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- About Our - The Plant - Health & Oils come from plant sources by crushing, cracking or flaking the vegetable, fruit, seeds or nut in a press and then purifying the resulting oil. Canola, sunflower, cottonseed and sesame oils are obtained from seeds, walnut and macadamia oils are obtained from nuts, while olive oil comes from a fruit and soybean oil comes from beans. Oils are essential for growth and development throughout all life stages. They give our bodies energy to work and exercise, as well as providing us with essential vitamins. They also keep us warm and protects our bones and joints. The canola oil in MeadowLea comes from canola seeds grown in Australia. MeadowLea is proud to be supporting Australian Farmers, as we select only Australian grown, Non-Genetically Modified canola seeds to make MeadowLea. In Australia canola is grown in the winter months, harvested in November / December and is the largest oil seed crop grown in Australia. Sunflowers are native to South America and MeadowLea's sunflower seeds come from Argentina. Sunflowers are a summer crop and can grow as high as 2 metres. Canola oil is a 'good' oil because it is high in monounsaturated fats and also contains significant amounts of beneficial Omega-3. Of all the commonly used oils in Australia, canola oil has the lowest amount of saturated fat. Sunflower oil is also a 'good' oil because it is high in polyunsaturated fats and low in saturated fat. In this chart, you can see the composition of some different oils. Remember, the less saturated fat an oil has, the better it is for you.

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libpq is the C application programmer's interface to PostgreSQL. libpq is a set of library routines that allow client programs to pass queries to the PostgreSQL backend server and to receive the results of these queries. libpq is also the underlying engine for several other PostgreSQL application interfaces, including libpq++ (C++), libpgtcl (Tcl), Perl, and ecpg. So some aspects of libpq's behavior will be important to you if you use one of those packages. Three short programs are included at the end of this section to show how to write programs that use libpq. There are several complete examples of libpq applications in the following directories: Frontend programs that use libpq must include the header file libpq-fe.h and must link with the libpq library.

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Introduction to TOD Handbook The City of Winnipeg’s new planning framework – anchored by OurWinnipeg and the Complete Communities Direction Strategy – is founded on environmental, social and economical solutions. This framework will prioritize building complete communities and accommodating growth and change in a sustainable way. This will be done by balancing growth in new and existing communities with intensification in certain areas of the city – namely, centres and corridors, major redevelopment sites, and downtown. Transit-oriented development (TOD) is a key component of this balanced approach. By enabling density, mixed use, accessible urban design and sustainable transportation options, it: contributes to the overall sustainability of the city, provides a valued complement to existing land use patterns, and offers a lifestyle option that appeals to many people. A variety of sites can accommodate TOD, including, but not limited to, former industrial sites… This paper contemplates a vision for transportation in BC that sees the province dramatically reduce, and eventually eliminate, the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to transportation. We outline a strategic framework that aims to achieve a target of zero fossil fuels in transportation by 2040 — equivalent to the target set by the Greenest City Action Team for the City of Vancouver. More importantly, we wrestle with the key equity and social justice issues that arise in such an aggressive rethink of transportation. In particular, we articulate policies to facilitate a smooth transition for already disadvantaged social groups (poor, disabled, working families, elderly, and marginalized groups), and to win over, rather than punish, the wide range of households who are dependent on cars for their mobility because they have “just played by the rules.” The challenges facing British Columbians living in rural parts of the province are greater than for urban areas, but not… When the first edition of Cities of Opportunity was developed, we made a decision to rank cities only in their 10 indicator categories and to forego showing overall rankings to avoid the misperception of a contest. That risk seemed especially significant in 2007, when the media cast New York and London in a death match for global capital market kingship. With the uncertainty of future energy supplies and the impacts of global warming, rapid transit is becoming increasingly important as part of the transportation mix in North American cities. The conventional choice for rapid transit alignments are off-street corridors such as rail and highway right-of-ways. More recently, cities are locating rapid transit projects along arterial street right-of-ways, to influence more transit-supportive development rather than low-density, single use environments common throughout North America. Promoting transit alignments that provide the best opportunity for this type of development, known as development-oriented transit, is essential for influencing a change in urban transportation habits and building more resilient cities. The overall purpose of the proposed Walkability Strategy for Edmonton is to develop an integrated set of potential actions to address a range of identified barriers to improving walkability in the city of Edmonton. Edmonton has become a fast-paced urban centre with ‘big city’ advantages, opportunities, and challenges. Like other large centres, the limits of funding, outdated regulatory frameworks, and increasing land mass, as well as the need for sustainable growth and improvements to quality of life, are challenging municipal decision makers to respond with integrated, innovative, and efficient solutions. Initiated by the Walkable Edmonton Committee and funded by Smart Choices and Alberta Health Services, the Walkability Strategy addresses a number of key urban form, infrastructure, and policy and program barriers that are impeding Edmonton from being a more-walkable city. Calgary has seen record levels of growth over the last few years and population and economic growth is expected to continue in the future. Over the next 60 years the population in the city itself is expected to grow from approximately 1 million to 2.3 million persons, with another .5 million people in the surrounding region. This level of growth offers the opportunity, and the need, to shape the future land use and transportation patterns of Calgary. Studies have repeatedly shown that community design and development has a significant impact on: emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases; levels of physical activity and social cohesion; and rates of injuries and fatalities related to motor vehicles, which may include pedestrians and cyclists. This discussion paper is intended to: review the best available evidence related to health and land use planning in terms of walkability; define what is meant by “walkable and transit-supportive communities”; identify the opportunities for realizing these attributes within a Halton context; and, suggest the parameters that can inform the Sustainable Halton and Regional Official Plan review processes with respect to walkability. It is recognized that future public and agency consultation on this paper will take place through these processes and that some elements of this paper, such as community design and transit, fall under local municipal purview. This report examines the impacts of residential parking requirements (the number of offstreet parking spaces mandated at a particular location) on housing affordability. Increasing parking requirements increase housing development costs, which has reduced the supply of lower priced housing and raised costs to consumer. This report does not question the need for some off-street parking. The question issue is how best to determine parking requirements and manage available parking supply. It describes more efficient and equitable strategies that support social and environmental goals.

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FRIDAY, June 15 (HealthDay News) -- African ancestry does not explain why black Americans are more likely than whites to have high blood pressure, a new study says. But there is a significant association between low education levels and high blood pressure in blacks. The findings dispel the long-held belief that West African ancestry is a major reason for high rates of hypertension among black Americans, according to lead author Amy Non, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at Harvard University. High blood pressure can lead to stroke, heart failure, kidney disease, blindness and dementia, and blacks are more likely than whites to develop these complications in connection with high blood pressure. Non and her colleagues examined data from nearly 3,700 American adults and found that four years of additional education would lead to a predicted decrease of 2 mmHg systolic (top number) blood pressure, a decrease that could lead to a large reduction in hypertension-related deaths in the United States. Each year of education was associated with a 0.51 mmHg decrease in blood pressure. "Improved access to education in African American communities may help to reduce racial inequalities of health," Non said in a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation news release. "We hope these findings will help African Americans and their physicians to better manage high blood pressure." She explained that education can lead to higher levels of health knowledge and improved health behaviors, better job opportunities and a more positive attitude. "While genetics undoubtedly plays a role in hypertension, our findings suggest that education level plays an even larger role in health disparities in hypertension," Non said. "This means that improved access to education among African Americans may reduce racial disparities in blood pressure." The study will be published in the August issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more about high blood pressure.

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How do Z pinches contribute to a variety of scientific research projects? Z provides the fastest, most accurate, and cheapest method to determine how materials will react under high pressures and temperatures, characteristics that can then be expressed in formulas called “equations of state.” Equations of state tell researchers how materials will react if basic conditions like pressure and temperature are changed by specific amounts. Dovetailing theoretical simulations with laboratory work, Sandia researchers have been able to perform equation-of-state measurements more precisely than ever before. Exposing targets to the high power levels of Z also allows scientists to study extreme states of matter, such as plasmas, and it may produce unexpected reactions and generate responses of great interest to many areas of science. Fusion research on Z, too, contributes to broader scientific insight. Because near-perfect symmetry is necessary to ignite fusion (so the imploding particles will be forced to collide by not having room to escape), a persistent challenge in fusion science has been to heat the target evenly, so it will implode symmetrically. The capsule and container holding the target have to work together to produce the desired outcome, and their configurations and interactions have been the focus of intense theory and experimentation. Diamond, for example, has been the object of much study as a potential capsule material. In melting diamond to a puddle, Z scientists have been able to understand the material’s various states – from solid to liquid, with a mixed state in-between. Thanks to Z, researchers now have a better understanding of the mixed state, which is not ideal to ignite a fusion reaction, and they can avoid it as they continue to experiment with diamond. In this and other ways, research on Z provides a roadmap for potential problems and opportunities on the path to fusion. Beyond the fabrication of fusion pellets and the careful design of targets, achieving fusion requires work on many other interdependent elements including the machines, the mechanisms for delivering power onto a target, implementing detailed diagnostics for experiments, and creating computer codes to understand and then predict what the diagnostics revealed. Fusion is conducted in extremely complicated systems that involve complicated radiation dynamics as well as densities and temperatures not otherwise seen in nature. Trying to understand all the elements involved requires large computer codes, and tests conducted on the Z machine are very useful for testing and refining those codes. All of this work is crucial especially in conjunction with the National Ignition Campaign, which is the program to reach ignition of an inertial confinement fusion target at the National Ignition Facility. How do Z pinches work? The Z machine uses electricity to create radiation and heat, which are both applied to a variety of scientific purposes ranging from weapons research to the pursuit of fusion energy. The process starts with wall-current electricity, which Z uses to charge up large capacitors (structures designed to store an electric charge). The electricity is supplied by a local utility company, and in every shot the machine consumes only about as much energy as it would take to light 100 homes for a few minutes. Metal cables arranged like the spokes of a wheel connect the capacitors to a central vacuum chamber, 10 feet in diameter and 20 feet high. The cables, some insulated by water and some by oil, are each as big around as a horse and 30 feet long. When the accelerator fires, powerful electrical pulses strike a target at the center of the machine. Each shot from Z carries more than 1,000 times the electricity of a lightning bolt, and it finishes 20,000 times faster. The target is about the size of a spool of thread, and it consists of hundreds of tungsten wires, each thinner than a human hair, enclosed in a small metal container known as a hohlraum (German for hollow space). The hohlraum serves to maintain a uniform temperature. The flow of energy through the tungsten wires dissolves them into a plasma and creates a strong magnetic field that forces the exploded particles inward. The speed at which the particles move is equivalent to traveling from Los Angeles to New York – about 3,000 miles – in slightly less than one second. The particles then collide with one another along the z axis (hence the name “Z pinch”), and the collisions produce intense radiation (in physics terms, 2 million joules of X-ray energy) that heats the walls of the hohlraum to approximately 1.8 million degrees Celsius. As fast and powerful as the implosion is, the instruments that measure it must be even faster in order to record the details of the process. This is an added challenge for researchers who rely on the accuracy of these measurements to understand Z results and nuclear events in general. Accurate measurements also allow scientists to experiment with a variety of target arrangements to create conditions useful for many different purposes.

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Remember the excitement and joy you felt when your child started to speak? Sounds led to words, words to sentences, and sentences to conversations. You encouraged their speech with interactions, imitation, questions and communication. Being able to converse with your child opened a new world for you both. It’s equally exciting when your child learns to read! I teach my students that, "First we learn letters, letters make words, words make sentences, and sentences make stories." Breaking down reading to this sequence lets your child know there is a pattern to reading. Knowing the pattern removes some of the anxiety children might experience when they are first learning to read. Just as you helped and encouraged your child to speak, you can help and encourage them to read. Here are four simple activities to encourage reading: - Read together every night. The benefits of as little as five or ten minutes of bedtime reading are extraordinary. Let their interest generate what you read together. If your child likes dinosaurs, for example, get some dinosaur books from the library and read a page or two together before bed. - Just as you talked to your child, let your child see you reading. Newspapers, magazines, books, e-mails, web articles, etc. all subtly reinforce the importance of reading in everyday life. - After you read a sentence with your child, have him find a certain word in that sentence. For example, if you read, "The dinosaur bones were found in a cave," ask your child to point to the word that says "cave." Have him find other words in the sentence. This activity helps your child build a "sight-word" vocabulary. - Often children want you to read the same story again and again. In a familiar story, substitute or change a word. For example, "Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the piano...? Your child will laugh and easily correct you with the proper word. Just like speech, every child’s reading ability develops at their own pace. With patience and consistency you can easily help your child discover the joy of reading.

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The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Volume 9, Issue 7 , Page 401, July 2009 doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(09)70162-8Cite or Link Using DOI Swine-origin influenza A H1N1 update As swine-origin influenza A H1N1 continues to spread through the world, with cases in Asia and Africa, WHO is now debating whether to declare a pandemic. Since the start of May, the number of H1N1 cases has risen from fewer than 3000 to over 20 000. As of June 8, 25 288 people had been infected, of whom 139 have died. A key concern was the spread of the virus to developing countries, which will struggle to contain the virus. Africa's first infection was in a young girl travelling back to Egypt fro ... This article is made available free of charge, as a service to our users. Please login to access the full article, or register if you do not yet have a username and password. Already Registered? Please Login New to TheLancet.com? TheLancet.com is the online home of: - The Lancet - The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology - The Lancet Infectious Diseases - The Lancet Neurology - The Lancet Oncology - The Lancet Respiratory Medicine Please register to access selected articles for free, personalize and interact with this site. Registration is free, takes no more than two minutes, and offers you many benefits.

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UNIT 14-H Entomology Project: Unit 1 Welcome to Unit I of 4-H Entomology. We hope that this unit and the activities it contains will help you to become more interested in insects and the different ways they live. The objectives of 4-H Entomology Unit I are to: - Learn what insects are and how they fit into the scientific classification system. - Identify the main parts of a grasshopper. - Make a killing jar to use when collecting insects for your insect display. - Learn the correct way to label insect specimens. - Collect, pin, and label 25 different kinds of insects. - Keep records of the activities you complete in this project. - Do three of the optional activities listed - Help other 4-H club members by giving entomology talks and demonstrations. To receive a printed copy of Unit 1, please contact your local cooperative extension office. Educational programs of the Kentucky Cooperative Service serve all people regardless of race, color, age, sex, religion, disability, or national origin. Issued in furtherance of Cooperative Extension work, Acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, C. Oran Little, Director of Cooperative Extension Service, University of Kentucky, Lexington, and Kentucky State University, Frankfort. This publication was originally prepared by R.A. Scheibner. Revised by Stephanie Bailey and Lee Townsend. University of Kentucky Entomology Contact: S225 Agricultural Science Center - North U of KY Dept. of Entomology Lexington, KY 40546-0091 This web page was designed by Truett Cohorn. Any suggestions or comments are welcomed, mail to: Original Document June 1, 1996. Last Updated October 3, 2000.

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II. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPLICATIONS OF UNSUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT As noted in chapter I, NWFP is richly endowed with natural resources including prime agricultural land, a scenic landscape, forests and wildlife, an extensive mineral resource base, an ancient culture, a wide network of rivers and streams, and a diverse climate. Certain of the natural resources, such as forests which protect the watersheds, are of vital importance, both to the province and at the national level. However, NWFP is also facing with several green and brown environmentally-related problems as a result of previous unsustainable development activities. This chapter highlights those environmental problems and issues in the province.

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What Is Heart Failure? The heart is a muscle. It pumps oxygen-rich blood to all parts of the body. When you have heart failure, the heart can’t pump as well as it should. Blood and fluid may back up into the lungs, and some parts of the body don’t get enough oxygen-rich blood to work normally. These problems lead to the symptoms you feel. When You Have Heart Failure Because of heart failure, not enough blood leaves the heart with each beat. There are two types of heart failure. Both affect the ventricles’ ability to pump blood. You may have one or both types. Systolic heart failure: The heart muscle becomes weak and enlarged. It can’t pump enough blood forward when the ventricles contract. Ejection fraction is lower than normal. Diastolic heart failure: The heart muscle becomes stiff. It doesn’t relax normally between contractions, which keeps the ventricles from filling with blood. Ejection fraction is often in the normal range. How Heart Failure Affects Your Body When the heart doesn’t pump enough blood, hormones (body chemicals) are sent to increase the amount of work the heart does. Some hormones make the heart grow larger. Others tell the heart to pump faster. As a result, the heart may pump more blood at first, but it can’t keep up with the ongoing demands. So, the heart muscle becomes more damaged. Over time, even less blood is pumped through the heart. This leads to problems throughout the body. What Is Ejection Fraction? Ejection fraction (EF) measures how much blood the heart pumps out (ejects). This is measured to help diagnose heart failure. A healthy heart pumps at least half of the blood from the ventricles with each beat. This means a normal ejection fraction is around 50% or more.

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This document has the following sections: What is an Indexer? Goal of an indexer The main goal of an indexer is to create and setup some resource automatically. The resources can be created depending on their name or their extension. Once the resource has been created, the indexer is also in charge of attaching the right frames to this resource, like the HTTP frame, the filters and so on. DirectoryResource (and subclasses) is associated to an indexer, if no indexer is specified the DirectoryResource is associated to the "default" indexer. Description of an indexer - Class and attributes of an indexer - Usually, the indexer's class is - The name of the indexer, ex: "icons" - Last Modified - Unused, but resent as, internally, it is a resource. - Super Indexer - The name of the parent indexer used when the current indexer fails to index. By default, the super indexer is the "default" - The sons of an indexer - Used to index files matching exactly a name, mainly used to index directories. You can specify that an "Icons" directory will always be negotiable, for example. The default name (ie: matching all directory names) is "*default*" - Used to index files with a specific extension. For example, "html" is a FileResource with an HTTPFrame set to give the "text/html" content type to this file. Then all the "foo.html" files will be indexed as "text/html" type object when accessed by HTTP. The default extension (ie: matching all the extension names) is "*default*". To index files with no extensions, you must use the name "*noextension*". - content-types (only for the Content Type Indexer) - In some cases the file extension is not the only criteria, for example when a PUT request occurs the indexer should use the Content-Type header coming with the request (if there is a content-type header). This is the job of the Content Type Indexer. The Content Type Indexer (org.w3c.jigsaw.indexer.ContentTypeIndexer), has one more child, the content-types node. The associations between mime types and resources are stored in this new child. Since 2.0.2 the ContentTypeIndexer accept generic mime types like text:*, *:xml or even *:*. For example, if you define text:* as a FileResource using a HTTPFrame (with a content-type set to *none*) all content types like text/html, text/plain, text/xml will be accepted. Note: The mime types stored in the indexer are not "real" mime types, the '/' has been replaced by a ':'. We decided that because the '/' can create some conflicts with the URLs in Jigsaw. You can find a sample indexer configuration in this page. Indexers in JigAdmin The Indexers Space is exactly the same thing than the Documents Space except that indexers classes are available in the "Available Resources" window. You are still able to add, delete, configure resources and frames but only in the indexers nodes (directories, extensions and sometimes content-types). Of course, you can also create new indexers (under the

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HTML 4.0 (the predecessor of 4.01) introduced something called frames, which split the browser's viewport up into different sections, each displaying a different webpage. It was a good idea in concept, but the execution left a few things to be desired. Amongst the litany of woes: Using the back button on a browser in frames tended to be unpredictable, depending on what frame was loaded when. You could not bookmark a specific set of pages in the frameset's, only the default set. Accessibility for the disabled was severely compromised. Printing frames could also wasteful, as you might find yourself printing all pages displayed in the browser. Viewers would have to download multiple pages: the page defining the frames, and all pages displayed by the frames. Not all browsers during frames' heyday supported frames, so you had to code a no-frames version of your webpage. So why were they ever used? If you had a part of a webpage (usually the navigation) that you used over and over again, a frameset allowed you to put that code in its own webpage and display it apart from everything else. While server-side processing—explained in Server-Side Scripting—also was used for this, in many cases (such as website hosts at the time and websites that come on a CD, like this one), that simply wasn't available. Speaking of navigation lists, they could be quite long, and frames allowed the list and the page proper to scroll seperately. They were a means of arranging a page before CSS really came into its own. For someone unused to programming, frames (which are HTML) were easier to work with than server-side scripts, which (for the most part) require some knowledge of a programming language. The search engines have been able to read and follow <frameset>s for over ten years now, but that's not to say there are no issues. Google will often/usually just link to the <frameset> page now, even if it was an internal page that actually ranked for the user's query. Heaven knows what Bing does now, but its probably something similar. My errors: Yes, typo HTML. Well, server-side PHP etc. is not too easy. The results you get by chopping up the browser window [replacing <BODY> tag] makes the whole page overly complicated and unwieldy. Up until a year or so (when HTML5 became a hot topic), one of the professors teaching basic/beginner HTML where I tutor made students use <FRAMESET>. Made me so angry that he complicated HTML that way and students ended up with Web sites that did not function properly. What effect do you want to achieve with <FRAMESET>? Do you have an online example to share? Maybe someone can suggest an alternative approach. I for one don;t have the attitude or aptitude for AJAX coding. P.S. -- Re-reading note your purpose is an HTML "tutorial." Imagine a very brief "footnote" reference to <FRAMESET> would suffice. Think it would be more helpful to point out how <FRAMESET> worked than whether or not it was "easier" than server-side scripting. Last edited by auntnini; 01-09-2013 at 05:55 PM.

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These games teach valuable skills and have a high fun and educational rating. Your child will practice investigation skills by scanning Dora's room for certain objects. Walking around her house, your child will play a variety of games such as dressing up Dora, helping her mother cook, and fetching her dog. Your child develops shape matching, letter recognition, and counting skills in the search for Gold clues. Your child will practice recognizing the capital and lower case letters of the alphabet as well as practicing phonics. Your child will learn to write letters of the alphabet and match them to sounds by tracing the letters with a mouse and choosing the objects that start with the letters. Your child develops spelling and letter recognition skills by helping Dora spell out simple words describing different pictures. Your child develops knowledge about the alphabet by watching these different videos and following along. Your child develops letter recognition and fine motor skills by helping Hoho collect coins that have the same letter as given by Kai-lan. Your child gains understanding about how letters form words by making words of common objects with Bert and Ernie. Your child will practice reciting alphabet letters and helping out Alpha Pig spell the word pumpkin. Your child develops letter recognition by watching this video about the alphabet.

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My first exploration with Experiments in Musical Intelligence involved coding the rules of basic part-writing as I understood them, since part writing constitutes one of the primary superstructures of traditional tonal music. After much trial and error, my program produced a kind of vanilla music which basically adhered to these rules. While basically correct in terms of how the voices move one to another and still conform to classical triadic harmony, the music seemed, at least to the educated ear, lifeless and without much musical energy. While some of the music composed using this approach did prove fairly successful, most of its output was equally uninteresting and unsatisfying. Having an intermediary - myself - form abstract sets of rules for composition seemed artificial and unnecessarily premeditative. As well, having to code new sets of rules for each new style encountered proved daunting. I therefore revised the program to create new output from music stored in a database. My idea was that every work of music contains a set of instructions for creating different but highly related replications of itself. These instructions, interpreted correctly, can lead to interesting discoveries about musical structure as well as, hopefully, create new instances of stylistically-faithful music. My rationale for discovering such instructions was based, in part, on the concept of recombinancy. Recombinancy can be defined simply as a method for producing new music by recombining extant music into new logical successions. I describe this process in detail in my book Experiments in Musical Intelligence (1996). I argue there that recombinancy appears everywhere as a natural evolutionary and creative process. All the great books in the English language, for example, are constructed from recombinations of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Similarly, most of the great works of Western art music exist as recombinations of the twelve pitches of the equal-tempered scale and their octave equivalents. The secret lies not in the invention of new letters or notes but in the subtlety and elegance of their recombination. Of course, simply breaking a musical work into smaller parts and randomly combining them into new orders almost certainly produces gibberish. Effective recombination requires extensive musical analysis and very careful recombination to be effective at even an elemental level no less the highly musical level of which I dreamed. For more details on how this process works, please see my three books on the subject from A-R Editions Computers and Musical Style, Experiments in Musical Intelligence, and The Algorithmic Composer and one from MIT Press Virtual Music.. (1) deconstuction (analyze and separate into parts) (2) signatures (commonality - retain that which signifies style) (3) compatibility (recombinancy - recombine into new works) Since the early days of Experiments in Musical Intelligence, many audiences have heard its output in the styles of classical composers. The works have delighted, angered, provoked, and terrified those who have heard them. I do not believe that the composers and audiences of the future will have the same reactions. Ultimately, the computer is just a tool with which we extend our minds. The music our algorithms compose are just as much ours as the music created by the greatest of our personal human inspirations. For a complete bibliography of books and articles, CDs, and so on about Experiments in Musical Intelligence, click here.

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|Navigate Language Fundamentals topic:)| The previous chapter "Getting started" was a primer course in the basic of understanding how Java programming works. Throughout the chapter, we tackled with a variety of concepts that included: - Objects and class definitions; - Abstract and data types; - Class-level and method-level scopes; - Keywords; and, - Access modifiers, etc. From this point on, we would be looking into the above mentioned concepts and many more in finer detail with a deeper and richer understanding of how each one of them works. This chapter on Language fundamentals introduces the fundamental elements of the Java programming language in detail. The discussions in this chapter would use the concepts we have already gathered from our previous discussions and build upon them in a progressive manner. The Java programming syntax In linguistics, the word syntax (which comes from Ancient Greek σύνταξις where σύν [syn] means "together", and τάξις [táxis] means "an ordering") refers to "the process of arranging things". It defines the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages. When learning a new language, the first step one must take is to learn its programming syntax. Programming syntax is to programming languages what grammar is to spoken languages. Therefore, in order to create effective code in the Java programming, we need to learn its syntax — its principles and rules for constructing valid code statements and expressions. Java uses a syntax similar to the C programming language and therefore if one learns the Java programming syntax, they automatically would be able to read and write programs in similar languages — C, C++ and C#

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Bullying has become an overwhelming problem among children and the number of kids being bullied continues to rise. Dr. Michele Borba author of 'The Big Book of parenting Solutions' says We are not putting the pause button on stopping that aggressive behavior earlier so it continues to rise and our kids continue to use it later on: As parents we know our kids will not openly say they are being bullied. What are the tell tale signs to look for? Unexplained bruises, clingy behavior, withdrawing from friends, a text or email that makes them agitated or emotionally uncomfortable. Dr. Borba says we need to pay close attention to cyberbullying any use of electronic kind of bullying that may be hitting. School administrators; teachers and parents need to intervene and put a stop to this now! Finally Dr. Borba often tells parents that we need to create a safe school environment that kids know there is a clear anti bullying policy so when a child or parent walks on that campus they know what we stand for and we are not going to tolerating anything less than compassion or respect. Be a stakeholder and get involved. If your child's school does not have an anti-bullying policy in place, lobby to get one now. No child should go to school tomorrow in fear. I'm Dr. Sue with TKD helping parents take charge.

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Giant rover to make ‘terrifying’ landing on Mars (CNN) — No spacecraft has ever landed like this before and NASA admits it’ll be a wild ride. NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover, a 2,000 pound (900 kilogram) SUV-sized robotic science laboratory, is scheduled to touch down on August 6 at 12:31 a.m. CDT. The $2.5 billion rover started its journey on November 26, 2011, with launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It’s mission is to figure out whether its landing site, Gale Crater, was ever home to microbial life. Curiosity has 10 science experiments on board and is equipped with a robot arm that can drill into rocks. Curiosity can climb over obstacles up to 25 inches (65 centimeters) high and can travel about 660 feet (200 meters) per day. Mission managers say Curiosity’s trip to Mars has been “outstanding,” but the landing will be the hardest ever attempted, according to John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington. “This is risky business,” he said at media briefing on Monday. The rover’s size — it’s 9 feet, 10 inches long and 9 feet, 1 inch wide – makes it too heavy to land with airbags like earlier rovers. Instead, NASA will use what it calls the “sky crane touchdown system.” The landing is so complicated, NASA made a video about it called “Curiosity’s Seven Minutes of Terror.” A parachute will slow the rover as it plummets toward the Martian surface, and then a rocket backpack will slow it even more and guide it to the landing site. The “sky crane” deploys, leaving the rover hanging by nylon cords just above the ground. After the rover’s wheels touch down, the cords are cut and the rocket backpack speeds away and crashes. “Is it crazy?” asked Mars Exploration Program Manager Doug McCuistion. No, not if you understand it, he said. Is it risky? “Landing on Mars is always risky,” McCuistion said. The rover will go from 13,000 mph to zero in seven minutes and there are hundreds of things that can go wrong, he said. “Mars throws things at you. Dust storms, atmospheric density changes, wind,” he said. “It’s a very unique and a very challenging environment.” He likened the landing to a game of dominoes. If one one of them is out of place, McCuistion said, it’s likely the last domino won’t fall and the rover may “hit the ground harder than we want it too.” So, is the rover landing crazy? You decide. Here are the key moments in the landing: The rover, packed into its travel case (cruise stage), along with its protective back shell, a rocket backpack, heat shield and parachute, arrives at Mars on August 6 traveling at a zippy 13,200 mph (5,900 meters per second). Ten minutes before it enters Mars’ atmosphere, the rover’s cruise stage will be jettisoned. A minute later, small rockets on Curiosity’s protective back shell fire to stop the spacecraft from spinning (the spinning helped stabilize the craft during its trip from Earth, but the motion is no longer needed). The spacecraft will rotate so that its heat shield faces forward to protect it from the fiery heat of entry. Two tungsten weights – each weighing about 165 pounds (75 kilograms) — are ejected. This will help shift the mass of the spacecraft and generate lift. The spacecraft then will fly in a series of “S” curves to keep it on course. The spacecraft’s computer controls this motion — NASA calls it “guided entry.” The exact amount of time until touchdown will be determined by how much maneuvering the spacecraft has to make. NASA says it will take between six and seven minutes. After the spacecraft finishes “S” curves, it drops more weights. Then the nail-biter part begins: -7 miles up (11 kilometers) – a giant parachute is deployed to slow the spacecraft. -5 miles up (8 kilometers) – the heat shield is jettisoned. An onboard camera (Mars Descent Imager) begins recording video of the ground. -1 mile up (1.6 kilometers) and speeding toward the ground at 180 mph (80 meters per second) — the back shell, with the parachute attached, separates from the rover and its rocket backpack. The rocket backpack’s eight retrorockets begin firing to slow the rover’s descent to less than 2 mph (0.75 meters per second). -66 feet up (20 meters) and about 12 seconds before touchdown – nylon cords lower the rover from the rocket backpack in the “sky crane” maneuver. The rover’s wheels and suspension system double as the landing gear. After touchdown, the nylon cords are cut and the rocket backpack flies away to crash down a safe distance from the rover. Curiosity will be “ready to rove” upon landing and its computer begins activities on the first day at Gale Crater.

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Yellow or white |Height of average adult|| Tall (possibly more than 7 feet) |Length of average adult|| |Ministry of Magic Classification|| A centaur is a magical creature whose head, torso and arms appear to be human and are joined to a horse's body. However, they are their own species, and are not any kind of half-breed. Despite possessing 'human intelligence', centaurs are classified as Beasts by the Ministry of Magic, at their own request, as they were unhappy at having to share Being status with hags and vampires. Like horses, centaurs can come in a variety of colours, ranging from deep black to white. They have the body of a horse, and the torso, arms and head of a human man. Centaurs are not in fact half-breeds, but an entirely different species on their own. They are not very pleased to be insulted, particularly where their lineage is concerned, as Professor Umbridge found out to her cost. Centaurs may posses the ability to be clarivoyant, as Firenze taught alongside Sybill Trelawney. Centaurs are forest-dwelling, and, in each country where colonies exist, the wizarding authority has set aside land exclusively for their use. One such colony exists in the Forbidden Forest, at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. However, centaurs have their own methods of concealment, and avoid contact with both wizards and witches and Muggles. They generally live in herds of ten to fifty individuals. Centaurs do not use wands for magic, but are known to be well-versed in magical healing, Divination, archery, and Astronomy. Centaurs burn herbs such as mallowsweet and sage to refine their stargazing findings. In fact, the centaur Firenze taught Divination at Hogwarts, starting in the 1995–1996 school year. Centaurs are known to be gifted in divining. Indeed, the centaurs of the Forbidden Forest regularly made vague allusions to seeing the future, as when the centaur Firenze told Harry Potter that they were fated to meet again, and when he and Bane spoke of the "intermission" of sorts, between the First and Second Wizarding Wars. He also mentioned to his class at Hogwarts, that centaurs spend years trying to master their particular art of divining the fates. Centaurs on the whole seem also to be rather proud of their species, which was evident in their testiness whenever anyone even accidentally alluded to them being "used" or in any way employed by humankind, as when Firenze was chastised for allowing Harry Potter to ride to safety on his back, after the young wizard encountered Lord Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest-- his fellow centaurs considered allowing such a thing tantamount to becoming a 'common' mule. In 1995, they attempted to murder Firenze for his decision to "enter into human servitude," which was seen as a great and base betrayal. Centaurs also decided to be placed in the Beast Division instead of the Being Division in the British Ministry of Magic archives, because they wished to not be associated with hags and vampires, whom the Ministry designates "Beings". Centaurs also seem to favour nature over technology, the extent of their tools visibly in use being their bows and arrows. Instead, they cast their attention upon reading signs in nature, and living in forests appropriated by the Ministry of Magic. They are territorial creatures by nature, as Rubeus Hagrid mentioned in 1995, upon seeing a herd of centaurs in the Forbidden Forest, whose land was being consistently reduced, and that they might revolt against the Ministry as a result. Later the same year, they proclaimed that even Hagrid was "no longer welcome" within "their" forest, as he had "forfeited the friendship of the centaurs," and that their "tolerance was waning" (in reference to Hagrid's half-brother, Grawp, whom Hagrid was hiding in the forest at the time). Relationship with wizardkind Starting in 1811, centaurs were offered "Being" status, when Grogan Stump decreed that a "being" was "any creature that has sufficient intelligence to understand the laws of the magical community and to bear part of the responsibility in shaping those laws." However, they declined because of the associations with other creatures, such as vampires and hags, that "being" status would give them. The merpeople made the same decision a year later. Despite being highly intelligent creatures, centaurs were still officially classified as of "near-human intelligence" by the Ministry of Magic in the mid-1990s, per the text of Law Fifteen B, as laid down by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Centaurs take this phrase to be a great insult, as Dolores Umbridge found out the hard way, as they find that "[their] intelligence, thankfully, far outstrips [humans']." A Centaur Liaison Office still exists in the Ministry of Magic's Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, though no centaur has ever used it. In fact, the phrase "Being sent to the Centaur Office" has become an in-joke at the Ministry, meaning that the person in question is about to be sacked. A centaur was also represented in the Fountain of Magical Brethren at the Ministry of Magic, at least before the fountain's destruction during the battle between Albus Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort. Centaurs have also been known to save wizards from harm, one instance being Firenze saving Harry Potter, when Lord Voldemort was in the forest, though this was highly looked down upon as centaurs were not supposed to interfere with "what is to come."When Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, and Hermione Granger ended up leading Dolores Umbridge into the Forbidden Forest, a group of centaurs appeared with some of them carrying off Dolores while the rest were scared away by Grawp in an event known as the Skirmish in the Forbidden Forest. It was mentioned that Albus negotiated for Dolores' release when he was rehired by the Ministry of Magic. Behind the scenes - In the books, Centaurs are described as they are in traditional Greek myths, with the back-end of a horse, but an ordinary human face and torso in their upper parts. In the films, however, their human faces are more equine-like, like an exact cross between horse and human. They are covered in hair, the same as their horse halves, with long protruded faces, and long pointy ears. - Despite the fact that the Wizards' Ordinary Magic and Basic Aptitude Test establishes them to exist, female centaurs have yet to be physically seen in any Harry Potter media. - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (First appearance) - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film) - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (video game) (GBC & PS1 versions only) - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film) - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (video game) - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - Harry Potter: A Pop-Up Book - LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 - LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 - Harry Potter Trading Card Game Notes and references

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Podcasts & RSS Feeds Science, Health and Technology Thu June 14, 2012 We’re not alone: healthy humans have more microbes than cells The bacterium Enterococcus faecalis, which lives in the human gut, is just one type of microbe that was studied as part of the Human Microbiome Project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Researchers have completed the first comprehensive census of the human “microbiome” — the trillions of bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms that live in and on our bodies. The associate director of Washington University’s Genome Institute, George Weinstock, was one of the project’s lead researchers. He says we have about ten times more microbial cells in our body than we have human cells. “If we add up all the genes in those microbes, there’s probably a hundred times or more microbial genes in our body than there are genes in our human genome,” Weinstock said. “So the microbes, they’re not just a small little part of us, they’re really a very, very large, perhaps almost dominant part of our body.” Researchers used DNA sequencing techniques to identify more than 10,000 species of microbes in five main areas of the body: the skin, the mouth, the nose, the vagina, and the lower intestine. Weinstock says they focused on the microbiomes of healthy people. “This is all the precursor to being able to do clinical studies where you compare healthy and diseased people, and now you want to try to see what’s different between them,” Weinstock said. “The first thing you have to do is see how much variability there is just among healthy people all by themselves.” Weinstock says we still don’t know what most of the microorganisms are doing in our bodies, but that many are beneficial, helping us digest our food or protecting us from disease. He says one unexpected finding was that healthy people were infected with low levels of viruses — without getting sick. The five-year, $153 million Human Microbiome Project was funded by the National Institutes of Health. The results are published in the journal Nature and several journals of the Public Library of Science (PLoS ONE, PLoS Genetics, and PLoS Computational Biology).

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A bioengineer and geneticist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have successfully stored 5.5 petabits of data — around 700 terabytes — in a single gram of DNA, smashing the previous DNA data density record by a thousand times. The work, carried out by George Church and Sri Kosuri, basically treats DNA as just another digital storage device. Instead of binary data being encoded as magnetic regions on a hard drive platter, strands of DNA that store 96 bits are synthesized, with each of the bases (TGAC) representing a binary value (T and G = 1, A and C = 0). To read the data stored in DNA, you simply sequence it — just as if you were sequencing the human genome — and convert each of the TGAC bases back into binary. To aid with sequencing, each strand of DNA has a 19-bit address block at the start (the red bits in the image below) — so a whole vat of DNA can be sequenced out of order, and then sorted into usable data using the addresses. Thanks to Justin Freeman.

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5 Steps to a Fabulous Garden 1. Start with a plan 2. Select the right plant for the location & prepare the planting site 3. Provide proper care and manage pests 1. Start with a plan. It’s just like making a grocery list before you go shopping. No gardener, like the hungry shopper, can resist that bargain or new variety. Unfortunately, when we get the plants home there is no room for them in the garden or our landscape doesn't have the right growing conditions to keep the plant healthy and attractive. A plan will save you money spent on the wrong plants for your landscape. • Make a sketch of the existing landscape, identify bad views to screen and good views to save • Note problem areas, sunlight and soil conditions • Sketch in locations for plants and gardens that add beauty to your view whether indoors or out • Evaluate and review the plan – it’s much easier to move plants on paper than after they are planted in the ground. 2. Select the right plant for the location. No matter where you live, all gardeners seem to suffer from zone envy. We are looking for warmer winters, cooler summers, and more or less moisture in the form of rain and snow. Matching the plants to the available space and growing conditions means better looking plants with less work. • Use plants tolerant of winter and summer temperature extremes in your area • Pick plants suitable for the average rainfall • Give plants plenty of room to grow to their mature size 3. Prepare the planting site. Soil is the foundation of a healthy and attractive garden or landscape. If you build a good foundation, your plants will be more drought and pest tolerant. Investing time up front means less work for you to keep the landscape healthy and looking good. • Start with a soil test – most University Extension Offices can help • Dig 2 to 4 inches of organic matter such as compost, peat moss or aged manure into the top 6 to 12 inches of soil • Incorporate Milorganite prior to planting and follow recommended application rates • The organic source of nitrogen is slow release and won't burn the tender roots of new plants • The low nitrogen slow release formulation eliminates excessive growth that is more prone to pests and requires more mowing or pruning • The Phosphorous is non leaching, staying put for plants to use 4. Provide proper care. A healthy plant is better looking, requires less corrective care, and is the best defense against pests. Proper watering, fertilizing, grooming and care throughout a plant’s life will keep it looking good for a long life in your landscape. • Water the soil thoroughly, moistening the top 4 to 6 inches of soil during extended periods of drought • Wait until the soil is crumbly and slightly moist before watering again • Water early in the morning to reduce the risk of disease and water lost to evaporation • Mulch the soil surface with shredded leaves, evergreen needles, woodchips or other organic mulch to conserve moisture, reduce weeds, improve the soil, and insulate roots from temperature extremes • Apply Milorganite to plants that need a nutrient boost • The low nitrogen encourages growth without prohibiting bloom • As microorganisms work on Milorganite, the Phosphorous and Potassium becomes bound to the soil and is made available for plants to use • The organic source of nitrogen won’t burn plants even during the heat and drought of summer 5. Manage pests in harmony with the environment Despite your best efforts, insects, weeds and disease can invade the landscape. A healthy plant is usually able to tolerate normal insect and disease infestations. Beneficial insects, pest-eating birds, or a change in the weather can slow the spread and damage caused by pests. Patience if often our best weapon. • Make sure you have a problem before treating since most insects (97%) are beneficial. They eat the bad guys and improve the environment • Check your garden weekly for problems since early detection makes control easier and more effective • Handpick and destroy diseased plant parts or troublesome insects as soon as they are discovered • If you choose to use a chemical look for the most eco-friendly product available, and always follow the directions

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Rights & Tenure in the News » Mongabay: Indigenous rights rising in tropical forests, but big gaps remain As seen on mongabay.com May 31, 2012 Children in Dani village in West Papua, Indonesia. The Indonesian constitution gives the government ownership over all land and natural resources. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In the last twenty years, rights for indigenous forest dwellers have expanded significantly, according to a new report by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). Covering nearly thirty tropical forest countries, the report finds that indigenous people now hold rights to 31 percent of the forest land in these countries, rising from 21 percent in 1992. However, landmark land rights for indigenous people remain imperiled by lack of enforcement, land-grabbing, government ambivalence, and industrial development. The report comes less than a month before the Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development, a meeting of global leaders that marks two decades since the Rio Earth Summit. "All 27 of the countries we analyzed have one or more laws recognizing legal rights of communities, either nationally or regionally," said Fernanda Almeida, lead author of the report, in a press release. "But the laws themselves are not enough. They must be 'good laws', and they have to be implemented." The issue goes beyond even human and indigenous rights. Experts and scientists have long argued that one of the best ways to keep rainforests standing is to grant land rights to those who have depended, and safeguarded, the forest for centuries: indigenous people and local communities. Tropical forests provide innumerable ecosystem services to the world: biodiversity conservation, freshwater protection, carbon sequestration, rainfall production, medicinal discoveries, among others. However, tropical forests and the people who depend on them remain threatened by agricultural development, mining, fossil fuel production, industrial logging, and other impacts. "Forest peoples are caught between the forces of a drive for environmental sustainability and the intense pressure of economic development", explains Jeffrey Hatcher, Director of Global Programs for RRI. "Despite tremendous progress in establishing legal tenure regimes, a lack of political will and bureaucratic obstacles make it a struggle to implement any real action in most forest-rich developing nations." The tension between industrial development and indigenous rights is apparent in many of the laws enacted by tropical forest nations. Implementation is lacking in many cases and laws are often circumvented, overridden, or simply ignored, in order to allow corporations and governments to exploit the land. "Although indigenous peoples and other forest communities' rights are now more recognized than ever before, the study finds that the vast majority of the identified tenure regimes restrict community rights by not recognizing one or more of the rights within the extended bundle of rights," reads the report. For example, over a third of the various legal regimes set up by forest nations for indigenous people still allow outsiders to exploit the forest with impunity, negating one of the principle rights inherent in land ownership. Still indigenous land rights are on the march. Twenty years ago, ten percent of the world's tropical forests were owned by their indigenous inhabitants, today that percentage has risen to 15. While there has been definite progress over the past twenty years, the report finds that much still needs to be done. "The majority of the world’s forests remain claimed by governments with almost no recognition of the legal rights of the millions of people who have inhabited and managed the forests for generations. This disconnect is becoming more apparent and more urgent to rectify—especially as forest lands are increasingly targeted for investment." Africa is lagging behind all other continent in recognizing indigenous rights, according to the report. Ninety-seven percent of the forests on the continent are owned by the state. While Indonesia formally recognizes local community's rights to traditional land, the state owns all of the land and natural resources, essentially trumping indigenous and local rights. On the other side, Latin America has led the way in establishing comprehensive indigenous rights. "If these laws ever make it off the books, billions of hectares and millions of people will have access to one of the most effective tools available for eradicating poverty and conserving limited resources," explains Andy White, coordinator of RRI. "If negotiators [at Rio+20] are serious about reducing poverty and conserving forests, they will call on forest nations to strengthen community land rights in their forests. Only when such rights are a reality on paper and in practice, will communities be able to do what they do better than anyone else—manage the forests and curb the unsustainable practices now threatening tropical forest nations worldwide." Posted By David Robeck at 10:46am on June 04, 2012 This blog may contain links to external websites. These links should not be construed as endorsements by Rights and Resources of the content present. They are provided for informational purposes only.

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University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky has developed an awesome tool for making the periodic table of elements fun. The Periodic Table of Comic Books allows users to click an element and discover comics that talk about it, while also reading analyses of how scientifically accurate those comics are. It’s still a work in progress, so there aren’t yet entries for say, meitnerium or astatine, but there are a surprising number of references for elements like hafnium and lutetium in addition to expected ones like oxygen, nitrogen, and – of course – krypton. As an example, below is Scrooge McDuck talking about lithium, but there are also fun examples of Jimmy Olsen looking for germanium and the Beyonder turning an office building into gold. A fun, educational way to kill some time.

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Standing up to 9 feet (2.7 meters) tall with lanky legs, massive bodies, huge overbites and eyes the size of a child's fist, an ostrich looks like an avian punch line [source: San Diego Zoo]. These birds are no laughing matter, though. They're the largest birds alive, and they can kill a lion with one swift kick. The ostrich is different from almost all other birds. They belong to a family of birds called ratites, which includes emus and rheas as well, and they are easy to tell apart from other winged creatures. For one thing, these birds can't fly. As strange as it seems for a bird to be flightless, it makes sense if you consider flight as a way to escape predators. Ostriches don't need that particular escape route because they can sprint at up to 43 miles per hour (70 kph) and run long distances at more than 30 mph (50 kph) [source: San Diego Zoo]. They're the fastest animal on two legs. Their speed is even more impressive when you consider they can weigh up to 400 pounds (181 kg) [source: USDA]. While they don't fly, their wings aren't useless: They serve to balance the ostrich while it runs and act as rudders to quickly change direction at top speed. Male ostriches also use their huge wingspan to attract females in mating season. Ostriches live mostly in desolate desert climates, so they have to be pretty flexible in their diet. They'll eat almost anything: plants, lizards, seeds, locusts and stones are common parts of their diet (yes, stones -- they help to crush up the other stuff they eat). One rancher has reported his ostriches swallowing tennis balls -- and a kitten [source: NWF]. On farms, ostriches' small and nonpicky appetite makes them a good investment. They grow faster than cattle on much less food. They reproduce more often than cows, and they sell for a lot more because their meat is considered a delicacy, at least in the United States. In Europe and South Africa, it's actually pretty common fare. Why's their meat so special? For one thing, while ostrich meat is poultry, it's red, not white like most other birds. And this red meat, which looks and tastes much like beef, is lower in fat, calories and cholesterol than not only beef, but also white meats like chicken and turkey. All ratites have red meat. It has to do with their muscles. On the next page, we'll find out what meat actually is and what makes ostrich meat red instead of white.

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It's always exciting to find an animal track. After all, the creature who made it may be just around the corner. You can capture that moment of discovery by making a plaster cast of the print to bring home. When you find an animal track, ask your kids to note all the details. Are there toes? If so, how many? Can you see claws? A webbed foot could be a duck, and cloven hooves might be a white-tailed deer. Look for animal footprints in wooded areas and along fields and near water; the muddy or sandy banks of a lake or river are ideal. Once you find a track, form the poster board strip into a circle that's wide enough to encircle it like a collar. Secure the circle with paper clips and press it in the ground around the track. Add water to the plaster in the bag, mixing it by squeezing the bag from time to time, until the plaster is the consistency of a smoothie. Pour the plaster into the mold so it is about 1/2 inch deep. Let the plaster harden, about 10 to 20 minutes. Carefully pull up the cast and peel off the paper collar. Brush off any excess dirt.

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I am trying to understand what is the difference between TCP Half Open Connection and TCP Half closed connection can any one tell what exactly are they? When TCP establishes a connection, it is considered guaranteed since there is a handshake that takes place: At that point the connection is established, and data begins to flow. In contrast, a UDP packet is not guaranteed, and is just sent in the hopes it gets there. Officially, according to the RFC's, a half-open TCP connection is when one side of the established connection has crashed, and did not send notification that the connection was ending. This is not the common usage today. Unofficially, if can refer to an embryonic connection, which is a connection in the process of being established. Half-closed is the opposite of that unofficial definition. It is a state somewhere in the middle where the computers are tearing down the established connection.

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|A tamarin rock star | (photographed by Ltshears at Wikimedia) Our moods change when we hear music, but not all music affects us the same way. Slow, soft, higher-pitched, melodic songs soothe us; upbeat classical music makes us more alert and active; and fast, harsh, lower-pitched, dissonant music can rev us up and stress us out. Why would certain sounds affect us in specific emotional ways? One possibility is because of an overlap between how we perceive music and how we perceive human voice. Across human languages, people talk to their babies in slower, softer, higher-pitched voices than they speak to adults. And when we’re angry, we belt out low-pitched growly tones. The specific vocal attributes that we use in different emotional contexts are specific to our species… So what makes us so egocentric to think that other species might respond to our music in the same ways that we do? |A serene tamarin ponders where he placed | his smoking jacket (photographed by Michael Gäbler at Wikimedia) Cotton-top tamarins are squirrel-sized monkeys from northern Colombia that are highly social and vocal. As in humans (and pretty much every other vocalizing species studied), they tend to make higher-pitched tonal sounds when in friendly states and lower-pitched growly sounds when in aggressive states. But tamarin vocalizations have different tempos and pitch ranges than our tempos and pitch ranges. Chuck and David musically analyzed recorded tamarin calls to determine the common attributes of the sounds they make when they are feeling friendly or when they are aggressive or fearful. Then they composed music based on these attributes, essentially creating tamarin happy-music and tamarin death metal. They also composed original music based on human vocal attributes. They played 30-second clips of these different music types to pairs of tamarins and measured their behavior while the song was being played and for the first 5 minutes after it had finished. They compared these behavioral measures to the tamarins’ behavior during baseline periods (time periods not associated with the music sessions). An example of happy tamarin music (Copyright by David Teie and available through Biology Letters) can be found here. An example of aggressive tamarin music (Copyright by David Teie and available through Biology Letters) can be found here.As the researchers had predicted, tamarins were much more affected by tamarin music than by human music. Happy tamarin music seemed to calm them, causing the tamarins to move less and eat and drink more in the 5 minutes after the music stopped. Compared to the happy tamarin music, the aggressive tamarin music seemed to stress them out, causing the tamarins to move more and show more anxious behaviors (like bristling their fur and peeing) after the music stopped. The tamarins also showed lesser reactions to the human music. They showed less anxious behavior after the happy human music played and moved less after the aggressive human music played. So, human voice-based music also affected the tamarins to some degree, but not as strongly. This may be because there are some aspects of how we communicate emotions with our voice that are the same in tamarins. (How did the tamarin music make you feel?) Can you imagine what we could do with this idea of species-specific music? Well, David and Chuck did! They have since developed music for cats using similar techniques. Although they're still working on the paper, they have said that the cats prefered and were more calmed by cat music compared to human music. You can find samples and get your own copies here. We often think of vocal signals conveying messages in particular sounds, like words and sentences. But calls seem to do much more than that, making the emotions and behaviors of those listening resemble the emotions of those calling. Want to know more? Check this out: Snowdon, C., & Teie, D. (2009). Affective responses in tamarins elicited by species-specific music Biology Letters, 6 (1), 30-32 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.0593

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Bullying is Preventable Bullying is Preventable By Sheriff Al Lamberti As the 2012/2013 school year begins, it is important for parents to be aware of the Broward County School District’s strict Anti-Bullying Policy. The policy prohibits bullying of, or by, any district student or employee. Since knowledge is power, it is vital that parents become familiar with the policy, which is sent home with every Broward County student the first week of school for parental and student review. Bullying among children is aggressive behavior that is intentional and involves an imbalance of power or strength. A child who is being bullied has a hard time defending himself or herself. Usually, bullying is repeated over time. Bullying can take many forms such as physical, verbal, emotional and cyber-bullying. There are signs you can look for to know if your child is being bullied: · torn clothes · loss of appetite · mood changes · reluctance to go to school · bruises or injuries that can’t be explained. If you suspect your child is being bullied, it is important to talk with your child, be supportive and gather information about the bullying. All suspected bullying should be reported to your child’s school. You can also make an anonymous report by calling the district’s emergency hotline at (754) 321.0911 or by visiting www.browardschools.com. Face-to-face bullying isn’t the only way children can be victimized. Many children and young adults are using their computers and cell phones to send or post texts or images intended to hurt or embarrass their classmates. This includes sending mean, vulgar or threatening messages and images, posting sensitive or private information about another person, or pretending to be someone else in order to make that person look bad. Children and teens can cyber-bully each other through e-mails, instant messaging, text messages, web pages, blogs or chat rooms. If your child is a victim of such bullying: · encourage your child not to respond to cyber-bullying · do not erase the messages or pictures (save these as evidence) · try to identify the individual doing the cyber-bullying · consider filing a complaint with your service provider to block the sender · contact your child’s school · contact law enforcement if cyber-bullying involves acts such as threats of violence, extortion, obscene or harassing phone calls or text messages, stalking, hate crimes or child pornography. I encourage all parents to talk to their children about what it means to hurt another person physically or verbally. The Broward Sheriff’s Office is working with the Broward County School Board on an educational curriculum called ThinkB4UPost to be launched during Red Ribbon Week in October. This is a direct message from school officials and law enforcement to children and young adults about the consequences of cyber-bullying. For more information about ways to prevent and identify bullying, please visit www.sheriff.org/anti-bullying. With the help and guidance of law enforcement, parents, caregivers and teachers, I am confident we can put an end to bullying!

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The Old English Exodus |The Old English Exodus| |Author||J.R.R. Tolkien (ed., Joan Turville Petre)| |Publisher||Oxford University Press| |Format||Hardback in dustwrapper| The Old English Exodus collects J.R.R. Tolkien's text and translation of the Old English poem that is known as Exodus. They are accompanied by a commentary that has been produced by editing his notes for a series of informal lectures given in the 1930 and 1940s. Although dated 1981, the book was actually published in January 1982. 3,000 copies printed.

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Australian Bureau of Statistics 1362.7 - Regional Statistics, Northern Territory, 2004 Previous ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 11/08/2004 |Page tools: Print Page Print All RSS Search this Product| NT ADMINISTRATIVE REGIONS 1.1 NORTHERN TERRITORY BY REGIONS, SUMMARY (a) Average annual growth rate. (b) See Glossary. (c) Components may not add to totals due to rounding. ESTIMATED RESIDENT POPULATION The estimated resident population in the Northern Territory at June 2003 was 198,351 with an average annual growth rate of 0.9% for the five years to June 2003. Population growth over the five years to June 2003 was unevenly spread across the NT, with a decrease in the populations of the Katherine and Barkly regions offsetting the increase in the populations of the other four regions. At 30 June 2003 more than half of the NT population lived in Darwin SD and Environs (55.4%) with 34.5% of the total NT population residing in Darwin City SSD. Darwin SD and Environs had an average annual growth rate of 1.3% for the five years to June 2003, with Palmerston-East Arm SSD contributing significantly with an average annual growth rate of 6.4% over this period. The major regional centres of Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek accounted for 19.1% of the NT population at June 2003. ESTIMATED RESIDENT INDIGENOUS POPULATION The experimental estimated resident Indigenous population in the NT at June 2001 was 56,875, representing around 29% of the NT population, compared with around 2% nationally. Darwin Region Balance was estimated to have the highest proportion of Indigenous persons at 30 June 2001 (77.8%), while Darwin SD and Environs had the lowest (10.5%). More than nine out of every 10 people were estimated to be Indigenous in the SLAs of Bathurst-Melville, West Arnhem, East Arnhem - Bal and Tennant Creek - Bal. In contrast, more than nine out of every 10 people in Litchfield Shire SSD and Nhulunbuy SLA were estimated to be non-Indigenous. AGE AND SEX STRUCTURE Males continued to significantly outnumber females in the NT, with 111 males for every 100 females at 30 June 2003, compared to 99 males for every 100 females nationally. At 30 June 2002 males outnumbered females in every region, ranging from 112 males per 100 females in Darwin SD and Environs to 105 males per 100 females in Central Region. Females outnumbered males only in the 5-14 year age group in Barkly Region (50.8% female) and in the 65 years and over age group in Darwin Region Balance (55.5% female), East Arnhem Region (54.0% female) and Central Region (52.3% female). The Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme, which until 2004 was administered by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services (ATSIS), provides much of the Indigenous employment in the Territory. Under the scheme, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people voluntarily forego their individual entitlement to unemployment benefits and take part in community development initiatives in return for wages equivalent to their foregone benefit. Participants are considered to be employed and so the program has a significant influence on NT labour force estimates. At December 2003 there were 7,859 CDEP participants in the NT, a similar number to that at the same time a year before (7,801). Katherine Region and Darwin Region Balance had the highest numbers of participants employed under the CDEP scheme at December 2003 (1,962 and 1,897 respectively) while Darwin SD and Environs had the smallest number of participants (314). CDEP Participants—December 2003 PRICES, INCOME AND EXPENDITURE CONSUMER PRICE INDEX Between March quarter 2003 and March quarter 2004 the Consumer Price Index for Darwin rose 1.1% compared to a rise of 2.0% for the weighted average of the eight capital cities. The greatest increases for Darwin were recorded for health (up 7.2%), alcohol and tobacco (up 4.2%) and education (up 3.5%). The indexes for transportation and recreation decreased over the same period by 3.2% and 4.1% respectively. In 2000-01 the average net tax paid by individual taxpayers in the NT was $8,254. East Arnhem Region recorded both the highest average taxable income ($47,081) and average net tax paid by individual taxpayers ($11,438). Barkly Region had both the lowest average taxable income ($36,437) and the lowest average net tax paid by individual taxpayers ($7,247). The SLA of Groote Eylandt had the highest average taxable income at $54,815 (44.7% higher than the average for the NT as a whole), largely as a result of mining activities in this area. Selected Centrelink income support benefits In 2002-03 Central Region had the highest rate of persons receiving an Age Pension at 32.2 per 1,000 population, followed by Darwin SD and Environs (30.3). Darwin Region Balance recorded the highest rate of persons receiving Newstart Allowance (171.0 per 1,000 population), followed by the Katherine and East Arnhem regions with rates of 106.8 and 105.6 per 1,000 population respectively. Darwin Region Balance recorded the highest rate of persons receiving Parenting Payment Single (39.2 per 1,000 population), followed by the Katherine and Central Regions (32.6 and 31.2 per 1,000 population respectively). Darwin Region Balance also had the highest rate of persons receiving Youth Allowance (38.0 per 1,000 population), followed by Central Region and East Arnhem Region with 25.7 and 20.2 per 1,000 population respectively. Selected Veterans' pensions At June 2003 there were 1,254 pensioners in the NT receiving one or more of Disability, Veteran or Partner Service or War Widow(er) Pensions from the Department of Veterans' Affairs. Over three quarters of these pensioners resided in Darwin SD and Environs (78.9%), with Central Region (11.9%) and Katherine Region (5.3%) having the next highest proportions. Disability Pension was the most common form of payment (received by 789 pensioners in the NT) followed by Veteran Service Pension (312). LAW AND PUBLIC SAFETY In 2003 there were 40,085 traffic infringement notices issued by police in the NT, down 18.1% from 2002. Exceeding the speed limit remained the most common type of traffic infringement notice in the NT, accounting for 81.8% of all traffic infringement notices in 2003. This figure includes speed camera infringements which fall predominantly in Darwin SD and Environs and Central Region. By region, Darwin SD and Environs had the highest proportion of notices for exceeding the speed limit (85.9%) while Central Region had the highest proportion of notices for failing to comply with seatbelt laws (19.2%). DOMESTIC VIOLENCE APPLICATIONS Domestic violence applications are the initiating document in a domestic violence matter. They can be lodged by individuals or by police. In 2003 there were 1,601 domestic violence applications lodged in the Magistrates Court, up 3.6% from 2002. Between 2002 and 2003 the number of applications lodged by individuals declined by 14.2% while the number of applications lodged by police increased by 45.5%. Domestic violence applications lodged by police outnumbered applications by individuals in three of the NT's six regions - Darwin Region Balance (75.0% of all applications), East Arnhem Region (66.1%) and Barkly Region (51.5%). In 2003 Barkly Region recorded the highest rate of domestic violence applications lodged per 10,000 population (228.9), which was nearly three times more than the NT total application rate (80.7). In contrast, East Arnhem Region and Darwin SD and Environs recorded the lowest application rates (44.4 and 64.8 respectively). CAUSES OF DEATH In 2002 the most prevalent causes of death in all regions of the NT were diseases of the circulatory system (including heart disease) and malignant neoplasms (cancer). Darwin SD and Environs had the highest prevalence of malignant neoplasms comprising 25.9% of the total deaths for that region while the East Arnhem Region had the lowest with 13.2%. Barkly Region had the highest prevalence of deaths due to diseases of the circulatory system at 32.7% while the East Arnhem Region and Darwin Region Balance had the lowest at 17.0% and 19.3% respectively. Diabetes mellitus accounted for about 8% of all deaths in the East Arnhem, Katherine, Barkly and Central Regions, more than double the proportion of deaths due to diabetes mellitus in Darwin SD and Environs (2.9%) and Darwin Region Balance (3.4%). During the three years to March 2004, changes in the average price of unleaded petrol in Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek generally reflected changes in the eight capitals average, although their average prices remained considerably higher than the eight capitals average. At March 2004 the Darwin price was 5.9 cents higher than the eight capitals average price (100.2 and 94.3 cents per litre respectively). Average Petrol Price (Unleaded), Selected Areas HOUSING AND CONSTRUCTION RESIDENTIAL BUILDING APPROVALS Building approvals data is an indicator of expected building activity. Between 2001-02 and 2002–03, approvals for new houses in the NT decreased by 20.1% (from 643 to 514). Darwin SD and Environs accounted for 63.2% of all new house approvals in 2002-03, down slightly from 63.6% of all new house approvals in 2001-02, while Central Region accounted for 15.2% of all new house approvals in 2002-03, up slightly from 14.6% in 2001-02. In contrast, approvals for new other residential building (e.g. units) increased by 41.3% between 2001-02 to 2002-03 (from 303 to 428). The vast majority of new other residential approvals in 2002-03 were in Darwin SD and Environs (84.1%), up from 75.9% of all new other residential approvals in 2001-02, followed by Central Region (11.4%), down from 20.5% in 2001-02. New Residential Building Approvals Of the 1,150 tenants allocated public housing in the NT during 2002-03, 56.6% had waited less than six months, 17.4% had waited six to 12 months, and 26.0% had waited more than a year. Applicants in Barkly Region and Darwin SD and Environs experienced the shortest wait times, with the majority of tenants having waited less than six months (74.5% and 61.1% respectively). In contrast, applicants in Central Region experienced the longest wait times, with almost half (49.2%) of the tenants having waited more than 12 months. MINING AND ENERGY In 2002-03 all NT manganese, bauxite and alumina was produced in the East Arnhem Region where large mines are located at Groote Eylandt and Gove. The majority of gold and silver production occurred in the Central Region (88.4% and 61.6% respectively) and all zinc/lead concentrate and diamonds were produced in the Katherine Region from deposits at McArthur River and the Borroloola area. All uranium oxide production occurred in the Darwin Region Balance from deposits at Ranger, Jabiluka and Koongara. The production of nonmetallic minerals other than diamonds increased from 2.2m tonnes in 2001-02 to 2.6m tonnes in 2002-03, an increase mainly attributable to quarry operations in Katherine and Tennant Creek areas for supply of aggregate and rail ballast for the Darwin to Alice Springs railway. VISITORS TO THE NT Of the 1.7 million visitors to the NT in 2002-03, 44.8% visited the Top End, 43.3% visited the Central Region, 17.6% visited Katherine Region and 8.9% visited Barkly Region. On average, visitors stayed 7.0 nights in the Top End compared with 3.9 nights in the Central and Katherine Regions and 1.9 nights in Barkly Region. In the Top End 36.7% of visitors came from within the NT, 48.3% were from interstate and 15.0% were from overseas. Conversely, 43.9% of all visitors to the Central Region were from overseas, and only 19.2% were from within the NT. The Katherine and Barkly Regions both had high proportions of interstate visitors (46.8% and 58.9% respectively). Visitors to the Top End accounted for 50.4% of all visitor expenditure, followed by visitors to the Central Region (37.5%) and Katherine Region (9.5%). On average, visitors to the Top End spent more per visitor night than visitors to the other regions. NORTHERN TERRITORY ECONOMY NORTHERN TERRITORY GROSS STATE PRODUCT In 2002-03 the Northern Territory (NT) Gross State Product (GSP) (at current prices) was $9,064m, an increase of 3.1% from the previous year. NT GSP contributed 1.2% to Australia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 2002-03 NT GSP (at current prices) was $45,870 per capita, which was $7,719 (20.2%) higher than Australia's GDP per capita. NT GSP per capita has been greater than the national average each year since the ABS began to produce GSP estimates (in 1989-90). LOCAL GOVERNMENT FINANCE In 2002-03 the Darwin City Council recorded the highest total revenue ($47.4m) and the highest level of total expense ($44.0m) of all seven municipalities in the NT. Grants were a significant component of total revenue for the smaller municipal councils with Tennant Creek Town Council and Litchfield Shire Council receiving 39.4% and 34.4% of their budgets from grants. In contrast the larger councils such as Darwin and Palmerston City Councils received 8.6% and 12.3% respectively of their budgets from grants. Similarly, grants were a major component of total revenue for the Community Government Councils (CGCs) and Incorporated Associations (IAs), comprising half (49.8%) of the budgets of all CGCs and IAs in the NT in 2002-03. These documents will be presented in a new window. This page last updated 20 June 2006

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The Bahamas Biocomplexity Project is divided into five main working groups in order to tackle various research components. Most of these efforts are designed to intersect to enable interdisciplinary analyses in later stages of the project. In addition to these working groups there are several organizations that meet periodically to advise on and develop educational and outreach materials related to marine conservation. Connectivity Working Group NASA, MODIS, 2001 The BBP’s Connectivity Working Group (CWG) aims to understand how different parts of The Bahamas are ecologically “connected” with each other and with neighboring parts of the Caribbean. The group is addressing several main objectives revolving around analyses of oceanographic circulation patterns and the connectivity of marine populations. The degree of populational connectivity for various species within the archipelago will influence how various configurations of Marine Protected Areas serve to conserve such species. Understanding the basic dynamics of water movement throughout The Bahamas is an important starting point for understanding the dispersal dynamics of marine organisms into and within the archipelago. Water flowing within The Bahamas appears to originate primarily from the North Atlantic subtropical gyre to the east, with some mixing from the Western Caribbean via the Straits of Florida to the west. Other data help calibrate circulation models and allow further quantification of circulation dynamics. These models, in turn, can be used to estimate potential dispersal of marine species. By tracking “virtual” particles that are released in various places and are then driven passively for various periods of time by these simulated circulation dynamics, researchers can assess potential dispersal patterns that may connect subpopulations from place to place. Other species, especially those with active dispersal behaviors, are carried much less passively by currents. With these organisms, circulation dynamics may be poor indicators of populational connectivity. One approach is to adapt the virtual particle method above by endowing the dispersing particles with simple behaviors that approximate those known from various species. A complementary approach is to estimate the actual dispersal of certain species using genetic analyses of population structure. Species currently under genetic study include staghorn corals ( Acropora cervicornis ), queen conch ( Strombus gigas ), spiny lobsters ( Panulirus argus ), land crabs ( Gecarcinus lateralis and Cardisoma guanhumi ), and bonefish ( Albula vulpes ). Habitat Working Group Dan Brumbaugh / AMNH-CBC The design of networks of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) for the conservation of biological diversity requires a good understanding of the distribution of that biodiversity. Unfortunately, the knowledge of the finer scale, ecological factors that influence how species and populations are distributed across environmental gradients and within different habitat types is often lacking. Individual MPA site designations are frequently made on the basis of important but relatively ad hoc assessments of habitat quality and social factors. MPA networks should ideally be designed, at least in part, with an objective base of information that allows planners to efficiently ensure that all major pieces of the ecosystem are protected. Habitats provide useful units for accounting for biological diversity as well as individual species of interest. Because individual species in coral reef ecosystems frequently make use of particular combinations of various shallow, benthic habitats, and because biodiversity becomes associated with habitats, analyses of habitat distribution allow for the systematic assessment of both biodiversity and component species. As a consequence, the BBP’s Habitat Working Group (HWG) is using detailed field-based surveys along with satellite imagery to produce benthic habitat maps that will provide key data for multiple aspects of the project. By linking habitat maps to associations between specific habitat types and species assemblages, we are testing, calibrating, and then extrapolating how different species assemblages can be conserved with different MPA network configurations. In addition to their use in biodiversity conservation, habitat maps, when supplemented by additional field data and Geographical Information System (GIS) analyses, allow estimates of which areas are particularly important for certain species. For example, since only certain shallow areas may provide critical nursery habitat lobsters and groupers, we are developing new approaches for identifying which estuaries, sounds, and lagoons are likely to be preferred, high quality habitats. Social Working Group Kate Holmes / AMNH-CBC A central goal of the BBP’s Social Working Group (SWG) is to identify potential socioeconomic and cultural impacts that may result from the establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Hopefully, this can lead to an improved process of designating the types of MPA (e.g., no-take zones versus gear restrictions, etc.), choosing their locations, and planning for both short-term and long-term impacts, such as fishing displacement, job displacement, and increased development associated with growth in tourism and other sectors. The SWG is using surveys, guided interviews, focus groups, and participant observation in Bahamian settlements in order to: 1) understand local perceptions of change in marine resource availability; 2) identify trends in local use of marine resources; 3) identify local and external drivers of social and ecological change; 4) identify sources of information about the environment; 5) identify local perceptions of the utility of regulations, including MPAs; and 6) characterize people's cultural attachments to the sea. Some variables necessary for modeling, such as fishing pressure, investments in gear and target species during different seasons, are more easily quantifiable than other, more value-laden activities, such as the personal pleasure derived from recreational fishing, or the value of coral reefs for future generations. Even quantification of the more quantifiable activities, however, can be quite challenging since fishing and marketing occur at multiple scales, ranging from larger commercial endeavors ("smack boats") to smaller, individual operations working in the informal economy. Even more challenging than estimating the impacts of regulatory changes on single groups, such as fishing households, is to understand and model the potential feedbacks that may occur as changes in one activity influence another. For example, the establishment of an MPA that supports recreational catch-and-release fishing and diving may attract tourists to that area. To cater to these tourists, new hotels, dive operations, and seafood restaurants may be established, potentially contributing to changes in water quality, boat traffic, habitat degradation, and overfishing pressures on nearby natural resources. What will be the net impact of these secondary effects on the local ecosystem? Such questions will need to be answered by linking socioeconomic analyses to inferences from other environmental studies. Modeling Working Group Kate Holmes / AMNH-CBC The BBP’s Modeling Working Group (MWG) is developing quantitative models and computer simulations to integrate the various components of the BBP across different spatial and temporal scales. These models range from abstract, analytical modeling to more spatially explicit, numerical simulations as the analyses increase in spatial and component complexity. Ultimately, dynamic simulations – built on a foundation of empirical concepts and data – will provide new ways of understanding how coral reef ecosystems and human communities may respond to various MPA network scenarios. At the same time, due to the uncertainties involved with quantifying human and natural dynamics, the inherent complexity of these systems, and the likelihood that certain factors will need to be grossly simplified to create the models, accurate predictions of outcomes will not be possible. In other words, we don’t expect to be able to produce simple, single answers to complex questions. Rather, by testing the importance of different factors to various results, and by repeating the simulations thousands of times, we will develop better probabilistic understandings of what drives the behaviors of the linked human and natural system. In this way, we will provide tools and weighted results that should help decision makers better understand the system and the range of possible outcomes given different scenarios. In conjunction with the BBP’s GIS working group, we are also developing spatially explicit GIS-based models which will ultimately have an interface that supports and facilitates scenario testing by researchers, educators, and decision makers of various network designs and implementations. GIS Working Group The BBP’s GIS Working Group (GWS) is developing a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database to facilitate data storage, access, visualization, and analysis of spatially explicit information from The Bahamas. The Bahamas Online Digital Map Atlas consists of several layers of data from the rich data sets collected and generated by all of the working groups of the BBP. At present, the atlas contains a range of physical, social, political, and ecological maps relevant to the Bahamian archipelago including layers depicting settlements, ports and marinas, dive sites, fisheries data, storm paths, bathymetry, remote images, status of various reefs, and benthic habitat distributions. Additional data layers continue to be added at regular intervals. Although GIS has become the standard platform for visualizing and analyzing spatial data, most GIS analyses are “static” in that they do not use mathematical relationships among data layers to dynamically simulate interactions across space and time. In an effort to combine the visualization capabilities of GIS with the models of integrative relationships being developed by the BBP, the GWG is also developing and adapting simulation models to the GIS platform. These GIS-based models will ultimately have an interface that supports and facilitates scenario testing by researchers, educators, and decision makers of various network designs and implementations. Education Interest Group Kate Holmes / AMNH-CBC Given the importance of environmental outreach and education for conservation decision-making, the BBP is working to develop stronger linkages between its marine research and education in The Bahamas and elsewhere. Members of the BBP meet periodically with organizations in The Bahamas and the U.S. who are interested in aspects of outreach and education. These meetings are useful for reviewing the educational activities of the BBP and for strategic thinking about future education priorities and directions. Some of the educational and outreach products include a companion guide to an exhibit on Marine Protected Areas, new college curricula in marine conservation science, marine-related educational materials for schools, community outreach materials, various exhibition materials at the American Museum of Natural History, and the possible development of a high school-based artisanal fisheries-monitoring project. In addition, various working groups are sponsoring field internships and collaborations for Bahamian college students and educators.

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A history of politicians crying The art and artfulness of crying lik a politician: NORMALLY, one would feel sympathy for anyone reduced to tears by a Ken Livingstone campaign video. But when the blubber is Ken himself, and the tears are in full public view and in the presence of his own party leader, the response is likely to be rather different. But Ken – who as Mayor of London once broke down while apologizing for the city’s role in the slave trade – is merely the latest in a long line of politicians who have broken down in the glare of the spotlight. Ken’s illustrious weeping predecessors include men such as Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill – the latter crying openly and frequently in the House of Commons. Here we celebrate that familiar, and not always honourable, tradition… Back in 1972, crying was a big deal. When Democratic candidate Ed Muskie was reported to have broken down while defending his wife form accusations of drinking and bad language, it dealt a fatal blow to his presidential aspirations. We say “reported”, because Muskie claimed that the alleged tears were in fact melted snow flakes. Watching the footage, he seems to have a point… The hard-drinking Aussie Prime minister (and self-styled “Australia’s mate”) was something of a groundbreaker down under when it came to public blubbing. He shed tears on national TV as far back as 1984 when speaking of a drug problem in his family, and in1989 when admitting to being unfaithful to his long-suffering wife Hazel. But things weren’t always so sad… George Bush junior was not averse to quivering his lip in public, but his daddy was the daddy… The Clintons are a famously lachrymose couple, but some tears seem more genuine than others. Judge for yourself as Bill, attending the funeral of former colleague Ron Brown, appears to switch from laughter to tears at the precise moment that he notices he is being filmed… As the new speaker of the US House of Representatives, serial blubber John Boehner celebrated victory in the only way he knows – by turning on the waterworks. “I spent my whole life chasing the American dream. I put myself through school… working every rotten job there was and every night shift I could find,” he wailed. “I poured my heart and soul into running a small business – and when I saw how out of touch Washington had become with the core values of this great nation, I put my name forward and ran for office.” And as we know when America calls, Boehner’s tears are sure to fall… And finally back to Britain. No one blamed Gordon Brown for welling up at the thought of his daughter’s death. But some might criticise his choice of venue – a TV studio containing Piers Morgan. Sadly for Gordon, his subsequent election campaign ended in tears too. Note: These pictures are taken from the web. They contain no copyright details. If they are yours, please get in touch and we will remove them

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DEAR DOCTOR K: I’ve been diagnosed with essential tremor. Can this condition improve, or will it only get worse from here? This condition definitely can improve with treatment. If you’ve been diagnosed with this disorder, I assume you have shaking movements of your hands, limbs, head or voice that you can’t control. If you’re like most people with this condition, it may come and go for reasons of its own. Essential tremor is a permanent condition. Without treatment, the degree of tremor typically worsens with age. It also can expand from one part of the body to other parts over time. There are many different neurological conditions that can cause tremor. Fortunately, essential tremor is one of the least serious and most easily treated. The neurological condition that most of my patients worry about when they develop essential tremor is Parkinson’s disease. But Parkinson’s is very different from essential tremor: It is a serious disease that affects a person’s ability to move. The tremors of Parkinson’s disease are more noticeable at rest. In contrast, essential tremor is most noticeable when your body is in action. Most important, having essential tremor does not mean that you will get Parkinson’s disease — there’s no connection. Essential tremor often begins in the dominant hand — usually the right hand, since most people are right-handers. You may have trouble with things like writing, typing or pouring a beverage. Essential tremor also can affect your head and cause your speech to tremble. The actress Katherine Hepburn developed essential tremor of her head and speech in her later years. Despite that, she gave some of her greatest performances in those years. Remember her in “On Golden Pond”? I can’t forget. Beta-blockers, particularly propranolol (Inderal), are the most effective treatments for essential tremor. Beta-blockers usually improve the tremor so that it does not interfere with normal activities. In some people, the tremor disappears completely. If you stop taking the medication, the tremor will return. Other drugs that may help include: - The anti-seizure drug primidone (Myidone, Mysoline). - The anti-anxiety medicine lorazepam (Ativan). - Gabapentin (Neurontin), a drug used primarily to treat chronic pain. - For severe tremors that don’t respond to other therapies, doctors may use injections of botulinum toxin (Botox). Many people find that drinking small amounts of alcohol temporarily relieves tremor. That’s small amounts: It’s wise for men to avoid drinking more than two drinks a day, and women one drink a day. Stress, caffeine and certain medicines may make the tremor worse. If that’s the case for you, learn ways to reduce your stress and cut down on caffeinated beverages such as coffee, tea and soft drinks. Some medications, including stimulants and antidepressants, may also affect your tremor. Ask your doctor if you are taking any medications that could be worsening your tremor. Essential tremor is something that many of my patients have learned to live with, after treatment has lessened the symptoms. It’s one of the infirmities of growing older.

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|'Yae-kazura' bears double, soft-pink flowers. The tree peony, or Mouton peony, is a deciduous shrub that bears large, showy, cup or bowl-shaped flowers from late spring to early summer. Leaves are dark green with blue-green undersides and are deeply lobed. Originating in China, the tree peony is long lived and may reach a height and width of 7 feet. Soil should be deep, rich and well-prepared. Remember to plant the grafted union of the tree about 5 or 6 inches below the suface of the soil. Peonies thrive on sun (part sun in warmer climates) and plenty of water. Plant where they will be protected from wind. The best time to prune is in late winter or early spring while the plant is still dormant.

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The Infamous Attack on Pearl Harbor is Remembered as US Flags Fly at Half MastBy Jena Isle on Dec 7, 2010 in Events, United States • The infamous attack on Pearl Harbor is remembered, as US flags fly at half staff in government facilities and public places. This is according to international reports, December 7, 2010. The commemoration of the attack on Pearl Harbor brings to mind that infamous day when the Imperial Army of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on that peaceful and pleasant day of December 7, 1941. Japanese aircraft destroyed ships and naval facilities, killing thousands of soldiers and civilians. Up to this day, the survivors of that early morning tragedy could still remember it vividly. The Japanese planes had dropped bombs and obliterated US Naval ships and thousands had died on that infamous day. It had marked also the declaration of war by the US against Japan. This day honors the more than 2,000 military men who have sacrificed their lives for their country. There were more than 1,000 wounded and 57 civilians killed with 35 wounded. There were more than 100 aircraft damaged. It marks also as a Day of Remembrance for the 3,000 personnel who survived the attack. This number is slowly dwindling as the brave men succumb to old age. Here is a video from YouTube of the USS Arizona Pearl Harbor. Spread The News!

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Short selling 'fundamental part of an efficient market' Short selling is a $2 trillion (£1.31 trillion) global industry which has often attracted controversy, particularly when its lending is used to do a trade known as "shorting" stocks. Shorting is when an investor borrows a stock sells it on the expectation the price will fall, and then buys it back at a later date, at a lower price, and returns it. Short selling has been blamed by many for exacerbating market falls and has been temporarily banned in a number of countries including France and Spain. But shorting is something which many pension funds and others take part in through hedge funds and other investment vehicles. David Lewis, head of the Securities Lending division at SunGard, told the Today programme: "Many studies have shown that volatility increases when short selling has been banned because you don't have the efficient price discovery. "Short selling is a fundamental part of an efficient market." First broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday 26 February 2013.

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A lot of people will need more than one period of treatment over the course of a lifetime. Relapse is simply the nature of the disease. A relapse does not mean that a previous treatment was a failure; it simply means that some level of treatment is once again needed. The longer you stay in treatment the better your chances of lengthy sobriety and the longer you can stay abstinent, the less likely you are to relapse. NIDA says that rehabilitation programs (residential or outpatient) should be at least 3 months in duration for best efficacy, and that a person on methadone should stay on the medication for at least one year. What Makes Treatment Effective? According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) some of the elements of effective drug or alcohol addiction treatment include: - Treatment must be matched to the needs of the individual – there is no one sized fits all solution, and a treatment plan needs to evolve as a person’s need for treatment changes over time - Addiction treatment works well, but only if you give it time to work! The longer you stay involved in treatment, the better the chances - Medications can be an effective adjunct treatment to psychosocial counseling - Involuntary treatment works – people do not need to want help at the beginning - Medical detox only readies a person for treatment – detox alone will not solve the problem - Drug testing during treatment is an effective way to monitor for relapse and relapse is a common part of any recovery1 Page last updated Aug 05, 2010

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Different DSLRs offer resolutions ranging from about 6 up to 24Mpix (with higher resolutions to come). Higher-resolution sensors offer more detail, but their smaller pixel size often leads to higher noise levels, and consequently to lower dynamic range, tonal range, and color sensitivity. When printing under identical conditions, however, the performance differences can be either mitigated or accentuated by the choice of print size. When one compares an 8Mpix image with a 32Mpix image printed on identical 20x30cm paper at 300dpi, the measurements for the original image do not give a good indication of the final result. The 8Mpix image will require no interpolation (2300 pixels for 20cm, or roughly 8 inches), while the 32MPix image will have to be reduced significantly, with 4 original pixels averaged into a single pixel. This averaging operation will significantly reduce the noise in the 32Mpix, and accordingly improves the measurements provided for the original resolution. Original measurements can help gauge image quality when viewed at 100%, but to better predict how prints will compare, we provide a normalized (and thus more reliable) version based on 8Mpix. See "Detailed computation of DxOMark Sensor normalization" for more information.

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Back Away From That Blackberry A California psychologist argues in a new book called 'iDisorder' that many physical and mental illnesses spring from overuse of Blackberries, iPads, and laptops. FRIDAY, May 18, 2012 — We've all heard that hours in front of our computers can make us lonely, stressed out, and less focused — but it may be worse than we thought, argues California psychologist Larry D. Rosen, PhD in iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming its Hold on Us. "Overreliance on gadgets and websites has created an enmeshed relationship with technology,” Rosen writes in his book. “This relationship can cause significant problems in out psyche, what I call an iDisorder." In the book, Dr. Rosen combines his research on health and technology with glimpses into other scientists' work to explain how these electronic gadgets infiltrate our heads. Here's a guide to technology-caused conditions he identifies — and tips for turning them around. FOMO: If you're out to dinner with your friends, and several phones lie face up on the table, you're suffering from the "fear of missing out," Rosen said in a phone interview. "We have raging anxiety that we may miss out on something" when we don't have access to our phones and other devices, and sometimes it interferes with good manners and concentration. The distracted are mostly teens and young adults, Rosen says. Rosen's solution: Check your phone less often, like every 15 minutes rather than every 15 seconds. Put yourself on a regular phone schedule not dictated by your anxiety levels. If you can't handle 15 minutes away from your device, try 10 at first. The key is to train yourself so you're controlling your technology — better than the other way around. Facebook depression: Rosen says studies show that people who are the most active on Facebook — the regular photo taggers and wall updaters among us — also tend to be the most depressed. But there's a caveat: The more friends you have on Facebook, the less depressed you're likely to feel. Your level of Facebook activity, surprisingly, doesn't necessarily relate to the number of friends you have. And, says Rosen, "Facebook activity is not all bad." It can be an excellent way to form a support group, or a depressing reminder that everyone is having more fun than you. To prevent the more negative symptoms of Facebook use, he recommends taking time off. Rosen isn't talking about a monthlong Facebook fast, but rather taking a break for a few hours or a day to reconnect with the real world and put your Facebook-related issues in perspective. Also, remember you can't get an accurate read on people's lives from their Facebook pages. "If you're judging what a person's life is like on Facebook, think again," he says. "It's just the way they're presenting their lives. Nobody's life is that good." Phantom vibrations: About 70 percent of people in a sample of 100 members of the medical staff at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., have experienced the feeling of a phone vibrating in their pocket even when it's not happening, according to one of the hospital's researchers, Michael Rotherberg. When it comes to our phones, we're extra vigilant, Rosen notes: "Part of our brain is constantly on alert for incoming signals. Often we're on hyper-alert because we don't want to miss any important messages we may get." To keep your anxiety levels from going into overdrive, try calming down your brain for 10 minutes every couple of hours. There's a laundry list of techniques that are proven to help our brains relax, says Rosen. These include listening to enjoyable music, talking to a friend, spending time in nature (even your front yard or a park), exercising, speaking a foreign language, taking a bath, or flipping through a book of beautiful pictures. Cyberchondria: You wake up with a cough, type in your symptoms, try to diagnose yourself, and panic about being terminally ill. "People may already have a level of anxiety about by their physical maladies, but because of the information we have available online now, it only exacerbates that," Rosen says. Keep your mind in check when it's racing to gloom and doom. "The bottom line is, there's information out there that is not valid. That's why you go to a specialist, someone who has expertise," he notes. There can be serious consequences to self-diagnosis. A recent survey of 1,000 British women (conducted by feminine health company Balance Activ) found that about one-fourth had self-diagnosed on the Internet, leading them to try the wrong treatment for their ailments. About 20 percent said they had wrongly suspected they had a serious disease. The Google effect: Since the advent of search engines, our brains haven't worked the same, says Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow. The "Google effect" happens when we rely on the Internet to remember facts we would previously have memorized (say, our friends' phone numbers). But forgetting small details and recalling search terms you need later isn't a new idea, Rosen says. "Before there was the Internet, there was a set of World Book encyclopedias you'd keep at home to remember facts." Now that we can access facts online from almost anywhere, Rosen predicts, our tendency to memorize ways to get information, rather than the information itself, will increase. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. "It keeps more space in our brains for more important stuff," he says.

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The Edupunks' Guide: How to Do Research Online It’s the best of times and the worst of times to be a learner. College tuition has doubled in the past decade, while the options for learning online and independently keep expanding. Anya Kamenetz's new free ebook The Edupunks’ Guide is all about the many paths that learners are taking in this new world, and we're running excerpts from the book all week. We're also asking GOOD readers to doodle your learning journey and submit the result by Sunday, September 11. There’s been a revolution in the way people spread knowledge. Sharing information openly over the Internet is way cheaper than purchasing it commercially in dead-tree format, and often the learning that happens this way is faster, more up-to-date, and more relevant to our immediate needs. A simple example is learning to make pizza. A few years ago, you may have had to take a class or at least buy a cookbook. Today you can put “how to make a pizza” into YouTube and within minutes, you’re watching a video that shows you how to fling the dough! More and more people around the world are building on this knowledge revolution to explore new modes of learning and to transform what we mean by “education.” For many, the first step in an online learning journey is a simple Google search. - Start with Google, the most-used search engine on the web. Put your phrase in quotes to return pages with the exact words, like this: “African-American history” - Search on Wikipedia to get an overview of the topic. Follow the links to an article’s sources at the bottom of the page. - Google Scholar will give you scholarly journal articles and other verified sources of information. - An online archive like The Internet Archive may offer original source material. - YouTube is good for videos—a quick entry into a topic. Or just Google your phrase and the word “video.” - For news stories, try Google News - For links on news, trends, and up-to-the-minute happenings, you can search Twitter with a hashtag, like this: #americanidol. - Try posting your question to a site like OpenStudy or WikiAnswers. - Put in your search terms plus the word “forum” or “blog” to see what ideas other people have discussed on message boards or on blogs. A successful online research session will leave you with 20 open tabs or windows at the top of your screen. Follow your curiosity, but keep track of the links you’re following in an email draft, Word document, or an application like Evernote or Diigo so you can consult them later. Top Free Learning Resources Online Europeana: A digital library with 4.6 million items from libraries, archives, museums and other institutions across Europe. Read Charles Darwin’s letters or listen to Pavarotti singing Verdi. The Internet Archive: A vast nonprofit digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts—video, audio, texts, and live music. Khan Academy: The Khan Academy has over 2000 videos covering basic math through calculus and trigonometry, physics, biology, chemistry, banking, finance, and statistics. The videos are short—5 to 15 minutes long—simple, and entertaining. They’re all made by Sal Khan, a 33-year-old former hedge fund analyst who started making them to help tutor his young cousins. LearnFree: 750 free lessons on basic computer skills, reading and math. Library.nu: Half a million free books. May not be exactly legal. Browse at your own risk. MIT Open Courseware: The oldest open courseware site, with 1,900 courses on everything from history to physics. A favorite for science and math. OpenCulture: A well-edited blog and site chronicling “the best” cultural and educational media on the web. They have lists of free online courses from top universities and free language lessons. Open Learning Initiative: The Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon has 13 free complete courses in topics ranging from physics to logic to French. The courses are highly interactive, using video, animations, and lots of embedded quizzes and assessments so you know how you’re doing. The site requires a signup and sometimes you may have to download some software. Open Textbooks: A catalog of open textbooks that are free to read online. Quia: On Quia, you can create your own games and quizzes to test yourself, or take thousands of quizzes—flashcards, matching games, word searches—that other students and teachers have created for the ultimate study guide. Saylor Foundation: Saylor lists 241 original courses on the site, for which the material comes from around the web. Scribd: Scribd is a place to find free books and presentations on almost any topic, uploaded and shared by the authors. Slideshare: Slideshare is a collection of free PowerPoint presentations, sometimes with audio. It’s a good place to learn about up-to-date topics like design, technology, and music. TED: TED (for Technology, Entertainment, Design) has an excellent collection of 300-plus short video lectures by scientists, authors, artists, political figures, and more. Browsing the site is sure to be enlightening and can give you clues about fields you might want to study, like behavioral economics or biophysics. Textbook Revolution: A student-run site with links and reviews to textbooks and other educational resources. Many are available free as PDFs, viewable online as ebooks, or websites containing course materials. You can also use the site to find descriptions of books that aren’t free, and find where they may be cheaper. Wikiversity: Wikiversity has a wide variety of multimedia course materials. Courses are run through the site, meaning students at universities create and publish course modules for other students’ use. Like Wikipedia, you can participate in the community by editing course material (a great way to test and expand your own knowledge) or by joining discussions in the “Colloquium” section. YouTube and YouTube EDU: Don’t forget to search YouTube for lectures and presentations on any topic you find interesting. YouTube EDU contains content that’s been tagged “education,” which may include quirky things like Tina Fey’s 2011 book talk at Google.

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The City Council took aim at the city's largest polluter Wednesday by requiring property owners audit energy usage and make maintenance overhauls to cut back on carbon emissions. Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the package of legislation would set a standard nationwide. Buildings of more than 50,000 square feet will have to upgrade their lighting by 2025, and those same buildings will now have to conduct energy audits every 10 years. The city's existing buildings account for 80 percent of the city's carbon footprint and represent $15 billion a year in energy costs. While environmental advocates and city officials championed the green-buildings package, some critics question the effectiveness of one piece of legislation (Intro 967-A), which originally required large buildings adopt the recommendations of the now-required energy efficiency audits. The version the City Council approved yesterday by a vote of 41 to 5 would make those recommendations voluntary. Some charge the council backed away from the tougher legislation because of lobbying from the city's business industry, which called the bill too expensive to implement in a floundering economy. Quinn argued yesterday that the council decided not to push for mandatory retrofitting because it would require a significant capital investment by landlords that would, in turn, trigger rent increases. Even without the mandatory retrofitting, officials have acknowledged that the entire package of legislation could be costly for property owners. But they argue overall it is a net positive. "Once these changes are put in place very quickly the building will not only make back whatever they have put in, they will actually begin to go beyond that and save," said Quinn. While the council abandoned the requirement for retrofitting, officials did say the city would strive to set an example. The bill requires the city retrofit its buildings if audits show it would result in savings on energy bills in seven years. The council is also requiring owners of large buildings to conduct smaller energy-efficiency improvements, which would have less of an impact on their pockets. Before every audit is submitted to the Buildings Department, buildings of more than 50,000 square feet will have to be retro-commissioned, which is when maintenance and low-cost performance improvements are made to increase a building's energy efficiency. Overall, the entire legislative package, said Quinn, would reduce the city's carbon footprint by almost 5 percent. Quinn also said the bills would create 18,000 green jobs. Environmental advocates have praised the package. "You come into a negotiation asking for more than what you were going to get," said Dan Hendrick of the New York League of Conservation Voters. "Even with all the amendments, it's still groundbreaking." In addition to the auditing bill, the council also passed legislation (Intro 973-A) by a vote of 44 to 2 that requires buildings of more than 50,000 square feet to make lighting upgrades by 2025, including the use of sensors and more efficient light fixtures. It would also require the installation of submeters, and landlords would have to provide tenants with monthly breakdowns of their electricity consumption. In addition, the council unanimously approved a new energy code (Intro 564-A) that requires equipment installed during renovations to meet efficiency standards, and it approved legislation (Intro 476-A) that requires large and city-owned buildings to monitor their energy and water consumption and report it to the Department of Finance. That data will eventually be made public. In addition to its green-buildings package, the council approved a zoning and financial incentive program to spur the construction of supermarkets in neighborhoods that have a drought of fresh food. Otherwise known as the Food Retail Expansion to Support Health, the program targets neighborhoods in the South Bronx, Upper Manhattan, Central Brooklyn and Downtown Jamaica. Its incentives include: allowing one additional square foot of residential floor area for every square foot of a fresh food store up to 20,000 square feet, allowing grocery stores of 30,000 square feet and below to locate in light manufacturing areas, and reducing the parking requirements for grocery stores in this area. Last Updated (Jun 06, 2012)

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The world food production has increased substantially in the past century, as has calorie intake per capita. However, in spite of a decrease in the proportion of undernourished people, the absolute number has in fact increased during the current food crisis, to over 963 million. By 2050, population growth by an estimated 3 billion more people will increase food demand. Increased fertilizer application and more water usage through irrigation have been responsible for over 70% of the crop yield increase in the past. Yields, however, have nearly stabilized for cereals, partly as a result of low and declining investments in agriculture. In addition, fisheries landings have declined in the past decade mainly as a result of overfishing and unsustainable fishing methods. Food supply, however, is not only a function of production, but also of energy efficiency. Food energy efficiency is our ability to minimize the loss of energy in food from harvest potential through processing to actual consumption and recycling. By optimizing this chain, food supply can increase with much less damage to the environment, similar to improvements in efficiency in the traditional energy sector. However, unlike the traditional energy sector, food energy efficiency has received little attention. Only an estimated 43% of the cereal produced is available for human consumption, as a result of harvest and post-harvest distribution losses and use of cereal for animal feed. Furthermore, the 30 million tonnes of fish needed to sustain the growth in aquaculture correspond to the amount of fish discarded at sea today. A substantial share of the increasing food demand could be met by introducing food energy efficiency, such as recycling of waste. With new technology, waste along the human food supply chain could be used as a substitute for cereal in animal feed. The available cereal from such alternatives and efficiencies could feed all of the additional 3 billion people expected by 2050. At the same time, this would support a growing green economy and greatly reduce pressures on biodiversity and water resources – a truly ‘win-win’ solution. FOOD FROM CROPS The three primary factors that affected recent increases in world crop production are (FAO, 2003; 2006): - Increased cropland and rangeland area (15% contribution in 1961–1999); - Increased yield per unit area (78% contribution); and - Greater cropping intensity (7% percent contribution). Trends in crop production and in these three factors are illustrated in Figures 7, 8 and 9. |Figure 7: Production increase in yield and area (1965–2008) of several key crops. Yield increases have generally exceeded areal increases. (Source: World Bank, 2009). ||Figure 8: Global trends (1960–2005) in cereal and meat production, use of fertilizer, irrigation and pesticides. (Source: Tilman, 2002; FAO, 2003; International Fertilizer Association, 2008; FAOSTAT, 2009). The use of fertilizers accounts for approximately 50% of the yield increase, and greater irrigation for another substantial part (FAO, 2003). Current FAO projections in food demand suggest that cereal demand will increase by almost 50% towards 2050 (FAO, 2003; 2006). This can either be obtained by increasing yields, continued expansion of cropland by conversion of natural habitats, or by optimizing food or feed energy efficiency from production to consumption. |Figure 9: Increase in crop production has mainly been a function of increases in yield due to increased irrigation and fertilizer use. However, this may change in the future towards more reliance on cropland expansion, at the cost of biodiversity. (Source: FAO, 2006). FOOD FROM FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE Aquaculture, freshwater and marine fisheries supply about 10% of world human calorie intake – but this is likely to decline or at best stabilize in the future, and might have already reached the maximum. At present, marine capture fisheries yield 110–130 million tonnes of seafood annually. Of this, 70 million tonnes are directly consumed by humans, 30 million tonnes are discarded and 30 million tonnes converted to fishmeal. The world’s fisheries have steadily declined since the 1980s, its magnitude masked by the expansion of fishing into deeper and more offshore waters (Figure 10) (UNEP, 2008). Over half of the world’s catches are caught in less than 7% of the oceans, in areas characterized by an increasing amount of habitat damage from bottom trawling, pollution and dead zones, invasive species infestations and vulnerability to climate change (UNEP, 2008). Eutrophication from excessive inputs of phosphorous and nitrogen through sewage and agricultural run-off is a major threat to both freshwater and coastal marine fisheries (Anderson et al., 2008; UNEP, 2008). Areas of the coasts that are periodically starved of oxygen, so-called ‘dead zones’, often coincide with both high agricultural run-off (Anderson et al., 2008) and the primary fishing grounds for commercial and artisanal fisheries. Eutrophication combined with unsustainable fishing leads to the loss or depletion of these food resources, as occurs in the Gulf of Mexico, coastal China, the Pacific Northwest and many parts of the Atlantic, to mention a few. Current projections for aquaculture suggest that previous growth is unlikely to be sustained in the future as a result of limits to the availability of wild marine fish for aquaculture feed (FAO, 2008). Small pelagic fish make up 37% of the total marine capture fisheries landings. Of this, 90% (or 27% of total landings) are processed into fishmeal and fish oil with the remaining 10% used directly for animal feed (Alder et al., 2008). In some regions, such as in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, increase in fisheries and expansion of cropland area have been the primary factors in increasing food supply. Indeed, fisheries are a major source of energy and protein for impoverished coastal populations, in particular in West Africa and Southeast Asia (UNEP, 2008). Here, a decline in fisheries will have a major impact on the livelihoods and wellbeing of hundreds of millions of people (UNEP, 2008). |Figure 10: Fishing has expanded deeper and farther offshore in recent decades (left panel). The decline in marine fisheries landings has been partly compensated for by aquaculture (right panel). (Source: FAO FISHSTAT, MA, 2005; UNEP, 2008). FOOD FROM MEAT Meat production increased from 27 kg meat/capita in 1974/1976 to 36 kg meat/capita in 1997/1999 (FAO, 2003), and now accounts for around 8% of the world calorie intake (FAOSTAT, 2009). In many regions, such as in the rangelands of Africa, in the Andes and the mountains of Central Asia, livestock is a primary factor in food security. Meat production, however, also has many detrimental effects on the environment, apart from being energy inefficient when animals are fed with food-crops. The area required for production of animal feed is approximately one-third of all arable land. Dietary shifts towards more meat will require a much larger share of cropland for grazing and feed production for the meat industry (FAO, 2006; 2008). Expansion of land for livestock grazing is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America: some 70% of previously forested land in the Amazon is used as pasture, with feed crops covering a large part of the remainder (FAO, 2006b). About 70% of all grazing land in dry areas is considered degraded, mostly because of overgrazing, compaction and erosion attributable to livestock (FAO, 2006b). Further, the livestock sector has an often unrecognized role in global warming – it is estimated to be responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport (FAO, 2006b).

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Simple technique appears to be safe and effective, review suggests By Robert Preidt MONDAY, Oct. 15 (HealthDay News) -- A technique called the "mother's kiss" is a safe and effective way to remove foreign objects from the nostrils of young children, according to British researchers. In the mother's kiss, a child's mother or other trusted adult covers the child's mouth with their mouth to form a seal, blocks the clear nostril with their finger, and then blows into the child's mouth. The pressure from the breath may expel the object in the blocked nostril. Before using it, the adult should explain the technique to the child so that he or she is not frightened. If the first attempt is unsuccessful, the technique can be tried several times, according to a review published in the current issue of the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). For their report, researchers in Australia and the United Kingdom examined eight case studies in which the mother's kiss was used on children aged 1 to 8 years. "The mother's kiss appears to be a safe and effective technique for first-line treatment in the removal of a foreign body from the nasal cavity," Dr. Stephanie Cook, of the Buxted Medical Centre in England, and colleagues concluded. "In addition, it may prevent the need for general anesthesia in some cases." Further research is needed to compare various positive-pressure techniques and test how effective they are in different situations where objects are in various locations and have spent different lengths of time in the nasal passages, the researchers noted in a journal news release. The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about foreign objects in the nose. SOURCE: CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal), news release, Oct. 15, 2012 Copyright © 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved. URL:http://www.healthscout.com/template.asp?id=669525

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Sixth Army Isolated By the end of the 1942 summer campaign the southern flank of the Eastern Front was split in two. Army Groups A and B stood almost back to back nearly four hundred miles apart, the one facing south along the high ridge of the Caucasus, the other northeast along the west bank of the Don. The whole Army Group B front on the Don had one function--to protect the forces to the south, at first Sixth Army and Army Group A, later also Army Group Don. That mission, not crucial as long as the offensive kept rolling, had fallen chiefly to the allied armies. In mid-December Hungarian Second Army and Italian Eighth Army still held the 200-mile front on the Don south of Voronezh. Their future performance was predictable: of the three allied armies the Rumanians had been considered the best. A glance at the map reveals how vulnerable Army Groups Don and A were; they dangled like puppets on strings at the ends of the few railroads that reached into the steppe east of the Don and Donets. (Map 5) The critical points on those lines were the river crossings. Everything east of the Dnepr Bend depended on the bridges at Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye. The distance from Dnepropetrovsk to the Russian line at Novaya Kalitva in the center of the Italian Eighth Army sector was 250 miles, while from Dnepropetrovsk to the Army Group Don front on the Chir River the distance was 330 miles and to the left flank of Army Group A, 580 miles. But the Russians did not need to strike that far west. On the left flank of Army Group Don they were within 80 miles of the three Donets crossings: Voroshilovgrad, Kamensk, and Belokalitvenskaya. A 150-mile march from the left flank of Army Group Don would take them to Rostov. Both Army Group A and Fourth Panzer Army were entirely dependent on the railroad through Rostov. The Army Group A left flank was 350 miles and the Fourth Panzer Army right flank 220 miles from Rostov. Although the Stavka was not yet so self-confident as to set about trying to bag two army groups in a single sweep, geography, the state of the German forces, and Hitler's generalship were encouraging such an attempt. Southwest Front Renews the Offensive In late November, when it could be seen that the Germans would attempt to relieve Stalingrad, the Stavka gave Southwest Front the mission of creating a massive diversion by attacking southwest and west against the Italian Eighth and Rumanian Third Army fronts from Novaya Kalitva south to the mouth of the Chir. Zhukov planned and co-ordinated the operation as A Double Thrust at Rostov 16 December 1942-19 January 1943 representative of the Stavka, leaving Stalingrad to Vasilevskiy.1 The offensive was to go deep--to the lower Kalitva, the Donets, and the Derkul. When the planning began Southwest Front had the First Guards and Fifth Tank Armies. Subsequently First Guards Army was enlarged, then split--its right flank becoming Third Guards Army--and Voronezh Front's Sixth Army was attached. In December, when the front around the Stalingrad pocket had stabilized, the Russians began to get nervous. The almost simultaneous failure of the Fifth Tank Army--Fifth Shock Army offensive on the lower Chir and the beginning of WINTERGEWITTER south of Stalingrad increased the nervousness, briefly at least, to a near case of jitters. Southwest Front's offensive, conceived as an embellishment, began to look like a salvage operation. Under orders, Vatutin changed the main direction from southwest to southeast and reduced the projected depth of the advance by half.2 On 16 December the Russians began to move again. Soviet Sixth Army broke through the Italian line east of Novaya Kalitva, sweeping an Italian corps out of its path. In the succeeding days Vatutin committed the First and Third Guards Armies to extend the breakthrough downstream along the Don. On the 10th the Celere and Sforzesca Divisions on the Italian Eighth Army right flank collapsed, carrying with them two Rumanian divisions on the left flank of Army Group Don. In four days the Russians had ripped open a 100-mile hole and were driving south behind Army Group Don toward Millerovo and the Donets crossings.3 For the Germans, the first problem was somehow to screen the deep northern flank of Army Group Don. The OKH transferred a corps headquarters, commanded by General der Artillerie Maximilian Fretter-Pico, from Army Group North to take over the right flank of Army Group B as the Armeeabteilung Fretter-Pico.4 It gave the Armeeabteilung one fresh infantry division, the headquarters and elements of the 3d Mountain Division, and remnants of a weak German corps that had attempted to backstop the Italians. Fretter-Pico's mission was to protect the Donets bridges east of Voroshilovgrad and at Kamensk, establish a line away from the river, and tie in with Army Group Don. On 23 December Manstein informed Hitler that the breakthrough on the army group left flank required an immediate shift of at least one division, perhaps two, from LVII Panzer Corps. That would mean relinquishing the idea of relieving Sixth Army soon and necessitate long-term air supply for the army. The army needed 550 tons of supplies a day; but von Richthofen, commanding Fourth Air Force, believed 200 tons a day was the most that could be delivered. If, as it appeared, air supply could not be guaranteed, Manstein saw a breakout as the only solution despite the risk. He pointed out that the appearance of Soviet reinforcements along the Mishkova meant the Russians would soon also be able to go over to the offensive there, a situation which was extremely dangerous since Fourth Panzer Army was relying on Rumanian troops to cover its flanks.5 Hitler's decision, in fact no decision at all, came in the early hours of the following morning. He authorized the transfer of "elements" of LVII Panzer Corps to the army group left flank to protect at Morozovsk and Tatsinskaya the air bases which were essential for Sixth Army's air supply. But the LVII Panzer Corps main force was to stay on the Mishkova until the advance toward Stalingrad could be resumed. As if it would make all the difference, he informed Manstein that one battalion of Tiger tanks being sent by railroad to the army group would that day cross into Russia near Brest-Litovsk.6 The Last Chance for Sixth Army A month is a long time to an encircled army. Its moral and physical sustenance reduced to the thinnest streams, it begins to wither. The entire organism is affected, most dramatically and dismayingly the men themselves. In 1941 the Germans had noticed and then forgotten that large numbers of Russians captured in the great encirclements died suddenly without detectable symptoms. In December, the same sort of deaths began to be reported in the Stalingrad pocket. A pathologist flown in to perform autopsies in secret discovered that undernourishment, exhaustion, and exposure had caused the complete loss of fatty tissue, changes in the internal organs and the bone marrow and, as the apparent cause of death, a shrinking of the heart except for the right ventricle, which was greatly enlarged. Such heart damage, in normal medical practice, had been regarded as a condition that chiefly affected the aged; among the soldiers of Sixth Army at Stalingrad, as the days passed, it was observed to be common in both the dead and the living.7 In the Stalingrad pocket death was no novelty. Sixth Army lost 28,000 men between 22 November and 23 December. On 18 December the army reported a ration strength of 246,000, including 13,000 Rumanians, 19,300 Russian auxiliaries, and 6,000 wounded; but that was far from representing its effective combat strength. Already in mid-October the army had reported that it was reduced to a front-line infantry strength of 56,500. Service troops were converted to infantry, but experience showed that even under the exceptional conditions of an encirclement, such conversions were neither easy to accomplish nor especially worthwhile in terms of combat effectiveness.8 At the end of the first month, the hard winter had not yet set in. The temperature lingered close to freezing--some days above, some below. Cold days were apt to be clear and only occasionally snowy or windy. Warmer days brought clouds, fog, light rain, snow, and, always when there were two or three such days in succession, mud. Not as extreme as it might have been, the weather, nevertheless, was not easily borne by soldiers who were inadequately sheltered and clothed and were living on slender rations of bread, soup, and occasional horse meat.9 The instability of the weather also seriously affected the air supply. In the early winter, particularly, continental and maritime air masses met over the region of the lower Don and Volga, producing not only frequent and rapid changes in the weather but great variations within relatively short distances. Consequently, when the skies over the air bases at Tatsinskaya and Morozovsk were clear the Stalingrad pocket was sometimes buried in fog. The relief attempt had failed. That another could be made or that the army could survive until then were both daily becoming more doubtful. On the afternoon of 23 December, Manstein called for a teletype conference with Paulus. He asked Paulus to consider whether, if no other course remained open, the breakout (which by then was assumed automatically to include the evacuation) could be executed provided limited quantities of motor fuel and rations were flown in during the next few days. Paulus replied that the breakout had become more difficult because the Russians had strengthened their line, but if it had to be, it was better done right away than later. Then he asked, "Do you empower me to begin the preparations? Once begun they cannot be reversed." Manstein replied, "That authority I cannot give today. I am hoping for a decision tomorrow. The essential point is do you consider the army capable of forcing its way through to Hoth if supplies for a longer period cannot be assured?" Paulus answered, "In that case, there is nothing else to be done." He thought the army would need six days to get ready and an added 300,000 gallons of motor fuel plus 500 tons of rations.10 Within the hour Manstein dispatched a situation estimate to Hitler in which he outlined three possibilities: (1) leave the army where it was and assure a daily air supply of at least 500 tons; (2) order Paulus to break out, taking the risk that the army might not get through; (3) transfer immediately the 16th Motorized Infantry Division and two panzer divisions from First Panzer Army (Army Group A) to enable Fourth Panzer Army to resume the advance toward Stalingrad.11 Again Hitler could not make up his mind and, in lieu of a decision, the next day countered with a series of questions. Was a breakout actually possible, and would it succeed? When could it start? How long could Paulus stay in the pocket, given the current level of supplies or, perhaps "somewhat" increased air supply? When could the relief operation be resumed if Manstein were given both the SS Panzer Grenadier Division Wiking and the 7th Panzer Division? Did Manstein think the Russians would soon be stopped by supply and fuel shortages? Would Manstein "welcome" being given command of Army Group A as well as Don in light of the fact "that the further developments could lead to momentous decisions?"12 (Hitler had relinquished personal command of Army Group A on 22 November and turned over command to Generalfeldmarschall Ewald von Kleist.) Mainstein answered that the breakout could begin, as reported, in six days. As to success, nobody could predict that with certainty; and, if even a moderate degree of assurance were desired, it would be necessary to transfer two more divisions from First Panzer Army. The SS Wiking Division and the 7th Panzer Division would be needed on the army group left flank when they arrived. There were no reasons for thinking the Russians would run out of supplies. As far as his also taking command of Army Group A was concerned, nobody would "welcome" it in the existing circumstances, but it was unavoidable. Even so, it appeared that for Sixth Army, and Army Groups Don and A as well, the announced "momentous decisions" would come too late. Manstein concluded, "I ask that it be considered how the battle would develop if we commanded on the other side."13 Operations Order 2 On 24 December Vatutin pushed a spearhead through to Tatsinskaya and came within artillery range of Morozovsk. That same day Second Guards Army, rushed to the Mishkova by Stalingrad Front, threw LVII Panzer Corps back to the Aksay River. To hold the air supply base for Sixth Army at Morozovsk and recapture the one at Tatsinskaya, Manstein had to take the 11th Panzer Division from the hard-pressed Fourth Panzer Army. He created the Headquarters, Armeeabteilung Hollidt, under General der Infanterie Karl Hollidt, and gave it command of the north flank. The Headquarters, Rumanian Third Army, he sent behind the Donets to reorganize the Rumanian stragglers and start building defenses downstream from Kamensk.14 To gain a respite north of Tatsinskaya-Morozovsk, Manstein had been forced to reduce Fourth Panzer Army's effective strength by a third; nevertheless, Hitler still hoped to bring up the 7th Panzer Division and the SS Panzer Grenadier Division Wiking in time to renew the advance toward Stalingrad.15 Manstein's situation report of 25 December demonstrated how slight that hope was. In a day or two, he said, the Fifty-first and the Second Guards Armies would attempt to encircle Fourth Panzer Army on the Aksay River. Nothing could be expected of Rumanian VI and VII Corps, and the two divisions of LVII Panzer Corps could muster no more than nineteen tanks between them. If Sixth Army was not to be left entirely in the lurch at Stalingrad, a panzer corps (two divisions) and an infantry division would have to be shifted from Army Group A to Fourth Panzer Army and at least one infantry division to the Army Group Don left flank.16 The next two days proved that Manstein was by no means painting too dark a picture. On the 26th Paulus reported that casualties, cold--the temperature that day was -15° F.--and hunger had so sapped his army's strength that it could not execute the breakout and evacuation unless a supply corridor into the pocket was opened first.17 The next day Rumanian VII Corps, holding the LVII Panzer Corps flank on the east, collapsed and fell into a disorganized retreat, leaving the German corps stranded. Hoth hoped to get the panzer corps back to Kotelnikovo where it might make another temporary stand.18 On the 27th Hitler, looking for a cheap way out, ordered Army Groups Don and A to hold where they were while Army Group B, to protect the rear of Don, retook the line of the Rossosh'-Millerovo railroad. Army Group A, he told Manstein, could not spare any divisions, and Army Group Don would have to make do with the SS Wiking, the 7th Panzer Division, and the battalion of Tiger tanks. The only hint of flexibility was an order to Army Group A to begin evacuating its wounded and scout a bridgehead on the Taman Peninsula.19 Manstein protested that Fourth Panzer Army's 2 panzer divisions and the 16th Motorized Infantry Division faced a total of 43 enemy units (brigades and divisions, tank, cavalry, and mechanized corps) while First Panzer Army in a well-constructed line was opposed only by an equal number, and Seventeenth Army had to deal with no more than 24 Soviet units. He was convinced, he wrote, that events would compel a shift of forces from A to Don. The sooner the decision to do so was made the cheaper it would be in the long run.20 Hitler countered with Operations Order 2. Army Group A, holding its line on the Black Sea coast and in the Caucasus, would swing its right flank back by stages to Salsk, where it would be able to take over its own flank defense. Fourth Panzer Army, if forced to, could fall back to the line Tsymlyanskaya-Salsk. To co-ordinate those movements Manstein would assume command of Army Group A at a time to be decided by Manstein himself.21 Hitler passed over in silence Manstein's earlier contention that his taking command of both army groups would be worthwhile only if it included full operational freedom.22 The last days of the year brought another crisis. On the afternoon of 28 December Fourth Panzer Army had to rescue LVII Panzer Corps by permitting it to withdraw from Kotelnikovo to the Sal River. That opened up the south bank of the Don to Rostov and exposed the deep right flank of Armeeabteilung Hollidt. The next day the Russians pushed out of a small bridgehead they held around Potemkinskaya, and Hollidt had to shift the 11th Panzer Division to Tsymlyanskaya, seventy miles downstream, to brake their advance. Because of the growing danger, Hitler ordered the 7th Panzer Division held at Rostov for a possible last-ditch defense of the city.23 On the 28th Manstein reported to Hitler that Fourth Panzer Army was no longer capable of holding a broad front south of the Don and that the Armeeabteilung Hollidt line could be penetrated from the north or south at any time. He intended to turn Fourth Panzer Army east south of the Sal River to protect the rear of Army Group A, taking the chance that the Russians might cut through to Rostov between the Sal and the Don. Armeeabteilung Hollidt would have to be pulled back, possibly, to a line slightly forward of the Donets, more likely to the river itself.24 On New Year's Eve Manstein told Paulus that the army group's first objective was to liberate Sixth Army, but the army would have to hold out in the pocket a while longer. Hitler, he said, had ordered Goering to increase the air supply to at least 300 tons a day.25 Whether he knew it or not, Manstein had said farewell to Sixth Army. Army Group Don would henceforth be fighting for its own life. Southwest Front's armies, having reached their original end objectives, were surging past Millerovo on the east and west toward the Donets between Voroshilovgrad and Belokalitvenskaya. Stalingrad Front, after transfer of its three armies on the south face of the Stalingrad pocket to Don Front, was renamed South Front on 1 January and given the mission of attacking toward Rostov on both sides of the Don with the Fifth Shock, Second Guards, and Fifty-first Armies.26 Ignoring Manstein's report of the 28th, Hitler, on New Year's Day, announced in a supplement to Operations Order 2 that he was going to send the Grossdeutschland Division and the SS Divisions Adolf Hitler, Das Reich, and 7th SS to relieve Stalingrad. Army Groups B and Don were to hold the most favorable positions for the jump-off. All the provisions of Operations Order No. 2 remained in effect. In it he had given permission for Hollidt to withdraw no farther than the line Morozovsk-Tsymlyanskaya.27 Even Hitler did not expect the divisions for the relief to be deployed before mid-February. To imagine that Fate and the Russians would allow that much time was the merest self-deception. At the turn of the year, very little had been accomplished. The withdrawals Hitler approved were piecemeal; he still talked in terms of "definitive" lines and was beginning to lose himself in nebulous plans for a counteroffensive. The decision to bend back the left flank of Army Group A was a significant step, but after he had issued the order he showed no desire to see it executed quickly and, on the contrary, seemed to welcome delays. On 2 January, in a dispatch to Zeitzler, Manstein no longer attempted to conceal his irritation. He pointed out angrily that although it could have been seen as soon as Sixth Army was encircled that the Russians were developing a major offensive on the southern flank of the Eastern Front and might strike into the rear of Army Group A, nothing had been done until the last few days about evacuating the wounded and the heavy equipment from the Caucasus. The consequences of that neglect would be either to slow the movements of Army Group A or to force a sacrifice of large quantities of equipment. Because the OKH (Hitler) was controlling all the substantial shifts of Army Group A forces no purpose would be served by Army Group Don's taking over A. Since the OKH had ordered the divisions intended for Fourth Panzer Army, the 7th and 11th Panzer Divisions, sent elsewhere, all Army Group Don could do was to instruct Hoth to hold as long as he could keep his flanks free. Army Group A would have to speed up its withdrawal and transfer a corps to Salsk.28 Unlike some that had gone before, this communication had at least one effect: Hitler did not again mention Manstein's taking command of Army Group A. Retreat to the Manich and the Donets In the first week of the new year Armeeabteilung Hollidt began a hectic 90-mile retreat to the Donets. On 3 January Armeeabteilung Fretter-Pico reported that the 304th Infantry Division, which had been assigned the mission of keeping touch with Hollidt's left flank, could not be depended on. It lacked training and combat experience; panic was breaking out in the ranks.29 East of the Fretter-Pico--Hollidt boundary the Russians had massed two tank corps for an attack toward the Donets crossing at Belokalitvenskaya, and Hitler, on 4 January, had to release the 4th Panzer Division to prevent a breakthrough. On the 5th, having retreated forty miles in six days, Hollidt gave up Morozovsk, the air base closest to Stalingrad. The next day Hitler tried to call a halt "for the sake of morale and to conserve the strength of the troops"; but with the Russians probing across the Don in the south and threatening to advance down the Donets from the north Hollidt had not a chance of holding any line east of the Donets more than a few days.30 On the other side of the Don, Fourth Panzer Army ranged its two panzer divisions and the Wiking Division along the Kuberle River, which flowed into the Sal from the south. In the gap between the Don and the Sal the III Guards Tank Corps pushed downstream along the south bank of the Don and at the end of the first week of January sent reconnaissance patrols to within twenty miles of Rostov. Hitler urged Manstein to commit the Tiger tanks, which he predicted would be able to destroy a Soviet tank corps; but when the Tigers went into action for the first time they failed to live up to that expectation. They claimed to have destroyed eighteen enemy tanks, but of the twenty Tigers half were damaged. Hoth reported that the tank crews needed more training and experience.31 When a motorized corps and guards rifle corps began making their way around Fourth Panzer Army's north flank, Hitler, on 6 January, had to permit Manstein to withdraw the 16th Motorized Infantry Division from Elista.32 Manstein warned that the division could do no more than stabilize the Fourth Panzer Army line temporarily. He again asked for a panzer corps from Army Group A and complained bitterly that everything was expected of Don while nothing was possible for A.33 In the second week of January, even though the crisis deepened, the fronts of the two southern army groups began to assume some coherence. Armeeabteilung Hollidt, shifting its panzer divisions back and forth to counter threats from the north and south, continued its march to the Donets. Hitler permitted Fourth Panzer Army to swing back to a line facing north along the Manich Canal.34 First Panzer Army, though slowed by its heavy equipment and by what Manstein, at least, considered exaggerated worries about what the Russians might do, gradually narrowed the gap between the army groups. Between 15 and 19 January the stage was set for new decisions which, in fact, were already overdue. Armeeabteilung Fretter-Pico, after successfully extricating some 14,000 troops from an encirclement at Millerovo, went into a line behind the Donets.35 Hollidt's units likewise gained the slight protection of the frozen river. On the Manich Canal between the Don and Prolyetarskaya Fourth Panzer Army set up a strongpoint defense, and First Panzer Army extended its left flank north to tie in east of Salsk.36 Sixth Army Destroyed By the beginning of the year Sixth Army was dying a lingering death from starvation and exhaustion. The supplies trickling in were sufficient to prolong but not to mitigate the agony. Between 1 and 23 December the amounts airlifted into the pocket had averaged 90 tons a day. In the first three weeks of January they came to 120 tons a day; but on only one day, 7 December, had the air supply reached 300 tons, the daily tonnage promised and about half the army's daily requirement.37 Nevertheless, the army was not yet completely at the Russians' mercy. The original success at Stalingrad had been the work of the Soviet armor, not the infantry; and when Fifth Tank Army and other armored elements had pulled out after the pocket was formed, the infantry had showed itself to be distinctly inferior. By January the weather, hunger, and fatigue had also taken their toll of the Russians. In fact, Sixth Army possessed some small advantages. The chief one was that the pocket enclosed nearly all of the built-up areas in and around Stalingrad; consequently, the German troops had some shelter and could obtain wood for fuel from the demolished buildings, while the Russians had none. Secondly, the terrain, flat and treeless, but cut by deep balkas (gullies), somewhat favored the defense. Lastly, the Germans had field fortifications of their own and some the Russians had built to defend the city. After the Russians resumed the offensive west of Stalingrad the task of reducing the pocket was left to Don Front. General Polkovnik Nikolai N. Voronov was assigned as Stavka representative.38 Don Front in early January had a strength, according to Soviet figures, of 281,000 men and 250 tanks.39 The final push, originally scheduled to begin on 6 January and take seven days, started on 10 January after Sixth Army had rejected surrender ultimatums on the two preceding days.40 The attack, it appeared, could hardly fail, since it was directed mainly against the pocket's west and south fronts, which were weak, having been improvised after the encirclement. Late on 10 January Paulus reported that after that day's fighting there was no longer any prospect of holding out until mid-February; relief would have to come much earlier; the promised quantity of supplies would have to be delivered; and replacement battalions would have to be flown in immediately.41 On 12 January the army lost Pitomnik, the better of its two airstrips. Six of the fourteen fighters based there took off under fire. Five attempted to land on the strip at Gumrak and crashed. The pilot of the sixth flew out to the west, thus ending the fighter defense over the pocket.42 In the northwest and south fronts the Russians had torn gaps which could not be closed because the army did not have enough troops or the gasoline to move them. Paulus reported on the 13th that there the artillery ammunition would run out by the end of the day and the guns were being abandoned where they stood.43 Nevertheless, from the Soviet point of view, the first phase of the final attack was a disappointment. It did not have the crushing effect initially expected, and after the first few days it lost momentum. The Soviet account blames an intelligence error which led to too low an estimate of the German strength.44 Most likely, Don Front was in almost the condition Sixth Army had been in during the previous September and October. Five of Rokossovskiy's seven armies had been in combat since midsummer. If the Soviet strength figures are accurate, the armies were at least 150,000 men understrength. Stalingrad was not coming cheap to the Russians either. On 15 January Hitler, after repeated pleas from Paulus, appointed Generalfeldmarschall DEVASTATION ALONG THE RAILROAD SOUTHEAST OF STALINGRAD Erhard Milch to direct the air supply for Sixth Army, giving him authority to issue orders to all branches of the Wehrmacht.45 Hitler's order for the first time established a command powerful enough to override all other claims on planes, fuel, and ground crews and organize the air supply on the scale which had been promised for Stalingrad; but it was too late. Daylight landings in the pocket were becoming too dangerous. On the 17th, after a pilot reported German troops falling back toward Stalingrad on either side of the airstrip, Fourth Air Force for a time suspended landings at Gumrak.46 Two days later the Russians took Tatsinskaya, forcing the planes to shift to bases at Rostov and Novocherkassk, over 200 miles from the pocket. As the Russians moved in for the kill, Paulus reported on 20 January that the "fortress" could not hold out more than a few days longer. In some sectors the defenders had all been wiped out and the Russians could march through the front at will.47 During the next night Gumrak was lost, leaving airdrops the army's only means of supply. The day of 22 January marked the beginning of Sixth Army's death agony. The Russians, pressing in from the southwest on a 3-mile-wide front along the railroad, broke through the outer ring of the Stalingrad city defenses at Voroponovo Station and marched east into the city with battle flags unfurled. To close the gap was impossible. Ammunition had run out on that stretch of the front and neither troops nor ammunition could be brought in from other sectors. That night Paulus radioed Hitler via the OKH: Rations exhausted. Over 12,000 unattended wounded in the pocket. What orders should I give to troops, who have no more ammunition and are subjected to mass attacks supported by heavy artillery fire? The quickest decision is necessary since disintegration is already starting in some places. Confidence in the leadership still exists, however.48 Surrender is out of the question. The troops will defend themselves to the last. If possible the size of the fortress is to be reduced so that it can be held by the troops still capable of fighting. The courage and endurance of the fortress have made it possible to establish a new front and begin preparing a counteroperation. Thereby Sixth Army has made an historic contribution to Germany's greatest struggle.49 As the front fell back from the west, the inner city, which after months of bombardment had the appearance of a landscape in Hell, became a scene of fantastic horror. Sixth Army reported 20,000 uncared-for wounded and an equal number of starving, freezing, unarmed stragglers. As many as could took shelter in the basements of the ruins where the tons of rubble overhead provided protection against the constant rain of artillery shells. There, in darkness and cold, the sick, the mad, the dead, and the dying crowded together, those who could move not daring to for fear of losing their places.50 Over the tallest of the ruins in the center of the city Sixth Army ran out the Reich battle flag "in order to fight the last battle under this symbol."51 On 26 January Sixty-second Army captured Mamai Hill, and tanks of Twenty-first Army linked up from the west to split the pocket in two. XI Corps formed a perimeter anchored on the tractor works on the northern edge of Stalingrad while Sixth Army headquarters, and LI, VIII, and XIV Panzer Corps dug in around and northwest of Railroad Station I. IV Panzer Corps, which had been holding the south front, was destroyed on that day by a Russian push across the Zaritsa River from the south.52 A day earlier Sixth Army had asked the Air Force to drop only food, ammunition was not needed--there were too few guns.53 The end was clearly at hand. On 28 January Sixth Army stopped issuing rations to the wounded in order to preserve the strength of the fighting troops. That day the main theme of the midnight situation conference at the Fuehrer headquarters was Hitler's desire to have Sixth Army reconstituted quickly, using as many survivors of the original army as could be found.54 By 29 January the south pocket was split, leaving army headquarters in a small enclave in the south and the remnants of LI and VIII Corps in the north. XIV Panzer Corps ceased to exist on that day. During the night ten small groups departed in a forlorn attempt to make their way west across almost 200 miles of enemy territory. By the following night, LI and VII Corps had been pushed into a small area around the engineer barracks, where they surrendered the following morning. The headquarters staff, Sixth Army, and survivors of the 194th Grenadier Regiment still held a 300-yard perimeter around the Red Square.55 At 0615 on the morning of 31 January the radio operator at army headquarters in the basement of the Univermag on Red Square sent the following message: "Russians are at the door. We are preparing to destroy [the radio equipment]." An hour later the last transmission from Sixth Army came through: "We are destroying [the equipment]."56 Paulus, failing to appreciate all the implications of his promotion to generalfeldmarschall the day before, became the first German officer of that rank ever to be taken prisoner. Hitler's comment: "Paulus did an aboutface on the threshold of immortality."57 In the north pocket around the tractor works, the 33,000 men of XI Corps, under General der Infanterie Karl Strecker, held out another forty-eight hours. On 1 February Hitler called on the corps to fight to the last man, saying "Every day, every hour that is won benefits the rest of the front decisively."58 At 0840 the next day Army Group Don received the last message from the north pocket: XI Corps, with its six divisions, has done its duty to the last. Long live the Fuehrer! Long live Germany! In the Stalingrad pocket the Germans lost somewhat over 200,000 men. The exact total was apparently never determined. During the fighting 30,000 wounded were flown out. The latest Soviet figures, which are substantially lower than those originally given but still apparently high, set the German casualties at 147,200 killed and wounded and over 91,000 captured, the latter including 24 generals and 2,500 officers of lesser rank.60 The Soviet Union has not made public its own losses. If the casualties of the VIII Cavalry Corps and III Cavalry Corps, 36 percent and 45 percent in the period 19 November to 2 December 1942, are representative, the Soviet losses must also have been substantial. An impression of what the final conquest of the pocket cost can be deduced from Don WRECKED GERMAN EQUIPMENT ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF STALINGRAD Front's ammunition expenditure between 10 January and 2 February 1943: 911,000 artillery rounds of all calibers up to 152-mm., 990,000 mortar shells, and 24,000,000 machine gun and rifle rounds.61 As Hitler frequently stated, Sixth Army performed a valuable service by tying down several hundred thousand Russian troops; on the other hand, it is possible to imagine a much less catastrophic development of the 1942-43 winter battles on the German southern flank in Russia had the army been permitted to withdraw its twenty divisions from Stalingrad in time. Nor was the magnitude of the defeat in any way lessened by the fact that it resulted more from Hitler's errors than from Soviet military skill. Historically, Stalingrad, along with Guadalcanal and the North African invasion, marks the start of the Axis' recession on all fronts in World War II. Table of Contents ** Previous Chapter (III) * Next Chapter (V) 1. The Soviet official history, which plays down Zhukov's role throughout but makes a particular effort to do so in connection with Stalingrad, states that Stalin on 27 November instructed Vasilevskiy to devote his full attention to Stalingrad and, as to the Southwest Front's offensive, said, "Let Vatutin and Kuznetsov [General Leytenant V. I. Kuznetsov, Commanding General, First Guards Army] handle it alone." (IVOV (R), III, 43.) It is inconceivable that Stalin at this stage would have casually entrusted so important an operation to a front and an army commander. 2. Sbornik Nomer 8. 3. Kriegstagebuch des deutschen Generals beim ital. AOK 8 v. 11.7.42-31.1.43, 15-20 Dec. 42, AOK 8 36188/1 file; H. Gr. Don, Ia Lage H. Gr. Don, 19.-21.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/16 file; H. Gr. Don, Ic/AO Nr. 276/42, an OKH, Fr. Heere Ost, 22.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/5 file. 4. In the German practice an Armeeabteilung, literally an army detachment, was a temporary command controlling two or more corps without the full staff and appurtenances of an army headquarters. 5. O.B. d. H. Gr. Don, Ia Nr. 0374/42, an Chef des GenStdH, 22.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/5 file. 6. OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. (I S/B) Nr. 421026/42, an Generalfeldmarschall von Manstein, 23.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/5 file. 7. Hans Dibold, Arzt in Stalingrad (Salzburg, 1949), p. 18. 8. Helmut Arntz, Die Wende des Krieges in Stalingrad, manuscript apparently written late in the war from official German records. Schroeter, Stalingrad, p. 208. 9. MS # P-114c (Hauck), Teil IV, Tabelle Xa. 10. FS-Gespraech, Gen. Feldmarschall von Manstein an Gen. Obst. von Paulus, 23.12.42, AOK 6 75107/5 file. 11. Manstein, an Chef Gen. Stab, Antwort auf heutige Anfrage, 23.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/5 file. 12. OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. Nr. 421030/42, an H. Gr. Don, 24.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/5 file. 13. O.B. d. H. Gr. Don, Ia Nr. 0376/42, in Chef des GenStdH, 24.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 14. H. Gr. Don, Ia, Lage H. Gr. Don, 22.-27.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/16 file; H. Gr. Don, Ia Nr. 415/42. Heeresgruppenbefehl fuer Neugliederung der Befehlsverhaeltnisse, 26.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 15. OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. 421030/42, an H. Gr. Don, 24.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 16. O.B. d. H. Gr. Don, Ia Nr. 378/42, an Chef d. GenStdH, 25.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 17. AOK 6, Ia Nr. 6010/42, an O.B. H. Gr. Don, 26.12.43, H. Gr. Don, 39694/6 file. 18. Pz. AOK 4, Ia Kriegstagebuch Nr. 5, Teil III, 27 Dec 42, Pz. AOK 4 28183/1 file. 19. OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. (I S/B) Nr. 421033/42, an den O.B. d. H. Gr. Don, 27.12.42; OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. Nr. 321034/42, Weisung fuer die weitere Kampffuehrung, 27.12.42. Both in H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 20. O.B. d. H. Gr. Don, Ia Nr. 0384/42, an Chef des GenStdH., 27.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 21. OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. Nr. 421042/42, Operationsbefehl Nr. 2, 28.72.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 22. O.B. d. H. Gr. Don, Ia, Nr. 0376/42, an Chef des Generalstabes des Generalstabes zu Fernspruch vom 24.72.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 23. Pz. AOK 4, Ia, Kriegstagebuch Nr. 5, Teil III, 28-31 Dec 42, Pz. AOK 4 28183/1 file; H. Gr. Don, Ia, Lage H. Gr. Don, 28.-31.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/16 file; OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. (I S/B) Nr. 1959/42, Einzelanordnungen des Fuehrers Nr. 79, 30.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 24. O.B. d. H. Gr. Don, Ia Nr. 0394/42, an OKH, Chef des Generalstabes, 31.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 25. O.B. H. Gr. Don, Ia Nr. 0396/42, an AOK 6, 31.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 26. Platonov, Vtoraya Mirovaya Voyna, 1939-45, p. 397. 27. OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. (I S/B) Nr. 421052/42, Ergaenzung zum Operationsbefehl Nr. 2, 1.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 28. O.B. d. H. Gr. Don, Ia Nr. 0399/42, an Chef des Generalstabes des Heeres, 2.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 29. A. Abt. Fretter-Pico, Ia, Kriegstagebuch, 18.12.42-2.2.43 3 Jan 43, A. Abt. Fretter-Pico 31783/1 file. 30. OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. Nr. 171/43, an H. Gr. Don, 6.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/7 file. 31. OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. Nr. 233/43, an O.B. d. H. Gr. Don, 6.1.43; Pz. AOK 4, Ia, Erfolgsmeldung Tiger-Panzer, 7.1.43. Both in H. Gr. Don 39694/7 file. 32. OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. Nr. 249/43, an H. Gr. Don, 6.1.43, H. Gr. Don file. 33. O.B. d. H. Gr. Don, Ia Nr. 0402/13, an Chef GenStdH, 7.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/7 file. 34. OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. (I S/B) Nr. 430028/43, an H. Gr. Don, 10.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/7 file. 35. A. Abt. Fretter-Pico, Ia, Kriegstagebuch, 18.12.42-2.2.43, 14-18 Jan 43, A. Abt. Fretter-Pico 31783/1 file. 36. H. Gr. Don, Ia, Lage H. Gr. Don, 15.-19.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/17 file. 37. Tageseinsatz der Luftlotte 4, 1.-23.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/3b-5 file. 38. Don Front commanded Twenty-first, Twenty-fourth, Fifty-seventh, Sixty-second, Sixty-fourth, Sixty-fifth, and Sixty-sixth Armies. 39. Sbornik Nomer 6 states that in January 1943 Sixth Army had a numerical superiority in artillery (6,200 guns to 3,770), machine guns (13,700 to 7,300), tanks (1,800 to 250), and motor vehicles (18,000 to 9,400). It admits that these figures include pieces of equipment possibly knocked out long before the final battles and some the Germans might not have been able to use far lack of fuel or ammunition. Sixth Army in early December reported a strength of about 100 tanks; probably by January many, if not most of these, were damaged, destroyed, or unserviceable for lack of parts and fuel. 40. Sbornik Nomer 6. 41. AOK 6, Ia, an H. Gr. Don O.B., 10.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/7 file. 42. Schroeter, Stalingrad, p. 166. 43. Ob. Kdo. H. Gr. Don, Ia Nr. 412/43, an OKH, Chef des Generalstabes, 13.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/8 file. 44. Sbornik Nomer 6. 45. Der Fuehrer, OKW, WFSt, Nr. 00284/43, 15.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/8 file. 46. Fernspruch von Luftflotte 4, Ia, 17.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/8 file. 47. OKH, GenStdH, Chef des GenStdH, Nr. 38/43, an O.B. d. H. Gr. Don, 20.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/8 file. 48. O.B. AOK 6, an Gen. Zeitzler zur Weitergabe an den Fuehrer and H. Gr. Don, 22.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/9 file. 49. H. Gr. Don, Ia, Abschrift von Funkspruch an 6. Armee. Zur Vorlage an Herrn Generalfeldmarschall von Manstein, 22.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/9 file. 50. H. Gr. Don, Ia, Tagesmeldung, 24.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/9 file. 51. H. Gr. Don, Ia, Morgenmeldung, 25.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/9 file. 52. AOK 6, Ia, an H. Gr. Don ueber OKH, 26.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/9 file. 53. AOK 6, Chef, an H. Gr. Don, 25.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/9 file. 54. AOK 6, Ia, an H. Gr. Don ueber OKH, 28.1.43, and AOK 6, Ia, an H. Gr. Don, 30.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/10 file; Greiner, Die oberste Wehrmachtfuehrung, 1939-45, p. 69. 55. AOK 6, Ia, an H. Gr. Don, 29.1.43; AOK 6, an H. Gr. Don 30.1.43. Both in H. Gr. Don 39694/9 file. 56. AOK 6, Ia, an H. Gr. Don, 31.1.43, 0615, AOK 6, Ia, an H. Gr. Don, 31.1.43, 0714. Both in H. Gr. Don 39694/10 file. 57. Arntz, Die Wende des Krieges in Stalingrad. 58. OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. (I S/B) Nr. 1433/43, an Gen. Kdo. XI A.K., 1.2.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/10 file. 59. XI A.K., an H. Gr. Don, Ia, 2.2.43, 0840, AOK 6 75107/1 file. 60. IVOV (R), III, 62. 61. [General Staff of the Red Army], Sbornik Materialov po Izucheniyu Opyta Voyny, Nomer 9, 1944.

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For more than twenty years, communities affected by the Chixoy Dam have demanded reparations for the damages caused by the project, which was built during Guatemala's most repressive military dictatorship. The project, financed by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, was built on the Chixoy River in the early 1980s and forcibly displaced more than 3,500 Maya community members. More than 6,000 families living in the area also suffered loss of land and livelihoods. When community members opposed relocation and sought better compensation, they were massacred, tortured and kidnapped. For years survivors have lived in extreme poverty but never given up their call for justice. The Chixoy Dam Legacy Issues Study finished in March of 2005 concludes that the construction of the dam signified lost of lives, lands, and people's livelihoods, and that it violated national and international laws. The study recommends the creation of a negotiations process between the government, communities and financial institutions resulting in a binding agreement. After several attempts to install a negotiations process, on September 2006 communities and the government signed an agreement to begin a formal process to verify the damages and losses, and negotiations to address reparations. A Commission was set up comprised of representatives of the Guatemalan government, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank, and facilitated by a representative of the Organization of American States. On April 10, 2010 after a decades-long struggle, the Reparations Plan for Damages Suffered by the Communities Affected by the Construction of the Chixoy Dam was finally signed and agreed by all parties, which involved the participation and approval of communities and the government. This is a huge victory for the communities. The plan includes the following provisions: • Compensation for material and non-material damages and losses will be provided to communities affected by Chixoy Dam. The total amount allocated to cover all these damages is US$154.5 million • 191 homes will be constructed for the community of Pacux, and for orphans that were not taken into account in INDE's resettlement program; 254 homes in other communities will be repaired; there will be improvement of roads, and water and sewage systems, and other infrastructural projects considered urgent and of priority. • The President of Guatemala will present an apology. The communities will have access to documents in the Historical Archive of the National Police related to the control by the State, and repression used against communities during the construction of the Chixoy Dam. • There will be a management plan of the Chixoy Basin implemented that is based on integrated watershed management, which includes reforestation with native plants, establishing an ecological flow adequate for the basin, and guarantees of minimum water quantity and quality. However, the government has refused to sign the legal agreement which would make the reparations plan binding, and ensure its completion. The World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank have also refused to take responsibility for their roles in financing the project and have not committed to financing reparations or to pressuring the Guatemalan government to comply with the reparations plan. We will continue to support COCAHICH's efforts to pressure the government to sign the binding agreement. - Read Heidi McKinnon's blog about her experiences living and working with communities affected by the Chixoy Dam. - Scorched Earth: The Rio Negro Massacre at Pak'oxom slideshow by photographer James Rodriguez. - The Great Kawinal: A City Submerged, a slideshow by James Rodriguez. - President Colom Promises to Redress the Damages Caused by the Dam (Spanish)

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Endangered species do not need juniper. Juniper is native but has served as a component species rather than a dominant species. Species at risk in our natural landscape are at risk from loss of habitat. Sage grouse do not live in juniper. The juniper offers predatory hawks a convenient perch to use as they watch for grouse to eat. The pygmy cottontail rabbit lives in and depends on sagebrush. Juniper degrades the sagebrush. Studies show an increased number of animals, birds and butterflies in areas where the juniper was cut compared to juniper woodland. A closed juniper woodland is a biological desert when compared to a verdant shrub steppe landscape. As the area and density of juniper is expanding, juniper is actually a problem for endangered species and wildlife in general. When a spring dries up or a creek flows less, all the wildlife in the area is affected. Water is a limiting factor in this arid region. Juniper further limits the water available. Our efforts to protect salmon trout and steelhead are costing our society billions of dollars. Still, we ignore the fact that the water lost to interception and transpiration due to juniper encroachment is water lost to the watershed and all its inhabitants. Juniper invasion has been shown to increase soil erosion eight fold. If we consider cost to benefit, the juniper invasion is costing us soil, water and wildlife. Where is the benefit? Environmental / preservation groups are not fighting tooth and nail to save the juniper. There is uneasiness about juniper becoming another big industry like logging (Weyerhaeuser) and farming (Cenex). There is also wariness about the disturbance of old growth stands and fragile locations. Those concerns are generally addressed during the planning stage of projects. It is easy to recognize and train workers to recognize the attributes of the old growth trees. The old trees lack commercial value. The old trees do have a value for the wildlife and scenic values of the site. Not much abuse of these recognized values has occurred. There is also a recognition of the impact juniper is having on the watersheds and wildlife. Thus “Environmentalists” have been guarded but generally quiet about juniper “management.”

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Ask the Doctor Questions about kidney disease? Risk factors? Signs and symptoms? Are you concerned about yourself, a friend or family member? Ask Dr. Spry. Nashville, TN— The greater the severity of hypertension, the greater the likelihood of kidney impairment, according to data from the National Kidney Foundation's Kidney Early Evaluation Program (KEEP). Even more concerning is evidence that more advanced stages of chronic kidney disease (CKD) are present once one surpasses the relatively mild blood pressure elevation of 130 mm Hg. Those are the findings of the latest KEEP Annual Data Report published as a special supplement to the April issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, the official journal of the National Kidney Foundation. KEEP is a voluntary, community-based screening program designed to raise awareness about kidney disease among high-risk individuals and provide free testing and educational information. Since its launch in 2000, approximately 125,000 individuals with diabetes, high blood pressure, or a family history of diabetes, hypertension, or kidney disease have been screened. Nearly one third showed evidence that they, themselves, already had kidney disease. Senior author Dr. George L. Bakris at the University of Chicago School of Medicine and his associates report that "the probability of not reporting kidney impairment when present was significantly greater for participants with microalbuminuria, providing an additional reason to assess microalbuminuria in hypertensive patients given this lack of awareness." In their article, Dr. Bakris' team compared the KEEP data with that of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a nationally representative sample of the US population. Results showed that hypertension with CKD, greater rates of CKD stages 3 and 4 in African Americans, obesity and diabetes were more prevalent in the KEEP data than in the NHANES data. "Screening programs improve public heath, improve knowledge and communication, enhance adherence to recommended therapies, and improve clinical outcomes," the authors conclude. KEEP is sponsored by Amgen, Abbott, Genzyme, Genentech, Novartis, Lifescan and Suplena. The National Kidney Foundation is dedicated to preventing and treating kidney and urinary tract diseases, improving the health and well being of individuals and families affected by these diseases and increasing availability of all organs for transplantation. For more information about chronic kidney disease and KEEP, contact the National Kidney Foundation at www.kidney.org Posted under: Research Studies With your support, the NKF is able to continue providing up-to-date, comprehensive information on kidney health. Click here to donate.

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Life in plants & animals is attributed to the essential presence of five principal elements – Sun, Space, Air, Water & Earth by Holy Vedas. Seeds as such are not active yet alive but when we cook them by roasting & boiling, they are totally dead & lose the power to reproduce. And when put to germination in presence of air & water they turn alive & dynamic & start growing to there parental plant form. So, eating sprouts means getting all the essential five elements in their natural proportion & also eating a sprout means eating a whole plant extract. Eating raw fruits & vegetables have always an edge over the cooked food. The pulses which can’t be taken uncooked fulfil the requirement of raw food on germination. The chemical changes which take place during the process change the ordinary water to organic one, the complex proteins to simple ready to assimilate amino acids, starch to instant energizer glucose, hard to digest fats to their simple readily digestible forms, the quantity of vitamins raises wonderfully & loss of B-Complex group vitamins & vitamin-C does not occur as the sprouts are always advised raw & are not heated. Though the millets & cereals are rich in minerals yet the minerals are not available to the body due to their complex bindings with Phytates. The phytates break only on germination to provide bound phosphorus to seeds & in the process the important minerals like Calcium, Magnesium, Zinc & Iron become absorbable to the body. The miraculous Vitamin-E is maximum in wheat germ & other oil yielding seeds. Researchers find its major role in male as well as female infertility. Apart from being anti-abortive, it treats so many other gynae problems also. The antioxidant properties of natural vitamin-E guard against serious diseases like Cancer, Strokes, Arthritis, Diabetes etc. . Recent studies show that Vitamin-E boost the immune system of older people to strengthen their resistance to infections. It also prevents narrowing of blood vessels & thus in a way guard the heart. Muscle cramps can be cured with this vitamin. So sprouts push aside the synthetic multi vitamins & inorganic minerals. Also you are safe against the overdose Germinated wheat, alpha-alpha, fenugreek seeds, sesame etc. have certain medicinal values also. The outer coatings of the germinated seeds provide a good quantity of fiber also which helps to clean the bowels. Further the sprouts need more of chewing & mastication –exercise of the jaws. Mixing of saliva makes them further digestible. Sprouts can be the best bet for the people who want a weight loss. Their different natural taste does not allow you to eat more than your appetite. Another plus point is that no chemical pollutants are added to the sprouts to make them palatable. Wheat, Grams, Peas, Moong, Mothe, Lobiya, Bajra, Alpha-Alpha, Groundnuts, Almonds, Seeds of sesame, Fenugreek. Sunflower are such which germinate easily. While the cereals yield much of complex-B vitamins, the pulses have added good proteins. Millets & Cereals are rich in minerals while oil seeds are saturated with fats. So while going for the sprouts, a sensible mixture of the above can give you the best of A sour & salty salad can be prepared by adding onions, mint & coriander leaves, fresh ginger, green chilies, cucumber & tomatoes with lemon juice. . The addition of some honey, dates(fresh or dried), gurh (jaggery), raisins & figs etc. make a high quality nourishment for the children as well as for the old ones. Grinding this mixture into a paste can be tried for the weaning infants but in small quantities. Blending the sprouts with milk, sugarcane juice, orange juice can be the best energizer for the people who can not chew or the patients recovering from the wasting diseases. A porridge made from the dried germinated wheat is a delicious recipe. Germination in winters is slightly difficult & time consuming but you can do it faster in a very simple way. Soak the seeds in fresh water for about twelve hours till they absorb enough water & become slightly soft. Drain out the excess of water thoroughly & put the seeds in a caserol covering properly with the lid. This retains the heat produced during the chemical changes taking place & results in faster germination. Keeping the sprouts in Sunlight can be more One should be careful to consume the sprouts to the optimum of their freshness. Keeping them not preserved for longer periods can cause contamination. Slightly warm & humid atmosphere causes fungal growth on sprouts. So, the sprouts should be best avoided during rainy season. real vigor from the economical sprouts can only be felt after you adopt them in regular diet. Dr Satish Bajaj 7 A.G.C.R Enclave Ph.011 22374713, Mob: 9868569986

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Margarita the giraffe just gave birth to a female calf at the Nashville Zoo on Sunday, June 10. Just four days old, the baby giraffe already stands 6 feet, 2 inches tall (1.9 meters) and weighs about 160 pounds (73 kilograms). Mother and calf are doing well and are currently off exhibit, the zoo said. Zoo officials plan to carefully monitor the baby's development and will make a decision on her public debut in the coming weeks. [Full Story: Baby Giraffe Born at Nashville Zoo] Kilauea continues to earn its reputation as one of Earth's most active volcanoes. Since January 1983, Kilauea has erupted continuously, coating much of the southeast coast of Hawaii's Big Island in fresh lava, which glows red in this satellite image. The center of the eruption is Pu'u O'o a crater southeast of Kilauea's summit. From here, the molten rock flows through lava tubes down Kilauea's steep slopes. The lava emerges on the pali (a Hawaiian word for cliff) and on the coastal plain, further down the mountainside. [Full Story: Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano Spews Lava, As Seen From Space] Despite being explored for more than a century, Carlsbad Caverns National Park still hides more passages. A team exploring the park's Lechuguilla Cave, the deepest cave in the continental United States, climbed over 410 feet (125 meters) into a high dome in early May. Upon reaching the top, lead climber James Hunter discovered a maze of previously unknown passages, pits and large rooms. The team named it Oz. [Full Story: New Secret Passage Discovered in Carlsbad Caverns] The Smithsonian National Zoo is celebrating the birth of two endangered fishing cats, marking the first time the endangered species has been successfully bred there, the zoo said. The two kittens were born on May 18 to 7-year-old mother Electra. Zookeepers expect the kittens to become valuable breeders in the future because their genes are not well-represented in the captive population of fishing cats. [Full Story: Birth of Endangered Kittens Gives Hope to Rare Species] A tornado swept across Italy's historic island city of Venice at around 11 a.m. local time yesterday (June 12), leaving a trail of twisted debris and a shaken populace in its wake. Videos and images posted on YouTube and splashed across the websites of local media outlets showed a large and menacing twister looming above picturesque tiled roofs and the historic seascapes for which the city is famed. [Full Story: Videos Show Rare Tornado Striking Venice] NASA's Aqua satellite captured this picture of smoke from Colorado's High Park fire on June 10, 2012. Notice how actively burning fire, shown by the red lines, has grown from the day prior. [Full Story: Images: Southwestern Wildfires Seen From Space] The Juruá River snakes slowly through the half-flooded Amazon rainforest in western Brazil, leaving free-standing oxbow lakes in its wake, which form when a river changes course as it meanders through a floodplain. The Juruá is the most winding river in the Amazon basin and one of the Amazon River's longest tributaries, exceeding 2,040 miles (3,283 kilometers) in length. Tropical rainforests have some of the largest rivers in the world because of the tremendous amount of precipitation their watersheds receive. [Full Story: Earth from Space: River Snakes Through Amazon Rainforest] The elusive and endangered dhole, or Asiatic wild dog, has been found roaming the forests of four nature reserves in Thailand. Working with photographs snapped by camera traps set up in 15 Thai parks, researchers have created the first map showing where dholes in this region likely live and what areas are suitable habitats for them. The wild dogs favor areas deep within parks, far from humans. Enhanced protective programs near forest edges could help preserve dholes, which are more likely to be shot or poisoned when they come too close to civilization. [Full Story: Elusive Wild Dog Species Spotted in Thailand]

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According to a new study, gargling sugar water can boost a person's self-control. Researchers found that swishing glucose based drink increased attention and self-control in a test that confuses the brain. Participants in the study were analyzed on the basis of their abilities to do tests on self-control. The first test involved meticulous crossing out of Es on a page from a statistics book. This test is known to deplete a person's self-control The other test was Stroop task (based on Stroop Effect) where participants were asked to identify the color flashed on the screen that spell out names of other colors. The task requires a great deal of attention and a high level of self-control to block out the wrong answers. 51 people participated in the tests. Half of them were given lemonade sweetened with sugar to rinse their mouths before the tests while the other half got Splenda-sweetened lemonade. Study participants who had rinsed their mouths with sugar-sweetened lemonade did better on the Stroop test than people who had rinsed with artificially sweetened lemonade. Rinsing your mouth with sugar-water will not help you exercise self-control during weight loss or with smoking cessation, researchers said in a press release. "The glucose seems to be good at getting you to stop an automatic response such as reading the words in the Stroop task and to substitute the second harder one in its place such as saying the color the word is printed in. It can enhance emotive investment and self-relevant goals," said Leonard Martin, professor of psychology from University of Georgia. Sugar water can help you focus on the task that needs more attention. Previous studies have shown that the first test requires so much energy that by the time people are done with it, they are so exhausted that they simply don't pay attention in the subsequent Stroop test. "Researchers used to think you had to drink the glucose and get it into your body to give you the energy to (have) self control. After this trial, it seems that glucose stimulates the simple carbohydrate sensors on the tongue. This, in turn, signals the motivational centers of the brain where our self-related goals are represented. These signals tell your body to pay attention," Martin said. He added that gargling with glucose can help people focus on important goals and also help perform better at the next task. "In short, we believe self-control goes away because people send away, not because they don't have energy. People turn it off on purpose," Martin added. The study is published in the journal Psychological Science. Published by Medicaldaily.com

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General tips for high SAT scores Relax the night before the test Don't cram. You are being tested on knowledge that you have accumulated over the course of the year. And over the past few months especially, you've been taking SAT prep. Studying at the last minute will only stress you out. Go to a movie or hang out with a friend -- anything to get your mind off of the test! Rely on the strategies you've learned through SAT test prep The SAT help you've gotten over the past few months has included a number of specific strategies that are guaranteed to increase your score during SAT testing. The tips below highlight a number of these strategies. Test specific tips for high SAT scores Critical Reading: Sentence Completions Sentence completions test both your vocabulary and your understanding of the logic of a sentence. Each question is a sentence containing either one or two blanks. Your job is to figure out which answer correctly completes the sentence. As you read, try to predict what word should go in each blank. Sometimes you can guess the meaning of one blank, but not the other. In that case, scan the answer choices, look for a word similar to the one you've predicted, and then eliminate the answer choices that don't match up. Critical Reading: Reading Comprehension The Critical Reading test now includes both long and short reading passages. Skim each passage to see what it's about. Don't worry about the details -- you can always look them up later if you need to. Just look for the main ideas. Then tackle the questions that direct you straight to the answer by referring you to a specific line in the passage. If you have time afterward, you can try solving the harder questions. Writing: Multiple-Choice Questions There are three types of multiple-choice writing questions on the SAT. The first group, Improving Sentences, tasks you with selecting the correct version - the one that is clearly written and grammatically correct -- of an underlined portion of a sentence. Sentence Error questions ask you to figure out which part of a sentence contains an error. Those on Improving Paragraphs test your ability to organize and clarify information. For all of these question types, think about the simplest, clearest way to express an idea. If an answer choice sounds awkward or overly complicated, chances are good that it's wrong. You will be given an open-ended essay prompt (topic) that asks you to state a viewpoint and support it. Essays are scored holistically, which means that the final score is based on an overall impression. It is important to develop your ideas and express them clearly, using examples to back them up. Your essay does not have to be grammatically perfect, but it does have to be focused and organized. The standard five-paragraph essay can be an effective way to make your point. Math: Multiple-Choice Questions As you work through the multiple-choice math questions, you'll be given reference information (formulas and facts), but you'll need to know how to use them. You're allowed to use a calculator, but it won't help you unless you know how to approach the problems. If you're stuck, try substituting numbers for variables. You can also try plugging in numbers from the answer choices. Start with the middle number. That way, if it doesn't work, you can strategically choose one that's higher or lower. These questions are not multiple-choice -- you come up with an answer and fill it into a grid. The grid does not contain a minus sign, so there is no way to indicate that a value is less than zero. That means that an answer can't be a negative number. Unlike the multiple-choice questions, you won't be penalized for wrong answers, so make your best guess even if you're not sure. You can't grid mixed numbers, so if you get a mixed number as an answer, you'll have to convert it to an improper fraction or a decimal.

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Some unknown terrible person shot a defenseless pilot whale last month, leaving it to swim the Atlantic in agony for weeks before it finally beached itself on the New Jersey shore and died. Authorities are still looking for the shooter. The bullet wound caused a fulminant infection in the whale’s jaw that prevented it from eating, so it basically starved to death. This was determined during a necropsy, an autopsy for animals. Along with sympathy for the poor creature, this debacle aroused an interesting question: How does one autopsy a whale? With four-ton meat hooks, whaling knives and bone saws, actually. Michael Moore, a veterinarian and whale biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, does it all the time. Moore spends much of his time studying North Atlantic right whales, an endangered species whose name derives from whalers’ adage that these were the “right whales” to hunt, because they’re easy to spot and float when they die. They’re no longer hunted for their oil, but they are entangled in fishing lines and injured in ship collisions, often suffering for a great while and also succumbing to starvation. “It’s the most egregious animal welfare issue globally at this time,” in Moore’s words. But protecting them requires understanding how they died, and to do this Moore must take them apart, studying their broken bones and lobster net-tangled flukes to determine their exact causes of death.In partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Moore deploys on-call, toting a case full of knives to examine right whales that have beached or are floating in the open ocean. Right whales are baleen whales and at least two orders of magnitude bigger than the toothed pilot whale that was shot, so in most cases, they must be examined right where they‘re found — that means on the beach. They either beach themselves and die there, or they’re towed to shore once they have been located at sea. Moore and other rubber-suited biologists work amid 120,000 pounds of slick black-and-red whale flesh, clambering over and through the carcass to find out what went wrong. Time is of the essence, because the longer they wait, the more the animal’s internal organs break down, making it difficult to determine how it died. Moore uses a Japanese whaling hook, which is useful for pulling back sheets of blubber to get at the animal’s internal organs. He carries a bone saw — formerly his mother’s — to get through jaws and vertebrae to find the location of a fatal injury. He’s even visited indigenous Alaskan tribes to study their ancestral whale processing techniques. The pilot whale that died was small, so it was trucked to a necropsy facility at the the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, N.J., down the shore north of Atlantic City. It weighed about 740 pounds when it beached, quite gaunt for an animal that should normally weigh more than a ton. Researchers knew something was seriously wrong, but they had to perform a necropsy to determine what it was. The creatures are brought in on trucks and hoisted into the facility on chains rigged to the ceiling, attached to four-ton-rated meat hooks. They lay on negative-pressure steel tables, the same types used in human autopsy procedures, which suck out odors and pathogens as the biologists get to work. The lab also contains deep freezers for stringing up deceased animals; it harbors an overwhelming odor of chemical and organic substances. (It’s somewhat legendary at WHOI that Moore lost his sense of smell while in veterinary school, which he says enables him to get literally inside a rotting animal carcass without losing his lunch or his cool.) The 11-foot-long pilot whale died shortly after authorities reached its side on the beach on Sept. 24. But it wasn’t until a necropsy a couple weeks later that they knew what happened. The bullet entered near its blow hole, but the wound had closed and faded a bit, suggesting it had been shot about a month prior. The .30-caliber round lodged in its jaw, causing the infection. “This poor animal literally starved to death,” said Bob Schoelkopf, co-director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, in an interview with the AP. “It was wandering around and slowly starving to death because of the infection. Who would do that to an innocent animal?” That question is now in the hands of the authorities. For biologists like Moore and Schoelkopf, necropsies can at least answer the question of how. Why, of course, is something else entirely. Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.

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In physical geography, a wetland is an environment at the interface between terrestrial ecosystems and aquatic systems. In essence, wetlands are ecotones. Wetlands are typically highly productive habitats, often hosting considerable biodiversity and endemism. By absorbing the force of strong winds and tides, wetlands protect terrestrial areas adjoining them from storms, floods, and tidal damage. The plants in wetlands help to filter pollutants in the water. Fresh water marshes are often on river floodplains. Intertidal wetlands provide an excellent example of invasion, modification and succession. The invasion and succession process is establishment of seagrasses. These help stabilize sediment and increase sediment capture rates. The trapped sediment gradually develops into mud flats. Mud flat organisms become established encouraging other life forms changing the organic composition of the soils. In the salt marshes there is greater species diversity, nutrient recycling, and niche specialisation making it one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth. For more information about the topic Wetland, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles: Recommend this page on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +1: Other bookmarking and sharing tools:

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Above, Indian children shout slogans during a protest in New Delhi on the Global Day Against Child Trafficking. While many countries have laws banning child labor, India has only recently pushed for a comprehensive law to punish child labor employers. Despite being outlawed, modern slavery persists. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) recently estimated that 20.9 million people are modern slaves worldwide. The search for the cheapest labor and lowest production costs creates a market that human traffickers supply. Children are not alone, as adults are also shackled into performing forced labor in parts of the world where enforcement is lax and corruption unbounded. The closest most Americans will come to modern slavery is calculating how many slaves work for them. Few realize that modern slaves may have picked the produce at their grocery store or the beans for their Fair Trade coffee. A group of Brazilian slave laborers listens to a Labor Ministry inspector (R) explain their legal rights on the Bom Jesus farm in the Amazon basin. As teams of government inspectors and federal police step up their quest to free an estimated 25,000 slave laborers, there is no doubt that Brazil’s feudal slavery traditions are alive in pockets of its hardscrabble northeast, more than a century after the practice was abolished. Photo: Rickey Roger/Reuters Domestic Servitude in Burkina Faso Valerie, 16, was sent by her parents eight years ago to live in her aunt’s house in a little village in Burkina Faso, as a domestic helper. Valerie is the first to wake up at 5:00 each day, and the last to go to sleep at almost midnight. She takes care of the 18 people living in the house, washing, cleaning, sweeping and cooking. When her aunt is unhappy with her work, Valerie is beaten. Valerie never went to school. A year ago, she fought with her aunt for permission to take tailoring lessons in a center for trafficked children in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Valerie wants to be a tailor. She wants an opportunity to decide her future. Photo: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images Migrant Workers Tricked Into Forced Labor Workers carry buckets of tomatoes to a drop-off point as they harvest what they can from tomato fields in Homestead, Florida. Migrant and undocumented workers promised well-paying jobs can fall victim to modern slavery—even in the United States. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images Children Making Bricks in Afghanistan Afghan children sort bricks at the Sadat Ltd. Brick factory, where they work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, in Kabul, Afghanistan. Child labor is common at the brick factories where the parents work as laborers. Desperate to make more money, they enlisting their children to help doing the less-strenuous jobs. Workers can make an average of $200 to $300 per month. The factory is paid around $45 for every 1,000 bricks. Photo: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images Indian Kids Mine Coal A young boy named Fight, believed to be eight years old, shovels coal at a depot near Lad Rymbai, in the district of Jaintia Hills, India. Children and adults squeeze into rat-hole-like tunnels in thousands of privately owned and unregulated mines, extracting coal with their hands or primitive tools and no safety equipment. Workers can earn as much as $150 per week or 30,000 Rupees per month, significantly higher than the national average of $15 per day. Some of the labor is forced, and an Indian NGO group, Impulse, estimates that 5,000 privately owned coal mines in Jaintia Hills employ some 70,000 child miners. Photo: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images Fair Trade Opportunity for Child Labor Clarisse Kambire, 13, a child laborer, fills a sack with bolls of cotton during the harvesting of fair trade organic cotton with fellow child laborers in a field near Benvar, Burkina Faso. In Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in the world, child labor is endemic to the production of its chief crop export. Paying lucrative premiums for organic and fair trade cotton has—perversely—created fresh incentives for exploitation. A slave worker, who was later rescued by local authorities, is pictured at a brick kiln in China’s Henan province. Chinese police detained 168 people accused of involvement in slavery that trapped victims in scorching brick kilns. Chinese Workers Rescued From Slavery Workers stand at a police station after they were rescued from a brick factory in Hongdong County in Linfen, north China’s Shanxi province. Thirty-one people, forced to work for a year as slaves, given only bread and water and no pay, were rescued at a factory run by the son of a local Communist Party official. Photo: China Daily/Reuters Nimble Hands and 19-Hour Work Days Young boys work as carpet weavers in an illegal factory in Attock, Pakistan. This village has about 20 carpet factories, where children as young as five work from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. in bad conditions and for low wages. Carpet weaving is one of the few chances for Afghan refugees in the village to make money. The children are often beaten and denied school studies. Andrew Freeman is a California native with a degree in history from UCLA. He’s covered a wide range of topics for TakePart, but is particularly interested in politics and policy. Email Andrew |@natureofdabeast | TakePart.com

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Narrator: This is Science Today. A new air sampler, which can effectively trap and evaluate fine particle pollutants in both their solid and gas phases has been developed by scientist Lara Gundel of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This sampler can greatly impact future EPA air quality standards and lead to a definitive understanding of how pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and pesticides, affect our health. Gundel: I guess the innovations we made were a way to separate the gases and particles accurately and then to be able to collective measure particles and the gases separately and accurately. Narrator: Gundel achieved this by coating an inner tube of roughened glass inside the filter with sticky resin beads, which were finely ground up until their pores were small enough to trap gas particles. Gundel: We quickly decided that this new technology that we had, these new kinds of sampler designs, could be used in outdoor air, in general atmospheric questions. Narrator: Gundel is currently collaborating with other scientists and the EPA to test this sampler at various sites across the country. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.

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Convenience foods can be purchased frozen, refrigerated, or right off the shelf. Because each food has different cooking requirements, it is imperative to read and follow the manufacturer's cooking instructions. The majority of these foods are not ready to eat straight out of the package, and typically, some further cooking is required. Not following label directions can lead to undercooked food, thus leading to food borne illness. Follow the basic steps provided while cooking convenience foods to help reduce your risk of getting a food borne illness. You might find that proper cooking requires a conventional, convection, or toaster oven and not a microwave. Instructions are specific to that product and may not be applicable to all ovens. Remember to stir, cover, and rotate foods to allow for even cooking. Another important consideration in convenience foods is the microwave wattage. Do you know the wattage of your microwave? Wattage is found on the inside of the door or on the back side of the appliance. If your microwave's wattage is lower than what is recommended on the instructions, it will more than likely take longer for your food to be cooked and reach its proper internal temperature. Typically, the higher wattage of a microwave you have, the less time it will take that food to reach its proper temperature. Lastly, remember to use a food thermometer. After you have cooked the food, be sure to allow the food to "stand" for the allotted amount of time specified in the instructions. Stand time is important to allow the food to finish heating through or cooking. One cannot tell if a food is properly cooked based on color or texture alone. Using your food thermometer is the only sure way to tell if a food has reached its proper internal temperature. Most convenience foods need to reach an internal temperature of 165? F. Remember to always read and follow the manufacturers' guidelines when cooking or reheating convenience foods.

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The basic purpose of every individual in a producing company is the same: to find and produce oil and gas in an efficient manner to the economic benefit of the company. A reservoir engineer cannot predict the production performance of an oil reservoir with any degree of certainty without a knowledge of the physical characteristics — the geology — of that reservoir. Neither can the geologist describe the physical characteristics of a reservoir and be sure of his work without considering the producing characteristics as evidenced by production and pressure data. This 2-day course is an attempt to bridge that particular chasm, being an introductory description of the field and techniques of petroleum reservoir engineering. The course will cover: - Reservoir Rock Properties; as porosity, fluid saturations, and permeability - Reservoir Fluid Properties; as fluid types, reservoir oil, reservoir gas - Reservoir Fluid Flow; as Darcy’s law, reservoir drive mechanisms - Reservoir Production Evaluation Techniques; as volumetric calculations, material balance, decline curves and deliverability Reservoir engineering can be defined as the design and evaluation of field development and exploitation processes and programs. As such, it can overlap the fields of geology, drilling and completion, production engineering, and reserves and evaluation. Therefore, some of each of these fields are included, but the major emphasis is on the techniques and methods utilized to characterize and predict the flow of fluids within petroleum reservoirs under natural depletion and various secondary and tertiary recovery operations. The event is organized and hosted by AAPG, a worldwide geoscience organization, with more than 36,000 members worldwide, and will take place May 17-18, 2010 in Houston, TX. Cost and registration information is available at the AAPG’s website. Check out the course information here. Last 5 posts by Susan Nash - Useful Geomechanics Resources for You - June 17th, 2013 - Engineering the Mississippian & Arbuckle: Geologist "Must-Knows" in One Day - June 5th, 2013 - Geomechanics: Simply Indispensable - May 29th, 2013 - Exploration and Development in the Mississippian System (Oklahoma and Kansas) - May 15th, 2013 - Engineering Aspects of Mid-Continent Carbonate Reservoir Development - May 13th, 2013

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“True freedom consisted in the spontaneous fusion of the individual with the collectivity” Mussolini and his Minister of Public Instruction, Giovanni Gentile, held this position. They used this idea to increase “fascistization” in education. Gentile was given the task to restructure Italy’s educational system for a few key reasons. 1. To ensure the universities produced students who were prepared to regenerate the Italian nation. 2. To debar working and lower middle class children from “acquiring ambitions above their station.” 3. Most importantly, that those who graduated from secondary schools and universities would feel bound to the national community. To do this, secondary schools focused greatly on classical studies, Latin, literature, history, philosophy, and religion, because these subjects were expected to transmit the “spiritual essence of Italy.” This led to the introduction of the state exam for private and public schools and the salute to the flag daily. The ministry had larger control over teachers and curriculum. Laws were put in place to ensure this control. In 1925, teachers were instructed that their teachings should educate Italian youth to understand fascism, and a law was passed that forced the retirement of any public employee who displayed views “incompatible with the general political aims of the government.” Starting in 1929 every primary and secondary school teacher was obligated to take an oath of loyalty to the regime, and by 1933, membership of the Fascist Party was required. The curriculum of theses schools was also regulated. To ensure uniformity, one state textbook was used in all primary schools starting in 1929. Gentile believed that education was “a process of spiritual interaction between master and pupil” and this relationship required autonomy and spontaneity, so he was operating on the idea that fewer schools of higher quality would do the trick. When doing research on Giovanni Gentile, I found this article which, if you are interested, explains his philosophy of education. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2378334

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When the federal government released an important compendium of mental health data this week, the headlines proclaimed that 1 in 5 Americans over 18 had a diagnosable mental illness in the past year, and 1 in 20 had a “serious mental illness.” But what does “serious mental illness” mean, anyway, and what are its connotations and implications when it comes to treatment? It’s a question worth asking, because it’s used differently in different contexts. The federal government has a formal definition for serious mental illness (SMI) which classifies it as “serious functional impairment, which substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities” and has occurred in the past 12 months. (The National Survey on Drug Use and Health mental health findings released this week also classified people as having mild or moderate functional impairment). This blog focuses on young people with mental illnesses, and I noted with interest the report’s findings that among adults, those ages 18 to 25 were most likely to have a SMI. (They were also more likely than older adults to meet other indicators of mental distress, but more on that in a future post). Although it’s treated as something of a truism among mental health advocates that those with mild and moderate mental illness are overtreated and those with SMI are undertreated, this data shows that 60 percent of the latter received some kind of mental health services, compared to about 40 percent of the former. Fifty-four percent of those with SMI received medication. Although the report didn’t break pharmaceutical treatment down by age group, among those with SMI, 18 to 25-year-olds were the least likely to receive mental health services compared to older adults. This is all very interesting, but making sense of the data is something of a challenge because of the various ways “serious mental illness” is defined in different contexts. While surveys like NSDUH use impairment as their metric, “serious mental illness” is, in my experience, often used to refer to diagnoses where psychosis or mania is present: bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder (a combination of schizophrenia and mood disorder symptoms). But that’s not always the case. Even the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, the chief U.S. advocacy group for the mentally ill, skirts the issue a bit. In a fact sheet on mental illness, NAMI also includes as serious mental illnesses OCD, depression, PTSD, panic disorder and borderline personality disorder. A young woman with bipolar disorder I know who majored in psychology and has done mental health advocacy, once made the distinction this way: There are conditions that any mainstream doctor is going to insist on treating with medication, she said – hence the psychosis and mania threshold. Those conditions that could be treated without meds are usually not included. Her definition makes a lot of sense to me, intuitively. But once you get into the business of suggesting that medication is, somehow, “optional,” you’re treading on perilous ground, turning what ought to be a case-by-case, individual determination into a categorical one. This is just the objection I have when critics of medication declare one group or another to be “overmedicated.” The blogger Natasha Tracy, who has bipolar disorder, wisely recognized the delicacy of this issue in a recent post on what the “worst” mental disorder is. She writes: “…No matter what the diagnosis, no matter what the illness, no matter what the pain scale, no matter what the statistics say, it doesn’t matter. Because when you’re on the floor of your kitchen with a razor blade in your hand, you know one thing for sure – your mental illness is surely the worst in the world for you at that moment. And you’re absolutely right.” I think that is beautifully – and very diplomatically put. But, to bring the topic back to the focus of this blog, what about when your condition is well-managed with medication? Does a formerly “severe” mental illness become “mild” or “moderate”? Does it disappear entirely? By the federal government’s definitions – which requires the illness to have been present in the past 12 months – it does. But as someone trying to assume an identity that incorporates, accommodates and yet doesn’t surrender to psychiatric problems, it’s a tricky question to answer. This post currently has You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts. PRESS OCH STRESS-en mental miljö värd att tänka på? (January 21, 2012) With Mental Illness, ‘Serious’ Is A Slippery Term « PDResources (January 25, 2012) Personality Disorders: Solace in Therapeutic Care - Adolescent Drug Rehab | Teen Drug Treatment | Teen Alcohol Rehabilitation | California Adolescent RehabAdolescent Drug Rehab | Teen Drug Treatment | Teen Alcohol Rehabilitation | California Adolescent Re (January 30, 2012) “Serious” Mental Illness | A Canvas Of The Minds (March 29, 2012) Last reviewed: 1 Feb 2012

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The atlas of climate change: mapping the world's greatest challenge University of California Press , 2007 - Science - 112 pages Today's headlines and recent events reflect the gravity of climate change. Heat waves, droughts, and floods are bringing death to vulnerable populations, destroying livelihoods, and driving people from their homes. Rigorous in its science and insightful in its message, this atlas examines the causes of climate change and considers its possible impact on subsistence, water resources, ecosystems, biodiversity, health, coastal megacities, and cultural treasures. It reviews historical contributions to greenhouse gas levels, progress in meeting international commitments, and local efforts to meet the challenge of climate change. With more than 50 full-color maps and graphics, this is an essential resource for policy makers, environmentalists, students, and everyone concerned with this pressing subject. The Atlas covers a wide range of topics, including: * Warning signs * Future scenarios * Vulnerable populations * Renewable energy * Emissions reduction * Personal and public action Copub: Myriad Editions

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Uganda Remains Bright Spot in African AIDS CrisisCNSNEWS.COM Among the nations of Africa, where 12 million people have died of AIDS and 23 million have the disease presently, Uganda stands out as one country where the government has taken effective action to fight the epidemic—by focusing not on safe sex, but on changing risky behavior. (CNSNews.com)—Among the nations of Africa, where 12 million people have died of AIDS and 23 million have the disease presently, Uganda stands out as one country where the government has taken effective action to fight the epidemic—by focusing not on safe sex, but on changing risky behavior. In the past decade, the infection rate has dropped 25 percent, and a whopping 50 percent in urban areas. The percentage of infected mothers who pass the disease on to their new born infants has fallen from 40 percent to 15 percent, as a result of increased treatments for HIV carriers and better prenatal care. Uganda was one of the first nations in Africa to publicly admit that it had a problem, declaring the disease a national crisis in 1986—ten years before most countries—and adopting a vigorous national plan to combat AIDS in 1992. Today, Uganda leads Africa in research for an AIDS vaccine. Yet these initiatives do not tell the whole story of Uganda’s relative success in fighting AIDS, for along with the nation’s early admission that it had a problem, the government there has chosen a different approach than many of the AIDS prevention programs presently in place in Africa, especially those sponsored by various agencies of the United Nations. Uganda, rather than relying solely or immediately on distributing condoms to people at risk for the disease, the government of President Yoweri Museveni has made a concerted effort to get citizens to change their behavior. The president himself has spoken out frequently on the need to remain abstinent before marriage and monogamous within marriage. “We’ve approached AIDS from several directions,” Tayebwa Katureebe, an attache at the Ugandan embassy in Washington, D.C., told CNSNews.com. “The first is to get people to recognize that they will not get AIDS if they don’t engage in the sort of behavior that causes AIDS. That means, abstinence, monogamy, and only then, condoms.” Katureebe said that the Ugandan government has involved local tribal leaders, as well as religious leaders from the country’s Catholic, Christian and Muslim communities in spreading the message of abstinence and monogamy. The Ugandan government also hopes that its program would be replicated in other areas of Africa, where AIDS positivity has reached as high as 30 percent in some sub-Saharan countries. The message seems to be particularly important in Africa, where promiscuity is more of a cultural norm than in the West and men taking multiple sexual partners is not uncommon. Some very traditional villages still engage in a practice called “sexual cleansing,” where a woman who has fallen sick has sex with several men in hopes of being cured by semen, which is thought to have purifying qualities. Such practices—as well as the prevalence of prostitution throughout the continent, especially along north-south trucking routes—have made Africa especially vulnerable to the spread of AIDS. Uganda’s approach differs from the approach of the UN throughout the continent. Through agencies such as the Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization, the global body has flooded the continent with male and female condoms made by UN-owned manufacturers, such as the UN Female Health Corporation. Secretary General Kofi Annan recently told reporters that despite lingering objections from religious and cultural leaders about the promotion of condoms, the UN would continue to encourage their use. “Governments have got to do something. We must end the conspiracy of silence, the shame over this issue,” said Annan. The notion that promoting condom use is encouraging promiscuity, he added, “won’t do.” However, there is new evidence that condoms may actually help fuel the AIDS crisis by discouraging essential lifestyles changes, such as limiting the numbers of partners or remaining monogamous. A recent report in the British medical journal The Lancet found that “increased condom use will increase the number of [HIV/AIDS] transmissions that result from condom failure.” More importantly, condom use may actually discourage the sort of lifestyle changes that are essential to stopping the spread of the virus in Africa, as people “switch from inherently safer strategies of partner selection or fewer partners to the riskier strategy of developing or maintaining higher rates of partner change plus reliance on condoms.” In the short term, the researchers conclude, the “benefits of condom use to individuals exposed to HIV or sexually transmitted diseases are substantial and well-documented, . . . [but] it is much harder to show that condom promotion has had significant impact on HIV epidemics.” Torres, Justin. “Uganda Remains Bright Spot in African AIDS Crisis.” CNSNews (April 10, 2000). Reprinted with permission of CNSNews.com Copyright © 2000 CNSNews.com Not all articles published on CERC are the objects of official Church teaching, but these are supplied to provide supplementary information.

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the supposed contraction of a body in the direction of its motion through the ether, postulated to explain the result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. The special theory of relativity denies that any such real change can occur in a body as a result of uniform motion but shows that an observer moving with respect to the body will determine an apparent change given by a formula similar to that of Lorentz and Fitzgerald [C20: named after H. A. Lorentz and G. F. Fitzgerald (1851--1901), Irish physicist] Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction (lôr'ənts-fĭts-jěr'ld) Pronunciation Key The shortening of an object along its direction of motion as its speed approaches the speed of light, as measured by an observer at rest with respect to the body. Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction is an effect predicted by Einstein's theory of Special Relativity. It is named for Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz and Irish physicist George Francis FitzGerald (1851-1901), who independently proposed such a contraction. See more at relativity.

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On this date in 1748, Jeremy Bentham was born in London. The great philosopher, utilitarian humanitarian and atheist began learning Latin at age four. He earned his B.A. from Oxford by age 15 or 16, and his M.A. at 18. His Rationale of Punishments and Rewards was published in 1775, followed by his groundbreaking utilitarian work, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Bentham propounded his principle of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." He worked for political, legal, prison and educational reform. Inheriting a large fortune from his father in 1792, Bentham was free to spend his remaining life promoting progressive causes. The renowned humanitarian was made a citizen of France by the National Assembly in Paris. In published and unpublished treatises, Bentham extensively critiqued religion, the catechism, the use of religious oaths and the bible. Using the pen-name Philip Beauchamp, he co-wrote a freethought treatise, Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind (1822). D. 1832. “No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion. . . . in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in the hands of governments.” —Jeremy Bentham, Constitutional Code © Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.

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- Toothpick or large, blunt needle - Clear gloss enamel or nail polish - Have your child roll small pieces of playdough into balls to make beads. - Pierce each bead with a toothpick or large blunt needle and allow to dry for several days. - Check holes after a day to see if they need repunching. - When dry, coat with clear gloss enamel or nail polish to bring out the color. - Thread beads onto a string and knot the ends together to create a necklace or bracelet. More on: Activities for Preschoolers Copyright © 1998 by Patricia Kuffner. Excerpted from The Preschooler's Busy Book with permission of its publisher, Meadowbrook Press. To order this book visit Meadowbrook Press.

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So how exactly do parents go about to create an environment of fun science for kids? There are numerous books out there that can help. One of these books is "The Amazing Science Discovery Series". This series specifically targets kids in the elementary grade levels and covers grade 1 to 5 science lesson. It's a set of 5 ebooks designed to help parents re-discover the fun in science together with their kids. Here are some tips adapted from this book to help you plant the seed of love for science in your little ones. Fuel their curiosity. If your child asks you a question the answer to which you aren't sure of, don’t invent an answer or end it by saying you don't know. The best way to approach this tricky situation is to find the answer together with your child. Research together. Maybe do an experiment together to check the outcome. That's the scientific method in action. Children learn a lot by doing. And if they see that you are enthusiastic about finding the answers and if you both are successful in finding it, it will show him that science is fun and that it is something comprehensible. Encourage your child to ask questions and take time to help him find the answers. This will keep him interested and involved in science. Allow your child to explore. As parents, we can be naturally over protective of our kids. But in the interest of science, we need to give them the opportunity to get down and dirty and explore the natural environment. Go on a trip to the beach, or a fishing expedition. Go camping with them once in a while or help them plant an herb garden. All of these activities provide them with the opportunity to interact with the natural world, which is something they will learn about in their life science classes. Letting them go out and explore will allow them to observe first hand the effects of weathering on various rock formations, the water cycle, and food chain and so much more. It will also make them aware of the need to conserve our resources and to be conscious of some of our actions that can harm the environment. Throw a science party for your kids and their friends. This is not as geeky as it sounds. Science parties are a great way to make science fun and cool for your child and his peers. You may not realize it, but something like a magic show can become a fun science activity for your child if the magician is also a good teacher and talks about how concepts learned in the physical sciences are used to make some magic tricks possible. Another idea is a kite making and flying party. Through this party, your host can talk about how kites are able to fly and how the weather can affect how high you can fly your kite or how specific kite designs are better compared to others. - article by Gabrielle Hunter

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A comprehensive metabolic panel (CMP) is a blood test that provides information about: how the kidney and liver are functioning sugar (glucose) and protein levels in the blood the body's electrolyte and fluid balance Why It's Done A CMP may be ordered as part of routine medical exam or physical, or to help diagnose conditions such as diabetes, or liver or kidney disease. The CMP may also be used to monitor chronic conditions, or when a patient is taking medications that can cause certain side effects. The CMP helps evaluate: Glucose, a type of sugar used by the body for energy. Abnormal levels can indicate diabetes or hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). Calcium, which plays an important role in muscle contraction, transmitting messages through the nerves, and the release of hormones. Elevated or decreased calcium levels may indicate a hormone imbalance or problems with the kidneys, bones, or pancreas. Albumin and total blood protein, which are needed to build and maintain muscles, bones, blood, and organ tissue. The CMP measures albumin specifically (the major blood protein produced by the liver), as well as the amount of all proteins in the blood. Low levels may indicate liver or kidney disease or nutritional problems. Sodium, potassium, carbon dioxide, and chloride (electrolytes), which help regulate the body's fluid levels and its acid-base balance. They also play a role in regulating heart rhythm, muscle contraction, and brain function. Abnormal levels also may occur with heart disease, kidney disease, or dehydration. Blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and creatinine, which are waste products filtered out of the blood by the kidneys. Increased concentrations in the blood may signal a decrease in kidney function. Alkaline phosphatase (ALP), alanine amino transferase (ALT), aspartate amino transferase (AST), and bilirubin; ALP, ALT, and AST are liver enzymes; bilirubin is produced by the liver. Elevated concentrations may indicate liver dysfunction. The CMP is more accurate when performed after fasting, so your doctor may ask that your child not eat for 8 to 12 hours before the test. It may help to have your child wear a short-sleeve shirt to allow easier access for the technician to draw the blood. A health professional will usually draw the blood from a vein. For an infant, the blood may be obtained by puncturing the heel with a small needle (lancet). If the blood is being drawn from a vein, the skin surface is cleaned with antiseptic, and an elastic band (tourniquet) is placed around the upper arm to apply pressure and cause the veins to swell with blood. A needle is inserted into a vein (usually in the arm inside of the elbow or on the back of the hand) and blood is withdrawn and collected in a vial or syringe. After the procedure, the elastic band is removed. Once the blood has been collected, the needle is removed and the area is covered with cotton or a bandage to stop the bleeding. Collecting blood for this test will only take a few minutes. Either method (heel or vein withdrawal) of collecting a sample of blood is only temporarily uncomfortable and can feel like a quick pinprick. Afterward, there may be some mild bruising, which should go away in a few days. Getting the Results The blood sample will be processed by a machine. Parts of a CMP may be available in minutes in an emergency, but more commonly the full test results come after a few hours or the next day. If any of the CMP results are abnormal, further testing may be necessary to determine what's causing the problem and how to treat it. The CMP test is considered a safe procedure. However, as with many medical tests, some problems can occur with having blood drawn, such as: fainting or feeling lightheaded hematoma (blood accumulating under the skin causing a lump or bruise) pain associated with multiple punctures to locate a vein Helping Your Child Having a blood test is relatively painless. Still, many kids are afraid of needles. Explaining the test in terms your child can understand might help ease some of the fear. Allow your child to ask the technician any questions he or she might have. Tell your child to try to relax and stay still during the procedure, as tensing muscles and moving can make it harder and more painful to draw blood. It also may help if your child looks away when the needle is being inserted into the skin. If You Have Questions If you have questions about the CMP test, speak with your doctor.

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Hepatitis (pronounced: hep-uh-TIE-tiss) is a disease of the liver. It is usually caused by a virus, although it can also be caused by long-term overuse of alcohol or other toxins (poisons). Although there are several different types of hepatitis, hepatitis B is a type that can move from one person to another through blood and other bodily fluids. It can be transmitted through sexual intercourse and through needles — such as those shared by intravenous drug or steroid users who have the virus, or tattoo needles that haven't been properly sterilized. A pregnant woman can also pass hepatitis B to her unborn baby. What Are the Symptoms? Someone with hepatitis B may have symptoms similar to those caused by other viral infections, such as the flu — for example, tiredness, nausea, loss of appetite, mild fever, and vomiting — as well as abdominal pain or pain underneath the right ribcage where the liver is. Hepatitis B can also cause jaundice, which is a yellowing of the skin and the whites of the eyes, and may cause urine (pee) to appear brownish. However, many people infected with hepatitis B do not have any symptoms until later on, when more serious complications, such as liver damage, can occur. How Long Until Symptoms Appear? Someone who has been exposed to hepatitis B may have symptoms 2 to 5 months later. Some people with hepatitis B don't notice symptoms until they become quite severe. Some have few or no symptoms, but even someone who doesn't notice any symptoms can still transmit the disease to others, and can still develop complications later in life. Some people carry the virus in their bodies and are contagious for the rest of their lives. Hepatitis B can be very dangerous to a person's health, leading to liver damage and an increased risk of liver cancer. Of babies born to women who have the hepatitis B virus, 90% will have the virus unless they receive a special immune injection and the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine at birth. How Is It Prevented? Because hepatitis B can easily be transmitted through blood and most body fluids, it can be prevented by: abstaining from sex (not having oral, vaginal, or anal sex) not using intravenous drugs or sharing any drug paraphernalia not sharing things like toothbrushes or razors Tattoo parlors sometimes reuse needles without properly sterilizing them, so be sure to research and choose tattoo and piercing providers carefully. To help prevent the spread of hepatitis B, health care professionals wear gloves at all times when in contact with blood or body fluids, and are usually required to be immunized against the hepatitis B virus. There is an immunization (vaccine) against hepatitis B, which is recommended for all kids and teens. The immunization is given as a series of three shots over a 6-month period. Newborn babies in the United States now routinely receive this immunization series. Teens who see their health care provider for yearly exams are also likely to be given the hepatitis B immunization if they haven't had it before. Immunization programs have been responsible for a significant drop in the number of cases of hepatitis B over the past 20 years. Sometimes, if someone has been recently exposed to the hepatitis B virus, a doctor may recommend the vaccine and/or a shot of immune globulin containing antibodies against the virus to try to prevent the person from coming down with the disease. For this reason, it's especially important to see a doctor quickly after any possible exposure to the virus. If you think you may have hepatitis B or if you have been intimate with someone who may have hepatitis B, you need to see your doctor or gynecologist, who will do blood tests. Anyone who has had sex should be routinely tested for other STDs as well. Let the doctor know the best way to reach you confidentially with any test results. If your doctor diagnoses hepatitis B, you may get medicines to help fight it. Sometimes, people need to be hospitalized for a little while if they are too sick to eat or drink. Most people with hepatitis B feel better within 6 months. Those who develop long-term hepatitis B will need to be followed closely.

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Abusive head trauma/inflicted traumatic brain injury — also called shaken baby/shaken impact syndrome (or SBS) — is a form of inflicted head trauma. Abusive head trauma (AHT) can be caused by direct blows to the head, dropping or throwing a child, or shaking a child. Head trauma is the leading cause of death in child abuse cases in the United States. How These Injuries Happen Unlike other forms of inflicted head trauma, abusive head trauma results from injuries caused by someone vigorously shaking a child. Because the anatomy of infants puts them at particular risk for injury from this kind of action, the majority of victims are infants younger than 1 year old. The average age of victims is between 3 and 8 months, although these injuries can be seen in children up to 5 years old. The perpetrators in these cases are most often parents or caregivers. Common triggers are frustration or stress when the child is crying. Unfortunately, the shaking may have the desired effect: although at first the baby cries more, he or she may stop crying as the brain is damaged. Approximately 60% of identified victims of shaking injury are male, and children of families who live at or below the poverty level are at an increased risk for these injuries as well as any type of child abuse. It is estimated that the perpetrators in 65% to 90% of cases are males — usually either the baby's father or the mother's boyfriend, often someone in his early twenties. When someone forcefully shakes a baby, the child's head rotates about the neck uncontrollably because infants' neck muscles aren't well developed and provide little support for their heads. This violent movement pitches the infant's brain back and forth within the skull, sometimes rupturing blood vessels and nerves throughout the brain and tearing the brain tissue. The brain may strike the inside of the skull, causing bruising and bleeding to the brain. The damage can be even greater when a shaking episode ends with an impact (hitting a wall or a crib mattress, for example), because the forces of acceleration and deceleration associated with an impact are so strong. After the shaking, swelling in the brain can cause enormous pressure within the skull, compressing blood vessels and increasing overall injury to its delicate structure. Normal interaction with a child, like bouncing the baby on a knee, will not cause these injuries. It's important to never shake a baby under any circumstances. AHT often causes irreversible damage. In the worst cases, children die due to their injuries. Children who survive may have: partial or total blindness speech and learning difficulties problems with memory and attention severe mental retardation Even in milder cases, in which babies looks normal immediately after the shaking, they may eventually develop one or more of these problems. Sometimes the first sign of a problem isn't noticed until the child enters the school system and exhibits behavioral problems or learning difficulties. But by that time, it's more difficult to link these problems to a shaking incident from several years before. Signs and Symptoms In any abusive head trauma case, the duration and force of the shaking, the number of episodes, and whether impact is involved all affect the severity of the infant's injuries. In the most violent cases, children may arrive at the emergency room unconscious, suffering seizures, or in shock. But in many cases, infants may never be brought to medical attention if they don't exhibit such severe symptoms. In less severe cases, a child who has been shaken may experience: Many cases of AHT are brought in for medical care as "silent injuries." In other words, parents or caregivers don't often provide a history that the child has had abusive head trauma or a shaking injury, so doctors don't know to look for subtle or physical signs. This can sometimes result in children having injuries that aren't identified in the medical system. In many cases, babies who don't have severe symptoms may never be brought to a doctor. Many of the less severe symptoms such as vomiting or irritability may resolve and can have many non-abusive causes. Unfortunately, unless a doctor has reason to suspect child abuse, mild cases (in which the infant seems lethargic, fussy, or perhaps isn't feeding well) are often misdiagnosed as a viral illness or colic. Without a suspicion of child abuse and any resulting intervention with the parents or caregivers, these children may be shaken again, worsening any brain injury or damage. If shaken baby syndrome is suspected, doctors may look for: hemorrhages in the retinas of the eyes swelling of the brain subdural hematomas (blood collections pressing on the surface of the brain) rib and long bone (bones in the arms and legs) fractures What makes AHT so devastating is that it often involves a total brain injury. For example, a child whose vision is severely impaired won't be able to learn through observation, which decreases the child's overall ability to learn. The development of language, vision, balance, and motor coordination, all of which occur to varying degrees after birth, are particularly likely to be affected in any child who has AHT. Such impairment can require intensive physical and occupational therapy to help the child acquire skills that would have developed on their own had the brain injury not occurred. As they get older, kids who were shaken as babies may require special education and continued therapy to help with language development and daily living skills, such as dressing themselves. Before age 3, a child can receive speech or physical therapy through the Department of Public Health/ Early Intervention. Federal law requires that each state provide these services for children who have developmental disabilities as a result of being abused. Some schools are also increasingly providing information and developmental assessments for kids under the age of 3. Parents can turn to a variety of rehabilitation and other therapists for early intervention services for children after abusive head trauma. Developmental assessments can assist in improving education outcomes as well as the overall well-being of the child. After a child who's been diagnosed with abusive head trauma turns 3, it's the school district's responsibility to provide any needed additional special educational services. Abusive head trauma is 100% preventable. A key aspect of prevention is increasing awareness of the potential dangers of shaking. Finding ways to alleviate the parent or caregiver's stress at the critical moments when a baby is crying can significantly reduce the risk to the child. Some hospital-based programs have helped new parents identify and prevent shaking injuries and understand how to respond when infants cry. The National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome offers a prevention program, the Period of Purple Crying, which seeks to help parents and other caregivers understand crying in normal infants. By defining and describing the sometimes inconsolable infant crying that can sometimes cause stress, anger, and frustration in parents and caregivers, the program hopes to educate and empower people to prevent AHT. Another method that may help is author Dr. Harvey Karp's "five S's": Shushing (using "white noise" or rhythmic sounds that mimic the constant whir of noise in the womb, with things like vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, clothes dryers, a running tub, or a white noise CD) Side/stomach positioning (placing the baby on the left side — to help digestion — or on the belly while holding him or her, then putting the sleeping baby in the crib or bassinet on his or her back) Sucking (letting the baby breastfeed or bottle-feed, or giving the baby a pacifier or finger to suck on) Swaddling (wrapping the baby up snugly in a blanket to help him or her feel more secure) Swinging gently (rocking in a chair, using an infant swing, or taking a car ride to help duplicate the constant motion the baby felt in the womb) If a baby in your care won't stop crying, you can also try the following: Make sure the baby's basic needs are met (for example, he or she isn't hungry and doesn't need to be changed). Check for signs of illness, like fever or swollen gums. Rock or walk with the baby. Sing or talk to the baby. Offer the baby a pacifier or a noisy toy. Take the baby for a ride in a stroller or strapped into a child safety seat in the car. Hold the baby close against your body and breathe calmly and slowly. Call a friend or relative for support or to take care of the baby while you take a break. If nothing else works, put the baby on his or her back in the crib, close the door, and check on the baby in 10 minutes. Call your doctor if nothing seems to be helping your infant, in case there is a medical reason for the fussiness. To prevent potential AHT, parents and caregivers of infants need to learn how to respond to their own stress. It's important to talk to anyone caring for your baby about the dangers of shaking and how it can be prevented.

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Classroom Strategies for Students with Disabilities This information is intended as a guide to assist students with disabilities in understanding and coping with their particular disability and its characteristics. Because every person and disability is unique, it is important to keep individual qualities and characteristics in mind when evaluating the usefulness of this information for a particular person in a particular circumstance. For additional information regarding these topics, please contact the Counselor/Coordinator of Student Accommodations. Difficulty paying attention or concentrating on one task for an extended period of time Difficulty hearing or processing/understanding what is heard. Total loss of sight Total loss of hearing Difficulty expressing oneself in spoken or written form Difficulty controlling hand, eye or other muscles that aid in the perception and expression of information Difficulty understanding/interpreting what one hears or reads Difficulty remembering information Difficulty seeing or processing/understanding what is seen For additional information please contact the Counselor/Coordinator of Student Accommodations at 217/234-5259 or email Jordan Hicks at email@example.com

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But the reality is that Venezuela has no nuclear infrastructure in place. This will have to be built from scratch. What does this entail? It entails the development of an NRC-like body that can oversee nuclear development in the country, hire consultants from the outside and educate a new generation of nuclear, mechanical, electrical, safety and radiological engineers and experts to be able to build and run such a project. All countries that currently enjoy nuclear energy have had to do this. As most of the 'blue prints' for this sort of development have already been established and are now under going a new growth in newer nuclear energy countries, it will be a slow, but wll understood process. The U.A.E, Jordan, Indonesia, Iran and Vietnam to name a few non-nuclear countries that are now in this middle of this process shows it can be done. The World Nuclear Association has this to say about Venezuela’s nuclear energy perspectives: “The National Assembly is working on legislation which includes nuclear power as an option. The President announced in November 2007 that the country will pursue a nuclear power program, inspired by Brazil and Argentina. Late in 2008 he announced that this would be with Russian help, and the first unit would be in the northwestern province of Sulia. A civil nuclear cooperation agreement was signed with Russia in November 2008 and further nuclear agreements in April and October 2010. The country also has very close links with Iran. “The last of these Russian agreements provides for construction of two nuclear reactors of 1200 MWe each and also for construction of a research reactor to produce radioisotopes, as well as relevant infrastructure and training. No timeline is set. “The government has confirmed that Iran is assisting with geophysical surveys related to uranium exploration, but there is no mining. Unconfirmed reports in 2009 of uranium exports to Iran have been denied. A Canadian company, U3O8 Corp, is exploring for uranium in the Guyana part of the Roraima Basin, which straddles the border. “The country had a small (3 MW) research reactor operating 1960-94, and in mid 2009 was discussing with Atomenergoprom the construction of another.” The Russian reactors are the most advanced of the older, well proven reactors Russia has built in the smaller MW outputs. India and China are both building the VVER reactors and so the learning curve is comng down, something the Venezuelan can take advantage of. Venezuela has been blessed with a abundance of hydro electricity. Upwards of 70% of their electrical energy is derived from gravity produced power of water falls, of which Venezuela has an abundance of. But...even as the Venezuelan Revolution has advanced by nationalizing it's under-invested, poorly run *private* electrical companies, climate change is beginning to show it's ugly face in Venezuela today. Left-Atomics is particularly happy with this move as a large amount of that private electrical generation and grid were foreign owned. A combination of the long running "El Nino" weather patterns and climate change has reduced overall rain-fall throughout Venezuela's extensive rain forest areas, thus reducing enough of the country's electrical generation, exacerbating the shortages of energy throughout the country. The revolutionary government there is pledged to make the Venezuelan electrical grid stronger and more robust. It is 'walking the walk' by investing heavily in grid upgrades and some fossil fuel power plants. Grid control and oversight now resides in both governmental boards and the workers who actually know the system best. The workers in this industry are heavily committed to Venezuela's socialist future, one that will have to rely on a better reliability, expansion and efficiencies both in generation, distribution AND in usage. So why nuclear? Venezuela certainly has the fossil AND the hydro resources to allow fo the continued expansion of consumer (residential) and commercial/industrial load ("load" is th technical term of the process of "using electricity"). Cleary, with climate change, Venezuela's future hydro usage is somewhat questionable. It will never completely disappear but with the ever large swings in precipitation, the reliability of this energy for base load/on-demand-power is more and more in question. Additionally, almost all of the country's hydro power and future hydropower potential resides in the south and south-east of the country, the load, however, is in the north and north-west of the country (The Guyana Province of Venezuela, located in the south east of the country is also a big user, as this is the center of the country’s steel industry). This makes it necessary to rely on very long transmission lines for all the hydro electricity produced, and, with counter-revolutionary sabotage a real and present danger, Venezuela’s energy security is also a prime-motivation for dispersing the country's generation to a larger degree that what exists now. Left-Atomics is not thrilled about the energy situation in Revolutionary Venezuela, especially seeing that more fossil fuel, mostly smaller diesel-electric generators, will be deployed. We are happy, however, that Venezuela is finally putting it's petro-dollars to good energy use with regard to the deployment of the two large Russian reactors. We don't know where they will be deployed or even if they will deployed in same sight location. But it will likely be a lot closer to the load that needs it, thus saving on transmission costs AND security costs and concerns. Secondly, Venezuela is also concerned about “energy sovereignty,” a term that is bandied about in the media. For Venezuela this takes on added meaning, as it does for countries like India and Iran. This energy sovereignty can only be achieved via a complete cutoff from US-original technology. The U.S. regularly uses these 'technology' strings to demand political concessions from those countries the US seeks to dominate, politically and economically. The US can simply end any sale of what it claims is its technology to any country based on "national security" grounds. This has stymied nuclear energy growth around the world as well as the development of nuclear energy technology in the U.S. itself since it artificially reduces markets to fit the political schema of the U.S. State and Defense departments. Thus, going with Russia, which is generally immune from such pressures, seems like a smart idea given Venezuela’s own anti-Imperialist foreign and domestic policy. The two VVER 1200 reactors would provide 2400 MWs of on demand base load power for the country’s growing electrical load. It is, however, less than 8% of the total load the country uses. Would this portend the development of future reactors in other locations around the nation? We won’t know until the Chavez government lays out a more specific program for deploying nuclear energy under the aegis of the Bolivarian Revolution.

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Titan, the U.S. Department of Energy's top open science computer, is going live on Monday with an upgrade that will likely make it the fastest supercomputer on the planet. At 20 petaflops -- that's 20 quadrillion calculations each second -- Titan outperforms by four petaflops the DOE's Sequoia supercomputer, which has held the crown since June. The official "Top 500" ranking of the world's fastest supercomputers will be announced next month. The United States is back on top of the computing world after ceding ground to Japan, China and Germany over the past three years. That's not just a badge of honor: It's also critical to national security and the country's economic viability. Titan will help U.S. scientists pioneer research into climate change, biofuels, nuclear energy, new materials and other crucial fields, which will help them create the next wave of car batteries, switchgrass ethanol and improved weather forecasting tools -- all developed in America. Formerly known as Jaguar, the Cray ( supercomputer at the DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory got a major upgrade and an appropriately intimidating new name. ) Titan replaced its predecessor's 224,256 central processing units (CPUs) with 299,008 faster CPUs made by AMD (Fortune 500), along with 18,688 graphics processing units (GPUs) made by , Nvidia (. The GPUs serve as accelerators to the CPUs. That's why Titan has just a third more central processors and the same number of computing nodes and cabinets as Jaguar, but delivers 10 times the performance. ) Even more crucially, Titan's processors are five times more energy-efficient than their predecessors. Power constraints are the biggest challenge in the race to maximize speed. Running at just 2.3 petaflops, Jaguar required 7 megawatts of energy -- the same amount of electricity required to power 7,000 homes. The cost of simply plugging in Jaguar was $7 million last year. If Jaguar had been expanded with CPUs, not GPUs, a 20 petaflop machine would have required 60 megawatts of power, at a cost of $60 million. That would have been a dealbreaker. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory says Titan's energy costs are very slightly higher than Jaguar's. The system's design is "a responsible move toward lowering our carbon footprint," says Jeff Nichols, laboratory director at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The GPUs powering Titan aren't special. They're actually same the hardware that's in high-end consumer PCs, popularized by hardcore PC gamers. It's not the first time gaming has helped supercomputing. IBM's (Fortune 500) RoadRunner supercomputer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory runs on the same processors used in the , Sony ( PlayStation 3. ) "It costs billions of dollars to develop high-performance computing processors, and there's no way to make that money back," says Steve Scott, chief technology officer at Nvidia. "We couldn't do what we're doing without a consumer business for these processors." So what's the DOE's plan for all of Titan's new speed and power? The Oak Ridge National Laboratory plans to stay focused on the 40 projects currently using the supercomputer. Instead of tens of millions of CPU hours, each project will get hundreds of millions. That will help researchers accelerate their breakthroughs. Still, it's only a matter of time before they'll want more. By 2016, the Department of Energy will be upgrading Titan to its successor, which it hopes will reach 200 petaflops -- 10 times the speed of Titan. |Chrysler relents, agrees to recall 2.7 million Jeeps| |Stocks: Investors hold their breath for Bernanke| |Bond investors bracing for Bernanke| |U.S. oil boom helps thwart OPEC| |China's fastest-growing cities for millionaires|

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I recently went to a Wine101 class and he approached it by helping us to just describe what we are smelling and tasting. With 9 simple wine terms, we are able to communicate what we are looking for in a wine. Sweet, Dry, and Fruity Sweet and Dry are opposites and only refer to sugar content in the wine. A sweet wine usually has alcohol percentage under 10%, while a wine with an alcohol percentage over 13% will have little to no sugar content left leaving it dry. Fruity is simply referring to an aroma. And since wine comes from a grape, it should always lead with a fruit based aroma. Fruity tends to be more dominant in new world wines (USA, Australia, South America etc). Acidic, Soft, and Tannic An acidic wine is all about salivating. How much salivation will tell exactly how much and what type of acids are in the wine. A wine with a lack of acidity is called a soft wine. A merlot is usually considered a soft wine. A wine with tannin leaves a astringent feeling in the mouth. Tannins can be caused by the following three things: oak, grape skins or grape stems. That big, bold cabernet from California usually provides a good example. Body, Balance, and Finish The body of wine refers to its impression of weight it leaves in your mouth. You can think of it as the richness of the wine. You can have a light, light-medium, medium, medium-full and full body wine. The balance of a wine is how well the fruit, body, acidity, tannins ect. act together. It’s about getting them to all work in harmony and compliment one another. Finish is everything that happens when you swallow the wine. Are you salivating? Do you have a bitter taste? Does it linger? What impression does it leave? As confusing as wine can be, these terms should help anyone describe what they want in a wine. So go ahead and drink a glass and use these terms to help you relay what you smell and taste.

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Sustainability and Renewable Merino Wool runs on grass The primary inputs for wool production are water, sunshine and fertile soils to grow grass – the primary diet of sheep. As such merino production inherently has the potential of being fully sustainable providing it is operated within the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. They must operate, or be in the process of implementing, a grazing management strategy based on long term sustainability. The management system must embrace holistic farming principals with the goal of developing a resilient ecosystem that can regenerate, withstand stress and rebuild itself when necessary. This goal should be to aim for 100% ground cover all year, with a focus on perennial grasses to regenerate the ecology and increase biodiversity. Holistic farming principles include: - Clear goals for the people involved – Clear goals for the land in use – Clear goals for the business - Clear goals for the management of livestock The management process should involve: - Reviewing these strategies regularly – Making decision with these goals in mind – Monitoring the health of your land, your business and the people involved

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What can you say about when these pictures were taken? Which segment on a digital clock is lit most each day? Which segment is lit least? Does it make any difference if it is set to 12 hours or 24 hours? Use the clocks to investigate French decimal time in this problem. Can you see how this time system worked? This article explains how Greenwich Mean Time was established and in fact, why Greenwich in London was chosen as the standard. Not everybody agreed that the Third Millennium actually began on January 1st 2000. Find out why by reading this brief article. Use the information to work out the timetable for the three trains travelling between City station and Farmland station. Nirmala and Riki live 9 kilometres away from the nearest market. They both want to arrive at the market at exactly noon. What time should each of them start riding their bikes? Follow the journey taken by this bird and let us know for how long and in what direction it must fly to return to its starting point. How many of this company's coaches travelling in the opposite direction does the 10 am coach from Alphaton pass before reaching These clocks have only one hand, but can you work out what time they are showing from the information? Use your knowledge of angles to work out how many degrees the hour and minute hands of a clock travel through in different amounts of Astronomy grew out of problems that the early civilisations had. They needed to solve problems relating to time and distance - both mathematical topics. In this version of the story of the hare and the tortoise, the race is 10 kilometres long. Can you work out how long the hare sleeps for using the information given? Can you put these mixed-up times in order? You could arrange them in a circle. This article for teachers suggests ways in which dinosaurs can be a great context for discussing measurement. Do you know the rhyme about ten green bottles hanging on a wall? If the first bottle fell at ten past five and the others fell down at 5 minute intervals, what time would the last bottle fall down? These two challenges will test your time-keeping! Galileo, a famous inventor who lived about 400 years ago, came up with an idea similar to this for making a time measuring instrument. Can you turn your pendulum into an accurate minute Calendars were one of the earliest calculating devices developed by civilizations. Find out about the Mayan calendar in this article. Read this article to find out the mathematical method for working out what day of the week each particular date fell on back as far as 1700. My measurements have got all jumbled up! Swap them around and see if you can find a combination where every measurement is valid. Sometime during every hour the minute hand lies directly above the hour hand. At what time between 4 and 5 o'clock does this happen? Look at the changes in results on some of the athletics track events at the Olympic Games in 1908 and 1948. Compare the results for 2012. This month there is a Friday the thirteenth and this year there are three. Can you explain why every year must contain at least one Friday the thirteenth? Can you place these quantities in order from smallest to largest? How far have these students walked by the time the teacher's car reaches them after their bus broke down? These clocks have been reflected in a mirror. What times do they Alice's mum needs to go to each child's house just once and then back home again. How many different routes are there? Use the information to find out how long each road is on the route she A paradox is a statement that seems to be both untrue and true at the same time. This article looks at a few examples and challenges you to investigate them for yourself. A game for two or more players that uses a knowledge of measuring tools. Spin the spinner and identify which jobs can be done with the measuring tool shown. This investigation explores using different shapes as the hands of the clock. What things occur as the the hands move. July 1st 2001 was on a Sunday. July 1st 2002 was on a Monday. When did July 1st fall on a Monday again? Can you rank these sets of quantities in order, from smallest to largest? Can you provide convincing evidence for your rankings? Two engines, at opposite ends of a single track railway line, set off towards one another just as a fly, sitting on the front of one of the engines, sets off flying along the railway line... If it takes four men one day to build a wall, how long does it take 60,000 men to build a similar wall? Two trains set off at the same time from each end of a single straight railway line. A very fast bee starts off in front of the first train and flies continuously back and forth between the. . . . Chandrika was practising a long distance run. Can you work out how long the race was from the information? Liitle Millennium Man was born on Saturday 1st January 2000 and he will retire on the first Saturday 1st January that occurs after his 60th birthday. How old will he be when he retires? During the third hour after midnight the hands on a clock point in the same direction (so one hand is over the top of the other). At what time, to the nearest second, does this happen? Can you rank these quantities in order? You may need to find out extra information or perform some experiments to justify your Noticing the regular movement of the Sun and the stars has led to a desire to measure time. This article for teachers and learners looks at the history of man's need to measure things. This article for teachers suggests ideas for activities built around 10 and 2010. If Tom wants to learn to cook his favourite supper, he needs to make a schedule so that everything is ready at the same time. A bus route has a total duration of 40 minutes. Every 10 minutes, two buses set out, one from each end. How many buses will one bus meet on its way from one end to the other end? N people visit their friends staying N kilometres along the coast. Some walk along the cliff path at N km an hour, the rest go by car. How long is the road? Every day at noon a boat leaves Le Havre for New York while another boat leaves New York for Le Havre. The ocean crossing takes seven days. How many boats will each boat cross during their journey? At the time of writing the hour and minute hands of my clock are at right angles. How long will it be before they are at right angles On a digital clock showing 24 hour time, over a whole day, how many times does a 5 appear? Is it the same number for a 12 hour clock over a whole day? Stuart's watch loses two minutes every hour. Adam's watch gains one minute every hour. Use the information to work out what time (the real time) they arrived at the airport. Mathematics has allowed us now to measure lots of things about eclipses and so calculate exactly when they will happen, where they can be seen from, and what they will look like.

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I’ve recently taken up doing something that will probably drive me bananas. A small education about interpreters, ADA, and why taking sign language classes does not mean you can interpret. It is against the law to offer anything unless you are willing to make it accessible to everyone. That’s why there are ramps to most stores, and guide dogs are allowed in places of business. Something a lot of people may not realize though is that this law (The ADA, or Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990) also stipulates that any place of business must hire interpreters if the Deaf client needs one for communication. This applies to hospitals, companies, schools, and pretty much any place that is not a “non-profit” organization. If you make money doing it, then you are required to make it accessible. Sometimes this means Deaf people are discriminated against, because hiring an interpreter is expensive. The average hourly rate for an interpreter varies, but generally it can be between $30 – $50. (I’m not in this price range, but I’m also not up to “average” yet, as I haven’t been doing this very long). The reasons for hiring an interpreter vary. For doctors it may be tempting to pull in the nurse from down the hall who took a few sign language classes. Unfortunately, much like some one who has taken a few German or Spanish classes, having a vocabulary does not mean you can speak the language. ASL is a very different language from English. It has its own nuances and grammatical structure, translating between the two nuances can be very difficult. One example I can think of is, if you were at the Doctor and they said “Your prognosis is not good, you may want to get your affairs in order.” What would that mean to you? In English, it means you’re probably going to die. Soon. But, translate this sentence in signs (with out taking into account the nuances of ASL) and you might just be telling the Deaf person that literally “this future is not good” (which could mean a large multitude of things) and the phrase “Get your affairs in order” does not exist in ASL. So you would be telling them to do what? Organize their life? Translating word-for-word is not the same as interpreting. A professional interpreter would be able to handle a situation like this, leaving the Deaf person with the appropriate message. Consider the language we use in English. In colleges, doctors’ offices, banks, and churches. The language used in each of these venues varies greatly. You would never hear some one say “Jesus is the light.” in a doctor’s office, where as you would never ask some one is they’ve taken any drugs recently (“drugs”, by the way is difficult to interpret because to hearing people this could mean prescription, OTC, and illegal drugs, where as in ASL there isn’t a sign to cover these categories together, so it requires listing. Should the interpreter not include a label the include “cough syrup” the Deaf person might not think it counts in the list. Tricky Tricky.). In Tennessee, before moving to Virginia, I did a bit of Church interpreting. Not for my own church, but at a local non-denominational church. I was paid for my work as well. Much like if the church needed to hire a plumber, they wouldn’t expect the plumber to come in a work for free – interpreting is my job. It puts a toll on my mind, and on my hands and elbows. What I really wanted to talked about before I started ranting on about being an interpreter: I know that my church does not pay interpreters. Some churches are not considered non-profit because the pastor (or other people involved in the management of the church) are paid by the money collected during offerings. The LDS church though is non-profit. The money they collect through offerings and tithing goes towards helping the community, and helping during disasters. The people “in-charge” of the chuch (bishops, stake presidents, etc.) are not paid for the services. This also means that the LDS church is not required to provide interpreters. This is a bad thing. A very bad thing. Very very very bad. For many reasons. - They take volunteers. Now generally, I am all for volunteering. Considering I currently volunteer 3 hours every Sunday to interpret, I can’t say volunteering (the action) is bad. But sometimes, when you rely on volunteer… you get what you pay for. Many of the interpreters I have worked with at church are under-qualified, and not really able to do the job well. - They expect too much. Three hours is a very very very long time. The Deaf people we are working with are used to using interpreters, and have come to expect that they can say “I prefer *this type* of sign language” and that’s what they get. If you have little experience in interpreting, you probably don’t know the different modes of sign language, and even if you do… it is stressful. - They don’t give you anything to prepare with. Where I work now I get the outline for the meetings the day before the meetings. I am able to prepare, and perform better because of it. - They don’t know how to use an interpreter. An interpreter is a tool. This is a problem in this church setting for three reasons. - Volunteer interpreters don’t know their place in this process. It is not appropriate for an interpreter to interject their own thoughts into a conversation they are interpreting. - If I am focused on translating from one language to the next language with the best of my ability, I am focusing on the conceptual meaning, and not on the spiritual meaning. This defeats the purpose of me going to church. I do not leave feeling spiritually uplifted, rather I leave feeling worn out. I don’t get to listen to, and internalize, the meaning of the lessons taught because I am too busy processing the words in a different way. The sense of community is lost to me because I am bust being some one else’s ears and voice. If I am there to interpret I can’t be in the hallway meeting people when the Deaf person is in the classroom, waiting on me to make it accessible. And vice versus. - People don’t know how to use interpreters. This is a matter of education. When a hearing person is communicating with a Deaf person, they should be looking at the Deaf person. They should talk to the Deaf person. They should say “How are you?” instead of saying to the interpreter: “Ask them how they are doing.” or “Tell him I said….” or “Tell her that this is happening.” Some Deaf person can read lips, and combine that with the signs they are seeing. If you are turning your head, it makes it difficult for them. It is also rather demeaning to the Deaf person. I also hate the the other interpreters will go searching the building for the Deaf people. THEY ARE GROWN ADULTS! If the interpreter goes to Sunday school, and the Deaf person wants to go to Sunday school… they will. It is not our job to coral them into the room. - Interpreters are held to certain standards. If a Deaf person tells me “My husband didn’t come to church because he’s sick.” I can’t say anything. If I were a friend, and the Deaf person and I were just chatting and she told me that, and then some one asked me later “why wasn’t Mr. XYZ here today” then I could say, “oh, his wife said he’s sick.” But as an interpreter, I would not be allowed to answer that question. Interpreters are held under the same type of client confidentiality that Doctors are, but even more so. Even by court order I can not divulge what I have interpreted, or anything shared between myself and the client, because, had the person been hearing and not Deaf, I wouldn’t have been there. I am expected to turn down jobs I know I cannot do, I am expected to respect confidentiality, I am expected to not be involved in whatever activity I am interpreting in. This means that, as an interpreter, if the Sunday School teacher asks me a question, I’m supposed to decline. It is distracting, and difficult for me to interpret and speak at the same time any way. This situation is unfair to both parties involved. The Deaf people are not receiving the quality of interpret that they deserve, and thus they are not getting out of the situation what they potentially could. On the other hand if the interpreter is under-qualified then they are being given too much responsibility, and too much stress. If they are qualified then they are being used, and under appreciated. The interpreters are also missing out on valuable lessons and community that they deserve. I have recently had to start attending church TWICE (that’s 6 hours of church) because I am not getting anything spiritual out of the situation. I know this sounds really whiny – but to be honest, it’s a huge challenge for me. Having struggled a lot with elements of the church in the last few years, before moving up to Virginia we had been attending church very sporadically. Moving up here was good for me, and motivating. I was really starting to enjoy church again. But now I am torn between continuing to reconnect with my religion, and doing a good job at interpreting.

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Have you ever heard of vesico-ureteral reflux (VUR)? This is a problem that I have be seeing lately which occurs in the urinary tract. In the normal scenario urine is produced in the kidneys and then travels through the ureters (which are like a straw) from the kidneys to the bladder. The urine is supposed to only proceed in one direction, and only down and into the bladder and then out the urethra when you urinate. But in some children, the kidneys are fine and doing their work of making urine but the ureters (the straws) allow the urine to go in a retrograde fashion (both up and down, or back and forth or whatever terminology you want) from bladder to kidney, ;and this is termed vesico ureteral reflux (not to be confused with gastro-esophageal reflux). Vesico-ureteral reflux is often diagnosed in infants and young children who present with prolonged fever which may be an indicator of a urinary tract infection. When a child under the age of 2 has persistent fever (usually over 72 hours), without any other focus of infection, a urinalysis and culture is often performed to rule out a urinary tract infection. It is also more prevalent to see this occur in little girls rather than in boys. If a urinary tract infection is confirmed it was previously the standard of care to perform a VCUG (voiding cystourethrogram) which is a radiographic study where dye is injected via a catheter into the bladder to look for retrograde flow of urine (the back and forth, up and down) to rule out VUR. In the past several months there have been changes in the management of VUR especially as it relates to first urinary tract infections. The new recommendations state that, children of any age, regardless of gender, with a first febrile UTI should undergo a renal/bladder ultrasound, rather than a VCUG. In other words, no more radiation and dye (not to mention the associated trauma) that went along with the voiding study. Years ago a VCUG was performed without any sedation, but over time it became standard to sedate the children before this procedure, and with that there were other issues about safety etc.. It was also recommended that a VCUG be done yearly to watch the regression or progression of reflux. That yearly VCUG just sent some kids and parents over the edge (including me!). The concern with VUR is that over the years this retrograde flow of urine could cause damage and scarring to the kidneys. This scarring could cause numerous problems (high blood pressure, kidney disease etc) for a child later in their life. The problem was figuring out who might go on to scar and need surgery etc.. The new guidelines recommend using a different type of scan in management of reflux. If your child has a urinary tract infection in association with a fever you might want to discuss whether they should see a pediatric urologist, and/or have an ultrasound. But if someone mentions a VCUG consider the newest guidelines. And, if you have a child with VUR, talk to your doctor about the changes in management and don't stress about a VCUG this year! That's your daily dose for today. We'll chat again tomorrow.

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Big Bad Cavities: Breastfeeding Is Not the Cause by Lisa Reagan “You’re going to have to stop nursing your son or sacrifice his teeth!” the dentist proclaimed. “But diabetes runs rampant in my family,” I sputtered, “and nursing Collins until he’s ready to wean himself is one of his only defenses.” “Well, it’s your choice,” he replied. Not wanting to cause any more trouble, I pocketed the “Free McDonald’s Ice Cream Cone” coupon the receptionist gave me as my 18-month-old son’s reward for screaming his head off during our visit and retreated to my car. How could my son have developed two cavities, plaque, and so many white lesions (precursors to cavities) on a sugar-free diet, and at such a young age? “Bottle-mouth!” the dentist had proclaimed. But how could my breastfed son have “bottle-mouth”? I decided to look for another dentist and to seek information on Medline, an on-line clearinghouse of dental and medical studies. What I discovered was surprising, validating, and guilt relieving. More than three dozen studies showed that my son’s early cavities (also called caries) were not caused by nursing – breastmilk is not cariogenic – but by an infectious disease classified only recently as Early Childhood Caries (ECC).1 Moreover, according to the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), breastfed children are less likely to develop this disease than their bottle-fed counterparts, and population-based studies do not support a link between prolonged breastfeeding and ECC.2 The Medline studies were listed by date, an arrangement that made obvious a significant pattern: Only the recent studies distinguished between bottle-fed and breastfed babies, a fact that explains the old names for the disease like “bottle-mouth,” “bottle-rot,” “baby bottle tooth decay,” or “nursing caries.” The author of a 1986 Mothering magazine article on dental caries could find no studies that distinguished between bottle-fed and breastfed babies.3 According to La Leche League International (LLLI), “Breastfeeding is typically assumed to be a cause of dental caries because no distinctions are made between the different compositions of human milk and infant formula or cow’s milk, and between the different mechanisms of nursing at the breast [with the nipple at the back of the mouth, not allowing for breastmilk to pool around the teeth] and sucking on a bottle with an artificial teat. We have only to consider the overwhelming majority of breastfed toddlers with healthy teeth to know that there must be other factors involved.”4 The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) discarded the terms “bottle-mouth” and “nursing caries” in 1994, thereby acknowledging ECC as an infectious disease not caused by breast- or bottle-feeding. Most studies now focus on ECC’s true causes, contributing factors, and even cures.5 It’s about time, too. In 1997 the American Academy of Pediatric Dentists (AAPD) declared that ECC was “currently at epidemic proportions in some US populations particularly among racial and ethnic minorities. The caries level in three- to five-year-old US Head Start children may be as high as 90 percent.”6 Nevertheless, the American Dental Academy (ADA) website continues to caution, “A condition called baby bottle tooth decay can destroy a baby’s teeth. Examples of bottle-fed liquids that can cause tooth decay are infant formula, fruit juice, milk, breast milk and any sweetened liquid.”7 No new or updated policy is forthcoming, according to an ADA spokesperson. “Most dentists and breastfeeding mothers have an adversarial relationship because dentists are likely to discount academic studies proving breastfeeding does not contribute to caries,” says Kevin Hale, a pediatric dentist in Brighton, Michigan. Hale serves on the Section on Pediatric Dentistry for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Counsel on Pre-doctoral Education for the AAPD and is currently one of three people responsible for drafting a policy proposal for the AAP that would recommend educating dentists and pediatricians on ECC’s causes and risks factors.8 “Breastfeeding is great,” Hale told me. “I do health histories on my patients – 80 a month – and it is profound, the difference between the health of the kids who were breastfed and those who were not. If a mother is breastfeeding, which I hope they do, I know it is her flora that is colonizing the child.” Unfortunately, Hale asserts, many dentists do not know this, nor do they know the risk factors associated with ECC. “Our biggest weapon against dental decay is education, not fillings.” What Is ECC? Early Childhood Caries’ main culprit, the bacterium Streptococcus mutans, or S. mutans, was suspected as far back as 1986.9 These bacteria are transmitted through saliva from mother (or primary caretaker) to child during the child’s first 30 months of life, are “site-specific” (so there must be at least one tooth in the infant’s mouth), feed on sucrose, and produce acid as a byproduct. In 1996, scientists at the University of Helsinki found that caries-free children had very low levels of these bacteria, whereas children with ECC had extremely high concentrations, more than 100 times the normal levels.10 ECC appears on teeth as white spots, plaque deposits, or brown decay and can lead to chips and breakage.11 Once the pattern of decay begins, it can be rampant and extensive. Patty Ogden, a mother of three in Norge, Virginia, demand-fed all her children, but only the youngest developed ECC. “When my son was about 18 months old, I noticed a brown line across his teeth,” she remembers. “By age two his teeth were fairly discolored and had a possible cavity or two.”12 After two years of wrestling with her insurance company, Ogden found a pediatric dentist and hospital that were covered and would use composite instead of mercury fillings, and her four year-old son underwent anesthetized surgery on his teeth. “He had two extractions, eight fillings with composite material, eight pulpotomies, and six stainless steel crowns on his molars. He also had his bottom front teeth ‘slenderized’ so that they wouldn’t touch, promoting more decay.” The CDC and the dental and medical communities consider ECC to be the most prevalent infectious disease of American children (five to eight times more common than asthma), with 8.4 percent of all children developing at least one decayed tooth by age two, and 40.4 percent by age five. Of these cases, 47 percent of children between the ages of two and nine never receive treatment. “Untreated decay in children can result in chronic pain and early tooth loss…failure to thrive, inability to concentrate at or absence from school, reduced self-esteem, and psychosocial problems,” according to the CDC.13 Dental caries in primary teeth is one of the major reasons for hospitalization of children and is costly to treat.14 The total cost of Ogden’s son’s surgery was nearly $7,000, with out-of-pocket costs exceeding $2,000. While researchers have recognized S. mutans as the bacteria responsible for ECC, other surprising risk factors have been identified. Significantly high correlations have been found between ECC and pregnancy complications, traumatic birth, cesarean sections, maternal diabetes, kidney disease, and viral or bacterial infection; for the neonate, risk factors seem to be premature birth, Rh incompatibility, allergies, gastroenteritis, malnutrition, infectious diseases, and chronic diarrhea.15 In addition to sugary foods, studies have implicated a salty diet (such as French fries and chips), iron deficiency, pacifier sucking, and prenatal exposure to lead as ECC risk factors.16 And even though human breastmilk is not cariogenic, some studies have shown that frequent night nursing may contribute to the development of ECC in the small percentage of children who are at risk for developing the disease.17 On the other hand, Hale acknowledges that in countries where the American diet isn’t a factor and infants sleep at their mother’s breast all night, ECC is not the epidemic it is here in the US. “We’re talking about 20 percent of the population of all children who are going to be carriers of the really bad bugs,” Hale says. “Some people have none, some have a few, and then a small percentage at the other end have the ‘mean flora’ [S. mutans]. Some people who eat terribly never get a cavity, and some people who eat well are riddled with cavities. Breastfeeding has nothing to do with creating caries. But if you or your child are one of the people who have the ‘mean flora,’ you will have to be extremely cognizant and vigilant of the fact that every substance aggravates the flora and contributes to caries formation.” Education, Not Fillings Hale sees his task as bridging the gap between academia and dentists by writing policy that would educate all health care providers about the risk factors and causes of ECC. The proposed AAP policy would recommend that pediatricians, who are far more likely than dentists to encounter infants, be trained to perform an ECC risk assessment on patients by one year of age. Currently, many at-risk children are not being caught in time for a treatment plan to be implemented before caries become rampant and surgery is inevitable. The reason is twofold. According to a 1998 article in Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, “Most dental providers do not want to treat young children, and most young children are difficult to examine and treat. But early intervention is crucial, since at-risk infants and toddlers with caries in their primary teeth are more likely to develop caries in their permanent teeth.”18 “We need to assess at-risk infants early on and teach their mothers how to give them special care and diets,” states Alice Horowitz, a senior scientist at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, part of the National Institutes of Health. “Moms are taught how to clean every other orifice in prenatal education classes, but they are not taught how to clean an infant’s mouth properly. The gums should be wiped daily with gauze, and teeth should be brushed as soon as they appear.”19 Both Hale and Horowitz hope that, in the future, educated dentists will be more willing to treat their smallest at-risk patients. “It really isn’t fair that pediatricians have to look for this; they aren’t trained in medical school on what to look for, and there aren’t enough pediatric dentists to go around,” Hale complains. “The dental community needs to step forward and encourage these early visits.” The proposed policy recommends that healthcare providers as well as parents be aware of the following facts: High-caries-index patterns run in families and are usually passed from mother to child (although a small percentage can be passed from a primary caregiver, the father, or siblings), from generation to generation; the children of high-caries-index mothers are at a higher risk of decay; approximately 70 percent of caries are found in 20 percent of our nation’s children; a mother’s dental hygiene and diet, as well as those of the primary caregiver and entire family, can significantly contribute to the development of ECC in her child.20 Fluoride Versus Nutrition Currently, because dental providers are largely uneducated about the causes and risk factors of ECC, diagnosis and treatment are tricky. But once ECC has been properly diagnosed, the treatment plan, whether either mainstream or alternative, must be followed aggressively. Horowitz presented the mainstream dental model suggestions for treating ECC: “We have always known that we can re-mineralize teeth with fluoride treatment like fluoride toothpaste, but now we know we can reverse ECC if it is caught and treated at the white lesion stage,” she reveals. “This knowledge gives healthcare providers and parents an incentive for early detection and treatment instead of waiting for anesthetized surgery.” Asked about the dangers of using fluoride toothpaste on young children, Horowitz recommended using a “tiny amount” and wiping the child’s mouth out afterwards. She does not recommend fluoride varnish as applied at dental offices for young children. Most dentists agree that fluoride will help to re-mineralize teeth, but given fluoride’s controversial reputation, parents may opt for alternative treatments. Ted Spence, a doctor of naturopathy, certified herbalist, and certified nutritionist who has been a family dentist for 25 years on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, disagrees with the NIDCR’s recommendation that fluoride be used to re-mineralize children’s teeth at the white lesion stage. Instead, he recommends a nutritional approach.21 “The health of a baby’s teeth begins with conception,” Spence emphasizes. “A mother’s diet is critical, as is the child’s diet after birth.” Over the years, Spence has treated tooth decay in young patients with vitamin D therapy. “I have seen soft teeth harden after cod liver oil and lots of butter are added to the diet.” Sunshine, cod-liver oil, fortified dairy products, butter, eggs, liver, and oily fish like salmon and tuna are sources of vitamin D. (Since vitamin D is toxic at high levels and is stored in body fat, the RDA of 400 IUs should not be exceeded.) “Our teeth naturally re-mineralize themselves with the calcium in our own saliva,” Spence says. “We can assist this process by eating vitamin D-rich foods, which increase the absorption of calcium.” Because fluoride is a neurotoxin and inhibits the absorption of calcium, Spence recommends against fluoride treatments. He also advises his patients to avoid sugar, on which the ECC bacteria thrive. Spence’s nutritional suggestions are supported by a 1996 study that found that a combination of vitamin D, vitamin C, and calcium reversed early decay in children at the white lesion stage.22 And according to the NIDCR website, “Supplementing with vitamins during the first several years of life reduces the prevalence of linear enamel hypoplasia, a caries-associated condition common in lower-income populations that can increase the risk of caries as much as tenfold.”23 According to an article in the Journal of Pediatrics, nutritional rickets, a result of a dietary deficiency of vitamin D, is making a comeback in the US, especially among dark-skinned infants–the same infants who are most at-risk for epidemic levels of ECC, according to the CDC, and the least likely to be breastfed, according to LLLI.24 Asked about using nutrition to reverse ECC, Horowitz replied that the NIDCR has not studied ECC and nutrition, adding, “There’s no question we likely could do this with diet alone, but a no-sweets and low-carbs diet is against societal norms. Grandparents are big risks and liabilities here. We know how to prevent this disease, through diet and brushing; we just need to get the information to moms and get them to do it.” Hale agrees that nutrition is the key to combating ECC. “Diet has the biggest impact of all of the preventive measures for ECC,” he says. “If you go back 20,000 years, the bugs are the same, but the difference is the absence of soda machines. By evolutionary design we will always crave sweets and fat and salt, but now we have way too much access to this stuff. Dental decay is just another example of the way our diet choices and sedentary lifestyle are killing us.” An article in the newsletter of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine states, “It would be evolutionary suicide for breastmilk to cause decay and [some anthropologists believe] that evolution would have selected against it. There are 4,650 species of mammals, all of whom breastfeed their young. Humans are but one species of mammals, but they are the only species with any significant decay.”25 Re-mineralizing teeth at the early stage of ECC, with either nutritional support or fluoride, may repair them, but it will not kill the ECC bacteria. Physical removal of the bacteria through brushing or wiping the teeth is still necessary. In pioneering efforts to kill S. mutans, researchers have experimented successfully with chemical antibacterial mouthwashes. Other efforts include a plant-based ECC vaccine, scheduled for release sometime in 2002. Parents who want an alternative route to chemical mouthwashes and vaccines can consult Flora Parsa Stay’s Complete Book of Dental Remedies, which recommends using peppermint mouthwashes as an antibacterial treatment for ECC. (Stay cautions that peppermint should never be used on infants.) Public Policy and At-Risk Children In the overlapping arenas of science and public policy, the definition and diagnostic criteria agreed upon by NIDCR scientists were needed before ECC could be recognized and acted upon as a public health epidemic. In September 2000, “Congress…passed a children’s health bill that, for the first time, authorizes a grant program to promote the oral health of young children. The provision is aimed at preventing dental caries in infants, toddlers, and preschoolers who are covered by Medicaid, SCHIP, or other federal health programs,” says Burton L. Edelstein, director of the Children’s Dental Health Project, Washington, DC.26 Authorized funding does not translate into guaranteed appropriations for programs that would provide oral intervention and care for at-risk children who have inadequate dental care and are at a greater risk for anesthetized surgery and hospitalization. “Given the severity of the problem, if enough people are willing to make enough noise about it to their congressional representatives, we could get it funded as early as 2003,” Edelstein states. “But, given the hundreds of appropriations that come across every senator’s desk each year, this may take some public pressure to translate the authorization into a public program.” To Breastfeed or Not? With scientists only recently agreeing upon ECC’s etiology, diagnosis, and treatment, and with nutritional therapies being largely ignored for now, informed parents must take the lead to protect their children’s oral and overall health with the preventive measures of regular brushing, healthy diets, and breastfeeding. It is La Leche League International’s experience that “a small percentage of at-risk breastfed children develop dental caries in spite of breastfeeding, not because of it. When weaning from the breast is in question, the well-documented long-term lifesaving and enhancing health and emotional advantages of human milk and breastfeeding over infant formula and bottle-feeding must be respected. These benefits must also be weighed against any self-limiting risk of dental caries in the primary teeth in early childhood.”27 “Rather than telling a mother to stop nursing, a dentist should praise the mother for giving her child her milk,” advises LLLI spokesperson Kim Cavaliero. “If the child has dental problems, the dentist needs to dig deeper and work to find the real cause behind the problem.”28 “The benefits of breastfeeding far outweigh the risks for caries,” Hale agrees. “But breastfeeding moms with at-risk children need to continue to push to find dentists who will work with them on a treatment plan.” Hale hopes that the forthcoming AAP policy proposals and the push for education in the medical and dental communities will help to ease and correct unwarranted adversarial tensions between breastfeeding moms and their health care providers. “It will take a lot of education of both mothers and healthcare providers, including dentists, to finally allow everyone to work together to serve the overall health interests of the child.” My decision as to whether to sacrifice my son’s teeth or continue nursing was always clear. My still breastfeeding-on-demand, co-sleeping four-year-old son is currently caries-free. Our aggressive treatment plan includes brushing daily with a nonfluoride children’s toothpaste and an herbal preparation of White Oak Bark, rinsing with Natural Dentist’s Herbal Mouthwash for Kids, avoiding sugary foods, and loading up on foods rich in vitamin D. The regimen has halted the progress of the ECC, and no new cavities have developed. 1. K. L. Weerheijm et al., “Prolonged Demand Breastfeeding and Nursing Caries,” Caries Res 32, no. 1 (1998): 46-50. 2. Harold C. Slavkin, “Streptococcus mutans, Early Childhood Caries, and New Opportunities,” National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), http://www.nidcr.org. 3. Sara Ani, “Breastfeeding and Dental Caries,” Mothering (fall 1986): 29-37. 4. “Breastfeeding and Dental Caries,” statement from La Leche League International, February 1996. 5. Hershel S. Horowitz, “Research Issues in Early Childhood Caries,” Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology 26, suppl. 1 (1998): 67-86. 6. “Early Childhood Caries Reaches Epidemic Proportions,” American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry press release (February 1997) http://www.aapd.org. 7. “What Is Baby Bottle Tooth Decay?” posted on November 28, 2001 on the American Dental Association website, http://www.ada.org. 8. Personal interviews with Kevin Hale, DDS, FAAPD, Brighton, Michigan, May 2001 through January 2002. 9. W. J. Loesche, “Role of Streptococcus Mutans in Dental Decay,” Microbiol. Rev. 50 (1986): 353-380. 10. S. Alaluusua et al., “Oral Colonization by More than One Clonal Type of M.S. in Children with Nursing Bottle Dental Caries,” Archives of Oral Biology 41, no. 2 (1996): 167-173. 11. See Note 5. 12. Personal interview with Patty Ogden, Norge, Virginia, November 1999. 13. “Frequently Asked Questions about Untreated Caries,” http://www.cdc.gov. 14. Thomas F. Drury et al., “Diagnosing and Reporting Early Childhood Caries for Research Purposes,” Journal of Public Health Dentistry 59, no. 3 (1999): 192-197. 15. B. Pertez and I. Kafka, “Baby Bottle Tooth Decay and Complications during Pregnancy and Delivery,” Pediatric Dentistry 19, no. 1 (1997): 34-36. 16. See Note 2. 17. Ollila Paivi et al., “Prolonged Pacifier-Sucking and Use of a Nursing Bottle at Night: Possible Risk Factors for Dental Caries in Children,” Acta Odontol Scand 56 (1998): 233-237. 18. See Note 5. 19. Personal interview with Alice Horowitz, PhD, Bethesda, Maryland, December 1999. 20. See Note 8. 21. Personal interviews with Ted Spence, DDS, ND, Exmore, Virginia, October 1999 and November 2001. 22. S. K. Gupta et al., “Reversal of Fluorosis in Children.” Acta Paediatr Jpn 38, no. 5 (October 1996): 513-519. 23. See Note 2. 24. Deborah Flapan, “Rickets Reemerging in United States,” Journal of Pediatrics 137 (2000): 143-145, 153-157. 25. Brian Palmer, “Breastfeeding and Infant Caries: No Connection,” ABM News and Views 6, no. 4 (2000): 27. 26. Personal interview, Burton Edelstein, DDS, MPH, Washington, DC, January 2002. 27. See Note 4. 28. Personal interview, Kim Cavaliero, February 2002. Originally published in Mothering Issue 113, July/August 2002 Lisa Reagan is a co-founder of Families for Conscious Living, parent representative on the Holistic Pediatric Board and Associate Editor for Pathways to Family Wellness magazine. She lives with her family on their biodynamic farm in Williamsburg, Virginia. You can reach Lisa at info (at) familiesforconsciousliving (dot) org.

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September 12: First 86 students (men and women) attended Buncombe County Junior College College was part of the Buncombe County School System and was located in the new Biltmore High School (just south of I-40 in Biltmore) Tuition was free Great Depression caused tuition to be charged. College would accept vegetables, eggs, milk, and general produce to pay tuition. First graduating class (Roy Taylor, valedictorian) Merges with closed Asheville City College and changes name to Biltmore College Because of the growing Depression, the Buncombe County School System withdraws financial support for the college and the campus moves to city-operated David Millard Junior High School (present site of Beverly Hanks Realtors on College Street, downtown). City School System provides financial support for the college Faculty turns over authority for college’s management to a Board of Trustees College chartered as Asheville-Biltmore College to recognize new financial/administrative connection with the Asheville City School Board (still known as Biltmore College is popular parlance) College is first accredited by the US Department of Education Because of population pressures in the City School System, the college is forced to move to the Asheville Normal and Teacher’s School (present site of Memorial Hospital Campus on Biltmore Avenue, south of downtown) In pursuit of its “own” campus, the college moves to the former County Home for Children (present site of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church on Merrimon Ave, north of downtown) First parking lot built (80 cars) Alumni Association founded under direction of first valedictorian, Roy Taylor ’29 Representative Roy Taylor ’29, introduces first state legislation to charter a state-supported college in Buncombe County Increased enrollment forces college to move to Seely’s Castle on Sunset Mountain (just north of the expressway cut). The castle had been a private residence for John and Evelyn Seely, E.W. Grove’s son-in-law and daughter. New names were contemplated for the college including Castle College and Overlook College. As a result of the move to the mountain the Asheville-Biltmore comes to be called the “College in the Sky.” Becomes first two-year college in North Carolina to receive state funds. Is the originator of North Carolina’s community college system. Enrollment increase leads to exploration of new campus location. Sites considered included the eighth floor of City Hall, the municipal golf course, and the Beaver Lake area. Decision was made to stay at Seely’s Castle. Asheville citizens voted solidly in favor of a bond referendum to expand the campus on the mountain. Under the presidency of Glen Bushy, the Board of Trustees reconsiders relocation and purchases 161 acres from attorney Landon Roberts and others in Woolsey Dip on the site of the Civil War Battle of Asheville. Groundbreaking for what would later be called Phillips Hall on the new campus. First classes held at new campus in the Fall. First African-American student enrolled Humanities Program founded Asheville-Biltmore College becomes a senior institution authorized to offer baccalaureate degrees. Because of the move to a baccalaureate institution, there are no graduates D. Hiden Ramsey Library dedicated. First building to be named. During dedication speech Governor Dan Moore states that it was his desire for Asheville-Biltmore to become a North Carolina’s public liberal arts college. Only one graduate (Trudy Wong). She is believed to be the only graduate of the short-lived 3-year baccalaureate degree program The 66 in ’66 were the first four year graduates from Asheville-Biltmore College First African-American graduate (Francine Delaney) First residence halls open (later known as the Governor’s Village) College joins the University of North Carolina System (along with UNCW and UNCC) and is chartered as The University of North Carolina at Asheville. (The other 10 joined in 1972) First Commencement held at steps of D. H. Ramsey library. Is the first class to receive UNC Asheville degrees. Enrollment crosses 1000 for first time Enrollment crosses 2000 for first time Enrollment crosses 2500 for first time Women’s basketball wins National NAIA title Honors Program Founded UNC Asheville joins the NCAA and the Big South Conference First fraternity (Pi Lambda Phi) and sorority (Alpha Xi Delta) chartered UNC Asheville becomes a NCAA Division I school Osher Lifelong Learning Institute founded First National Conference on Undergraduate Research held at UNC Asheville Receives first national press attention when named among “the very best” of America’s “high-quality, low-priced” colleges in Changing Times Magazine First Masters of Liberal Arts graduate (Leah Karpen) Last Rockmont held Officially recognized as one of the nation’s first public liberal arts colleges First Lawn Party held (at time known as UNCAMont) Tenth National Conference on Undergraduate Research held at UNC Asheville First Founders Day held UNC Asheville’s Alma Mater is dedicated University welcomes largest freshmen class ever 700+ University reaches largest enrollment ever 3450+ Twentieth National Conference on Undergraduate Research held at UNC Asheville University celebrates 80th anniversary

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Cultural Landscapes: Preservation Challenges in the 21st Century Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention and the 20th anniversary of the Declaration on Cultural Landscapes, this conference will bring together scholars and professionals from around the world to address the debates over the interrelationship between culture and nature, the challenges of preservation within historic urban landscapes, the development of an integrated approach to identifying and assessing cultural landscapes, and the challenges of developing conservation strategies that reflect the complexities of world cultures and sites and respect their multiple stakeholders. Defined combined works of nature and humankind that express a long and intimate relationship between peoples and their natural environment, cultural landscapes embody diverse interactions between humans and their environment, seek to protect living traditional cultures, preserve the traces of cultures that have disappeared, and in the case of historic urban landscapes, maintain the historic fabric of living urban environments. The conference will be structured around: - A series of "forward looking" thematic panels: Resilience and Stability; The Challenge of Climate Change; Continuing Use; Intangible and Tangible Values; and Historic Urban Landscapes. - Six highly focused project reviews or special topics: examinations of specific cultural landscape projects currently underway or planned worldwide, or on specific strategies for management, emphasizing practical implementation and bottom up strategies integrating communities, stakeholders, etc. The conference is sponsored by the Program in Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies at Rutgers University with the participation of the Center for Art and Cultural Policy Studies, the Woodrow Wilson School (Princeton University), Penn Cultural Heritage Center (University of Pennsylvania), the Bloustein School of Public Policy and Planning (Rutgers University), and the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences/Landscape Architecture (Rutgers University).

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You Will Learn How To - Operate the EKG machine. - Use the EKG unit. - Prepare the patient and perform EKG. - Read EKG Reports - Recognize reportable abnormalities Who Should Attend Students that are interested in pursuing a career as an EKG Technician. This course also prepares students for the NHA’s “Certified EKG Technician” Exam. EKG is an instrument used in the detection and diagnosis of heart abnormalities. It measures electrical potentials on the body surface and generates a record of the electrical currents associated with heart muscle activity. - Introduction to Electrocardiography - The EKG as a diagnostic tool - Overview of heart structure and function - Role of the EKG Technician - Ethical and legal considerations for EKG personnel - Privacy considerations for medical offices (HIPAA) - Electrocardiography Procedures - Introduction to the EKG unit - Loading Paper in EKG Machine - Preparing the patient for EKG - Performing the EKG on patient - Cleaning and storing EKG Machine - Recognizing Reportable Abnormalities - Recording the cardiac cycle - Normal value ranges for EKG records - Common types of reportable abnormalities - Overview of Related Tests and Procedures of telemetric EKG, Holter monitor, stress tests, ultrasound cardiograph, etc. Exams Prepared for “Certified EKG Technician” by National Healthcareer Association

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ingredients & lore blended with decaf ceylon tea, natural peach flavor, marigold flowers, apple pieces and apricots Cultivation of peaches began in China as early as 2000BC. The winds of trade brought peaches to Greece and Persia, where they were instantly accepted. The juicy fruit was also a big hit with the Romans, who cultivated it throughout the empire. From Italy, peaches made the leap across the Atlantic, where early settlers planted them throughout the East Coast. Soon they were so plentiful, local botanists thought of them as native fruits.

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Gaia: why some scientists think it's a nonsensical fantasy The world's oldest living trees, bristlecone pines each stand on their own pedestal of dolomite rock, high in the Californian mountains All photos by Nick Paloukos Ross Andersen is a Senior Editor at Aeon magazine. He has written extensively about science and philosophy for several publications, including the Atlantic and the Economist. No event, however momentous, leaves an everlasting imprint on the world. Take the cosmic background radiation, the faint electromagnetic afterglow of the Big Bang. It hangs, reassuringly, in every corner of our skies, the firmest evidence we have for the giant explosion that created our universe. But it won’t be there forever. In a trillion years’ time it is going to slip beyond what astronomers call the cosmic light horizon, the outer edge of the observable universe. The universe’s expansion will have stretched its wavelength so wide that it will be undetectable to any observer, anywhere. Time will have erased its own beginning. On Earth, the past is even quicker to vanish. To study geology is to be astonished at how hastily time reorders our planet’s surface, filling its craters, smoothing its mountains and covering its continents in seawater. Life is often the fastest to disintegrate in this constant churn of water and rock. The speed of biological decomposition ensures that only the most geologically fortunate of organisms freeze into stone and become fossils. The rest dissolve into sediment, leaving the thinnest of molecular traces behind. Part of what separates humans from nature is our striving to preserve the past, but we too have proved adept at its erasure. It was humans, after all, who set fire to the ancient Library of Alexandria, whose hundreds of thousands of scrolls contained a sizable fraction of classical learning. The loss of knowledge at Alexandria was said to be so profound that it set Western civilisation back 1,000 years. Indeed, some have described the library’s burning as an event horizon, a boundary in time across which information cannot flow. The burning of books and libraries has perhaps fallen out of fashion, but if you look closely, you will find its spirit survives in another distinctly human activity, one as old as civilisation itself: the destruction of forests. Trees and forests are repositories of time; to destroy them is to destroy an irreplaceable record of the Earth’s past. Over this past century of unprecendented deforestation, a tiny cadre of scientists has roamed the world’s remaining woodlands, searching for trees with long memories, trees that promise science a new window into antiquity. To find a tree’s memories, you have to look past its leaves and even its bark; you have to go deep into its trunk, where the chronicles of its long life lie, secreted away like a library’s lost scrolls. This spring, I journeyed to the high, dry mountains of California to visit an ancient forest, a place as dense with history as Alexandria. A place where the heat of a dangerous fire is starting to rise. Dendrochronology, the study of tree rings, takes its name from the Greek words dendron, meaning 'tree limb' and khronos, meaning ‘time’. It is a young discipline, an offshoot of astronomy – a science itself obsessed with the measure of deep time. In 1894 the father of dendrochronology, Andrew Ellicott Douglass, was an assistant to Percival Lowell, the astronomer who popularised the notion that Mars is ringed with canals. Douglass had exhibited a remarkable fluidity of mind well before he caught Lowell's eye. At Trinity College, Connecticut, he had taken degrees in physics, geology and astronomy, earning honors in all three. Douglass was hired to assist Lowell in a series of detailed observations of the red planet, but in his spare time he was nurturing a new idea about the sun. He had begun to wonder if sunspots, magnetic irregularities on the solar surface, could swing the Earth’s climate enough to affect growth in trees, and if some record of these swings might be divined from tree rings. He wondered if trees inscribed celestial events into their rings. Douglass was hardly the first to see tree trunks as oracles or sources of knowledge — a myth has it that the idea of a circle first passed into the human mind by way of a tree stump. Nor, remarkably, was he the first to correlate tree rings with climate. In the fourth century BC Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle, wrote a nine-volume study of botany, wherein he noted that trees produce new rings annually. In the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci went a step further, observing in one of his many journals, that ‘rings in the branches of sawed trees show the number of years and, according to their thickness, the years which were more or less dry’. It was through this pattern, this dispersed archive of recorded starlight, that dendrochronology was born This April, I visited Ed Cook, a dendrochronologist at Columbia University’s Tree-Ring Lab, just north of Manhattan. Cook, who helped to found the lab back in 1975, is a short, serene man with a deep voice and a long wizardly beard. He has done fieldwork in forests all over the world, but his signature achievement is a North American drought atlas. We’re accustomed to thinking of atlases as representations of space, purely geographical. This atlas captures time as well. To construct it, Cook compiled data from 2,000 separate tree-ring chronologies into a map of the continent’s dry spells — a map that spans thousands of years. Each tree-ring chronology is the product of hundreds of hours spent bent over a microscope, counting and measuring rings on tree cores: smooth, pencil-thin tubes of wood that dendrochronologists bore out from the trunks of trees. When I asked Cook what made him want to spend four decades doing this painstaking work, he paused for a moment, before confiding that it was the mystery of tree rings that hooked him. He said that trees were like a great puzzle, that you had to work carefully to decipher what they were telling you. Trees owe their rings to an ingenious botanical technology, the vascular cambium, a slimy lining of cells that sits under a tree’s bark like a layer of long underwear. In spring, the cambium’s interior surface produces a new layer of cells that hardens into cream-colored wood. The cambium continues to produce new wood into summer, but as the months go by, its output slowly darkens. This seasonal shading delineates each ring from those around it. From this process we derive one of our most elegant axioms about nature, a piece of folk wisdom we all learn in childhood: to count the rings of a tree is to count the years of its life. By 1901 AE Douglass was tiring of Lowell’s eccentricities, especially his obsession with Martian canals — an obsession that eventually led to a falling out between the two men. Douglass was also keen to test his theory of sunspots and trees, and so he began studying tree rings in old stands of ponderosa pine near his observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He was looking for patterns of thin growth that coincided with years known for high sunspot activity. At Columbia, Ed Cook explained to me that evidence of such a pattern typically requires core samples from more than 20 trees. A single tree’s rings are not enough, because they might only reflect changes in that tree’s immediate surroundings. In 1904, Douglass made a startling finding. He discovered thin growth in a number of local ponderosa pines for the years 1899 and 1902, both of which were known for sunspot outbreaks. The pattern was dubbed the ‘Flagstaff Signature’, and Douglass would go on to find it in trees throughout Arizona. It was through this pattern, this dispersed archive of recorded starlight, that the science of dendrochronology was born. It didn’t take Douglass long to realise that he had stumbled onto an extraordinary insight, with applications far beyond astronomy and botany. In 1929 he constructed a tree-ring chronology that went back 1,000 years, which he used to help archaeologists date wooden beams from Pueblo ruins perched beneath desert cliffs in America’s south-west. In the years that followed, Douglass would go on to date more than 40 separate Native American ruins, revolutionising the region’s history and making his reputation as a scientist. He detailed his findings in an article for National Geographic in December 1929. Striking a triumphant tone, Douglass compared his tree-ring chronology to the Rosetta Stone, boasting that it was ‘more accurate than if human hands had written down the events as they occurred’. As a science, dendrochronology was off to an auspicious start. But it would have to wait several decades before finding its ultimate object of study: the bristlecone pine. The world’s oldest trees, bristlecone pines belong to a group of ‘foxtail’ pines that live in small alpine pockets of the western United States. Foxtail pines are hardly newcomers to this Earth. Their oldest fossil ancestor dates back more than 40 million years, to the Eocene, the epoch when modern mammals first emerged. Though today the trees are found at between 2,700 and 3,500 metres, their range fluctuates considerably with climate. Because the trees like things dry and frigid, they extend their reach downward in cool, glacial times and recede to high ground in warm periods. In California, foxtail pine fossils have been found as low as 1,500 metres, no doubt the denizens of a previous ice age. The oldest of the living bristlecones were just saplings when the pyramids were raised. The most ancient, called Methuselah, is estimated to be more than 4,800 years old In March this year, I paid a visit to these extraordinary beings on an arid strip of dolomite atop California’s White Mountains. Located just north of Death Valley, the White Mountains are some of the driest on the planet. Visiting the trees in March meant trudging several miles through snow at just over 2,700 metres, as road access to the bristlecones is closed through May. It also meant that the forest was empty, as deserted of human beings as it has been for all but a brief flicker of its history. It is hard to resist cliché when conveying the antiquity of the bristlecone pine. The oldest of the living bristlecones were just saplings when the pyramids were raised. The most ancient, called Methuselah, is estimated to be more than 4,800 years old; with luck, it will soon enter its sixth millennium as a living, reproducing organism. Because we conceive of time in terms of experience, a life spanning millennia can seem alien or even eternal to the human mind. It is hard to grasp what it would be like to see hundreds of generations flow out from under you in the stream of time, hard to imagine how rich and varied the mind might become if seasoned by five thousand years of experience and culture. The bristlecones owe their alpine habitat to the cresting of an ancient geological swell, a great wave rippling through the rock of Earth’s crust. The trees sit atop the White Mountains, but it is the neighbouring Sierra Nevada — the highest range in the contiguous United States — that creates the arid conditions they crave. More than 200 million years ago, deep beneath the Earth’s surface, an oceanic plate began sliding under America’s west coast. The friction of that event filled the local crust with great plumes of granite, a volcanic rock known for its glittering quartz. Out of this deep, crustal sliding arose mountains and volcanoes, craggy giants that millions of years would smooth into rounded stubs. But time would resurrect them eventually. Less than five million years ago — in a sense, the geologic present — new mountains of ancient granite began to rise from the grave of that ancestor range. Today they hover more than 4,000 metres above the neighbouring Pacific Ocean. Over time, water — both liquid and glacial — has carved their peaks into thin wedges, snow-whitened dorsal fins of exposed granite. Together they make up the Sierra Nevada, the great, gleaming spine of California. As you read this, they are still rising. Near the summits of the White Mountains, in the rainshadow of the Sierras, the bristlecones find the cold, dry solitude that they need to survive. A view looking from the bristlecone groves aross to the Sierra Nevada ridge. The Sierra is important to this story because its high ridge forms the rain shadow that makes possible the dry air beloved by the bristlecones. When Pacific storms move east from California's coast, the granite wall of the Sierra ridge deflects their moisture, funnelling it into some of the world's largest, most spectacular alpine lakes. All that slips through to the White Mountains is a strong, dry wind, and that's just the way the old trees like it. Indeed, from the right vantage point, the bristlecones on the high, western slopes of the White Mountains almost seem to reach out to the Sierra, their gnarled branches twisted into an arboreal pantomime of worship. From this elevated perch, these elderly trees have borne witness to the rise of a new geological age, a successor to the Holocene. This new age is called the Anthropocene, or ‘age of humans’, and it refers to the stretch of time during which we have begun to reshape the Earth’s chemical makeup. The idea of this new age arose just over a decade ago, as scientists began to realise that the geological record would likely bear the marks of human activity for aeons to come. There is still a question as to whether the term will enter the official geological lexicon, and there is fierce debate about whether the Anthropocene began with the Industrial Revolution, or with the development of agriculture some 10,000 years ago. But this much is certain: one of its signature features is massive deforestation. It was just under 400 million years ago that plants first evolved woody stems in order to propel themselves upward into unobstructed sunlight. That is an ocean of time: 400 million years is nearly double the time it takes the sun to make a full orbit around the Milky Way. Human beings, by contrast, have been around for only 2.2 million years, one 100th of a galactic revolution. Before trees and forests, the biosphere was just a thin layer of life sheathed around the rock of our planet. By the end of the Carboniferous period, named for the carbon-rich rock produced by fossilised vegetation, forests had circled the globe, pushing the biosphere’s ceiling up by hundreds of feet. We are still living off the sunlight they captured: Carboniferous forests were the raw material of most of the world's coal fields. Canopy-covered forests created the first leaf-shaded ecosystems, which went on to shelter a profusion of new species, becoming, with time, the most biologically productive environments on Earth. Trees also reshaped the planet’s broad, meandering waterways, which had roamed the continents aimlessly for aeons. Their deep roots stabilised riverbanks, helping to corral rivers into predictable, deep-channeled streams. Trees became the tall tent poles of the biosphere, the infrastructure of an entirely new Earth. And they have proved quite durable since, rallying from super volcanoes, sun-blotting asteroids and the continent-mowing glaciers of ice ages. In modern human beings, however, they face an unprecedented foe. Deforestation began in prehistoric times, but it was not always as brutal or efficient as it is today. Our primate ancestors practised a kind of deforestation by migration, trading the treetops for terra firma and the forests for open plains. Humans are a different story. Anthropologists suspect we have been cutting down trees for as long as we have been around, mostly to harvest raw material for shelter and fire, but also to construct crude bridges to cross rivers into new landscapes. For a time, our tree-felling was no match for the regenerative power of forests. Indeed, today's indigenous forest peoples demonstrate the human capacity to live within a forest's natural limits. But over the past 5,000-10,000 years, our fast-growing civilisations have developed the technology to clear trees faster than they can grow back. In that short time — a slim fraction of the forests’ tenure on Earth — we have managed to destroy more than half of them. And we are getting better at it. During the 20th century, the human population grew 100 times faster than any large animal species has ever grown before. To support the caloric needs of that explosion in biomass, we have systematically torched forests to make room for crops, so that today the landmass devoted to agriculture is the largest land-based ecosystem on the planet. Even where forests do remain, they are surrounded on all sides. The logic of globalisation requires that markets be connected, and that means crisscrossing the Earth’s forests with roads and railways. Only in the Congo Basin and some of the more isolated areas of the Amazon do truly large stretches of forest remain intact, and even those might not last the century. The world’s trees are, in every sense, under siege. By 1932, AE Douglass had become so busy with dendrochronology that he hired an assistant to help him with fieldwork, a 24-year-old New Yorker named Edmund Schulman. Until that point in his life, Schulman had spent little time in forests. After a childhood spent in Brooklyn, he bounced around a bit academically, taking classes at New York University and Brooklyn College. Eventually he completed his BSc at the University of Arizona, and, after a stint with Douglass, a PhD in climatology from Harvard. Douglass and Schulman were an odd couple. Douglass had an intuitive style, reminiscent of the boldness of Victorian scientists who thrived on singular moments of great insight. Schulman, whose black glasses and necktie gave him the look of an accountant, was the straight man, the data hound who kept careful records. In our conversations at Columbia, Ed Cook had been quick to praise Douglass’s genius, but he seemed to reserve his deepest admiration for Schulman, whom he credited with bringing a quantitative approach to dendrochronology. It was Schulman, Cook said, who made it into a rigorous science. In 1939, Schulman began a search that would span the whole of his remaining life, a search for the world’s oldest trees. He knew a truly ancient tree would yield a more expansive vision of the Earth’s climate. A tree with thousands of rings would allow climatologists to hover in space for centuries, watching glaciers crawl up and down the continents; it would let them wormhole into springs and summers past; it would let them see the real seasons of Earth. In Dante the forest is demon-haunted and evil, the underworld out of which the hero must ascend Schulman began his hunt in Bryce Canyon, a dry, desert wilderness in Southern Utah, known for its spectacular geology. His first summer there he found an 860-year-old ponderosa pine at 2,000 metres. Later, moving up into Central Utah, he found an even older tree, a 975-year-old pinyon pine. Both of these trees were old, but neither compared with a legendary 3,000-year-old sequoia tree that John Muir claimed to have found in Yosemite. In 1953, new research convinced Schulman to shift the course of his search to high-altitude trees. He speculated, in an article for Science, that there might be alpine trees that were 2,000 years old. Schulman was especially keen on sequoia trees, on account of the Muir legend, but he also mentioned bristlecones in the article, noting that those found in the White Mountains had been ‘recognised by forest personnel as likely to reach unusual ages’. It is not surprising that it took science so long to find the bristlecone pines. These trees rank among the most isolated organisms on Earth. They have spent tens of millions of years crawling away from the planet’s fertile havens, the mild climates and nutrient-rich environments that encourage biodiversity. Not content with the solitude of thin mountain air, these ascetic trees anchor down in nutrient-bereft dolomite, a grey rock that most plants cannot abide. Their muscular roots octopus around underground boulders, forming a base that can keep them rigid and standing for thousands of years after death. Thomas Harlan, a longtime researcher at the Arizona tree-ring lab founded by Douglass, told me he once found a snag of bristlecone wood that had remained rigid for more than 8,000 years. I won’t forget the first time I saw one of these erect tree-corpses, leering at me like a scarecrow beside the snow-covered road. The tree’s exposed wood had aged into rich tones of gold and copper, and it seemed to leap out of the rock like a petrified flame. To see the living bristlecones is to be struck by their beauty, but also by their strangeness. Of the first 30 that I saw in the White Mountains, no two were alike. Some were stooped, some tall; others had multiple trunks and intricately spiralling limbs. The trees owe their unique morphologies to the special way their roots and trunks are connected. A normal tree pools its resources: it slurps up water with its roots and then sends it around the base of its trunk, nourishing each sector of its bark equally. Bristlecone roots do not share water in this way. Instead, they connect directly with a particular section of bark. If a root is damaged or otherwise unproductive, its attached strip of bark dies. Each sector fends for itself in a kind of intra-organism longevity contest. This trees-within-a-tree style of growth is what gives ancient members of this species their singular appearance. As saplings, they look like symmetrical cones, Christmas trees in miniature. But given sufficient time, their sectors begin to diverge, as tiny environmental advantages and disadvantages accumulate over hundreds, even thousands, of years. The tree might spiral and thicken on one side and die on the other, transforming itself into a swirling, wooden Janus. Among the truly ancient bristlecones I saw trunks ringed entirely in exposed wood but for a single holdout: a strip of bark aglow with green needles and the singular fragrance of pine. These Dali-painted trees, called single-strip survivors, can carry on for thousands of years after the death of their other sectors. The dense grain of the dead wood stays rigid over all that time, giving form to the surviving sliver of tree and pushing its needles, its solar panels, high into the sunlight. Those needles, long-lived in their own right, can stay productive and green for more than 40 years, but they abhor neighbours, preferring the sun of sparse stands to the shade of dense forests. This spacing protects the trees from quick-spreading fires, and it makes for a singular forest aesthetic. Hiking through the wide hallways of the bristlecone forest, I noticed each tree was pedestalled on its own root-encrusted island of earth, backlit by blue sky, giving off the dignified air of solitude. Even the thickest patches had their vistas, their long horizons. Pausing for a moment to catch my breath in the thin air, I turned my back to the mountain. In the distance I could see oceans of cold sunlight roaring off the Sierra Nevada. This experience of openness and sublimity among the bristlecones is at odds with fundamental Western ideas about forests, ideas that might have something to do with our peculiar animosity towards them. Indeed, a suspicion of forests as dark, shadowy places is written into the basic texts of Western culture. In Greek mythology, Dionysus, the ivy-wreathed god of the ‘wooded glens’, threatens civilisation with a return to animalistic primitivism. In the Old Testament, Yahweh commands Hebrews to burn down sacred groves wherever they find them. Christian culture has traditionally identified the forest as a pagan stronghold, a gloomy haven for witches and outlaws. In Dante the forest is demon-haunted and evil, the underworld out of which the hero must ascend. For Descartes the forest is the precursor to enlightenment, the physical embodiment of confusion, the maze that the light beams of reason must penetrate. The Stanford literary critic Robert Pogue Harrison has an interesting theory about our weariness of forests. In his 1992 book Forests: The Shadow of Civilisation, he suggests that, at a subconscious level, we resent them for their antiquity, their antecedence to humans. Drawing from the work of the 18th century Italian philosopher and historian Giambattista Vico, Harrison traces the human dread of forests to the origin myths of sky gods such as Jove, who ruled over Rome as Jupiter and over Greece as Zeus. According to legend, Jove first announced his existence to aboriginal humans by sending lightning into primeval forests. He did this to clear a hole in the tree canopy, to open up the ‘mute closure of foliage’, as Harrison calls it, so that humans could see the sky for what it was: a divine entity, a sender of signs, a source of revelation about our origins and our destiny. As Harrison explains, The abomination of forests in Western history derives above all from the fact that, since Greek and Roman times at least, we have been a civilisation of sky-worshippers, children of a celestial father. Where divinity has been identified with the sky, or with the eternal geometry of the stars, or with cosmic infinity, or with ‘heaven’, forests become monstrous, for they hide the prospect of god. Embedded in these myths and legends is an uncomfortable truth for a culture that, until quite recently, believed itself to occupy the physical and teleological centre of the universe. The myths betray an ancient, long-stifled awareness that forests preceded human consciousness; that they were a precondition of it. In 1953, Edmund Schulman spent his summer doing fieldwork in the Idaho countryside where, the year before, he had found another old tree, a 1,650-year-old pine. On his long drive back to the tree-ring lab in Arizona, he made a stop in the White Mountains to visit the bristlecone pines, to see if there was any substance to the persistent rumors of their antiquity. As it happens, he nearly missed them. Schulman had spent a fair amount of time in Yosemite Valley sampling John Muir’s giant sequoias. In sequoias, height is a decent proxy for age, a correlation that Schulman assumed extended to all alpine conifers. When he went to see the bristlecones, he spent the bulk of his time poking around the younger trees, which were tall and had the majority of their sectors intact. Schulman cored several of these tall bristlecones and found them to be aged, but not ancient. Most were under 1,000 years old. Left to its own devices a bristlecone pine could live forever, perpetually regenerating itself like an ever-expanding set of flawless Russian dolls One afternoon, on a whim, he decided to venture to the high mountainside south of the tall trees, where a small forest of drooping, sickly looking bristlecones could be seen radiating downward from the peak. As sunset neared, he scrambled up the mountain finding thick, gnarled trees along the way, some scarcely five metres tall — less than half the height of the young trees across the valley. This was at a time when Schulman still did his own mountaineering (in the years to follow, he would sit from a comfortable vantage point and direct graduate students toward trees he wanted cored, yelling and signaling while they scrambled on the rocky hillside). That afternoon in 1953, as dusk hit, Schulman settled on a tree that looked promising enough to core. He drilled into it, extracted a sample, and then hurried back to camp to beat the darkness starting to pool in the valley between the Sierra and the White mountains. That night, by the fire, Schulman began to count the rings of the bristlecone core, finding them so thin and dense that 100 fit into a single inch. Straining in the light of the campfire, he ticked off century after century, more than 30 in all. Schulman had found a 3,000-year-old tree, the oldest then known to science. A tree older than Christ. Bristlecone pine rings: they are so fine and dense that over a century of life can be embodied in a single inch of wood It is not unusual to feel wonderment, and a small measure of envy, at the longevity of the bristlecone pine. Indeed, humans have poured a great deal of energy and ingenuity into prolonging life, with little success. Though modern medicine has extended many lives, no human has ever lived beyond a century and a quarter. Even in the realm of story and miracle, where the imagination faces fewer restrictions, long-lived humans, usually sages or kings, live a millennium at most. The most famous of these, Methuselah, for whom the oldest bristlecone pine is named, lived just 969 years according to biblical tradition. To hear of the extreme ages of these trees is to wonder how they outlast us so decisively. How do they fend off the entropic crush of the universe for so long? As far as botanists can tell, bristlecones don’t seem to age in the way we do. A close look at their rings reveals that the wood they produce thousands of years into their lives is as fresh as sapling wood: it bears no sign of age-related mutation. Bristlecones have also learned to mirror the vicissitudes of their harsh environment by limiting their growth in times of drought. In the driest years, the bristlecones all but shut down, adding only the slenderest of rings — sometimes just a cell’s width — to their surviving sectors. But this downshift isn’t permanent. When rain returns, the tree roars right back to life: its roots gulp up water, its silver-green needles suck down carbon and sunlight, and before long, the tree’s photosynthetic factories are humming along again, feeding the cambium’s growth spasms. Left to its own devices, a bristlecone pine could live forever, perpetually regenerating itself, like an ever-expanding series of flawless Russian dolls. But the bristlecone doesn’t live in a vacuum; like any tree, it is vulnerable to pests and predators. Though the tree is armed with an unusually thick resin, a kind of sticky, wound-clogging blood that flows through its limbs and trunk, its best protection is its choice of environment. It finds itself alone on this tough, dry mountaintop, far removed from the bark-gnawing beetles and wood-rotting fungi that might otherwise threaten it. In the end, the tree endures extreme environmental hardship so that it doesn’t have to endure company: its solitude is its salvation. The bristlecone pine is so isolated and so well suited to its environment that, until quite recently, its worst enemy was time. If you live 4,000 years, you live long enough to be unlucky, long enough to fall victim to the kind of random events that the Earth’s short-term tenants are spared. John Muir once wrote, of ancient sequoias, that ‘of all living things, the sequoia is perhaps the only one able to wait long enough to make sure of being struck by lightning’. In the bristlecone forest, I saw several ancient trees that bore the scars of lightning strikes. And even when they manage to dodge Jove’s wrath, the trees can’t escape the rise and fall of geology’s tides. Indeed, the oldest often sit atop a tangle of exposed roots, their twisting bulk laid bare by thousands of years of erosion. Though the bare roots are as thick as anacondas, they can’t withstand alpine conditions forever. Eventually they will die, and the trees they support will crash to the forest floor, victims of their own longevity. In 1958 Schulman wrote an article for National Geographic, describing the extraordinary trees he had found in the White Mountains. After 1953 he had gone on to discover twenty different 4,000-year-old trees, including Methuselah, the oldest living tree today, and Prometheus, a 4,900-year-old tree cut down by mistake in 1964. The impact on the science of dendrochronology was enormous, and like Douglass’s discovery of the Flagstaff Signature, the benefits spilled over into other sciences, especially those attempting to get a better grip on the past. The ancient trees were instrumental in calibrating the radiocarbon curve, the lodestar that scientists use to date carbon-bearing material less than 58,000 years old. They also helped ecologists to better understand the structure of forests, the most complex ecosystems on Earth. In the past we have menaced trees with axes and torches, but now it will be the hot, aggregated exhaust of our civilisations Schulman never saw his article published in National Geographic – or the extraordinary scientific breakthroughs that followed. He died of a heart attack at the age of 49, just two months before it hit newsstands in March 1958. But the bristlecones would pay Schulman a lasting tribute, by reserving their most valuable secrets for his discipline: climatology. The most useful bristlecones are those that sit high in the White Mountains, near the edge of the tree line. Like all bristlecones, they are meticulous recorders of climate, because they tune their growth to it so precisely. But the high trees have another advantage. While the low-altitude bristlecones grow in response to rainfall, those near the tree line tailor their growth to temperature. Their rings are like stilled thermometers retrieved from a time machine. Dendrochronologists at Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research have used the high living trees, and their dead ancestors, to piece together a tree-ring chronology stretching back 8,840 years, nearly the entirety of the Anthropocene. The chronology tells a familiar tale about what is happening to the Earth’s climate. In 2005, a researcher from Arizona’s tree-ring lab named Matthew Salzer noticed an unusual trend in the most recent stretch of bristlecone tree rings. Over the past half century, bristlecones near the tree line have grown faster than in any 50-year period of the past 3,700 years, a shift that portends ‘an environmental change unprecedented in millennia,’ according to Salzer. As temperatures along the peaks warm, the bristlecones are fattening up, adding thick rings in every spring season. Initially there was hope that the trend was local to the White Mountains, but Salzer and his colleagues have found the same string of fat rings — the same warming — in three separate bristlecone habitats in the western US. This might sound like good news for the trees, but it most assuredly is not. Indeed, the thick new rings might be a prophecy of sorts, a foretelling of the trees’ extinction. Remember that bristlecone pines thrive in isolation. They owe their longevity to their ability to withstand the rigors of an environment that is inhospitable to their predators. If the White Mountains continue to warm, the next generation of trees will be forced to move higher in the range to find the cool temperatures and isolation they crave. Bristlecones do come equipped with an escape plan of sorts. Their seeds have long, translucent wings attached to them, and if the wind is right, they can fly long distances, pushed aloft by alpine breezes. Under ordinary circumstances the seeds could help the trees to climb up these mountains in a generation or two. But there isn’t much room to move here, because the bristlecones are already flirting with the peaks. A prolonged period of warming will leave them trapped on the summits, with nowhere to go. Meanwhile, bark beetles and fungi, pests that can make quick work of entire forests, will see their habitats expand. They will charge up the White Mountains, headed straight for the bristlecone pines. The oldest bristlecones, with their odd puzzles of living and dead limbs, are dwarfed by their younger kin. These vigorous young trees may not survive if the mountains continue to warm and there is nowhere higher for their offspring to colonise. If global warming drives these trees to extinction it will signal an evolution in the technology of deforestation. In the past we have menaced trees with axes and torches, but now it will be the hot, aggregated exhaust of our civilisations. Deforestation once arose out of our animosity towards particular forests, those that stood in the way of our future homes and crops. But deforestation is becoming delocalised; it is becoming an unavoidable byproduct of our existence, a diffuse, Earth-spanning emanation no tree can escape – even those that take root at the far reaches of the bio-inhabitable world. I asked Thomas Harlan, a longtime researcher at Arizona’s tree-ring lab, if there were signs that the trees were starting to migrate. He told me about a new sapling he had found well above the tree line in the White Mountains. ‘I can take you up to a point that’s higher than any living tree, and higher than any of the dead trees we’ve ever found, and I can show you where, two years ago, I found a little foot-high bristlecone pine growing,’ he said. Harlan explained that the tree was entering one of the most vulnerable periods of its life. ‘Whenever a tree gets to the point where it’s higher than the snow level, the winds are going to beat it to pieces in the winter, and so whether it will survive or not I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But,’ he added, ‘it might be a sign that the trees are starting to advance up the hillsides again.’ It is interesting to think of the different fates that might await Harlan’s sapling. It could live to see the wonders of the year 6000, etching 4,000 summers into its thin-ringed diary. But it might also die early, vanishing this winter or next, or in a few hundred years, along with this grove and the rest of the bristlecone pines. These strange, memory-laden trees might turn out to be nothing more than a brief bloom of wildflowers in the scheme of deep time. Harlan was circumspect about the trees’ odds of survival. ‘With bristlecone pines, you have to be patient,’ he told me. ‘Come back in 200 years and I’ll tell you more.’ Sitting under an old bristlecone in the cool April sun, I thought of Edmund Schulman, for whom this grove is named. I thought about the tragic contradictions of the human animal, this strange species that reads trees, but also destroys them. Over the course of 400 million years, trees built up a fertile new layer on the Earth’s surface, a layer that incubated entirely new ecologies, including those that gave rise to our ancestors. But now it is humans who spread out over the planet, coating its surface in cities and farms, clearing away the very trees that enabled our origins. This forest, like so many others, has become an intersection in time, a place where narratives of geologic grandeur are colliding. A place to put your ear to the ground, a place to confirm that even here, in the most ancient of groves, if you listen closely, you can hear the roar of the coming Anthropocene. Published on 16 October 2012

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Sushrut in 600 BCE practised plastic surgery and arrived at sure solutions to some of the problems which the Europeans could not solve as late as the 16th century. In that century Copernicus and Galileo proclaimed the truth that the earth is round. The Indian astronomer, Aryabhatta, was already aware of this in 5 BCE.The law of gravity was already known to Bhaskaracharya 500 years before Sir Isaac Newton. How many of us know this astronomical truth? At the university of Takshashila thousands of students studied in 42 faculties. The same situation prevailed at that equally famous seat of learning at Nalanda. It was these universities that gave birth to modern India.The concept of air travel which has become so common nowadays was known to ancient Indians. Hundreds of books were written on the aerial mode of transportation. From these books, a volume written by Bharadwaj called Yantrasarvasvam is available even now. It comprises 68 volumes on aeronautics. How many of us know of them? A part of a second - 34,000th part to be exact - was known as 'krati'. Such was the advanced state of calculation in those far-off days. How brilliant must have been scholars like Vishvamitra, Yagnavalkya, Kanad and Chanakya Pandit Kedarnath Prabhakar of Pune has unearthed many interesting things connected with our achievements and published them in the form of letters. He wrote about the Kutub Minar at Delhi. "How expert were our people in construction and architecture? Kutub Minar provides an example. It can be considered as a memorial column to Varahamihir, because he was one of the nine jewels at the court of king Vikramaditya. He was a famous scientist and the Minar was his creation." But Sultan Kutubuddin Aibek, as was the habit of his ancestors, appropriated the Minar and put his name on it. We do not have a placard around our necks proclaiming the greatness of our culture or traditions. But, we should not forget that we have a glorious heritage and a history of illustrious people who have made significant contributions in all fields of life.The foundation of religion has been laid by holy men, religious texts and mandirs. The arts owe their origin to dharma and sadhus; and sadhus have evolved faith and traditions. There have been several storms and obstacles on our march this far. But in that we, the youths of today, have not shared any burden. We did not bear the torch. We did not raise the sword to defend our tradition against aggressors. We have also not made any sacrifice. That is why we do not have the moral right to speak lightly or disparagingly of our country, its religion or traditions. A rich man's son once lost a gold chain at the Swaminarayan mandir in Junagadh. The founder returned the chain to Swami Gunatitanand. When the boy came to the mandir to claim the chain, Swamishri asked, "Who is the owner of the chain? Your father or someone else?" "It belongs to my father." "Then don't you have a sense of responsibility? You had lost it." Yes, traditions and customs are like gold. Gold, itself, has no sense of responsibility. However, we must have responsibility for the gold. So we must preserve it. If we earn the gold, we will know its value. Those who utilise traditions in their lives know their value.

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Cancer is one of the most fear inducing words in our culture; and it is the number one disease American’s wish to avoid, according to on-line surveys. While cancer research has yet to find the magic bullet for knocking out cancer, there is good news about this deadly disease. As far back as November of 1996, Harvard School of Public Health published a 15 year study which evidenced that cancer is largely preventable by improved diet and lifestyle. The study stated that upwards of 70% of all cancers could be prevented with better nutrition for Americans. And now the good news continues. In 2007, several new studies are showing that certain foods, when eaten in combination, enhance the prevention of cancer. If you are interested in preventing yourself from getting cancer, here are some food combinations to pay attention to: - From the American Institute of Cancer Research International Research Conference, the combination of broccoli and tomatoes, when fed to laboratory rats, evidenced significantly smaller cancerous growths than when the rats were fed either the broccoli or tomato exclusively. The anti-cancer effect is credited to the combination of the lycopene from the tomatoes and the glucosinolates from the broccoli. These two powerful phytoneutrients (plant nutrients) combine to prevent damage to our cells as well as aid in flushing out carcinogens (things that cause cancer) from our body. - Another study published by the Institute of Food Research in the UK identified that the combination of Brussels sprouts, cabbage, broccoli or other cruciferous vegetables with foods high in the mineral selenium enhances the anti-cancer effect that each of these foods by themselves. Foods rich in selenium are shell fish and nuts, such as Brazil nuts. - Another study published in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology; showed that individuals who consumed large amounts of curcumcin, which is found in the spice turmeric, and quercetin found in white onions had a greater reduction of colon polyps, which can become cancerous. - Another recent research article, published in the Journal of Nutrition, identified study cohorts of 102 women who were instructed to add 10 fruits and vegetables a day to their diet for two weeks. A second control group was instructed to add foods from 18 botanical groups, including garlic, onions, and the cruciferous foods, such as broccoli and cabbage. While at the end of the study, women in both groups showed a decrease in peri-oxidation which contributes to cancer, the women in the 18 botanical food group showed a decrease in DNA oxidation, a precursor step in the development of cancer. This is excellent news for all of us who wish to take greater control over our health and longevity. Thanks for scientific research, by adding these food combinations, and eating a largely plant based diet; we may reduce or eliminate the threat of cancer for ourselves and share this information with others. - Dr. Georgianna Donadio American Institute for Cancer Research.

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More than finding your place in the world, Kid-Architect is about making it. Through the use of the most basic building block of space of our time – the box – children can explore the composition of space, forming it as they wish and improvising as they play. Applying the simple box layout promotes an intuitive understanding of form and function, making the play process more accessible. Suitable for children ages 5-11 Kid-Architect helps create a sense of space and volume while developing the child’s ability to take into account multiple aspects of problem solving by enabling him to form various shapes/spaces using the same given objects. With simple design and choice of basic materials it may be used in a variety of ways over different periods of time. By using more panels you increase the volume of buildable space as well as the number of options for this three dimensional composing. As children grow, Kid-Architect grows with them. Kid-Architect is made from recycled foam cut into 60X60X1.5cm pieces. Each two pieces are glued together with an added rip-stop cloth protruding from one side in order to attach permanently to other pieces. The temporary connection of pieces during the game is done with Velcro attached to the edges. In order to be able to connect any two parts together Velcro is assembled in a way which produces no two similar strips thus eliminating the dependence on a polarized system.

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First, draw a slanted square for the box's body. This square will be where the face goes. Next, draw the rest of the box. You should start seeing the box. After, draw the handle of the box. Be very careful with this step because you need to draw it as even as possible. Now, draw the lines according to the picture. These are the folds. Then, draw the eyes,cheeks, and mouth. Next, erase the extra lines. The only extra line should be the ones in the handle. This step is optional. All you have to do is trace the picture. I traced the outside with a fat sharpie, and traces the rest with a thin sharpie. If you don't trace well and have lots a pencil showing, erase it. Do not trace the cheeks. Finally, color the cheeks red/pink, and color the handle any color you want.

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Our world is changing. Forces of constant change, chaos, and complexity are replacing forces of stability and permanence that prevailed over our way of life. Methods of organizing such as top-down, command and control, monocentrism of viewpoints and culture, are being challenged and are proving to be ineffective in our education, religion, politics, and government. The predictable, permanent, homogenous community is now rare. Climate change adds to the instability and may have caused more tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes than ever witnessed. Man-made disasters have also become a great threat. The war zone has been widened as ordinary folks who feel aggrieved now have easier access to very potent polemic equipment and are willing to use them on fellow citizens. Globalization and technology are the main economic factors driving this change. Globalization and technology, particularly communications technology, are enabling great access, both geographical and informational, thus creating a leveler field. These have yielded products en-mass, population migration, individuation, specialization, and great diversity – diversity of choices, affiliations, culture, beliefs, organizing, markets, etc. Research indicates that diversity tends to be beneficial when allowed to flourish. When people think of diversity, they tend to refer to race and ethnicity. Daniel Levi, in his 2001 book “Group Dynamics for Teams,” prescribes that true diversity has three compartments – psychological (values, personality), demographic (gender, race, ethnicity, age) and organizational (tenure, occupation, status). In reality, diversity has always been around us but was suppressed or completely ignored. Conformity and uniformity were the bureaucratic methods established for controlling and seeing society. Fueled by globalization and technology (and climate change), econocentric perspectives have shown their flaws and limitations in managing variations and complexities, leading to frequent crises. Traditional Approaches to Planning In their 2005 article, “Post-crisis Discourse and Organizational Change,” Seeger, Ulmer, Novak, & Sellnow describe crisis as a “specific, unexpected, and non-routine event or series of events which creates high levels of uncertainty and threat or perceived threat to an organization’s high priority goals.” A crisis will generally have a “low probability/high consequence,” such that it defies interpretation, thereby imposing severe demands on sensemaking. The words “crisis,” “disaster,” and “emergency” are sometimes used synonymously to describe a disruption to a system that causes a breakdown of structures, routines, procedures, rules, norms, and relationships and beliefs. Individuals, groups/teams, and organization/communities can be affected by crisis, sometimes differently. For this study and report, we focus on crisis effect on organization/community and use both words synonymously. Traditionally, a crisis is seen as an event that could have been avoided. Crisis discourse generally has a retrospective focus. Our current systems of managing and planning are therefore largely reactive and normative. They are based on rationality. The processes are top-down, command and control, and cause and effect oriented. Failures in crisis and disaster management, such as the Katrina disaster and home mortgage crises, demonstrate that there may be fundamental problems in the way we continue to plan, particularly amidst the unpredictability of the next crisis. After 9/11, we had Katrina, then the Virginia Tech shooting, and now a mortgage crisis. Yet, normative adjustments remain modus operandi. We fix the problem based on the flaws of the last crisis. We keep making the same mistakes, crisis after crisis, because we are not looking at the big picture. Poor leadership, communication, under- and over-estimation of risk, flexibility, cooperation, command structures, and trust between agencies or authorities are the usual culprits. Crisis managers are asked to think outside the box but largely remain in the box. So do the structures surrounding decision-making, even during crisis. Absence of resources: education, budget, authority, experience, and support further restrain the practitioners. Emergency managers historically come from military, law enforcement, and fire. Even the military has had to change its tactics to fight the new type of urban warfare. There is now a call from the disaster management field to increase the diversity in the disaster management profession to include women, minorities, and professionals from varied disciplines. Scholars have also been attracted to the field due to its seminal nature. Whereas a normative approach to crisis management planning has its place and usefulness, many researchers now purport that a crisis is and should be looked at as a natural stage in an ongoing evolution and an important part of the learning process. An emergent perception is to view crisis as an illumination of reality that may raise the awareness for evaluation and change. Although infrequent, unexpected, abnormal, sometimes seemingly devastating, crises and disasters can be experienced richly as precipitous to learning and change. The Chinese language interpretation and symbol for crisis is opportunity. Crisis is potentially a natural outcome of dysfunction within, between and among individuals, organizations, and cultures. When we juxtapose these factors with climatic, technological and multicultural issues, we see the need for diversity and integration in our planning. A crisis or disaster is inevitable in a complex system. Need for Diversity in Planning If crises and disasters have become unpredictable, calamitous, and inevitable, more emphasis should be placed on helping people to prepare, react, and respond to them. The effort to engage the communities in disaster preparedness has been dismal. Philosopher Jurgen Herbamas wrote in 1975, “A crisis cannot be separated from those experiencing it.” Besides the efforts of physical prevention, we can help people better make sense of the situation when they are well informed, are participants in the planning, establish trust prior, etc. Our response teams and efforts must also reflect and be adaptive to the changing circumstances and demographics. We must integrate diversity factors into our planning. When it comes to diversity, we have moved from ignorance to suppression to awareness to acceptance and now, our challenge is integration. According to the United Nations statistics, the number of people living outside their countries of origin rose from 96 million to 174 million between 1980 and 2000. “The central challenge for modern diversifying societies (therefore) is to create a new, broader sense of ‘we,’” Putnam wrote in his best seller, “Bowling Alone.” Margaret Wheatley, in 2004, added that the benefits of diversity emerge not from the variation of races and ethnicity (demographic diversity) but from the presence of different outlooks and specializations – a cognitive influence of diversity Emergent organizational theories now emphasize systems that are flexible, adaptable, and integrated. For instance, after 9/11, while cockpit doors in planes were hardened, little was done to protect from plastics and liquid explosives until recently in 2006. On the other hand, a federal directive for pilots to possess guns in flight was finally scrapped after many pilots and airlines protested. These are typical emergency management reactions to a disaster in an effort to prevent another, similar to the last. “They are reactive, not proactive,” said Retired Air Force Col. Randall J. Larson. And so, Hurricane Katrina struck to find us unprepared. “We are asked to think outside the box but we remain in the box.” Meanwhile, our society continues to grow in complexity; climatically, technologically, and culturally. Our systems of governance and education, for instance, are not changing at the pace of rapid diversity. Communication is the key to sensemaking in crisis: The more affected we are by the situation the more information we need. The continuous flow of information gives people the capacity to respond intelligently to crisis situations. Effective communication among organization members, stakeholders, the public, response teams, volunteers, the media, and governmental and non-governmental agencies before, during, and in the aftermath of crisis often is viewed as a significant benchmark for success or failure in crisis. Given our changing circumstances, diversity and sensemaking in crisis management planning could be the cornerstone of political “success.” Sensemaking is the process of generating and interpreting a social world to form a shared meaning, at times, from complex and divergent perspectives. Sensemaking in crisis cannot be effective in today’s multi-cultural communities without consideration for diversity. Through the exploration of our diversity, we begin to collate our common needs and aspirations. In his article, “Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis Situation,” Weick (1988) wrote that the less sensemaking process directed at a crisis, the more likely that the crisis will get out of hand. The entity (individual, leader, group, organization, or community) has the opportunity to fundamentally reframe a crisis through renewal discourse, focusing on the opportunities that arise from it within the context of shared values of that particular entity. Sensemaking that ensues from accurate and current information also potentially controls panic and overreaction that sometimes lead to additional losses. In their European study on multicultural communication, Falkheimer and Heide (2006) propose the use of ethnicity, focusing collective cultural identity as dynamic, relational, and situational in crisis theory and practice. Current mass and system oriented crisis communication paradigms could be replaced with a culturally sensitive and reflexive perspective. The authors purport that “crisis communication should be understood and analyzed as a ‘sensemaking’ process, where reality is negotiated and constructed in cultural contexts and situations rather than distributed from sender to recipient.” Identity is the sense-making capacity of the organization; it begins with the individuals, goes to groups, and forms the culture of the organization. Today, for diverse communities, it is important to understand and incorporate everyone’s views into the way we organize. Communities in crisis can re-enact their world through discourse to make sense of what just happened in ways that lead to better understanding and acceptance. In some cases, this post-crisis interpretation may be so compelling that it yields extraordinary efforts by members to rebuild and recreate the organization. Challenges of Implementation Many organizations will tell you they are for diversity and are active in its pursuit and implementation. The reality is that attitudes are entrenched and are hard to change. Kaman Lee (2005) in “Crisis, Culture, Community,” suggests the negligence of a culture-based crisis management planning may reflect underlying ethno-centrism among researchers and practitioners. It may also be a trap that they slip into unconsciously. In other cases, planners’ view of diversity is narrow and at times, convenient. “We can’t get people on the other side to participate,” “We embrace diversity,” and “We’ve met the federal mandates for issues such as special needs assessment.” “There’s no budget for outreach programs.” So in the face of rapid multi-culturalization, mainstream diversity management and literature continues to focus disproportionately on how the “diverse” shall adjust to the system. A crisis or disaster will inevitably expose the flaws and inequities in the system. That has a way of exacerbating the crisis. Think of the images of Katrina and the poor leadership response. It behooves complex organizations in diverse communities to not only incorporate diversity and sensemaking into their planning, but they should also be able to measure such in their plans and operations. To date, for example, there are only few obscure studies of the special role of women in homes, teams and communities in time of crisis, noted Elena Enarson (1988) in her article, “Through Women’s Eyes.” Components of Diversity and Sensemaking in Crisis As organizations move the diversity concept beyond simple quantification (number of blacks, number of female contractors, etc.), their challenge now and in the future is achieving true integration. The full benefits of diversity and sensemaking in emergent organization planning cannot be fully realized with minimal integration of the different components of the system. Many who find themselves in the fringe will tell you how their views and participation are suppressed even when nominally counted in. Therefore, successful diversity and integration cannot and should not be measured by quantity alone but also by quality. This is so because, in the increasing complexities of communities and crises, diversity and sensemaking become critical tools to reckon with for safety and effective response to crisis. Extensive research and synthesis of the literature on crisis management, organization and diversity theories helped this research to identify six prevailing components of diversity and sensemaking in crisis management for diverse organizations and communities. They are flexibility, inclusion, trust, risk perception, adaptability and equitability. These components were found to be most consistent throughout bothe theory and practical literature. These variables (components) and their definitions relative to crisis management were presented to several experts for validation and subsequently pilot tested. Finally, in March 2008, a full study was conducted at the Disaster Recovery Journal (DRJ) conference to measure the viability of these variables in disaster management as perceived by planners attending the national conference on business continuity planning. Table 1: Graph Showing the Gap between Current Practice and Importance 1) With statistical significance, respondents perceived these variables of diversity to be low in their respective disaster management practice. 2) With statistical significance, they also perceived the variables to be of high importance in crisis management planning for diverse communities. 3) A wide gap therefore exists between current practice and a desired state of diversity conscious disaster management planning. See Table 1. Specifically, risk perception and flexibility were ranked highest, both in presence and in importance by all demographics who participated in the survey. See table 2. Equitability, Inclusion and trust ranked lowest for both presence and importance, respectively. Table 2. Comparison of High Ratings (4 and 5 combined) Presence and Importance. Women, however, generally ranked the diversity and sensemaking variables of equitability, inclusion, and trust higher than their male counterpart for importance. See table 3. Y = Yes, N = No Table 3: Statistically Significant Difference in Importance of Variables by Demography 1. Utilizing the variables of diversity and sensemaking established in this research, the planners themselves found their disaster management program to be flawed or inadequate without adequate consideration for diversity and sensemaking. 2. With the establishment of these variables, it is now possible for institutions to scientifically and correctly measure the presence of diversity in their management program. Opportunities for future study: 1. Further studies need to be conducted of these variables to test their consistency and validity as comprehensive and true measurements of diversity, not only amongst emergency and crisis management planners but also with organizations in general, particularly those who are looking to effectively measure the effectiveness of their diversity programs. Dollar or demographic measures are limiting and could be manipulated. 2. If disaster response planners perceive a significant gap between current and desired practice for inclusion of diversity and sensemaking in disaster management planning, it would be interesting to measure the perception of ordinary citizens on the same matter, particularly those who recently experienced a disaster. 3. If planners acknowledge a gap, what are the steps needed to close the gap and what may be the obstacles? Diversity as a concept and as the way we live is here to stay. Our organizing often lags behind new realities. Don Beck in his influential book, “Spiral Dynamic” writes, “It is time to create the new models that have in them the complexity that makes the older systems obsolete. And to the extent that we can do that, and do that quickly, I think we can provide what will be necessary for a major breakthrough for the future.” Studies show repeatedly that diversity fosters creativity and gives decision-making strength. This study insinuates the need for more diversity to foster strength in decision-making and also the need for incorporating sensemaking in our crisis planning. In our crisis and disaster management planning, we ought to be able to exercise flexibility; include as many components as possible in the planning; cultivate trust between groups and neighbors prior to crisis; learn to better measure risk; tempering our response accordingly; learn to adapt to the changing environment; and strive for equitability before, during, and in the aftermath of crisis. Most importantly, we need to be able to assess our level of preparedness vis-à-vis diversity and sensemaking in planning. These variables provide tools for such assessment. The sooner we adopt these variables in our planning, the more lives we will be able to save and the more we will be perceived as effective-successful! Peter Osilaja, Ed.D. is the CEO/founder of KidSafety of America. For 17 years, KidSafety of America has created and marketed health and safety education concepts, products and services to the public sector. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org. "Appeared in DRJ's Winter 2009 Issue"

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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Pilot Biologist Fred Roetker's Cessna float plane used during the May pond count – photo courtesy USFWS Anything that dictates waterfowl hunting season lengths, dates and bag limits always catches hunters' attention. Which is why the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's annual Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey report never goes unnoticed as hunters enter the off-season's final stretch. In preparation for the report's release, typically the first week of July, it might be helpful to understand who exactly comes up with these counts, how they do it, and perhaps even more importantly, how the results ultimately impact hunters. From mid- to late May, the USFWS teams up with the Canadian Wildlife Service and state, provincial and tribal agencies to conduct the survey, which is designed to estimate the breeding waterfowl population's size and to evaluate habitat conditions. Each year, pilot biologists and observers fly fixed-wing airplanes at low altitude (150 feet) on established transect lines throughout the continent's major waterfowl habitat areas. The survey covers more than 55,000 linear miles representing more than 2.1 million square miles of the northern United States and Canada. How does USFWS come up with final estimates? The aerial waterfowl count is complemented by surveys ground crews conduct to make up for the fact that some birds aren't visible from the air. It's easy to imagine, for example, that large, bright canvasbacks are much easier to see than small, cryptically colored green-winged teal. The disparity between the aerial and ground counts of individual species helps biologists develop visibility correction factors to apply to aerial counts. First, they use their aerial counts and adjust them based on these visibility correction factors, then extrapolate the sampled transect results to the entire survey area. Over the last 55 years, the result has been an estimate of breeding duck numbers using key nesting areas. In some of the far northern regions of the traditional survey area, like the Boreal Forest, ground counts simply aren't feasible, as access to the land is extremely limited. In these situations, the USFWS changes its aerial game plan by conducting the visibility surveys along a limited number of transects in helicopters rather than fixed-wing planes. Since the helicopters move slower and offer greater visibility, corrections can be developed from fixed-wing versus helicopter observations. Important to note is that populations of a number of species, including mallards, northern shovelers, blue-winged and green-winged teal and gadwalls have been, in recent years, higher than the long-term average. The 2010 survey will reveal whether or not this recent trend will continue. All about habitat The term "May ponds" refers to the index of wetland habitat obtained at the same time the birds are counted, hence the Habitat portion of the survey. As a general rule, duck production increases in wet years; so, the number of May ponds along with the count of breeding ducks is an early signal of the coming fall flight. In recent years, the surveys have shown much variation in habitat conditions between different regions. For example, the 2009 survey reported that considerable precipitation in late spring 2008 and above-normal precipitation over the fall and winter recharged wetlands across the Dakotas and eastern Montana, making for especially wet habitat conditions. Conversely, below-average precipitation through northern Saskatchewan and parts of northern Manitoba led to rather dry conditions. The 2010 survey will show current expectations for habitat conditions in the coming season. The survey results for habitat and waterfowl populations will be the basis for the regulations process. The process between the USFWS and states, which sets season dates and bag limits, begins within a few weeks after the survey's completion. For more information:

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The National Ignition Facility out at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is the size of a football stadium and equipped with the largest laser in the world. With said massive laser nearing completion — it'll be done by 2009 — and the facility scheduled to begin testing in 2010, the folks running the show have set an ambitious timetable of realizing fusion power by 2011. It sounds too good to be true, and maybe it is, but it centers around a concept called Laser Inertial Confinement Fusion-Fission Energy (or LIFE), which produces carbon-free electricity using a laser like the one installed at the NIF. According to an LLNL release, LIFE could "generate gigawatts of power 24 hours a day for as long as 50 years without refueling while avoiding carbon dioxide emissions." Only time will tell if we're finally able to take advantage of fusion, but I'm looking forward to slapping my forehead and shouting "Great Scott!" when it does.

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The Angel and the Virgin: A Brief History of the Annunciation A display selected from the Museum’s collection by the artist, writer and print historian Lino Mannocci, whose own work can be seen in the exhibition Clouds and Myths: Monotypes by Lino Mannocci. Illuminating the different ways in which artists have depicted the Annunciation - the revelation of the Angel Gabriel to Mary that she would conceive a child who was the son of God - this selection unites a range of old master prints from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries with a select group of manuscripts, enamels and ceramics. At the exhibition’s centre is the Annunciation panel by Domenico Veneziano, a source of inspiration for Mannocci’s own work. Tue 9 February 2010 to Sun 9 May 2010 Charrington Print Room (Gallery 16)

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Rabies is a viral disease that is transmitted through the saliva of infected warm-blooded animals like raccoons, skunks, foxes, bats, cats, and dogs. Rabies is most often spread to animals and humans through a bite from an infected animal. For humans, rabies is almost always fatal if rabies shots are not given before the onset of rabies symptoms . Rabid animals may act tame, or may display strange or unusual behavior such as aggressiveness, avoiding food and water, foaming at the mouth, or difficulty moving. Stay away from any strange animals, especially wildlife. Report any unusual acting animal to your County Animal Control office. Tips to Prevent Rabies: Keep pet’s rabies shots up-to-date. By Georgia law, dogs, cats, and ferrets must get a rabies vaccine when they are 3 months old, but be aware that for some newer combination vaccines, this age is 8 weeks. Call your veterinarian for more details on rabies vaccines for your pets. - Keep pets indoors, in a fenced yard, or on a leash when outdoors at all times. - Do not leave uncovered garbage or pet food outside. Food that is left out may attract wild or stray animals. - Stay away from wild, sick, hurt, or dead animals. Do not pick up or move sick or hurt animals. If you find a wild, sick, or hurt animal, call your County Animal Control office. - Do not keep wild animals like raccoons, skunks, foxes, coyotes, and wolves as pets. It is dangerous and also illegal. - Teach your children not to go near, tease, or play with wild animals or strange dogs and cats. - Call the GPC at 1-800-222-1222 with any rabies questions.

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During the Finnish-Soviet negotiations ending the Continuation War (1941–1944) between Finland and the Soviet Union, the Soviets renounced their claim to Hanko and instead demanded the right to construct a naval base at Porkkala. The Finns were forced to agree to a fifty-year lease on Porkkala as part of the Moscow Armistice concluded on 19 September 1944. Finnish President Carl Mannerheim regarded this concession as the most troublesome provision of the armistice agreement because Soviet forces could easily occupy Helsinki via Porkkala. The Finnish handover of Porkkala took place ten days after the armistice was signed, and its 10,000 inhabitants were given eight days to evacuate the peninsula. On 28 September 1944, Soviet troops occupied the area. The lease was confirmed in the Paris Peace Treaty of 10 February 1947. On 24 May 1947, the Soviet Union and Finland signed the Porkkala-Udd Transit Agreement that permitted Soviet forces to transit southeastern Finland in order to supply their recently acquired base. In the years that followed, the value of the Porkkala Peninsula to the Soviet Union diminished. There was no threat to Soviet control over the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland, and military advances also meant that the Soviet Union could close off the Gulf of Finland from its southern coast. Also, conclusion of the Finnish-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance in April 1948 and the policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union pursued by President Juho Paasikivi (1946–1956) all worked to lessen tensions between the two states. On 17 February 1955, Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin informed President Paasikivi and Prime Minister Urho Kekkonen that Moscow was willing to renounce its fifty-year lease on Porkkala in return for a twenty-year extension of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance with Finland, and a communiqué was subsequently issued to that effect. Porkkala was officially returned to Finland on 26 January 1956. Vehvilainen, Olli. Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia. London: Palgrave, 2002.

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OFF THE CHARTS Oil supply rising, but demand may more than keep pace Published: Saturday, November 24, 2012 at 4:36 p.m. Last Modified: Saturday, November 24, 2012 at 4:36 p.m. It used to be taken for granted that as economies grew, they would use more oil. That was a major reason cited in warnings that the world would run out of oil, particularly if standards of living rose in developing countries. Well, standards of living are improving in developing countries, but the dire forecasts now appear to be wrong. In part that is because new discoveries and improving technologies have increased the amount of oil that can be produced. It also reflects conservation, in part, as cars become more efficient and as other steps are taken to reduce oil use. The International Energy Agency, in its 2012 World Energy Outlook, released last week, forecast that U.S. oil production, which began to rise in 2009 after decades of decline, would continue rising through at least 2020, when it could be about as high as it was in 1970, the year of peak production. At the same time it forecast that by 2035, U.S. oil consumption, which peaked in 2005, could decline to levels not seen since the 1960s, depending on how much conservation is encouraged. The IEA report also forecast that by around 2020, the United States could surpass Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer, and that while the country was not likely to become a net exporter of oil, the North American continent as a whole could be by around 2030. But despite declining demand in some countries that historically were heavy users of oil, the world demand for oil seems likely to continue to rise. The IEA forecast that global energy demand – including demand for energy produced by other sources – is likely to rise by 35 percent by 2035, with a large part of the increase coming from China and India. In 1969, the United States consumed a third of the oil used in the world, while China used less than 1 percent. Last year the U.S. share was less than 22 percent, while the Chinese accounted for 11 percent. The IEA forecasts that by 2030, the U.S. share could be less than the Chinese one. By 2035, U.S. consumption of oil is expected to be as much as one-third less than it was last year. In China, oil consumption is expected to be up as much as two-thirds from the 2011 level, and India's is predicted to more than double. Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.

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THE PATTERNS OF HOME LANGUAGE USAGE AS DETERMINANTS OF ACADEMIC LEARNING OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS Mishra, S.P., The University of Arizona, USA The study examined the impact of the patterns of home language uses on the academic learning of English Language Learners (ELL). On the basis of dominant spoken language patterns in home of Mexican-American students from low socio-economic homes, the sampled children were divided into bilingual and monolingual groups. The subjects in the study consisted of 146 children from an elementary school. A battery of standardized achievement tests was administered to both monolingual and bilingual groups of subjects. The findings indicated that children speaking both English and Spanish languages at their homes with equal frequency significantly outperformed on all measures of academic achievement as compared with their English or Spanish only monolingual counterparts. The implications of obtained findings indicate the cognitive benefits of bilingualism as it relates to academic learning and readiness.

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Most kids have a portable music player, but how many can build their own portable speaker dock? This science kit for kids contains everything needed to build a working plug & play dock for any device with a headphone jack (that plays saved music), including iPods, cell phones & mp3 players. Kids will learn some basic electronics, including the difference between analog and digital technology. No tools required. Needs 1 9V battery (not included). For ages 8 years and up. Speaker Dock Kit Components: 1 circuit board, 1 set of speakers, 1 LED, 1 on/off switch, 2 optional paper housing designs, 2 sheets double stick tape, 4-color booklet. Awards: Parents Magazine Best Toy, Oppenheim Top Toy Platinum. WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD—Small parts. Not for children younger than 3 years.

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Virgil Hawkins Story Paving the Way for Equal Rights In April 1949, Virgil D. Hawkins, a former faculty member of Bethune Cookman College, applied for admission to the University of Florida College of Law. He was academically eligible and possessed appropriate life experience qualifications. For nine years Hawkins and his allies would fight Florida’s Jim Crow laws, which racially segregated its state universities, until they were ultimately victorious in the U.S. Supreme Court. In May of 1949, UF denied admission to Hawkins and five other African-American applicants solely based on race. Hawkins appealed under the Equal Protection Clause to the Florida Supreme Court but did not prevail. The Court instead required Florida to build a law school for black students at Florida A&M University. Between 1948 and 1956, 85 African-American students are denied admission to UF. “All Deliberate Speed” In the landmark 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that public schools nationwide must be desegreagated with “all deliberate speed” by 1956 and in a companion decision ordered UF to admit Hawkins. He was still not admitted, and would go before the Florida Supreme Court three more times and the United States Supreme Court twice more. Sacrifice Leads to Integration In 1958, Hawkins withdrew his application to the University of Florida College of Law in exchange for a Florida Supreme court order desegregating UF’s graduate and professional schools. On Sept. 15, 1958, George Starke was admitted to the College of Law, UF’s first African-American law student. Starke received police protection for the first few weeks, but withdrew after three semesters. Public schools across Florida finally began to integrate. W. George Allen became the first African-American to graduate from the University of Florida College of Law in 1962. The first seven African American undergraduates register at UF. Inspiration and Backlash The 1960s were an era of change and instability but also of great progress. This eventful decade included the March on Washington, JFK’s assassination to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the desegregation of Alachua County public schools. In 1965, the Center for African Studies was established at UF. In 1968, the Black Student Union was established at UF. In 1969, Spencer Boyer was hired as a visiting professor and first African American to teach at UF Law, but he and his family left abruptly after receiving threats. Also in 1969, the African American Studies Program at UF begins. Stephan P. Mickle becomes the second African-American to graduate from UF Law in 1970. Mickle went on to become the first African-American to establish a law practice in Gainesville and ultimately became a federal judge. The 1970s also student protest against UF admissions policies based on race, resulting in one-third of African-American students leaving the university and paving the way for UF’s first affirmative action policy. Since then, UF has established itself as a racialy diverse institution, with the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations established at the law school dedicated to the continued study and discussion of difficult race-related issues.

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Child Safety Tips Child Safety Brochures General Child Safety for Parents - Straight talk with children works best when discussing the serious topic of personal safety with your children. Do not rely completely on puppets, coloring books, gimmicks, and cartoon characters. - Instill in your children a sense of self-worth and dignity at every opportunity. - Teach your children basic sex education, (i.e., the areas of the body that are covered by a bathing suit are private). - Establish that inappropriate touches are against the law. This gives your child confidence to assert themselves with those who try to abuse them. - Allow children to express affection on their terms. Do not instruct them to give kisses or hugs to people they do not know well. - Stress that there should be no secrets from you, especially those involving another adult. - Explain the importance of reporting abuse or attempted abuse to or another "Trusted Adult." This would also apply to inappropriate touching. - Do not rely entirely on "The Buddy System." In many documented cases, sisters, brothers, and playmates have been victims of terrible crimes when together. - Make it a priority to get to know your children’s friends and their families. - Encourage involvement in extracurricular activities. Children with many interests are less likely to experiment with drugs or other negative influences. - Teach your children to respect, admire, and celebrate the differences in people. - Ask questions about what your children are doing, where they are going, and whom they will be with. - "Set Times" to be home or check in. Have a back-up plan. - A child’s room should not be considered their private, personal domain where parents are not allowed to check them. - Monitor computer and Internet usage, daily, if possible. - Above all, encourage your children to recognize, trust, and follow their instincts about people and situations. Listen to their instincts. Good Parenting is asking the hard questions and caring about the answers. Stranger Safety Tips for Children What is a stranger? - Simple, a stranger is someone that you do not know or your parents do not know. - Strangers are even people you see every day. Not all strangers are bad, but it is very difficult to tell bad strangers from good strangers Examples of strangers: - A person that you never met before. - A person that you may see often, but know nothing about; e.g., the ice cream person, mail person, newspaper person, or a neighbor. - A person whose name and address you do not know. - A person your parents do not know. - Strangers can come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages. Even a teenager could be considered a stranger to you. - Safety rules for dealing with strangers. If approached by a "stranger" you should: - Never talk to a stranger. - Never go near a stranger. - Never accept gifts or rides from a stranger. - If a stranger comes toward you, step backwards, turn around and run away. - Never go anywhere with a stranger. - Report strangers to your parents, teachers, bus drivers, or a responsible adult that you know well. - The main rule to remember: "Stay away from strangers." Examples of stranger scenarios: - What should you do if a stranger asks you for help or offers you candy, a toy, or a pet? Say "NO", turn around and run away. - What should you do if a stranger asks you to go for a ride in their car? Say "NO", and run in the opposite direction that the car is going. - What should you do if a stranger tries to grab you? You can yell for help! You can kick, scratch, or bite! You can run away as fast as you can. - What should you do if a stranger has a gun and tells you to go with him? Yell for HELP! Run away as fast as you can, and continue yelling for help. Go tell an adult. - Always remember to tell your parents, a police officer, a teacher, a bus driver, or another adult you trust and know, about what happened as soon as possible. Being safe at home when you are alone - Always lock the door. Do not answer the door if someone knocks. Never let strangers into the house. - If the telephone rings, answer it. Do not tell anyone that you are alone. (You can tell them your parent cannot come to the phone right now). Ask who is calling, and offer to take a message. - If there is a storm, stay away from the windows. - Leave medicines and poisons alone, they can really hurt you. - Do not play or touch any guns that might be in the house. Other rules for safety - Never go anywhere without first telling your parents, or the person in charge, where you are going, who is going with you, how you will get there, and when you will be back. - Always use the "Buddy System" when playing outside or going places. - Always say "NO" if someone tries to touch you in ways that make you feel frightened, uncomfortable, or confused. Always tell a grown-up that you trust about what happened. - Always go directly home from school or the bus stop. Back to Top Page Last Edited: Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:40:10 AM If you cannot view PDF files, you can download Acrobat Reader for free from Adobe Systems, Inc. In order to use PDF files, you must have Acrobat installed on your computer.

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Constant and strong unpleasant breath odor is known as halitosis. For many people suffering from halitosis, it becomes an embarrassment for them to be part of society. This in turn leads to low self esteem. In most cases, the root of halitosis lies in the mouth. Dental hygiene is very important to cure and prevent bad breath. Here we give you a list of natural cures for halitosis. Halitosis generally occurs from bacteria that settle in the corners of the teeth and gums. If you do not brush regularly, food particles may remain intact in gaps between teeth becoming the breeding ground for bacteria and releasing a foul smell. Brush twice a day and floss daily if you have bad breath. Use a mouthwash to rinse after every meal. Make sure that your mouthwash contains zinc ions if you want to eliminate bad breath. Zinc neutralizes the sulfur compounds in the mouth which cause foul odor. Mouthwashes containing essential oils are also beneficial in curing halitosis. Both tea tree oil and lemon oil have antibacterial properties to help cure bad breath. You can also dilute peppermint oil in water and rinse your mouth with this solution after every meal. Unclean mouths are the chief cause of halitosis. So oral health is very important if you want to get rid of bad odor in the mouth. Using tongue scrapers removes food particles, dead skin cells and bacteria settled on the tongue. Sometimes the tongue appears white due to a thick coating on the upper layer. This has to be removed with a tongue scraper. Even if you do not have a tongue scraper, clean the tongue with a spare toothbrush. Drinking cold water or other cool fluids like cucumber soup or fruit juices is important to maintain oral hygiene. It is said that excess heat in the stomach leads to a foul smell that is emanated from the mouth. Balance the heat in your body especially during summers by consuming large quantities of cool fluids. Both black and green tea contain compounds called polyphenols which help in killing bacteria in the mouth. Brew your tea very light for best results against halitosis. Chewing on herbs will help eliminate halitosis. Take small sprigs of parsley, rosemary, tarragon or spearmint and chew on them for less than five minutes after meals for best results against halitosis. You can also boil sprigs of herbs in water and drink the liquid. Chewing on crunchy vegetables and fruits cures halitosis effectively. It is said that the crunchiness removes plaque from teeth. However, you have to take care that particles of these fruits and vegetables like carrot, jicama or apple does not remain in the mouth after you have finished eating. Studies have shown that this green pigment present in plant leaves neutralizes halitosis by removing toxins and bacteria present in the bloodstream. Boil plants such as wheatgrass, alfalfa or barley in water and drink the solution. These plants contain a high percentage of chlorophyll and successfully remove bad breath. Photo Credit : http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/medical/IM02080

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As small schools across the Northern Plains consolidate, a town fights to preserve its rural, two-room schoolhouse. By Cindy Long The spelling and grammar lesson in Steven Podoll’s classroom is a little like the changing of the guard. “Fifth-graders, please come up,” Podoll calls. Two students push back their chairs and rise to meet him at a table in the front of the room, passing two fourth-graders on their way back to their seats with their assignment. Half an hour later, two sixth-graders replace the fifth-graders. Finally, the seventh-grader is called up. And so it goes for math, science, reading, and the rest of the subjects the fourth- through eighth-graders in Podoll’s class study at this two-classroom rural school in Baldwin, North Dakota. The Baldwin School sits on a small hill in the center of “town”—just behind the hand-printed “Welcome to Baldwin” sign and across the railroad tracks from a white clapboard post office the size of a toolshed. It overlooks the wide northern plains that roll on for miles before meeting the sky. The town itself lies on a country road east of Highway 83, about 15 miles into the sloping grasslands of the open prairie north of Bismarck. The population hovers around 54 or 55, according to the local postmaster. A community of farmers and ranchers, the people of Baldwin have for generations worked the land through storms, drought, grassfires, and blizzards. Like fluctuating crops of grain, the town has grown and flourished, withered and shrunk. But it’s always endured, thanks in large part to the town school that first opened its doors in 1908. For those who live in Baldwin and other small towns across the country’s Great Plains, the prairie isn’t just a place, it’s a way of life—and one that may be drawing to a close as farmers sell off land and livestock, urban areas sprawl, and small towns dwindle. With them go the country schoolhouses that once dotted the landscape. North Dakota alone had more than 4,700 one-room schools in the early 1900s. Now only a handful remain, and as is the case elsewhere in the Midwest, state laws and declining populations are prompting many small schools to either consolidate or close. Often, a town’s school is its last foothold. When the school closes, the town dies. And that’s exactly what the people of Baldwin hope to prevent. “If the school closed, it would be as if Baldwin suffered a stroke,” says Podoll. “It might survive, but barely.” This year, there are no eighth-graders in Podoll’s class, which has just seven students—two each in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, and one seventh-grader, a tall, blonde girl named Tori, who often helps the younger students, including her sixth-grade brother, Travis. Next door in the K–3 classroom, fellow teacher Beth Duey has eight students—a few of them with siblings in Podoll’s class. Over the years, the population of the school has reflected the prosperity of the town. When it first opened in 1908, eight years after Baldwin was founded, teacher W.E. Yeater (gender not recorded) had 26 students and earned $50 a month. The population held steady through the teens and twenties, growing to 37 students in 1934—a class that, according to the records, included six “farm boys,” six “farm girls,” 12 “town boys,” and 13 “town girls.” Then the Dust Bowl spread northward and depression gripped the country. By 1937, just 11 students were enrolled in the Baldwin School. Slowly, the town population rebounded. By the 1950s school enrollment was back in the 30s and 40s, but Baldwin was never the same. In its heyday, the town boomed with banks, hotels, grain elevators, a lumber yard, newspaper, train depot—even a dance hall. A series of fires razed many businesses, others simply closed their doors. Today, the center of town consists of a post office, a railroad track crossing, a handful of houses, and the Baldwin School. That list might get shorter if North Dakota’s state legislature passes a bill that would require elementary schools with fewer than 100 students to consolidate with a district that has a high school. After the eighth grade, Baldwin students currently have a choice between high schools in Bismarck to the south or the “bigger small town” of Wilton to the north. Although the Baldwin school wouldn’t immediately close—the town must vote whether to keep it open—residents feel the passage of S.B. 2333 would make it inevitable. “It’s taxation without representation,” says Podoll. “It would take local control of the school away from Baldwin, and it would divert property taxes to the [consolidated] district. Nobody in Baldwin wants this to happen. Everyone realizes that when you stop funding schools, towns suffer.” According to Marty Strange, policy director at the Rural Schools and Community Trust, a national nonprofit addressing the relationship between schools and communities, consolidation is “hot in areas with depressed rural economies and where urban areas are growing fast.” Both descriptions fit Baldwin. A prolonged three-year drought has sapped local farmers, and the edge of Bismarck is creeping closer, with Baldwin sitting in the shadow of Bismarck’s new Super Wal-Mart, a short 15-minute drive down the highway. The argument for consolidation, Strange says, is that it lowers taxes for the citizens of rural towns and provides children with access to a wider array of classes and services. “But people know their local schools work,” he says. “And rural America has paid through the nose for the privilege of having good schools in their communities. They’ve shown time and again that they’re willing to sacrifice to keep them.” That’s been the case in Baldwin, where town residents have repeatedly voted to raise their mill levies to keep the school open, according to Gerry Ann Small, an aide at the Baldwin School. Her husband and three children attended the school, and she’s quick to point out that all of her kids remained on the honor roll in high school after graduating from Baldwin. “Our kids get a solid education here,” she says. “A Bismarck teacher once told me she could always pick out the country kids—they were ready to study, polite, and always willing to help their neighbor,” she says. The legislation is coming up for a vote again this year, and “they’re in for another fight,” says Small. “This school is the heart and soul of our community.” On the first day of school, the local Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter visits the Baldwin School for the first flag-raising of the year (the flag pole was donated by the VFW in honor of five Baldwin soldiers killed in the Vietnam War). In December, the town gathers at the school for its holiday program, and the students go caroling from farmhouse to farmhouse, where they’re greeted with warm cookies or cider. For Valentine’s Day, grandparents are invited to school for breakfast. The students even organized a Youth Citizen’s League so they could volunteer within the community. They raised money to help a newlywed couple whose home burned down, for a local firefighter badly injured on the job, and to buy clothing and winter gear for needy children. And then there are the basketball games. Two coed teams—fourth through eighth grade, and second through third, compete against four other rural schools in Burleigh County. The first-graders are the cheerleaders, complete with uniforms and pom-poms. “When the Baldwin Bullets play, that gym is plum full with folks from town,” Small says. One of their most loyal fans is the postmaster, Gail Gordon, who was born in Baldwin in 1942 and has lived there ever since. Gordon believes the school, like the post office, is central to Baldwin’s small-town character. “When a small town loses its school or its post office, it loses its identity,” she says. Gordon’s father was the postmaster when she started out as a clerk in 1958. Before the building was converted into a post office, it was St. John’s Lutheran Church (the pulpit is still intact). Before it became a church, it was a “rolling schoolhouse” that sat perched atop timbers and was pulled by horses from field to field where farm children could take a break for their lessons. When Gordon stands at her counter, she looks out at the present-day school yard, where she can watch the kids play during recess. “I went to school there, my dad went to school there, and my daughter went to school there,” she says. “It’s always been a fine school.” It still is. The students benefit from a low student-teacher ratio; access to technology (there’s nearly one computer for every student, all with wireless Internet connections); a built-in tutoring system with older kids helping younger students; and a sense of community that’s difficult to develop in larger schools. And because there is just one teacher for multiple grades, there’s a consistency that allows the teacher to more effectively track progress, address problems, and become a support system. “I teach one student for five years, every day, for five or six hours,” Podoll says. “In a setting like this, these students become a member of your family. How can I not do my best to see these students succeed? How can I not care about them and their futures?” The start of the school day is almost like a scene from Little House on the Prairie. Podoll stands on the steps and rings a bell, alerting the kids playing in the school yard that it’s time to come in for class. After the Pledge of Allegiance, the students each pull out their water bottles for a 20-second drink. “Why do we drink water each morning?” Podoll asks. “Because it goes straight to our brains,” the kids chime back. While most of the curriculum is broken down by grade, Podoll tries to find a few lessons appropriate for all levels. One is the lesson in daily oral language, where Podoll writes “bad” sentences on the board and the students find the mistakes. He also teaches the students a new word of the day—he got the idea the year he received a “Word of the Day” calendar for Christmas. The favorite all-class activity is the daily reading period, when Podoll reads aloud. “He always stops at a cliffhanger,” says Small. “That way, the kids want to read the next chapter. He’s really turned them on to reading.” Podoll grew up in Hazen, North Dakota, about an hour’s drive from Baldwin. Valedictorian of his high school class of 53 students, he got a full academic scholarship to the University of North Dakota, where he studied communications with hopes of becoming an ESPN announcer, until he became “somewhat disillusioned with the behavior of the modern athlete.” He decided to become a teacher, not only for the chance to work with kids, but also because he wanted to touch as many lives as possible. “There hasn’t been a day since that I’ve regretted the decision,” he says. “Getting to know these kids and being an integral part of their lives is an experience that is at times impossible to describe.” His students have no such trouble describing him—and funny tops their list of adjectives. Podoll cracks jokes about canceling recess (the students check each day to make sure it’s still on), he accuses the students of turning his hair gray (he’s only 29), and he uses words like “ba-bada-bingo” when the kids nail an answer. He’s also fond of practical jokes. “He’s fun and smart,” says Chantelle, one of the two fifth-graders. She lives on a farm with 350 cattle, three horses, and “a bunch of cats and kittens.” One of her daily chores is to feed and water the horses in the barn; her horse, Cody, is sorrel with a white blaze on his forehead. She also helps with the herd, giving shots to the calves. “I’ve been kicked a few times,” she says. She might stay in Baldwin and help her brothers with the farm when she grows up, or she might become a marine biologist. She’s still deciding. In the meantime, her grandmother drives her the 10 miles to school each day, and Chantelle says she couldn’t imagine going anywhere else. “It’s not too big. I like little schools,” she says. “You get lots of help, the kids are nice—nobody is mean. I think it’s the best education there is.”

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versão On-line ISSN 0717-7356 SANTORO, Calogero M et al. PLEISTOCENE HUMAN OCCUPATION IN THE ATACAMA DESERT: FIRST RESULTS FROM THE APPLICATION OF AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PREDICTIVE RESEARCH MODEL. Chungará (Arica) [online]. 2011, vol.43, n.especial, pp. 353-366. ISSN 0717-7356. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0717-73562011000300003. In South America, evidence of human occupation dates back to 14,600 calibrated years BP (14.6 ka). Yet, important areas such as the Atacama Desert, between latitude 17° to 21° S (northern Atacama), lack occupations older than 11,5 ka. Current hyperarid conditions in the Atacama have dissuaded many researchers from considering this region as a possible territory for Pleistocene-Holocene peoples. Paleoecological data, however, have suggested increased availability of water along the western slope of the Andes from 17.5-9.5 ka. Thus, we systematically searched for rodent middens and paleowetlands in the large canyons of the Andean Precordillera as well as the interfluves (1,000-3,000 masl). As a result, we identified specific habitats favorable for early human settling. This interdisciplinary and predictive methodological model, summarized in this paper, allowed us to identify several sites. Among these, Quebrada Maní 12 is the first Pleistocene-Holocene human occupation (~11.9 a 12.7 ka) known from the northern Atacama. Palavras-chave : Pleistocene-Holocene transition; early peopling; paleoenvironment; Atacama Desert.

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