions over the Arctic during those weeks,” says Leif Toudal Pedersen, a senior scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute. “Whether we reach an absolute minimum or not, this year again confirms that we are in a new regime with substantially less summer ice than before. “The last five summers are the five minimum ice extent summers on record.” Every year, the Arctic Ocean experiences the formation and then melting of vast amounts of floating ice, but the rate of overall loss has accelerated. During the last 30 years, satellites observing the Arctic have witnessed reductions in the minimum ice extent at the end of summer from around 8 million sq km in the early 1980s to the historic minimum of less than 4.24 million sq km in 2007. Before the advent of satellites, obtaining measurements of sea ice was difficult: the Arctic is both inaccessible and prone to long periods of bad weather and extended darkness. Radars on Earth observation satellites such as ESA’s Envisat are particularly suited to monitoring polar regions because they can acquire images through clouds and darkness. In the coming weeks, ESA will continue to monitor the situation in the Arctic with its Envisat, CryoSat and SMOS satellites.

Eureka Tower Radiation Instruments NOAA Physical Science Division Arctic Observations and Processes group and Environment Canada erected a 10.5 m flux tower in Eureka, Nunavat, Canada in 2007. At the top, we installed upwelling/downwelling shortwave and longwave radiation instruments . Downwelling instruments are facing up, measuring solar radiation from the Sun, while upwelling instruments are looking down, measuring radiation from the ground. Kipp and Zonen CM22 radiometers measure shortwave radiation, while Eppley PIR radiometers measure infrared radiation. The six-panel plot on the right shows the tower shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) radiation data (61 minute running average) in 2009. Units are in W/m^2. The bottom right plot shows albedo, calculated by dividing SW upwelling by SW downwelling. melting snow during the Arctic spring/summer lowers the albedo from near 1 in the spring to close to 0 in June when the ice is mostly melted. Large noise seen from October-April shows the evidence of long winter in arctic. During this period, longwave radiation dominates. Instruments are detecting very small upwelling and downwelling SW signals. When you divide a very small number by a very small number, it fluctuates very wildly! Did you know... - Radiation instruments (radiometer, pyrgeometer, and pyranometer) have a device inside, which converts thermal energy to electrical energy. These instruments receive both shortwave and longwave radiation.

Atlas Of Creation Is Depicted As An Icon In The Cultural Fight Die Tageszeitung, a daily newspaper published in Berlin, Germany, carried a report headed “The Pictures and Tones of Nature,” in its 11 July, 2007, edition. The report in the 60,000 circulation daily made the following comments about Atlas of Creation: ... There are some books that, because of their special contents, need to be kept close at hand. “Atlas of Creation” is one such book. In his 800-page book, the author Harun Yahya has compared large-scale photographs of fossil rabbits, herrings, ants or ferns with illustrations of ferns, ants and rabbits living today. The conclusion is always the same: 30-million-year-old rabbit fossils show no difference between them and present-day rabbits. This represents proof that the creature never underwent evolution. The “Atlas of Creation” is like an icon of the cultural struggle for the correct science of the origins of human beings and other organisms. ... The “Atlas” first appeared in Istanbul in 2006, following which it was distributed free of charge to many schools in France, Belgium, Spain and Switzerland. Right from the very first sentence the book leaves the reader in no doubt regarding who its opponent is. The refutation of the theory of evolution is stressed so strongly because Darwin’s theory represents “the basis of all philosophies against religion.” ... French Education Minister Gilles de Robien considers the Atlas so dangerous that he eventually decided it should be banned. ... In his report, biologist Herve Le Guyader noted the luxurious appearance of the book and that the illustrations in it might have a particularly powerful impact. This is a new method from the Evangelical cultural struggle. Protestant Christian publications to date have never contained so many pictures or been so luxurious. ... Harun Yahya’s “Atlas of Creation” becomes a new model at this point. Yahya – or Adnan Oktar to give him his real name – is a Turk. His works, consisting of a total of more than 45,000 pages and containing some 30,000 illustrations, have been translated in 57 languages by the publishing house to which he is affiliated. There is no doubt that Atlas of Creation’s being declared to be “dangerous” stems from the way it sets out the facts it describes in a very clear and irrefutable manner. Unable to respond to ideas with ideas of their own, various countries which claim to be the defenders of freedom of thought and democracy have despairingly resorted to measures such as proscription, reminiscent of fascist regimes. This, in fact, proves that the ideas set out in the Atlas are true. This mindset, which seeks to ban the book by suggesting that every reader will be influenced by it, demonstrates that the mask of Darwinism has been lifted and that the collapse of materialism is inevitable.

Once an attacker has physical access to the computer, he almost certainly has access to the data on it, writes Security Supersite Editor Larry Seltzer. If so, the OS doesn't really matter. Very often well hear reports about a serious security vulnerability. We look into it, and theres a catch: In order to execute the attack, physical access to the computer is necessary. You can safely ignore these alleged vulnerabilities: Without physical security, no system is secure. If I can open the computer, I can remove the hard disk, put it in as the second drive in another computer and read the contents of the disk. Bye-bye, security. But its not usually necessary to open the box. I can boot the system off a floppy disk or CD-ROM and read the hard disk that way. Given such access, there are commercial and free tools available that can reset the Administrator password on the installation of Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP - gaining access to a Win9x system is even easier. (The existence of these tools is a good thing; administrators need to be able to access systems where the passwords are forgotten or changed for malicious purposes.) But even thats not necessary; if you can boot off the floppy or CD, you can install a second copy of Windows on the hard disk and run that to analyze data on it. This point is very important when considering whether attacks represent vulnerabilities in the computers operating system: If I boot the system off the floppy or CD-ROM, the operating system on the hard disk is not running. Its just a bunch of files. Your only potential protection when physical security is breached is to use an encrypted file system, such as Windows 2000 Pro and Windows XP Pros EFS. (See this article on the SecurityFocus Web site for a good explanation of encrypting file systems.) No operating system (to my knowledge) employs such a file system by default. The most recent such case of significance was an allegation by a famous writer that one could break into a Windows XP system by booting off a Windows 2000 CD and running the Recovery Console. The Recovery Console is a special console mode OS used to repair Windows 2000 and Windows XP. You run it by installing it to the hard disk and booting into it, or booting it directly off the Windows installation CD. See this Microsoft Knowledge Base article for a description of the Recovery Console, and this one for a description of the Windows XP Recovery Console.

Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle exposes the antagonistic world of capitalism, and especially as it is seen through the experiences of immigrant workers. The novel, set in the heart of the city of Chicago, tells about immigrants from Lithuania looking for what every immigrant is looking for: The Great American Dream. The main characters Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite struggle to get jobs and make a living for themselves, which are under harsh conditions as they learn that great American dream does not mean showing up and living like royalty. In the beginning of the novel Jurgis and Ona first come to Chicago accompanied by many family members in celebration of their wedding and are holding a feast in part of the city known as “Packingtown.” Packington was the immigration center for people like them, but little did they know what living and working there would actually entail. Jurgis and Ona are hit with their first culture shock at their own wedding feast. In Lithuanian culture, it is custom for wedding guests to leave money for the couple to help over the cost of renting space for the party. The guests, however, as poor as ever do not do this and leave the couple in debt to the bar owner. Despite this Jurgis develops some hope and optimism and declares that he will work hard to gain this money. Jurgis as well as various other family members find work, especially after they realize how much housing in even the poorest location and home would cost them. The work is physically demanding with very little safety or security for the workers. Throughout their struggles to earn what very little wage they receive they continue with poverty, illness,isolation and debt. The Jungle centers on the theme of the “American Dream” that was and continues to be the belief of immigrants. The characters in the novel are brain-fed the notion that coming to America would solve all of their problems and they could live successfully and harmoniously through hard work. The way they are presented the “American Dream” concept is like they are being promised they will have better and not to mention easier lives. What Sinclair does is expose the truth of the situation through the experiences of the immigrants as they learn everything the hard and not to mention the unpleasant way that it was not how they thought it would be. Sinclair’s naming of the novel The Jungle was a symbol to Packingtown and its residents referring to Social Darwinism and the abuse of capitalism, where everyone fought for survival and became various forms of prey for the various forms of predators. The characters not only are burdened with the physical demand to survive but also a mental and emotional one. It becomes more than just making a better living in America, it has turned into just living where the most important and hardest thing to keep up is morale.

General Jose Gervasio Artigas Arnal is the National hero and father of Uruguayan independence. General Artigas was born on the 19th of June in 1764 and died on September 23, 1850. During his lifetime he became a larger than life figure and with the passing of time he achieved an unrivaled position in the history of the South American nation of Uruguay. There is a large, life sized statue of General Jose Gervasio Artigas in Montevideo's La Plaza Independencia. This impressive artwork is one of the region's most popular and important landmarks. General Artigas was born into a privileged family and his wealthy parents tried to provide him with every opportunity. Shortly before he entered his teenage years he began working on some of his family's land. He enjoyed his first taste of independence at this time because the lands on which he worked were out in the country away from his parents who resided in Montevideo. Young Artigas became an expert horseman and marksman. He even smuggled some goods in from neighboring Brazil. It is said that General Artigas was a great admirer of the United States and their new document, the Constitution. When he was in his early 30s General Artigas enlisted in the Corps of Blandengues which was charged with the protection of the border between Uruguay and Brazil. This enlistment was part of an amnesty deal which was then available for young men who had committed crimes that were of a non-violent nature. He fought to liberate Buenos Aires and he also had a role in the Battle of Montevideo. During the Battle of Montevideo he was wounded and ended up as a prisoner of war. In February of 1811 General Jose Gervasio Artigas was able to leave the Corps of Blandengues and he then joined the fight to free the Eastern Bank which would later become present day Uruguay. In April of 1811 he was responsible for issuing the Mercedes Proclamation, assuming control of the revolution's fighting forces and would defeat the Spaniards during the Battle of Las Piedras. He even laid siege to the city of Montevideo and was named the First Chief of the Orientales which was the name of the early people of Uruguay. Three years later General Artigas organized Liga de los Pueblos Libres. Artigas was officially named "Protector". In 1815 he wrested control of Montevideo from Buenos Aires. He was also part of the 1815 Proto-Congress of the Independence of Argentina. It was during this meeting that all of the Oriental provinces officially announced their freedom and sovereign identity. Even the first Uruguay flag owes a debt of gratitude to General Artigas who ratified its use during the 1815 Proto-Congress meeting. He added a diagonal stripe to this flag and today this banner is known as the flag of Artigas. Portugal became both jealous and worried about the influence and popularity of General Artigas and this new Federal League that had been established in Uruguay. The Portuguese army was able to crush Artigas and his troops, but only because several members of the Federal League chose to enter into agreements with Buenos Aires that Artigas did not approve. This divided the League members and their rebellion against Artigas made it possible for Portugal to defeat his forces. General Artigas was left with few followers and no resources to call upon. He was forced to go to Paraguay in 1820. Paraguay's dictator exiled him to Candelaria where he would never take part in any politics or military actions again. Artigas died in the nation of Paraguay at the age of 86. His body was buried there but in 1855 his remains were moved to the Panteon Nacional. In 1977 the body of General Jose Gervasio Artigas was returned to Montevideo and placed in the Artigas Mausoleum. Today his memory is honored in Uruguay and his name has been given to an airport, a museum, schools, clubs, bridges, ships a province and the city of Artigas Uruguay.

Procedures and Aircraft Behavior /*TRE/ The purpose of this article is to familiarize controllers with terminal area navigation (RNAV) procedure structure and expected aircraft behavior. First described are terminal RNAV benefits and the "building blocks" of an RNAV standard terminal arrival route (STAR) and standard instrument departure (SID). The next section explains the expected behavior of aircraft flying advanced RNAV routes. The final section discusses the accuracy of RNAV and the use of radar vectors with RNAV procedures. Although the focus of this article is on terminal procedures, the flight behavior described is applicable to both the terminal and en route environments. RNAV allows an aircraft to operate on any desired path without the need to fly directly toward or away from a ground-based navigation aid (NAVAID). Aircraft position is determined using NAVAIDs, a self-contained system (such as an inertial reference system), the global positioning satellite system (GPS) or a combination of these. Pilots are provided with distance, time, bearing and cross track error relative to a route or point in space. Although once used primarily for en route navigation, RNAV routes are increasingly being designed for terminal area use. Advanced RNAV includes the ability to access a navigation database containing the points, routes, speeds and altitudes for a specific procedure. This data may be loaded into an aircraft flight management system (FMS) or instrument flight rules certified GPS system creating a path that can be followed using the flight director or autopilot. Advanced RNAV is limited to aircraft with the equipment suffixes of /E, /F, /G, /R or /Q.1 Benefits of RNAV. There are several potential benefits to terminal RNAV routes including: 1) More direct routing, saving time and fuel. 2) Fewer radio transmissions due to less need for controller instructions. 3) Increased airspace/runway capacity through the use of defined paths. 4) Increased flight path predictability and repeatability when compared to radar vectoring. There are also potential disadvantages to using RNAV in the terminal area:2 1) Controllers will need to provide services to both RNAV and non-RNAV aircraft within the same airspace. 2) RNAV databases and equipment are not fully standardized, and there is no firm guidance on how the information is processed by aircraft systems. Tracks may be flown slightly differently due to equipment, pilot technique or airline policies. However, these track differences should not be significant enough to appear as deviations from the published procedure. 3) Initially, controllers may be uncertain of the expected aircraft behavior during an RNAV turn, which may result in unnecessary vectors. A common factor in each case is that RNAV procedures in the terminal area are relatively new. Over time the number of RNAV operations should increase. Good procedure design, effective training, and experience with terminal RNAV will increase pilot and controller confidence in RNAV procedures. The Building Blocks. Every RNAV STAR and SID is built from one or more segments. (See Figure 1.) Each segment has a specific function and requirements. Figure 1: STAR and SID Segments 1) Runway transitions: the portion of the procedure between the runway/s and the common route/point. Procedures may contain one or more runway transitions, but this is not a required segment and may not be a part of all procedures. 2) Common route/point: the portion of the procedure that is common to all runway and en route transitions. The common route may consist of a single waypoint. 3) En route transition: the portion of the procedure between an en route transition fix and the common route/point. Most procedures contain more than a single en route transition. Each RNAV procedure segment contains two basic parts: 1) Waypoint: A position defined by latitude and longitude coordinates. A waypoint may be a named point in space or associated with existing NAVAIDs, intersections or fixes. A waypoint is most often used to indicate a change in direction, speed, or altitude along the desired path. There are two types of waypoints: fly-over and fly-by. 2) Leg types: The path before, after or between waypoints. Leg types are identified by a two-letter code that describes the path (e.g., heading, course, track, etc.) and the end point (e.g., the path ends at an altitude, distance, fix, etc.). These coded leg types are used in the aircraft navigation database, but are not shown on the procedure chart. For air traffic controllers and pilots, the key to how a procedure should be flown is the narrative description and graphic depiction shown on the RNAV procedure chart. RNAV Flight Behavior This section describes expected flight behavior of aircraft operating in the terminal or en route RNAV environment. Waypoints Defined. How an aircraft will fly an RNAV, STAR or SID procedure depends upon the type of waypoints and legs used in the procedure. Waypoints are normally used to indicate a change in direction, altitude and/or airspeed. There are two types: fly-over and fly-by. The fly-by waypoint is the most common and is preferred for use in designing terminal RNAV procedures. Figure 2: Fly-by and Fly-over Waypoints A change in direction at a fly-by waypoint requires the navigation system to "anticipate" the turn in order to intercept and fly the next leg. The amount of distance of turn anticipation (DTA), (see Figure 2) prior to the waypoint depends primarily on the aircraft speed and the angle of the turn. At a fly-over waypoint, the aircraft will not turn to intercept the following leg until passing over or abeam the waypoint. Aircraft speed and angle of turn will influence the resulting flight path. Fly-over waypoints are shown on charts within a circle. Given that some variation will always exist in the flight path, there is a much higher level of predictability and repeatability with a fly-by versus a fly-over waypoint. Fly-by waypoints also require less protected airspace than fly-over waypoints. Controllers should remember that aircraft normally maneuver inside of the turn prior to reaching a fly-by waypoint. For a fly-over waypoint, the turn will occur after reaching the waypoint. The final (terminating) waypoint of a procedure will be flown as a fly-over waypoint. RNAV Leg Types. Commercial database providers "code" terminal RNAV procedures for use in aircraft navigation systems. The accepted coding format was created by Aeronautical Radio Incorporated (ARINC3) and is known as the ARINC 424 Navigation Database Specification. The specification describes over twenty different "path terminators" known as leg types. Leg types describe the path before, after or between waypoints. The FAA uses only a small subset of the available leg types in public procedures. A two-letter code describes the path (e.g., heading = V, course = C, track = T, etc.) and its ending point (e.g., an altitude = A, distance = D, fix = F,4 etc.). Although not explicitly depicted on charts, controllers and pilots can determine leg types (and thus expected aircraft behavior) by reading the chart narrative and viewing the graphic depiction. The most common leg types used by the FAA are defined below. 1) A "track" is a magnetic course between waypoints that must be intercepted and flown. This is the most common leg type and is coded as "TF." 2) A "course" is a magnetic course to a waypoint that must be intercepted and flown. A "CF" leg differs from a "TF" only in that it does not have a beginning waypoint. 3) "Direct" describes a direct course from an aircraft's position to a waypoint. A "DF" leg allows an immediate turn to a waypoint without requiring intercept of a particular course. A "heading" is a magnetic heading to be flown. Heading legs are subject to wind drift. A "VA" leg is a heading to an altitude and a "VM" is a heading to a "manual termination." The "VA" leg is often used as the first leg of an RNAV departure. The "VM" leg is most often used to end an RNAV STAR on, for example, a downwind leg heading. Figure 3: Flight Path Behavior: Fly-over waypoint to a Track-to-Fix (TF) leg Figure 4: Flight Path Behavior: Fly-over waypoint to a Direct-to-Fix (DF) leg. Figures 3 and 4 show examples of Track (TF) and Direct (DF) legs following a fly-over waypoint. In Figure 3, the aircraft will "track" from ALPHA to BRAVO by intercepting the magnetic course between the two waypoints. In Figure 4, the aircraft will proceed "direct" to BRAVO after crossing the fly-over waypoint ALPHA. In Figure 5, a VA, CF, TF combination has been used to create the initial portion of an RNAV SID. Figure 5: Combined VA, CF and TF legs on an RNAV SID RNAV Accuracy and Vectoring This section discusses the accuracy of RNAV procedures and vectoring aircraft off of and onto RNAV SIDs, STARs and routes. RNAV Accuracy. The precision with which an RNAV procedure is flown depends on the navigation source and on the aircraft onboard equipment and database. Even though a standard format exists (i.e., ARINC 424), the coding of an RNAV SID or STAR into a database (or the interpretation of that coding) may vary slightly. Differences in the databases along with variations in aircraft performance may result in slightly different tracks between RNAV aircraft on the same procedure. This will be most apparent during turns and where fly-over waypoints are used. Tracking of a defined path by an RNAV aircraft is as accurate as, or better than, that of aircraft flying conventional routes. In fact RNAV is often used to fly conventional en route and terminal procedures Use of RADAR with RNAV. For aircraft assigned an RNAV STAR or SID, the role of the radar controller remains unchanged from conventional procedures. Standard radar separation applies and controllers may need to vector RNAV aircraft off of the RNAV route for spacing or sequencing. One advantage of RNAV SIDs and STARs is reduced ATC radio transmissions. Where speeds and altitudes are coded within the procedure controllers should not need to issue turns, speed or altitude assignments.5 Controllers only need to intervene if aircraft deviate from the defined vertical and/or lateral track, or when vectors are necessary for separation or sequencing. There are two important points to remember about removing aircraft from an RNAV procedure: 1) Controllers may assign altitudes or speeds other than those published on the procedure without requiring aircraft to leave the lateral path. 2) Removing an aircraft from the lateral path removes the aircraft from the procedure. Controllers should advise pilots if return to the RNAV procedure is expected since this may prevent the pilot from removing the procedure from the navigation system memory. As when removing any aircraft from a procedure, an altitude to maintain must be provided if the RNAV procedure included altitude information. When vectoring an aircraft onto an RNAV STAR, SID or route, vector direct to a waypoint.6 Assigned headings should minimize the intercept angle to the next leg to assist in preventing overshoot. Figure 6 shows the expected track of an aircraft vectored direct to a fly-by waypoint. Although no maximum angle has been defined, a good rule of thumb is to have the aircraft established on a track so that no more than a 45-degree turn is required to become established on the following leg (Angle A in Figure 6). The aircraft should be established on this track and the pilot advised to "proceed direct" at least 5 miles from the waypoint to which the aircraft is being vectored (Distance B in Figure 6). Figure 6: Vector direct to BRAVO, a fly-by waypoint Many variables affect how an aircraft will intercept an RNAV procedure including distance from the waypoint, wind conditions, aircraft speed, rate of turn, and altitude. Controllers should be aware that overshoot of the new path may occur even when vectoring to a fly-by waypoint if, for example, a large course change is required close to the waypoint. This possibility may be particularly significant in some cases as illustrated in Figures 7 and 8. Figure 7: Overshoot of BRAVO Figure 8: Fly-by of BRAVO In Figure 7, due to the short distance to BRAVO and the large turn angle needed to intercept the next leg, an aircraft vectored direct to BRAVO (a fly-by waypoint) overshoots the next leg and enters P815. In Figure 8, an aircraft is vectored direct to BRAVO at less than a 45-degree angle and further from the waypoint (not less than 5 miles) so that it is able to anticipate the turn and does not enter P815. These are examples of normal RNAV behavior. To help avoid such an occurrence, when vectoring aircraft onto RNAV procedures, controllers should be aware of possible aircraft behavior and take measures to help mitigate it. 1 FAA, Aeronautical Information Manual, Table 5-1-2

Campbell, John, 1653–1728, American editor, b. Scotland. After emigrating to Boston, he was postmaster of the city from 1702 to 1718 and wrote newsletters for regular patrons. In 1704 he started printing these newsletters as a weekly half sheet, devoted mostly to foreign news, entitled the Boston News-Letter. Sold to Bartholomew Green in 1722, it was the first successfully established paper to appear in colonial America. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. More on John Campbell from Fact Monster: See more Encyclopedia articles on: Journalism and Publishing: Biographies

panama-hat palm, perennial herb ( Carludovica palmata ) growing wild from Central America south to Bolivia. Despite its frondlike leaves it is not a true palm. The leaves are used to weave Panama hats, an industry centered in Ecuador. The plant is classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Liliopsida, order Cyclanthales, family Cyclanthaceae. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Philippines Archives and LibrariesEdit This Page From FamilySearch Wiki Philippines Archives and Libraries This section describes repositories other than the Family History Library that can help you in your research. The Family History Library has copies of many but not all of the records at these archives. Archives collect and preserve original documents of organizations such as churches or governments. Libraries generally collect published sources such as books, maps, and microfilm. When you need the address of a library or archive, return to this section. Before you visit, contact the archive or library. Ask about their collection, hours, services, and fees. Send a well-worded letter of introduction and intent. This will increase your chances to use the records. Libraries in the Philippines The National Census and Statistics Office (NCSO). The National Census and Statistics Office has the major civil records after 1932 and is currently responsible for all civil registration. Unfortunately, most documents from 1932 to 1945 were destroyed in World War II. Prior to 1974 the office was known as the Bureau of Census and Statistics. Most vital records should be available at the Family History Library and Family History Centers. The microfilmed records include birth certificates, death certificates, marriage contracts, and notarial records. Employees of the Philippine National Census and Statistics Office will answer questions. Send family history inquiries to: Office of the Civil Registrar General National Statistics Office EDSA Corner, Times Street West Triangle, Quezon City 1104 Tanggapan Sa Pamamahala Ng Mga Kasulatan At Sinupan (Records Management and Archives Office). The Archive Division of the Records Management and Archives Office (Bureau of Records Management) has approximately 11,000,000 documents from the Spanish colonization period (1552–1898) and a few records from the American occupation period (1898–1946). Unfortunately, thousands of documents have been lost due to careless handling, deliberate destruction, and natural deterioration caused by termites, mold, and moisture. The Family History Library has filmed the most important genealogical records from this collection, including: - Cemetery records (cementerios). - Inheritance records and inventories of personalestates (bienes de difuntos). - Marriage records (matrimonios). - Census records (vecindarios, estadísticas, padrones de chinos). - Military records (quintas, guardia civil, hojas de servicio). - Immigration and naturalization records(naturalización de Españoles, radicación de estrangeros). - Notarial records (protocolos). For more information on these records, see the Philippines Wiki article for each record type. The Archive Division of the Records Management and Archives Office is in the Philippine National Library Building. Send inquiries to: Archive Division of the R.M. & A.O. Philippine National Library T. M. Kalaw Street Ermita, Manila 2801 Metropolitan Manila, Philippines The Philippine National Library has a valuable 45,000-volume Filipiniana collection of biographies, local histories, bibliographies, and gazetteers. It also has collections of rare books and manuscripts, newspapers and brochures, and microforms. The atlases, maps, gazetteers, and manuscripts of the rare books collection are listed in: Medina, Isagani R., Editor. Filipiniana Materialsin the National Library. Quezon City, Philippines: Published jointly by the National Library and the University of the Philippines Press, 1971. The Filipiniana collection at the University of the Philippines Library is also helpful. See: Filipiniana 1968: A Classified Catalog of Filipinian Books and Pamphlets in the University of the Philippines Library as of January 1, 1968. Diliman, Rizal, Philippines: the University of the Philippines, 1968. The following libraries shelve Filipiniana collections: - The Ayala Museum Library has over 3,500 rare books and manuscripts: Ayala Museum Library and Iconographic Archives Metropolitan Manila, Philippines - The Jorge B. Vargas Filipinian Collectionhouses Vargas's personal collection of rarebooks, documents, and manuscripts: Jorge B. Vargas Filipiniana Foundation 241 Shaw Boulevard Metropolitan Manila, Philippines - The Fr. Luis G. Merino Library has rare holdings from 1700 on, Philippine history, architecture, cultural arts, and the restoration of the historic walled City of Intramuros. The Fr. Luis G. Merino Library 5/F Palacio del Gobernador Building Gen. Luna Street, Intramuros Manila, Metropolitan Manila, Philippines The following collection includes mostly documents from the American occupation period, with some records from the Spanish colonization period, and a few modern records: U.S. Embassy, American Historical Collection Ateneo de Manila University Quezon City, Metropolitan Manila Telephone: (632) 924-4601, ext. 2668 Fax: (632) 924-4428 Many important libraries are listed in: Dayrit, Marina. Directory of Libraries in the Philippines. Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines: The University of the Philippines Library, 1973. Besides the libraries listed above, each province has a library that stores valuable local histories. Some municipalities and cities have libraries that collect local family histories and other important genealogical records. Also, each municipality has a local civil registrar office that keeps valuable family history information. The local civil registrar logs all civil registration events (see Philippines Civil Registration- Vital Records. Church Archives. See Philippines Church Records. The U.S. Library of Congress. The U.S. Library of Congress has a large Filipiniana collection. It has the most comprehensive foreign bibliography on the Philippines (about 18,000 entries) in the Orientalia Division of its: Southeast Asia Subject Catalog. Boston, Massachusetts, USA, G.K. Hall, 1972. Six Volumes. Volume 4: The Philippines. Library of Congress 1st–2nd Streets, S.E. Washington, D.C. 20504 The Newberry Library. Chicago's Newberry Library has the most valuable foreign collection of documents from the Spanish colonization period. You can contact the library at: 60 West Walton Street Chicago, Illinois 60610-3394 The above collection is described in: Newberry Library. Chicago, Illinois, USA. Dictionary Catalog of the Edward E. Ayer Collection of Americana and American Indians in the Newberry Library. Volume 6, pp. 5,895–99,964. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: G. K. Hall, 1961. Welsh, Doris V. Catalog of Printed Materials Relating to the Philippine Islands, 1519–1900, in the Newberry Library. Chicago, Illinois, USA: Newberry Library, 1959. Lietz, Paul S., Editor. Calendar of Philippine Documents in the Ayer Collection of the Newberry Library. Chicago, Illinois, USA: Newberry Library, 1956. (FHL book 959.9 A3c; film 0795964 item 4.) Computer Networks and Bulletin Boards Computers with modems can be useful tools for obtaining information from selected archives and libraries. In a way, computer networks themselves serve as a library. The Internet, certain computer bulletin boards, and commercial online services help family history researchers: - Locate other researchers. - Post queries. - Send and receive e-mail. - Search large databases. - Search computer libraries. - Join in computer chat sessions. You can find computerized research tips and information about ancestors from the Philippines in many sources at local, provincial, national, and international levels. The list of sources is growing rapidly. Most information is available at no cost. Some information and guides are available on the Internet for research in the Philippines. Sites that include information about libraries and museums, maps, and naming customs are found in various Wiki articles for the Philippines. General sites that act as indexes to many interesting Philippines genealogical sites on the Internet include: - Philippines Genealogy Web Project. - Family History Library home page. - This page was last modified on 22 April 2013, at 18:06. - This page has been accessed 9,282 times. New to the Research Wiki? In the FamilySearch Research Wiki, you can learn how to do genealogical research or share your knowledge with others.Learn More

Da Vinci's Last Supper Painting |The Last Supper 1498, Mixed technique, 460 x 880 cm Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan here to see our fine art reproductions. Da Vinci's Last Supper painting of 1498 is not a traditional true fresco (buon fresco) painted on wet plaster, rather it is painted on dry plaster with tempera in the fresco secco technique. Da Vinci's Last Supper painting can be found in the refectory (dining hall) of the convent of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan, Italy. The stone wall was first prepared for Da Vinci's Last Supper painting by sealing the stone with pitch, mastic, and gesso. Da Vinci's experimental technique caused rapid deterioration of the Last Supper painting, as it was described by Vasari, a Leonardo biographer, as being "ruined" by 1556. The dry paint of Da Vinci's Last Supper painting was reported to already be flaking off as early as 1517, a consequence of his experimental technique. Da Vinci's Last Supper painting has undergone a number of restorations, the first in 1726, and the last in 1999 which took 21 years to finish. Brenda Harness, Art Historian

A SeaLaunch Zenit launch vehicle experienced an 'unusual' event during the 31 May launch of Intelsat 19. Despite reaching its assigned transfer orbit, the Space Systems Loral LS-1300-based satellite fully deployed only one of its two solar arrays. "Boeing engineers did note an unexpected, isolated event around 72sec after launch, which registered on microphones and pressure sensors," says Energia, which SeaLaunch contracts to deliver and launch the vehicles. "We have only seen this one other time out of the 31 flights and while it is premature to speculate on its origin until further analysis is complete, it bears a striking resemblance to a prior Space Systems/Loral mission." Boeing builds the Zenit's payload adaptor, which is heavily instrumented to monitor the health of the spacecraft and satellite. "The data available on Intelsat-19 very clearly indicates that this is not the same issue that we had last year," says Intelsat. "Not including Intelsat 19, five more 1300 satellites have been launched with ten successful solar array wing deployments." The prior mission referenced by Energia is the Telstar/Estrela do Sul 1 satellite, another LS-1300 bus which suffered a similar anomaly during liftoff, resulting in non-deployment of one of its solar arrays. According to the Flightglobal/Ascend database, "Sound sensors picked up an explosive sound during that part of flight and it is thought that the array broke then. Although the exact cause of the event could not be determined, telemetry data indicated that the fairing was not a cause or contributing factor to the event on the spacecraft." Estrela do Sul 1 was declared a partial loss, and due to limited power and fuel it was retired after only five years of operation. The follow-on satellite, referenced by Intelsat, called Estrela do Sul 2, also deployed only a single solar array due to an unrelated problem. Observers began to suspect a launch vehicle malfunction when SES elected to continue with the 20 June launch of SES 5, an LS-1300-based communications satellite. Were the satellite to blame, SES would likely have canceled the launch.

Continuing her charge against the subtherapeutic use of antibiotics in food animal production, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) sent a letter late last week to more than 60 of the leading fast food companies, meat producers, and grocery stories asking them to release details on their antibiotic use policies. Slaughter specically asked the companies to breakdown what percentage of the food they sell is raised “without any antibiotics,” raised with antibiotics only for “therapeutic reasons,” or raised with “routine use of antibiotics” — information that consumers often have no way of knowing. The list of companies that received the letter was varied, including: Burger King, Cargill, YUM! Brands, Costco, Bon Appetit Management Company, Kraft, McDonald’s and Whole Foods. “Very simply, consumers have a right to know what’s in their food,” said Slaughter. “It’s like that old commercial, ‘where’s the beef?’ We just want to know, ‘what’s in the beef?’ The US is facing a growing public health crisis in the form of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and information about how these companies are contributing to its rise or resolution should be available to consumers.” Antibiotic-resistance is not just an issue that rallies sustainable agriculture advocates — who have long argued against drug use in food animal production — the issue is increasingly tied to foodborne illness outbreak headlines. Last year, the United States had the most outbreaks ever of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella tied to meat and poultry, according to Slaughter’s office. Last summer, the largest Class I meat recall on record was initiated after Cargill ground turkey was linked to a nationwide drug-resistant Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak tied to 136 illnesses and one death. “Decades of research has shown that the practice of routinely feeding antibiotics to swine, cows, and chickens harms human health by contributing to diseases that fail drug treatment,” the letter continued. “A National Academy of Sciences report stated that ‘a decrease in the inappropriate use of antimicrobials in human medicine is not enough [to slow the increase in antibiotic resistance]. Substantial efforts must be made to decrease inappropriate misuse in animals and agriculture as well.” The most recent estimates show around 80 percent of all antibiotics sold annually are used in food animal production. The only microbiologist serving in Congress, Slaughter challenged companies to tout examples of lessening antibiotic use. “There are some who would have us believe that we must pump our food up with antibiotics to keep prices low and affordable,” she said. “But the food industry has proven success stories and leaders who understand the benefits that come from raising and serving antibiotic-free meat. It is not incompatible for us to have healthy and affordable food.” The letter asks companies to respond in detail to Congresswoman Slaughter’s office by June 15.© Food Safety News

New Research Illuminates Byzantine Artistic HeritageContact: Chris Gosier A prominent scholar of medieval art spoke at Fordham on Oct. 17 about new research that is shedding light on the full artistic splendor of the Byzantine Empire. Hundreds of relic containers all over France can give a more complete view of the Byzantine artistic heritage if they are systematically inventoried, said Jannic Durand, curator of objets d’art at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. He spoke of various relic containers, or reliquaries, that held the body parts of saints or objects associated with saints. Some of the reliquaries are missing, and must be reconstructed through drawings or descriptions hidden in obscure archives. Some are likely waiting to be discovered or identified, he said. Sometimes, relics or reliquaries that were destroyed long ago can be re-envisioned through engravings, inventories, images and scholarly writings, he added. In this way, "we can sometimes arrive at a relatively clear vision of the objects which made their way to France" at various times—in the immediate aftermath of the Crusades, but also in the centuries that followed, he said. It was during the Crusades and shortly after the fall of Constantinople in 1204 that large numbers of Byzantine relics and reliquaries appeared in the West, particularly in France, he said. After the empire had been pillaged, its relics and reliquaries continued to trickle into the West without ever entirely stopping, he said. Some are entirely preserved, such as the True Cross of Anjou, housed in Baugé, Maine-et-Loire, whose pearls and precious stones indicate its Byzantine origin, he said. Others can be seen only in photographs, such as the skull of St. Akindynos, which had been stamped with a gilded silver medallion depicting his bust-length portrait. It was stolen from a church in Arbois, France in 1991. More than 150 people attended the lecture, "Recovering a Part of Byzantine Heritage: The Afterlife of Byzantine Relics and Reliquaries in France," held in the 12th Floor Lounge of the Lowenstein Building at the Lincoln Center campus. The lecture drew art historians, medievalists from around the New York area and Byzantine scholars who were in the area for the Byzantine Studies Conference held that weekend at Rutgers University. Durand visited Fordham through the Forsyth Lectureship, set up by the International Center of Medieval Art to support lectures by a distinguished scholar of medieval art at multiple venues. Founded in 1841, Fordham is the Jesuit University of New York, offering exceptional education distinguished by the Jesuit tradition to approximately 14,700 students in its four undergraduate colleges and its six graduate and professional schools. It has residential campuses in the Bronx and Manhattan, a campus in Westchester, and the Louis Calder Center Biological Field Station in Armonk, N.Y.

|View larger image| The mighty ash (Fraxinus excelsior) which stands on the lawns to the front of Gordon Castle, in the Morayshire town of Fochabers, presents an imposing figure. The trunk is of exceptional girth for this species, measuring a staggering 7.79 metres (25 feet 7 inches) in girth at 1m (3 feet 3 inches) above ground level. Above this, the girth becomes grossly exaggerated because of large swellings and limb bases, attaining 8.74 metres (28 feet 8 inches) at 1.5 metres (4 feet 11 inches) above ground. The huge, stately canopy is equally impressive, with the massive limbs which form the framework of the crown reaching 28.5 metres (93 feet 6 inches) in height. The tree appears to have been pollarded many years ago, and displays a typically low-branching and multi-stemmed crown form. As is typical with most old ash trees, the trunk is heavily decayed and largely hollow. It is a remarkable testament to the strength of its timber that the thin outer shell of sound wood is capable of supporting such a capacious canopy. Ash as a species is relatively short-lived, with few trees exceeding 200 years before old age and decay set in. The Gordon Castle tree is clearly something of an exception, and is of considerable antiquity. The site has been a stronghold of the Gordon Clan since the 15th century, with the original castle of 1470 being replaced by the 4th Duke of Gordon in 1769. It is likely the tree dates from around this time. Where to see the Gordon Castle Ash: The entrance to Gordon Castle is located at the west end of the town of Fochabers, approximately 14.5km (9 miles) east of Elgin, Moray. The impressive entrance gates lie to the north of the A98 road at the war memorial, just at the entrance to the west end of the main street. The ash tree stands on the lawns to the north of the castle. Access available with permission. Image: copyright Edward Parker

Updated: Thursday, 07 Mar 2013, 10:51 AM CST Published : Thursday, 07 Mar 2013, 10:31 AM CST WASHINGTON (AP) — The filibuster — used this week by Republican Sen. Rand Paul to oppose John Brennan's nomination as CIA director — is a parliamentary tactic used to block or delay legislative action. Using a filibuster, a senator can essentially hold the floor to prevent a bill from coming to a vote. Filibusters — from the Dutch word for "pirate" — were popularized in the 1850s and continue today in the Senate on the thinking that any senator should be able to speak as long as necessary on an issue, according to Senate historians. Paul's filibuster lasted nearly 13 hours, ending early Thursday. Rules were passed long ago to limit debate in the larger House of Representatives. In 1975, the Senate reduced the number of votes required to end the debate — an action called "cloture." Cloture requires a three-fifths vote, or 60 of the current 100 senators. Filibuster tactics have varied over time. During the 1930s, Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana used the filibuster against bills that he thought favored the rich over the poor — taking up the time by reciting Shakespeare and reading recipes for "pot-likkers." He once held the floor for 15 hours, but the record for the longest individual speech goes to South Carolina's Strom Thurmond. Thurmond filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Senate historians say.

Shabti Figure of Djehutyemheb 3269, Shabti Figure of Djehutyemheb, New Kingdom (late 18th-19th Dynasty); c. 1323-1190 B.C. Material: Indurated limestone; with head of gessoed and painted wood Dimensions: h. 8 _ in. 21 cm Unusual because of its composite materials, this shabti figure’s body is made of limestone while the head is gessoed and painted wood. It also would have had wooden feet and crossed arms, now lost. His elaborate costume, with pleats and apron, was common on shabtis of the late 18th and 19th Dynasty. Across his apron are several lines of text that identify the owner as Djehutyemheb, ‘overseer of cattle in the Temple of Re.’ The apron hieroglyphs also contain an excerpt from the Book of the Dead, an Egyptian funerary text that consisted of over two hundred ‘spells’ to aid the deceased in their journey through the afterlife.

Plant of the Week Cirsium pitcheri range map. USDA PLANTS Database. Cirsium pitcheri leaves. Cirsium pitcheri flower and seeds. Cirsium pitcheri seed. Bumblebee pollinating a Cirsium pitcheri. Pitcher’s Thistle (Cirsium pitcheri) By Morty Harwood Pitcher’s thistle, or dune thistle, occurs along the shores of Lake Michigan, Huron, and Superior. Originally discovered around 1820 by Dr. Zina Pitcher in what is now Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, this small thistle grows to a maximum height of about three to four feet when flowering, considerably less that the size reached by its larger cousin Canada thistle (C. arvense). A native of the Great Lakes dune ecosystem, it thrives in sandy soil with the help of an impressive taproot (up to six feet long!) that helps the plant obtain water. For much of its life the Pitcher’s thistle exists as a small, inconspicuous cluster of leaves called a rosette, the massive taproot encompassing a majority of the plants mass. Flowering occurs after the Pitcher’s thistle survives in this rosette stage for up to eight years. After flowering and producing seed, the plant dies. Pitcher’s thistle can be identified by its deeply toothed, wooly leaves and by the presence of spines at the tips of each point on the leaf. The wooly coating gives the leaves and stems their characteristic silvery appearance, as well as helping the plant to conserve water. The plant flowers from mid-June through September and shows a flower head that ranges from creamy white to light pink. This trait can be helpful in distinguishing it from other, more common thistles, which typically possess pink or purple flowers. Other varieties of thistle also lack the extremely wooly leaves and silvery appearance of the Pitcher’s Thistle. From an ecological perspective, all thistles are important food sources for certain birds, especially American Goldfinches, which may feed on thistle seed almost exclusively during later summer and early fall. Small mammals such as ground squirrels may also consume the seeds after they have fallen from the plant. Although it was likely never extremely widespread, Pitcher’s thistle was once fairly common in sand dune ecosystems of Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, and the Canadian province of Ontario. Numbers of Pitcher’s thistle, however, have declined in recent decades due to habitat destruction associated with development and recreational use. The sensitivity of the Pitcher’s thistle to these types of disturbances led to its designation as a federally threatened species in 1996. A threatened species is a species that is at risk of becoming endangered, while an endangered species is one that is at risk of becoming extinct. Pitcher’s Thistle is also protected at the state level in each state where it occurs, and at both provincial and national levels in Canada. Due to continued development and overuse of the sensitive Great Lakes sand dune ecosystem, there is still a risk to the Pitcher’s thistle and other native plants sharing this habitat. Invasive plants species – particularly spotted knapweed – also pose a threat to the habitat of the Pitcher’s thistle. Recently, concern has arisen that the non-native beetle species Rhinocyllus conicus may be praying on Pitcher’s thistle. This beetle preys on the flower heads of the plant, and was originally introduced to control populations of non-native thistles. For More Information

Vikings sold cheap copies of their sword called the Ulfberht. Their original Ulfberht was made from steel imported from the Middle East. Apparently they found a market for their swords and made copies from cheaper metal and sold them across northern Europe, where archaeologists would find them around a millennium later. Today the swords are described as having been too soft and as having buckled or broken easily when used in battle. 21st century researchers say that by the 11th century, after the Russians blocked access to the Volga River, it became almost impossible for the Vikings to obtain the higher-quality steel that they used in making their swords.

Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), 1776 oil on canvas 127 x 101.6 cm Transfer from the Canadian War Memorials, 1921 National Gallery of Canada (no. 8005) During the American Revolutionary War, the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant (1742-1807) was given the rank of captain and fought on the side of the British. This portrait was painted on the occasion of Brant's trip to England to negotiate the role of the Iroquois Confederation of the Six Nations in the conflict. He wears the silver gorget (a piece of armour for the throat) presented to him by George III. His Mohawk name, Thayendanegea, means "two sticks bound together", denoting strength. Frame: running moulding with carved ornament, gilded. Britain, second hald 18th century

In the low desert, transplant tomatoes between mid-February and mid-March, with frost protection. This provides extra time for plants to establish root systems and grow more plentiful foliage, and to get flowers blooming and fruit setting before summer heat arrives in late May. Tomato pollen is not viable over 90 degrees, so if you wait too long to plant, no fruit! At higher elevations, wait a few more weeks to set out tomato plants with frost protection. Finish Transplanting Bare-Root Roses and Fruit Trees Transplant bare-root roses and deciduous fruit trees through the end of the month. Container-grown roses can be transplanted up until April. Soak bare-root plants in a bucket of water for several hours or overnight before planting. If you can not get plants you've purchased into the ground immediately, be sure the roots are wrapped in moist peat moss and burlap (or similar) so they do not dry out. Dry roots are dead roots! Skip an Irrigation If you are lucky to receive decent winter precipitation, you may be able to skip a scheduled irrigation. Cold, overly wet soil promotes root rot in many plants, especially desert plants that are adapted to long dry spells. Thin Root Crops Beets, carrots, kohlrabi, onions, radishes, rutabagas, and turnips need space to develop to mature size. Thin periodically as needed, leaving space about one to one and half times the vegetable's ultimate size. You can eat what you thin as tender baby vegetables. If you thin a day or two after a regular irrigation, it is easy to pull without disturbing nearby roots. Prepare for Warm-Season Gardening It may be chilly outdoors, but warm season gardening is just around the corner. Sort through your seed stash. If it's old, do a germination test to see if seeds will sprout. Peruse seed catalogs for new varieties of warm-season cukes, melons, and squashes. Order early so you will be ready to start seeds indoors six to eight weeks before transplanting outside.

Orgins and History: Gatka is the martial art of the Sikhs, and is tied in with the religion Sikhism. It’s a weapons-based martial art, which was imparted to the Sikhs in the time of Guru Hargobind Ji (the sixth Guru of the Sikhs) by the Rajputs (Hindu warriors of northern India) in the 16th century, in gratitude for their release from imprisonment by the fledgling Sikh army of that time. The Sikhs at that time opposed the Mughal Empire, which violently oppressed both Sikhs and Hindus in the name of Islam. The Tenth Master of the Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh Ji, was an extremely proficient martial artist. He continued to encourage the Sikhs to train seriously in the martial arts, and in 1699 founded the Khalsa, a special Order, to which all Sikhs would thereafter aspire to joining. The Khalsa was subject to strict military and personal discipline, and were enjoined to, inter alia, always carry 5 items with them: the Kanga (a small wooden comb), Kachhehra (long drawers instead of a loincloth), Kara (a steel bracer worn on the right wrist), Kesh (uncut hair) and Kirpan (curved sword). The Khalsa was enjoined to train to fight, and to vigorously resist the oppression of any religious community, including Sikhs and Hindus. The wearing of the kirpan represented the martial character of the Khalsa, and all Sikhs, men, women and children, were encouraged to resist their Mughal oppressors, and to train diligently in gatka. Gatka was used succesfully by the Sikhs throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, in numerous battles against the Mughal forces. Eventually, the Sikhs succeeded in deposing the Mughal overlords, and in creating a new, tolerant rulership in the Punjab (the “Land of Five Rivers”, a region in modern-day India and Pakistan). Gatka is, and has always been, taught as a spiritual exercise in Sikhism. Sikhism requires its followers to become absorbed in honouring the Name of God, and this is taught through the ecstatic exercise of gatka. Sikhism and gatka are inextricably intertwined, in many ways. Gatka actually refers to the soti, a wooden stick used in training, which is equipped with a basket hilt. The entire martial art is based on the correct use of a vast array of melee (hand-to-hand) weapons. The foundation of the art is the panthra, a basic form and methodology for moving the feet, body, arms and weapons correctly, in unison. Gatka is normally taught with rhythmic accompaniment, and the object is to achieve fluid, natural and flowing movement, without hesitation, doubt or anxiety. The attacking and blocking methods are all based upon the positions of the hands, feet and weapon(s) during the panthra dexterity exercise. Many weapons are taught with special methodologies, in addition to the panthra exercise. There are set of unique “chambers” and other techniques, which are unique to certain weapons, such as the khanda (two-edged sword), the tabar (axe) and the barcha (spear). The most common weapon used by gatka exponents today is the lathi (a stick of varying length), but all of the other traditional weapons are still taught. A common combination in that hands of gatka practitioners of today and in the past is the sword and shield. The panthra exercise is a flowing, non-stop movement, and there are no specific “techniques” as such in gatka. Rather, the methods of attacking and defending are the same, and the application depends on the circumstances at the time. The panthra exercise is practised at the same time as the “Jaap Sahib” prayer is being sung. Also, a three-beat-per-cycle is played by a drummer at the same time. This assists in developing natural and flowing co-ordination. Most gatka groups train in a religious or semi-religious situation, such as in a gurdwara (a Sikh place of worship) or in a Sikh cultural centre or school. However, in recent years a number of “Akhara” (regiment or gymnasium) organisations have been founded, with the express purpose of teaching and disseminating the skill of gatka. Gatka students always train with “both hands full”, as this is both an excellent exercise for matching the two halves of the body and is emphasised as ideal for combat. Gatka emphasises the superiority of having something in both hands, whether it’s two sticks, or a stick and a sword, or a sword and a shield or any other combination. At an advanced level, gatka is always tailored to the practitioner. Hence the gatka practitioner will eventually focus all of his effort on training his or her abilities with a chosen weapon or combination of weapons. Gatka was never originally intended as a competitive sport. However, recently a number of modern gatka organisations have introduced competition. Normally, these are based on a “best of two” or a “best of Five” hits contest between two practitiners. How to find an instructor: The best traditional gatka practitioners outside the Punjab are known by word of mouth only. However, some organisations have recently begun teaching their own variation of gatka, in schools and clubs, in the same way as any other martial art. These organisations usually advertise, too. However, their gatka may differ significantly from the traditional form of the art, either by accident or design. It may be fruitful to consult your local gurdwara (Sikh temple) officials in order to find a reputable gatka instructor who is willing to teach you. Discretion (most gatka experts disdain being the centre of attention) and courtesy will be indispensable in finding yourself a willing instructor in the art. author : Arun Singh from : http://www.atlantamartialarts.com/styles/gatka.htm

Good food guide How to prepare and cook food safely Studies show that the kitchen contains the most germs in the home. One found that the kitchen sink contains 100,000 times more germs than the bathroom. Germs such as E. coli, campylobacter and salmonella enter the kitchen on our hands, raw food and through our pets. They can rapidly spread if we're not careful. If food isn’t cooked, stored and handled correctly, people can become ill with food poisoning, colds, flu and other conditions. Our hands are the main way germs are spread, so it’s important to wash them thoroughly with soap and warm water before cooking and after touching raw meat. Raw meat, including poultry, contains harmful bacteria that can spread easily to anything it touches. This includes other food, worktops, tables, chopping boards and knives. “Lots of people think they should wash raw chicken, but there's no need," says nutrition expert Sam Montel. "Any germs on it will be killed if you cook it thoroughly. In fact, if you do wash chicken, you could splash germs on to the sink, worktop, dishes or anything else nearby.” Take particular care to keep raw meat away from ready-to-eat foods such as bread, salad and fruit. These foods won’t be cooked before you eat them so any germs that get on to them won’t be killed. “Use different chopping boards for raw and ready-to-eat foods,” says Montel. When storing raw meat, always keep it in a clean, sealed container and place it on the bottom shelf of the fridge where it can’t touch or drip on to other foods. Don’t eat these foods rare (not thoroughly cooked): - rolled joints of meat Cooking food at the right temperature will ensure that any harmful bacteria are killed. Check that food is piping hot right through to the middle before you eat it. When cooking burgers, sausages, chicken and pork, cut into the middle to check that the meat is no longer pink and that it’s piping hot (steam is coming out). When cooking a whole chicken or other bird, pierce the thickest part of the leg (between the drumstick and the thigh) to check that the juices are no longer pink or red. Pork joints and rolled joints shouldn’t be eaten rare (not thoroughly cooked). To check when these types of joint are ready to eat, put a skewer into the centre of the meat and check that the juices are no longer pink or red. It’s safe to serve steak and other whole cuts of beef and lamb rare (not cooked in the middle) or blue (seared on the outside) as long as they have been properly sealed (cooked quickly and at a high temperature on the outside only) to kill any bacteria on the meat’s surface. If you’ve cooked food that you’re not going to eat immediately, cool it at room temperature and then store it in the fridge. Putting hot food in the fridge means it doesn't cool evenly, which can cause food poisoning. Montel's advice is to keep the coldest part of your fridge between 0C and 5C (32F and 41F). “If your fridge has an internal freezer compartment that is iced up, the fridge could struggle to maintain its temperature,” she says. Wash all worktops and chopping boards before and after cooking as they are sources of germ cross-contamination. The average kitchen chopping board has around 200% more faecal bacteria on it than the average toilet seat. Damp sponges and cloths are the perfect place for bacteria to breed. Studies have shown the kitchen sponge to have the highest number of germs in the home. Wash and replace kitchen cloths, sponges and tea towels frequently. Good food guides Family food interactive guides Health eating self-assessment Could your diet be putting your health at risk? Find out with this short test. Five a day meal planner This meal planner makes it easy to get your 5 a day. Food allergies self-assessment Determine whether you have a food allergy or an intolerance.

Scientists have sequenced the entire genomes of five Plasmodium vivax strains taken from the blood of patients on different continents, providing a wealth of new data to help in the future mapping of malarial parasite traits such as drug resistance, and determine how different strains are geographically distributed. The work, by researchers at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, has identified over 80,000 SNPs that can form the basis of association studies and population surveys to study the diversity of P. vivax in a single region. Critically, the results also demonstrate that P. vivax isolates from patients in Madagasar, Cambodia, and South America are genetically surprisingly similar, and exhibit little evidence of local adaptation. One possibility for the relative lack of genetic diversity is that the P. vivax population has only recent origins, and has just dispersed rapidly across the world without major loss of diversity or influence from natural selection. A second possibility for the observed allele sharing, however, is that there’s been a continuous gene flow in the current P. vivax population. “P. vivax is now a cosmopolitan parasite that can be easily spread throughout the world by way of dormant hypnozoites,” the investigators suggest. “If this second hypothesis is true, it holds bleak prospects for P. vivax malaria elimination,” the researchers add. “With high level of gene flow, genetic polymorphisms conferring drug resistance or novel invasion mechanisms could spread across the world and further complicate control strategies.” The reported work is the result of sequencing three P. vivax strains taken from patients in Cambodia, two from infected individuals in Madagascar, and a South American human strain that has adapted to survive in monkeys. The researchers also resequenced the Sal I strain, which originated from a patient in El Savador in 1972, and was the first P. vivax strain to have been sequenced, back in 2008. Sal I resequencing effectively allowed the researchers to confirm the viability of their next-generation whole-genome sequencing approach. P. vivax is the most frequently transmitted and widely distributed malarial parasite worldwide, with estimates suggesting it causes some 250 million cases of the disease every year, resulting in a global public health burden of some $1.4–4 billion. The ability to sequence P. vivax taken directly from patients represents a major achievement as the parasite doesn’t survive in vitro, which makes functional studies difficult, and previous genetic analyses have centered on the dozen or so strains that can be propagated in monkeys. However, further study of the parasite is vital both for understanding the malarial disease process, identifying possible therapeutic strategies, and understanding how different strains adapt and spread. Drs. Zimmerman et al., describe their work in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases in a paper titled “Whole Genome Sequencing of Field Isolates Provides Robust Characterization of Genetic Diversity in Plasmodium vivax.”

Materials and Public Health by Geotimes Staff Earth resources are the foundation of modern civilization, crucial to almost every facet of our lives. And yet we know that some geologic materials pose significant health risks that jeopardize individuals, communities and even whole populations. In some instances, people are exposed when they move into areas with high concentrations of these materials, such as when houses are built above uranium-rich rock units that produce radon gas. More often, exposure is the unintended consequence of mining and other human activities that release geologic materials into the surface environment. In this feature, our writers take a look at the current status of five well-known Earth materials that regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, have identified as significant health risks: arsenic, asbestos, mercury, silica and radon. Most of these materials have been the subject of public health scares in the past, and several have been in recent headlines. News reports warned of possible risks to rescue workers at the World Trade Center site due to high asbestos levels in the dust. Arsenic was front-page news when President Bush considered changes to drinking-water standards adopted in the final days of the Clinton administration. In the case of crystalline silica, some readers may be surprised to learn that efforts are underway to develop stricter regulation of the second most abundant element in the crust! Many geoscientists are actively engaged in mitigating the health impacts of these and other geologic materials by identifying exposure pathways, mapping geographic distribution, monitoring water and soil concentrations and identifying natural background levels in areas where remediation is being undertaken. Despite these efforts, collaborations with the public health community have been limited. But that may be changing. The recently announced partnership between the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences may open the door to greater collaboration between geoscientists, epidemiologists and other scientists working to protect public health. Asbestos in Libby, Montana Yell "Fire!" in a movie theater and you'll clear out the room in seconds. Yell "Asbestos!" and the theater will clear out almost as fast. Asbestos is a well-known and highly publicized threat to human health and is perhaps the most devastating occupational hazard in U.S. history. But policy-makers, geologists and public health organizations don't agree on the risks asbestos poses to the general public. Asbestos is controversial because of its many tiny fibers. If these fibers shed out from asbestos-containing materials they create an airborne dust, which when inhaled can penetrate lung tissue and cause asbestosis, mesothelioma and lung cancer. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) make no distinction between the two kinds of asbestos - chrysotile and amphibole - though geologists and some public health experts who say that chrysotile's cylindrical fibers are less damaging to the lungs than the splintery fibers of amphibole minerals. The term asbestos describes a variety of fibrous, nonflammable minerals with flexibility and high tensile strength. Their unique properties were used mostly between the 1940s and 1970s in fireproof insulation, vinyl flooring, pipe insulation, ceiling tiles, brake linings and roof coatings. Chrysotile, a serpentine mineral, is also known as "white asbestos" and makes up about 95 percent of asbestos found in buildings in the United States. The other asbestos minerals - crocidolite, amosite, anthophyllite, tremolite and actinolite - are amphiboles that aren't commonly used in commercial products. OSHA began regulating workplace asbestos in 1970, around the time when miners and construction workers, who worked with the fibrous material, began reporting serious lung disease. At that time, the United States used about 800,000 metric tons of asbestos per year. OSHA published the Asbestos Standard for the Construction Industry, which outlined four categories of asbestos contamination, and specified precautions and disposal techniques for each class. For instance, if asbestos insulation is removed (Class 1), contractors and supervisors trained in asbestos removal must be onsite wearing respirators and protective clothing. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, EPA followed suit by banning any new uses for asbestos, designating it a class A human carcinogen (on par with secondhand cigarette smoke) and drafting the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA). In 1986, President Reagan signed the Act, which also put into effect the Toxic Substances Control Act, requiring all public and private schools to survey their structures for asbestos and implement an "appropriate response action." Ironically, ridding a building of asbestos can make the air inside more hazardous than before. When asbestos materials are torn out from walls, ceilings and between pipes, asbestos dust contaminates the air. Had the asbestos materials not been touched in the first place, the fibers would remain harmlessly contained in the ceiling tiles of the insulation. Responding to EPA and OSHA regulations, worried schools districts and homeowners spent billions ripping asbestos products out of their buildings. In 1999, removing asbestos materials in the United States cost about $3 billion. Throughout the 1990s, New York City schools alone spent more than $100 million on asbestos removal. "Asbestos abatement is pretty much a fiasco," Tim Flood, an epidemiologist at the Arizona Health Department, told USA Today in 1999. "It's hard to think of a worse investment. Many more lives would be saved if the money were spent on drug prevention, guardrails, sunscreen, medical research, almost anything really." Asbestos legislation continues to evolve as does research on the suite of asbestos minerals. EPA's response to asbestos has changed markedly over the years. In 1983 the agency's asbestos handbook stated that removing the material is always appropriate, while their 1990 handbook acknowledged that asbestos removal may cause more contamination than leaving it in place. Now, according to its Web site, "EPA's advice on asbestos is neither to rip it all out in a panic nor to ignore the problem under a false presumption that asbestos is risk free … asbestos material in buildings should be located [and] it should be appropriately managed." At this year's EPA Asbestos Health Effects Conference in Oakland, Calif., scientists discussed asbestos fiber testing techniques, carcinogenic effects and mineral classification. But in terms of dealing with instances of asbestos contamination such as in Libby, Mont., "the conference was disappointing," says Aubrey Miller, a doctor working with patients sick with amphibole asbestos-caused disease. "A situation like this demands the best, most progressive thinking to understand the health problems we're seeing - the old rules don't apply here." in Libby, Montana In Libby, Mont., residents have been dealing with a different kind of asbestos fiasco. Their families and community have been profoundly affected by amphibole asbestos from a vermiculite mine in the town. From 1963 to 1990, W.R. Grace and Co. mined vermiculite in Libby to make a home insulation material called Zonolite. The asbestos-laced vermiculite was transported to a plant in northeast Minneapolis to be processed. Now, communities in both Montana and Minnesota report that hundreds of their residents are stricken with asbestos-related diseases. EPA testing of indoor air, dust, insulation, and yard and garden soil from 35 homes in Libby found evidence of tremolite (also classified as richterite) asbestos. When medically screened, 18 percent of individuals who lived, worked or played in Libby for at least six months prior to 1990 had lung abnormalities indicative of asbestosis. Of W.R. Grace employees, the figure was 49 percent. "We know tremolite causes illness," says Aubrey Miller, a doctor working jointly with Libby and the EPA. "And in Libby we're seeing illness in people who never worked at the mine, which is something new." Libby is currently under consideration for Superfund status by the EPA. In northeast Minneapolis, the Zonolite plant that processed Libby's vermiculite provided piles of free "stoner rock" (waste vermiculite rich in asbestos) for the public. Nearby residents used the "rock" as fill in gardens, sandboxes, lawns and driveways until this March, when EPA tests found that the rocks contained dangerous levels of tremolite. So far, 24 employees of the processing plant, formerly owned by Western Mineral Products Co., have died from asbestos-related diseases. One man, who never worked in Libby or at the Minneapolis processing plant, but remembered playing in piles of "stoner rock" as a child, died from asbestosis at the age of 42. Minnesota's Department of Health is currently conducting an extensive survey of about 1,700 Minneapolis residents to determine rates of asbestos illness, exposure and home contamination. The department is also publicizing the causes of asbestos illnesses at public meetings. "We want to identify who's been exposed and give them information on clinics, diagnosis and health insurance," says Rita Messing of the Minnesota Department of Health. Public outcry over the dangers of radon in the home began in 1984 after a young family man and engineer set off the national alarm. It was an accident. While leaving work at the Limerick, Pa., nuclear power plant, Stanley Watras walked through a newly installed radiation detector and shocked the checkpoint officials. Watras was the only person contaminated. He even set off alarms coming in to work. When his home was checked for radiation, the safety officials found radon measuring 650 times the average level. In New York and in Sweden, energy-efficient homes had been cropping up with excessive radon, because, it was thought, insulation to make homes less "leaky" was trapping the natural gas. Radon was a known health hazard produced by the decay of uranium in the bedrock, but it was considered more of an issue for miners and homes with little ventilation. With Watras' home a prime example, suddenly radon became a problem anyone might already have without knowing it, leaky house or not. In 1879, 21 years before Friedrich Dorn discovered radon, miners in the Erz Mountains of Czechoslovakia were dying from respiratory diseases attributed to dust exposure. As radioactivity became better understood, studies focused on uranium miners. Uranium and thorium have half-lives of billions of years and as they decay they create radium, which decays to form radon gas. The half-life of radon is only 3.8 days. But during radon's short decay to a stable lead isotope, the gas produces four alpha particles. A sheet of paper can stop an alpha particle with only molecular damage to the paper. When inhaled, those alpha particles hitchhike on dust and smoke and deliver their minor attacks as they stick to the cell walls of the lungs. The high rate of lung cancer among miners was linked to a one-two combination of accumulative radon exposure and cigarette smoking. While most homes don't have radon levels nearly as high as mines, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that almost one-third of the lung cancer deaths in 1995 among people in the United States who never smoked may have been linked to long-term exposure to high levels of indoor radon. All rocks and soils have uranium - some more than others. The amount of radon transmitted through the foundation into low-pressure regions of a house or office depends on how much radon is produced in the rocks, how much of the gas escapes into pore spaces, and how permeable the soil is around the building. The U.S Geological Survey has mapped potential areas of high radon across regions of the United States, Puerto Rico and Guam. The EPA and the Office of the Surgeon General recommend that all houses be tested for radon. If radon levels of more than 4 picocuries per liter of air are found, action should be taken to confirm the tests. The building may need to have vents installed that will redirect the radon back outside. Now, 16 years after the Watras case, homeowners are more savvy. Many are testing their homes before selling them to prevent lawsuits from the new owners. Short-term radon kits can cost as little as $10. But radon tests are not ubiquitous. In This summer, after an employee in Lyme, N.H., was diagnosed with lung cancer in May, tests showed that the town offices had high levels of radon gas. Despite our current understanding of the health hazard, radon is still a problem. More recently, scientists have shifted the question of radon to how much of the natural gas poses a risk in groundwater supplies and drinking water. Agitating the water through the use of laundry or showers can allow a small amount of radon gas to escape into the air. The risk from water supplies, however, is small compared to the primary health threat of radon entering households through soil. For more information on indoor radon, visit www.epa.gov/iaq/radon/. The 1999 Risk Assessment of Radon in Drinking Water can be found at www.nap.edu/catalog/6287.html?onpi_newsdoc091598. The ancients called it quicksilver for its color and the way it flowed like a liquid. It was later named after the Roman messenger god who flew through the sky. Both names were apt, for mercury is the only metal that exists as a liquid at room temperature and the only one that effortlessly volatilizes into the atmosphere. Mercury is poisonous, however, and its mobility, coupled with its persistence, makes it one of the most challenging toxic substances to control. Mercury is found in minerals such as cinnabar - deposits of which, as at Almadén, Spain, have been mined for thousands of years. Volcanic activity, eolian processes, volatilization from land and ocean surfaces and the combustion of fossil fuels all loft mercury vapor into the atmosphere, where it can remain for years. Once in the atmosphere, mercury spreads widely. Humans find mercury quite useful. Alchemists used mercury in an effort to transmute base metals into gold. Their efforts were not so far-fetched, however, as mercury readily forms an amalgam with gold and is effective in helping remove the precious metal from surrounding rock. Mercury's density changes little in the liquid state. That property, plus the fact that mercury does not adhere to glass, makes it almost perfect for use in instruments such as thermometers and barometers. And its ability to conduct electricity lends it to use in switches and relays. Mercury also serves as a seal and coolant in nuclear reactors. Its vapors are used in lamps, and the metal is a common component of pharmaceuticals, fungicides and dental fillings. As a result of the widespread use of mercury, the concentration of this versatile element in the environment has increased dramatically since the industrial revolution - and human and ecosystem health have suffered the consequences. All natural forms of mercury - elemental (vapors), inorganic and organic - may adversely affect health. Inhaled mercury vapors damage the lungs, but their most damaging effects are to the central nervous system. With violent tremors and bizarre behavior, the "mad hatter" syndrome is the most serious health effect. Contaminated groundwater is a widespread source of mercury vapors that can diffuse into buildings where humans live and work. People may ingest inorganic mercury salts, such as mercuric chloride, from contaminated soils or sediments, damaging the gastrointestinal tract and even more damage to the kidneys. Elemental and inorganic mercury, however, is not readily absorbed into the digestive tract, unlike the organic forms. Methyl mercury is the chief organic form of mercury. Synthesized by anaerobic bacteria common in anoxic environments such as wetlands, it is the most toxic of all forms - elemental, inorganic or organic. Methyl mercury easily disperses through water and air, and concentrates up the food chain. For instance, humans who regularly eat fish containing mercury can accumulate it in their bodies to toxic levels over a period of time. Methyl mercury can kill brain cells and other types of neurons. Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advised that pregnant women, women of childbearing age, nursing mothers and young children avoid eating certain kinds of fish that may contain high levels of methyl mercury, such as shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish. Great strides have been made to reduce mercury contamination in the environment. Mercury thermometers are rarely used; some industries have eliminated or greatly reduced their use of the metal. But a great deal of work remains to be done. Geotimes contributing writer Naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water is a hot topic of debate these days. At a recent public hearing, the House Subcommittee of Environment, Technology and Standards listened to testimony on the most up-to-date research on the science, benefits and costs of regulating arsenic in drinking water. "What we are examining here is the danger from arsenic in extremely minute amounts, equivalent to one teaspoon of arsenic in about 1.3 million gallons of water," said Chairman Vernon Ehlers. At the hearing, Robert Goyer from the National Academy of Science's National Research Council (NRC) presented a study published this past September that links bladder and lung cancer to arsenic exposure from drinking water. This study comes at the request of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which, in January, proposed lowering arsenic's maximum allowable level in drinking water to 10 parts per billion. The NRC study is one tool to aid the EPA in its cost-benefit analysis of enforcing the proposed lower standard. Although the technology exists to remove arsenic from water down to a level of 3 parts per billion, no full-scale arsenic removal plants have been built and tested. The actual cost on a national level is still uncertain, although one EPA estimate puts the number at $181 million a year under the proposed 10 parts per billion standard, and the American Waterworks Association Research Foundation has estimated costs as high as about $590 million a year. Legislation could subsidize the construction cost of new treatment facilities for small communities, but individuals may also pay the price with increased water bills. Testifying at the hearing, Scott Rubin, an attorney for the National Rural Water Association, said individual home water bills could quadruple - a price residents of some small rural communities cannot afford. At the same time, however, the EPA estimates that reducing the maximum allowable arsenic standard to 10 parts per billion could prevent between seven and 33 deaths from bladder and lung cancer annually. The NRC report found that when men and women daily consume water containing 3 parts per billion of arsenic, their chance of developing lung or bladder cancer in their lifetime is 1 in 1,000. At 10 parts per billion, the risk jumps to more than 3 in 1,000. And National Resources Defense Council senior attorney Erik Olson pointed out that even at that lowest standard, the cancer risk is "ten times higher than what the EPA says is acceptable." The EPA normally assumes an acceptable risk as 1 in 10,000. In 1975, the EPA set a maximum allowable level of 50 parts per billion of arsenic in drinking water. The 1996 Amendments of the Safe Drinking Water Act required the EPA to set a new standard by Jan. 1, 2001. After evaluating more than 6,500 pages of statements from 1,100 commentators, the EPA used its discretionary authority under the 1996 legislation to lower the standard to a level that "maximizes health reduction benefits at a cost that is justified by the benefits." So, in January 2001, under the Clinton administration, the EPA set a new standard of 10 parts per billion. Subsequently, the Bush administration suspended enforcing that standard to the 54,000 community water systems in the United States until the NRC could review it. The NRC addressed the hazards of consuming water contaminated with arsenic based on risk data from southwestern Taiwan and northern Chile. The NRC's new health risk estimates exceed those on which the EPA based its pending January ruling. The symptoms and signs of arsenic poisoning differ among individuals, population groups and geographic areas, making it difficult to assess arsenic's health burden. Also, no method exists yet to distinguish cases of internal cancer caused by arsenic from those induced by other factors. Information on where arsenic occurs naturally in groundwater largely comes from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) maps. A USGS map from May 2000 shows that arsenic is most prevalent in groundwater in the Southwest (see page 34 this issue). The USGS sampled from wells that draw water from aquifers used for drinking water. Arsenic is widely distributed throughout Earth's crust. According to the USGS, arsenic in groundwater is most commonly the result of the dissolution of minerals and ores from weathered rocks and soils. Volcanism and forest fires can release arsenic into the atmosphere. And arsenic is used in industrial products, such as paints, dyes, metals, drugs, soaps and semiconductors. Wood preservatives use about 90 percent of industrial arsenic in the United States. Agricultural applications, mining and smelting add to the arsenic inventory. Inorganic arsenic can occur in the environment in several forms, but in groundwater, it is most commonly found as trivalent arsenite or pentavalent arsenate. Chlorinating water converts the trivalent arsenic species to the pentavalent form, according to Sheryl Luptowski at the National Sanitation Federation (NSF), a nonprofit organization that tests products that affect public health. She says some commercially available home water filters can remove arsenic from water. Filters that use reverse osmosis technology can remove the pentavalent arsenate found in chlorinated water. Another kind of filter, called a distiller, can remove both species of arsenic. Visit the NSF Web site for more information: www.nsf.org. Lisa M. Pinsker Go to your local hardware store and find a bag of potting soil. Observe the fine print on the bag. You might find a warning that the potting soil is a carcinogen. It probably contains quartz, a form of crystalline silica. In fact, just about anything made of quartz, granite, sandstone, sand or clay contains a form of silica: bricks, ceramics, roads, concrete, sandpaper, foundry molds, filters for municipal water supplies, dessicants, toothpaste, paper and materials for industry - just to name a few. We have long known that breathing in small pieces of crystalline silica can scar lung tissue and cause silicosis. In 1930, as it began to recognize crystalline silica as the source of "miner's asthma," the U.S. Department of Labor held its first conference on silicosis. Since then, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has regulated how much respirable crystalline silica workers are exposed to, and the American Conference on Governmental Industrial Hygienists and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health both recommend limits on how much crystalline silica dust workers should breathe. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a World Health Organization group based in Sweden, crystalline silica, when inhaled, is a carcinogen in some cases. IARC reviewed the scientific literature to make its ruling, and thus concluded that people working in some ore mines or quarries or ceramics factories faced an excess risk of lung cancer. Research on whether silicosis leads to cancer is ongoing. Shortly after IARC's ruling, OSHA in the United States sought to follow suit and consider cancer risk as part of its comprehensive ruling on crystalline silica. That project went on hold last year, but it is still on OSHA's radar screen. The question, says mineralogist William Moll, is, "How do we take the second most common mineral on Earth and call it a carcinogen?" Moll works with the Sorptive Minerals Institute, which represents industries that make products from clay - such as cat litter. The IARC ruling could affect such industries, which use silica-based materials in their products. For example, under California's Proposition 65, or the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, the state recognizes crystalline silica as a carcinogen. As a result, bags of cat litter sold in the state would have to be labeled as carcinogens, says Lee Coogan, executive director the Sorptive Minerals Institute. Working to prevent economic troubles for the cat litter industry, the Sorptive Minerals Institute tapped the knowledge of mineralogists, including Moll, and collected enough data to win a Safe Use Determination from California's Office of Environmental Health Hazards Assessment in June 1999. The state judged that, in pouring, scooping, and generally being around cat litter, a person would not be exposed to enough quartz to be in danger. More importantly, Moll says the institute's research suggests that crystalline silica can be harmful in some forms but not in others. IARC's determination included a clause that cancer risks varied by industry and process, suggesting that hazard could vary with the crystalline silica's form and phase. Not every study of every ore mine, for example, showed that workers faced an excess cancer risk. Taking this idea further, the Sorptive Minerals Institute study suggested that crystalline silica might only be harmful after it was newly crushed and its crystal structure was disturbed, but perfectly fine if the crystal face was in the same shape it was in 15 million years ago, Moll says. This fact could pose health risks to a sandblaster or quarry worker, but not to someone pouring cat litter or visiting the beach. "Silica is a complex substance, and to try and do a one-size-fits-all regulation isn't fair," Coogan says. In the process, the institute's research introduced a new line of thinking that more researchers, particularly mineralogists, need to pursue in studying the health hazards of crystalline silica. Such is the opinion of Virginia Colten-Bradley, who worked as a consultant for OSHA as it examined how to address IARC's decision. The National Toxicology Program concludes that sufficient evidence exists to show that respirable silica can cause cancer in experimental animals, but that the evidence for its carcinogenity to humans is limited. The problem with animal experimentation, Colten Bradley says, is that researchers usually crush the quartz before putting it into test subjects's lungs, usually rats. The crushed quartz could react differently in the rats' bodies than unaltered quartz. These studies don't account for the way changing the mineral's surface or its crystal structure can change the experiment's outcome, she says. Right now the OSHA ruling is on hold. But, Coogan adds, "This is going to be something that's going to go on for a long time." For more on the cost/benefit analysis of arsenic's maximum allowable standard, visit the EPA Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water Web site. The National Sanitary Foundation provides information on water filtration methods and products. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration Web site on asbestos. American Lung Association Web site about health effects of asbestos. Facts on crystalline silica from Occupational Safety and Health Administration with links to other relevant Web sites. The International Agency for Research on Cancer Web site. Food and Drug Administration warning about mercury in fish.

Deserts consist of huge deposits of sedimentary material which have been affected by ancient ocean tides, ancient rivers, glaciers, floods, gully washers and windstorms. They are literally a gold mine of placer deposits. There is also an enormous amount of gold-bearing mountainous dry placer ground which has remained relatively untouched by large-scale gold mining activity because of the scarcity of water required in those locations to support wet recovery methods. Generally speaking, dry methods of gold recovery are not as effective or as fast as wet recovery methods. Yet, dry methods do work well enough that they can produce gold well if the ground is rich enough. Recent developments in dry washing equipment have made it possible for a one or two-man operation to work larger volumes of dry placer ground without water, and obtain good results in gold recovery. Dry processing recovery systems generally use air flows to do the same job that water does in wet recovery systems. Under controlled conditions, air flows and mechanical motion and vibration can be made to effectively get rid of lighter, worthless materials. This causes a concentration of heavier materials similar to what occurs in wet processing. SETTING UP TO WORK AN AREA Sometimes a road can be bulldozed to your spot. Sometimes you can drive right in with a 2 or 4-wheel drive truck. In these situations, you might consider screening pay-dirt into the back of a truck and hauling it to a wash plant to be processed elsewhere. Actually, this is just slightly more difficult than shoveling directly into a wash plant. The hardest part is breaking the material away from the streambed and classifying it. It takes a little more time to haul the material to the wash plant, but that depends upon the distance and the condition of the road. It is also more difficult to shovel up into a truck. Some small operations use a portable conveyor belt to lift the material into their truck. Feeding the material from a truck into a wash plant is not as difficult, because it is usually down hill. An average one or two-person team should be able to move the equivalent of a pickup-sized load of screened pay-dirt and process it through a wash plant at another location in the period of a full day’s work-perhaps even two truckloads, depending upon the distances involved. If the material is paying well, they could do well at it, too. If conditions do not allow you to truck the pay-dirt to a nearby water site to be processed by wet methods, you will have to consider processing the rich material by dry-production methods. While dry-panning and winnowing do work, and have been broadly used as a means of production during the past, they are not normally as effective as some of the modern dry-washing plants which are available on today’s market. Dry-washing machines use an air blowing fan or bellows-type device to blow a controlled amount of air-flow up through the dry material that is being processed. Air flows help blow off the lighter materials and allow the heaviest particles and gold to collect. Dry-washing plants are available which can either be operated by hand or by lightweight engine and air-fan assemblies. “Non-motorized dry-washing unit” A hand-operated dry washing plant usually includes its own classification screen as part of the unit. Raw material can be shoveled directly onto it. The bellows air-blower is usually operated by turning a hand crank, which is often conveniently located so that one person can both shovel and alternately work the bellows at the same time. Under ideal conditions, two people working together can process up to a half-ton of gravel per hour by taking turns, one person shoveling while the other works the bellows. Some units also have a 12-volt electric conversion kit to allow you the option to either hand-crank in the field or connect to a 12-volt battery for automatic bellows operation. Various gasoline motor-driven dry concentrating units are available on the market which utilize static electricity and high-frequency vibration to help with gold recovery. Most commonly, there is a high-powered air-fan which pumps air through a discharge hose into the concentrator’s recovery system. The air currents which pass through the recovery system are adjustable so that the proper amount of flow of lighter materials through the recovery system can be obtained-similar to a sluice box in wet-processing. The purpose of the steady airflow is to “float off” the lighter materials through the box. Heavier materials like gold will have too much weight to be swept through the recovery system by the flow of air. The bottom matting in this type of concentrator is usually made up of a specialized material which creates an electrostatic charge as high velocity air is passed through it from the air discharge hose. Fine pieces of gold, while not magnetic, do tend to be attracted to surfaces which have been electrostatically-charged, similar to the way iron particles are attracted to a magnet. So the bottom matting in these concentrators often attract fine particles gold to itself and tends to hold them there. Some motorized dry concentrators also use a high-frequency vibrating device to keep the entire recovery system in continuous vibration while in operation. The way to get gold particles to settle quickly down through other lighter materials is to put the materials into a state of suspension. The vibrating device on this concentrator helps fine particles of gold work their way down through lighter materials that are being suspended by air-flows. Here follows an excellent video demonstration which shows exactly how motorized dry concentrators work: A motorized dry-washing machine is excellent for the production demands of a one or two-person operation. Under ideal conditions, it is able to process up to about a ton of raw material per hour, which is the equivalent of what a medium-sized wet sluicing operation can produce. This is as much or more than one or two people can usually shovel at production speed when working compacted streambed material. Most motorized dry-washers do their own screening of materials and almost everything else automatically. This leaves the operator free to produce at his or her own comfortable speed. Total weight of the average motorized dry-washer is about 75 pounds, but the units do break down into separate pieces which can usually be carried around by a single person. So the electrostatic concentrator can be carried to a hot spot if it is worth a few trips to do so. They usually get about 3 hours to the gallon of gasoline. SETTING UP A DRY-WASHER There is no fixed formula for setting up the proper air flows and downward pitch on the recovery system of a dry-washer. A lot depends upon the nature of the material that you are processing, how heavy it is, whether or not the material is angular or water-worn and the purity (specific gravity) and size of the gold being recovered. Each of these variables is likely to affect how you must set your recovery system in each different place that it is operated. The main thing to remember is that the machine needs to separate the gold from the lighter, valueless materials. If you only have a small amount of air-flow running through your dry-washer, then you will need more pitch on the recovery system-and you may need to feed the material slower. Too much air flow can also be a problem. Normally, you would compensate by adjusting to a lesser pitch on the riffle board. Watch how the material flows over the riffle board. You should see the dirt rise up in an orderly fashion and flow over top of each riffle. It looks an awful lot like water. It is best to keep a steady feed of material going through a dry-washer at all times. The riffles should be filled about half to three-quarters, with a steady flow moving from one riffle to the next. The material in the riffles should have a fluid look to them; they should not be packed solid. This following very important video sequence demonstrates how to set up and operate a motorized dry-washer, and it shows exactly what you should look for while making flow adjustments to obtain optimum gold recovery: It is a good idea to shovel lower-grade material into your dry-washer while adjusting for the proper air flows and pitch. Once set, you can shovel in the pay-dirt. One thing about dry-washing is that because it is generally slower than wet methods, the pay-dirt must have more gold. High-grade areas in the deserts certainly do exist! This is all the more reason to make sure your recovery system is set properly before processing pay-dirt. Chances are that you will not see any gold that might be discharged into the tailing pile through a dry-washer recovery system. Another thing about setting up a dry-washing production program is that you always set up a dry-washer downwind of where you are working! Once gold falls into the dead air space within the riffles, it will usually stay there. The air-flows are generally not strong enough to push gold out of there. There is a limit to this, however. Just like a water recovery system, a dry-washer will concentrate the heaviest materials which it processes. After some time, the heavier concentrates may require stronger air flows or a steeper pitch to keep them in suspension. At this point, it is probably time to clean up the recovery system and start all over again. If you are keeping a close eye on your recovery system, you can see when it is time to clean up. The fluidity of the material inside the riffles becomes more concentrated and slows down. DRY-WASHING AND CLAY-LIKE MATERIALS Material to be processed must be thoroughly dry to get the best results out of any dry-washing plant. Sometimes you will run into moist clays when out in the dry regions-just like you do in the wet streambed areas. It is also possible to find a pay-layer associated with the clay. Clays make dry-washing procedure more difficult, because they must be thoroughly dried out and broken up before being processed effectively by dry methods. Sometimes this means the material needs to be set out in the sun to dry for a full day or more before anything further can be done with it. Sometimes it is necessary to dig clay a couple of days ahead of the processing stage. You can alternate spending a day digging and laying out material to dry, and then a day processing dried material. Sometimes, the dried clay can harden into clumps, which then must be broken down into dust and sand before you can recover the gold out of it. When necessary, all of these requirements require more time and energy. But if a good pay-streak is involved, you will find yourself doing whatever is necessary to recover the gold out of it. It may be necessary to use rock-crushing machinery to break up hardened clay-like material and crush it down on any kind of a production -scale. The clean-up of concentrates from a dry-washing plant is accomplished best by wet-processing methods. Usually, if you have room-enough to haul around a dry-washing plant in your vehicle, you will also have room for enough water to pan down your final concentrates, too. The following video sequence demonstrates how and when to perform a final clean-up during dry-washing: If water is not available to you out in the field, the clean-up of your dry concentrates can sometimes be accomplished quite effectively by running them through your dry-washing plant several times. Final cleanup procedures can then be done to separate the gold from the last bit of remaining valueless material. DESERT PLACER GEOLOGY The chances of finding a hotspot out in the desert, or in some other dry region, are probably just as good or as your chances of finding a hotspot in the watersheds of the gold-bearing mountainous areas. These chances are pretty good, providing that you are willing to spend the time, study and work that is necessary to implement a good sampling plan. Probably your best bet is to start off with a “Where to Find Gold” book and study the geological reports which apply to the area(s) of your interest. There has been some small-scale mining activity out in the dry regions. Much of it was lode mining, but some placer activity took place, as well. A good portion of prior activity is recorded information today. It can be of great value to you to know where gold has already been found. It is almost a sure thing that the areas which were once worked for gold at a profit were not entirely worked out. They might be worked again with today’s modern equipment at a profit. Any area which has once proven to pay in gold values is a good generalized area to do some sampling activity to see if additional pay-dirt can be found. The desert areas were pretty-much left alone by the large-scale mining activities of earlier times because of the accessibility problem. Often, during earlier times, there was not enough water to sustain life, much less to process gold-bearing material. But desert prospector should not limit him or herself to only the once-proven areas. Most of the desert regions have gone pretty-much untouched by past (effective) sampling activity because of accessibility problems, lack of water, and not having adequate equipment to do the job up until recent years. So the desert prospector has access to a lot of ground, and there are not that many competitors to worry about. A single large rain or wind storm can change the entire face of the desert in just a few hours. There is very little undergrowth in these areas to prevent a good-sized rain storm from causing an incredible amount of erosion. And so you hear all the old-timers’ stories of finding bonanza-sized gold deposits, marking their position, going out after tools and supplies, and then returning to find the desert entirely changed and the bonanza apparently gone. Undoubtedly, some of these treasure stories are true. After all, many of those old-timers had gold to go along with their stories. Many of them spent the rest of their lives looking for their “lost gold mine.” All of the placer geology concerning wet areas also applies to desert placer deposits (most which were developed during wet storm events). The same remains true of eluvial deposits-which is the gold that has weathered from a lode and been swept some distance away by the forces of nature. Eluvial deposits in the deserts (called “Bajada placers”) tend to spread out much more widely, and in different directions. This is because they are usually not eroding down the side of a steep mountainous slope. Therefore, they are sometimes a little more difficult to trace back to their original lodes. But it can be done. The answer is to do lots of sampling. History has shown that one of the best locations to look for gold is where the hills meet the desert and fan out. This is where the water slows down during flood storms and drops gold in the gullies and washes. There also are likely to be more gold traps further up the hillside. When doing generalized sampling in the desert, concentrate much of your activities in the washed-out areas, where natural erosion has cut through the sediments and created a concentration of heavier materials. Dry-washes, dry streambeds and canyons are good for this. Get an eye for the terrain, looking over the high points and the low points to get an idea of where the water flows during large flood storms. Areas where the greatest amount of erosion has taken place are areas where the highest concentration of gold values might be found. Remember that we are looking at many thousands of years of erosive impacts. Bedrock will be exposed in some low areas, as in canyons and dry washes. These are ideal places for you to get into the lowest stratum of material-where the largest concentrations of gold values are often found. Large and small canyons have been formed by many years of erosion and are likely spots to find paying quantities of gold. Caliche is cement-like false bedrock which is commonly found in desert placer areas.(photo USGS) The desert and dry areas also commonly have a “false bedrock” layer specifically called “caliche.” Sometimes (often), this caliche layer is only a foot or two thick. In some areas, gold is concentrated along the caliche, just like on top of bedrock. After a storm in the desert, in some places you can find small pockets of gold in the gravel traps, under rocks and under boulders which rest on top of the caliche. Sometimes the gold is pounded directly into the caliche and needs to be removed with a pick or crevice tool. Caliche layers which are close to the surface allow small-scale dry-washing operations to be economically feasible, because of the lesser amount of gravel and material which needs to be shoveled off the gold deposits. Streambed material can be recognized by the smooth water-worn rocks. Anywhere in gold country, where streambed material is present, is a prime area to be doing some preliminary sampling. Such material indicates that it has been exposed to a substantial amount of running water. This means concentrating activity took place with those same materials. It is possible that the material was once washed out of an ancient river. However, gravel and material does not need to be water-worn to carry gold in the desert areas. Rough and angular gravel, which has not been greatly affected by water, also sometimes carries gold in volume amounts. Testing is the key. Sometimes it can be worthwhile to do some sampling in the different layers of desert material when they are present and exposed. Gold concentrations in and between flood layers can happen even more in the desert. This is because of the flash floods which can occur there. Sometimes substantial gold concentrations can be found just beneath boulders which rest upon bedrock, or up in a layer above bedrock. When you find a gold deposit in a dry area, whether on bedrock or the caliche, you will want to thoroughly clean the underlying surface upon which the gold is resting. Seldom will you visually see gold in dry placer material-even when there is a lot of gold present. Use a whisk broom or vack machine to clean all of the loose material. Sometimes, it is also productive to break up the surface of the caliche or bedrock with a pick or other crevicing tool. Occasionally, in dry washes, you can actually see stringers of black sand along the bedrock or caliche-especially directly after a storm. You can sometimes do exceptionally well by following these stringers and digging out the concentrated gravel traps. Do not forget to test the roots from trees and other vegetation in such areas. Vegetation requires a certain amount of mineralization to grow. Roots can grow in and around high-grade gold deposits. I have heard of single roots which have been dug up and produced as much as three ounces of gold! Some electronic prospectors use their metal detectors to trace concentrations of black sand. Then they follow up by testing the areas which produce the strongest reads from their detectors. Some desert areas, like Quartzsite, Arizona, also have gold just lying around anywhere-even on top of the ground. Such places are excellent for electronic prospecting and dry-washing. The deserts of Australia are famous for this. I have a number of friends who have been very successful in the Nevada deserts, using metal detectors to recover large numbers of nuggets, some very large, directly off the surface of dry desert ground. If you find a piece of gold on the surface of a dry placer area, it is likely that there are more pieces of gold in the immediate area. Electronic prospectors call these areas “patches.” Gold generally does not travel alone-unless it was dropped there by mistake. Sand dunes in the desert are usually not very productive. This is because they mainly consist of lighter-weight sands that were deposited there by the wind. However, sometimes the wind can blow off the lighter-weight sands from a particular location, leaving the heavier materials exposed behind. This is similar to what happens after a big storm at the gold beaches. This is something that should be watched for. When prospecting around in the dry areas, when you encounter tailing piles from past dry-washing operations, it might be worthwhile to do some raking of the tailings and scan around with a metal detector. Sometimes old tailing piles can be productive enough to run them through a modern dry-washer.