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An elevator from Earth to space may look something like this.
Click on image for full size
Courtesy of NASA
Elevator to Space!
News story originally written on October 15, 2000
Would you like to take an elevator to space? Scientists are working on one!
A really long cable will stretch from Earth to space. But don't get too excited.
It won't be built for at least 50 years!
Scientists say a large asteroid will be tied to the end of the cable to keep it straight.
A 20 mile high tower will be on Earth to hold the cable. Maybe some day we'll take
this elevator to space!
Shop Windows to the Universe Science Store!
Our online store
includes issues of NESTA's quarterly journal, The Earth Scientist
, full of classroom activities on different topics in Earth and space science, as well as books
on science education!
You might also be interested in:
It was another exciting and frustrating year for the space science program. It seemed that every step forward led to one backwards. Either way, NASA led the way to a great century of discovery. Unfortunately,...more
The Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on October 29th at 2:19 p.m. EST. The sky was clear and the weather was great. This was the America's 123rd manned space mission. A huge...more
Scientists found a satellite orbiting the asteroid, Eugenia. This is the second one ever! A special telescope allows scientists to look through Earth's atmosphere. The first satellite found was Dactyl....more
The United States wants Russia to put the service module in orbit! The module is part of the International Space Station. It was supposed to be in space over 2 years ago. Russia just sent supplies to the...more
A coronal mass ejection (CME) happened on the Sun last month. The material that was thrown out from this explosion passed the ACE spacecraft. ACE measured some exciting things as the CME material passed...more
Trees and plants are a very important part of this Earth. Trees and plants are nature's air conditioning because they help keep our Earth cool. On a summer day, walking bare-foot on the sidewalk burns,...more
There is something special happening in the night sky. Through mid-May, you will be able to see five planets at the same time! This doesn't happen very often, so you won't want to miss this. Use the links...more | <urn:uuid:ef8e1562-50a9-4d13-8ee0-06c887976497> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.windows2universe.org/headline_universe/space_elevator.html&edu=elem | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947135 | 511 | 3.0625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Most people spend a large chunk of their day parked in front of a computer. While they type away, these office workers are shedding millions of bacteria. Who are the worst offenders? The men, a new study suggests.
"We know that there are bacteria everywhere, but we really don't know which kinds and what their main sources are," study researcher Scott Kelly, from the University of San Diego, told LiveScience. "We spend so much time in our offices, and we know so little about the microbes that live in them."
Now we do. Kelly and his colleagues found high levels of bacteria that come from human skin and mucus membranes, as well as tons of bacteria from plants and soil when they sampled offices. The researchers also found tons of bacteria on phones and chair armrests.
Swabbing the office
In the fall of 2007, the researchers sampled bacteriafrom offices in New York, San Francisco and Tucson, Ariz. They tested three buildings per location, 10 offices in each building, for a total of 450 bacterial samples. They noted what part of the office they took the sample from (chair, phone, keyboard, desk, etc.) and the gender of the office's occupant.
They then took swabs for two tests. The first was to grow the bacteria on the swab in the lab (only some bacteria are able to grow in the lab), to give an idea of the levels of bacteria in each sample. They also analyzed the genetics of the samples, to test how many different kinds of bacteria (this includes ones that didn't grow in the lab, giving a picture of the diversity of the sample).
They analyzed all the samples and found more than 500 groups, or "genera," of bacteria on the office surfaces. The most abundant bacteria were from human skin and the nasal, oral or intestinal cavities. Other examples came from bacteria that live in soil or dust.
They found that chairs and phones had a high abundance of bacteria, while the desktop, keyboard and mouse were somewhat cleaner. "These surfaces are pretty inert. You are getting mostly what you are putting out or shedding, or what's blowing in through the door and window," Kelly said. "It's harmless; you bring it in with you."
Of particular interest, the bacteria levels the researchers found depended on the gender of the office occupant. "The surfaces inhabited by men tended to have more bacterial cells and more abundance of cells than those inhabited by women," Kelly said. [Germs Really Are Everywhere (Infographic)]
The researchers have two suggestions of why this might be. First, this could be just because men are frequently larger than women, so they have more surface area to grow bacteria, and therefore end up shedding more bacteria into their environment.
The second idea is not nearly as flattering. Previous studies have shown that men are just dirtier than women; they don’t wash their hands or brush their teeth nearly as often. This could be the cause of their extra dirty offices (and orifices), the researchers said.
They did find that San Francisco was cleaner than New York or Tucson, but that could be an artifact from the small number of buildings they tested. They did find a big difference in the soil-associated bacteria in Tucson, probably because of the different climate, researchers said.
The study was published May 30 in the journal PLoS ONE.
- 5 Foul Things That Are Good For You
- Tiny & Nasty: Images of Things That Make Us Sick
- Slacker Staffers: Disengaged in the Workplace (Infographic) | <urn:uuid:f088782d-04d4-4db6-a5b8-9fe8feeb136d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/06/01/dirtiest-places-in-office/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973649 | 732 | 3.140625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Bible: a thick, dusty book with flimsy pages, obscure language, and dense stories? None of the above. With this zine, students develop the attitudes and confidence needed to light their path with the lamp of Scripture. They can then access God’s message to the world by asking how each reading relates to them: “What does this text say about Christ, and how does it apply to my life?”
The zine explores general motivations for and goals of Bible study. It then suggests study habits and methods, and explains various formats and translations of the Bible. The zine introduces the Old and New Testaments, the kinds of books they contain, and how the books came to be there.
The Teacher Guide provides interactive lessons and further practice using the tools needed to tangle with difficult passages—study notes, cross-references, and a concordance. (Age 12+) | <urn:uuid:f34a3a70-c93a-4fb1-a13d-9a48c506a06b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.orthodoxmarketplace.com/archdiocese-departments/religious-education/zines/a-lamp-to-my-feet-an-introduction-to-the-bible-teachers-guide.html?currency=CAD | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911039 | 187 | 3.40625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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dihedral_style table style Ntable
dihedral_style table spline 400 dihedral_style table linear 1000 dihedral_coeff 1 file.table DIH_TABLE1 dihedral_coeff 2 file.table DIH_TABLE2
The table dihedral style creates interpolation tables of length Ntable from dihedral potential and derivative values listed in a file(s) as a function of the dihedral angle "phi". The files are read by the dihedral_coeff command.
The interpolation tables are created by fitting cubic splines to the file values and interpolating energy and derivative values at each of Ntable dihedral angles. During a simulation, these tables are used to interpolate energy and force values on individual atoms as needed. The interpolation is done in one of 2 styles: linear or spline.
For the linear style, the dihedral angle (phi) is used to find 2 surrounding table values from which an energy or its derivative is computed by linear interpolation.
For the spline style, cubic spline coefficients are computed and stored at each of the Ntable evenly-spaced values in the interpolated table. For a given dihedral angle (phi), the appropriate coefficients are chosen from this list, and a cubic polynomial is used to compute the energy and the derivative at this angle.
The following coefficients must be defined for each dihedral type via the dihedral_coeff command as in the example above.
The filename specifies a file containing tabulated energy and derivative values. The keyword specifies a section of the file. The format of this file is described below.
The format of a tabulated file is as follows (without the parenthesized comments). It can begin with one or more comment or blank lines.
# Table of the potential and its negative derivative
DIH_TABLE1 (keyword is the first text on line) N 30 DEGREES (N, NOF, DEGREES, RADIANS, CHECKU/F) (blank line) 1 -168.0 -1.40351172223 -0.0423346818422 2 -156.0 -1.70447981034 -0.00811786522531 3 -144.0 -1.62956100432 0.0184129719987 ... 30 180.0 -0.707106781187 -0.0719306095245
# Example 2: table of the potential. Forces omitted
DIH_TABLE2 N 30 NOF CHECKU testU.dat CHECKF testF.dat
1 -168.0 -1.40351172223 2 -156.0 -1.70447981034 3 -144.0 -1.62956100432 ... 30 180.0 -0.707106781187
A section begins with a non-blank line whose 1st character is not a "#"; blank lines or lines starting with "#" can be used as comments between sections. The first line begins with a keyword which identifies the section. The line can contain additional text, but the initial text must match the argument specified in the dihedral_coeff command. The next line lists (in any order) one or more parameters for the table. Each parameter is a keyword followed by one or more numeric values.
Following a blank line, the next N lines list the tabulated values. On each line, the 1st value is the index from 1 to N, the 2nd value is the angle value, the 3rd value is the energy (in energy units), and the 4th is -dE/d(phi) also in energy units). The 3rd term is the energy of the 4-atom configuration for the specified angle. The 4th term (when present) is the negative derivative of the energy with respect to the angle (in degrees, or radians depending on whether the user selected DEGREES or RADIANS). Thus the units of the last term are still energy, not force. The dihedral angle values must increase from one line to the next.
Dihedral table splines are cyclic. There is no discontinuity at 180 degrees (or at any other angle). Although in the examples above, the angles range from -180 to 180 degrees, in general, the first angle in the list can have any value (positive, zero, or negative). However the range of angles represented in the table must be strictly less than 360 degrees (2pi radians) to avoid angle overlap. (You may not supply entries in the table for both 180 and -180, for example.) If the user's table covers only a narrow range of dihedral angles, strange numerical behavior can occur in the large remaining gap.
The parameter "N" is required and its value is the number of table entries that follow. Note that this may be different than the N specified in the dihedral_style table command. Let Ntable is the number of table entries requested dihedral_style command, and let Nfile be the parameter following "N" in the tabulated file ("30" in the sparse example above). What LAMMPS does is a preliminary interpolation by creating splines using the Nfile tabulated values as nodal points. It uses these to interpolate as needed to generate energy and derivative values at Ntable different points (which are evenly spaced over a 360 degree range, even if the angles in the file are not). The resulting tables of length Ntable are then used as described above, when computing energy and force for individual dihedral angles and their atoms. This means that if you want the interpolation tables of length Ntable to match exactly what is in the tabulated file (with effectively nopreliminary interpolation), you should set Ntable = Nfile. To insure the nodal points in the user's file are aligned with the interpolated table entries, the angles in the table should be integer multiples of 360/Ntable degrees, or 2*PI/Ntable radians (depending on your choice of angle units).
The optional "NOF" keyword allows the user to omit the forces (negative energy derivatives) from the table file (normally located in the 4th column). In their place, forces will be calculated automatically by differentiating the potential energy function indicated by the 3rd column of the table (using either linear or spline interpolation).
The optional "DEGREES" keyword allows the user to specify angles in degrees instead of radians (default).
The optional "RADIANS" keyword allows the user to specify angles in radians instead of degrees. (Note: This changes the way the forces are scaled in the 4th column of the data file.)
The optional "CHECKU" keyword is followed by a filename. This allows the user to save all of the the Ntable different entries in the interpolated energy table to a file to make sure that the interpolated function agrees with the user's expectations. (Note: You can temporarily increase the Ntable parameter to a high value for this purpose. "Ntable" is explained above.)
The optional "CHECKF" keyword is analogous to the "CHECKU" keyword. It is followed by a filename, and it allows the user to check the interpolated force table. This option is available even if the user selected the "NOF" option.
Note that one file can contain many sections, each with a tabulated potential. LAMMPS reads the file section by section until it finds one that matches the specified keyword.
Styles with a cuda, gpu, omp, or opt suffix are functionally the same as the corresponding style without the suffix. They have been optimized to run faster, depending on your available hardware, as discussed in Section_accelerate of the manual. The accelerated styles take the same arguments and should produce the same results, except for round-off and precision issues.
These accelerated styles are part of the USER-CUDA, GPU, USER-OMP and OPT packages, respectively. They are only enabled if LAMMPS was built with those packages. See the Making LAMMPS section for more info.
You can specify the accelerated styles explicitly in your input script by including their suffix, or you can use the -suffix command-line switch when you invoke LAMMPS, or you can use the suffix command in your input script.
See Section_accelerate of the manual for more instructions on how to use the accelerated styles effectively.
This dihedral style can only be used if LAMMPS was built with the USER-MISC package. See the Making LAMMPS section for more info on packages. | <urn:uuid:c8e3e890-7936-4343-8ee9-889f1e7376eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lammps.sandia.gov/doc/dihedral_table.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.847236 | 1,810 | 2.84375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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A Q&A with John Carty, anthropologist and co-curator of our new exhibition, Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route.
John is currently Research Associate at the Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University. He was kind enough to talk to us about Yiwarra Kuju, providing us with some fascinating insights into an already fascinating exhibition.
Q: What is this exhibition about?
John: At first glance, you’d assume the exhibition is about the Canning Stock Route, an 1800 kilometre droving track that ran through the heart of Western Australia and was created to provide another avenue for bringing cattle from the north to the south of the state.
But the stock route, the way it was made, and its impact on desert waters and people, has had a complicated legacy for desert people to this day.
As surveyor, Canning’s job was to find water at regular intervals – a days walk apart – to bore wells for the cattle to drink from. To do this, he needed Aboriginal guides. Some were willing helpers, but several of these guides were used against their will.
The manner in which the water was located and secured for white colonial commerce cast a shadow longer and wider than the route itself. It is one that people express in their art today. While none of the artists in this exhibition were alive in 1906 when Canning first went through, most of them grew up in the desert watching these strange white men and their cattle passing through their Country.
Yiwarra Kuju tries to show that Aboriginal beliefs and values are not as mysterious or far removed from the average punter as they are often portrayed. We want to move people beyond the notion that Aboriginal Country is just landscape. And to give them an intimate understanding of Country – of the waterholes that people paint, as ‘home’, as a part of themselves.
Yiwarra Kuju means ‘one road’ in the Martu language. We’ve used ‘one road’ to bind the art, people and story of the Western Desert together. We use the Canning Stock Route as the meeting point, as the cross-cultural scaffolding on which to develop an understanding of Aboriginal Country, and the shared history that happened within it.
Q: What can visitors expect when they enter?
John: A visually stunning, and technologically pioneering exhibition. It is not what you would expect of a fine art show, and it’s probably not what people would expect of a museum show either.
We make paintings the visual stars, but not at the expense of story. The two go together, they need each other. If anything, it is a museum show wrapped in a fine art show. And it is driven at every point by the voices of the Aboriginal artists and professionals involved in the project.
Q: What do you hope visitors take away from the exhibition?
John: Visitors, regardless of their levels of understanding of Australian History, Aboriginal art or Aboriginal Culture, can expect to be surprised, entertained by the playful and interactive qualities of the show, but also, we hope, a little challenged.
It’s a great entry point for tourists, or people visiting Australia, as it provides an introduction to Aboriginal Culture, Aboriginal Art and Australian History all in one.
It’s also wonderful show for kids, and families, because we’ve created some pioneering technology (basically a 10 meter long IPAD touch-screen which allows kids to explore their interests, or just play, in their own way), which captivates younger audiences in ways that basic social histories rarely do.
It's an exhibition for people who think they know nothing about Aboriginal art. Unlike so many exhibitions in fine art galleries, it invites you in and gives you a range of different ways of learning how to see and read these paintings.
That said, it is also an exhibition for people who think they know a lot about Aboriginal art, and particularly desert art. Yiwarra Kuju, because we took the importance of Country so seriously in curating the show, challenges a lot of the tired platitudes and preconceptions that govern the display of Aboriginal art at the moment.
Q: What are some of the highlights in your opinion?
John: Obviously the touch screen technology I mentioned before is a huge highlight of the exhibition, but my personal highlight is probably Patrick Tjungurrayi’s big pink painting, Canning Stock Route Country.
It might not be the best painting in the show, everyone has their tastes, but for me it is without doubt the most interesting work of art. During the research for the Canning Stock Route project, Patrick accompanied this painting, as he was painting it, with a series of oral histories that illuminate his Country and artistry in revelatory ways.
The top line of white squares is actually the Canning Stock Route, the bottom line is the Dreaming. As he unfolded this line out into the painting, he also unpacked his memory as we were driving through the desert rolling and unrolling it each day and painting it at different sites along the Canning Stock Route during the project.
Most people don't paint these great dreaming narratives over vast distances. Most people don't document multiple historical events in one painting and most people don't feel authorised to paint this much. However, everyone paints combinations of this kind of content when they paint their Country, because the dreaming is inseparable from the land, from family, from history and the currents of your own life.
Q: How did this exhibition come to be?
John: It began with a series of workshops run through the FORM Canning Stock Route project, the principal expression of which was the enormous Return to Country trip we undertook in 2007.
On this trip we sought to invert the processes of history by bringing all the artists and storytellers who had left that Country back to the Canning Stock Route to tell their stories. We travelled along the Route for a month or so, visiting sites, and recording Aboriginal oral histories of that Country. And at various places we would stop for a few days and the artists for that Country would paint.
As this process unfolded, we realised that people were painting far more than just a history of the stock route from an Aboriginal perspective, they were offering a radically different perspective on history itself.
So when we translated and transcribed all the stories, and connected them to the paintings that had been produced, it was clear we weren’t telling an Aboriginal history of the stock route, but a bigger story about the Country, about family and Dreaming and the world the stock route cut across.
I think it was around late 2008 when the National Museum of Australia decided that the collection might need a bigger audience too. Through the vision of people like Mike Pickering, they acquired it. But we still had to find a way to structure the story, to anchor all that complexity into an experience that audiences could relate to. We spent a couple of years working through this curatorial problem with our cross-cultural team.
The logic of the show will change slightly in different venues, but the main objective was to create an experience so that when you’re inside the exhibition, you are walking around inside the country. You start in the southern end of the stock route, and wend your way north up the Kimberley, passing through people’s country and the history that unfolded there. History happens where it happens.
Q: You have worked extensively throughout the Western Desert and Kimberleys – what drew you to this area?
John: I was drawn to work in the desert initially by the same kinds feelings that underscore this exhibition. There was a story out there, a story in which I was implicated just by being Australian, a story that I knew nothing about.
It’s ridiculous; I somehow managed to get a degree in Anthropology without knowing anything about the people of my home Country. I wanted to know more, I wanted to find a way in to understanding the people of this country, their story of Australia, but I guess like many people I didn’t know where to begin.
I think its a really common feeling – particularly among older generations who never had access to Aboriginal history in school. Art was my window, my way in.
So I set out to write my PhD on the Balgo artists, many of whom are represented in the Yiwarra Kuju exhibition. I spent three years living in Balgo learning about what it is that people paint, but more importantly learning about the people who are doing the painting.
That work in Balgo, and my familiarity with desert artists and languages, lead to my involvement in the FORM Canning Stock Route project. Tim Acker and Carly Davenport were developing the project in 2006, and asked me if I’d come along the stock route for a month or so to record the artists stories and make cups of tea.
A few weeks ago I was in Perth for the opening there, where all the CHOGM delegates got to see the show, and I was still fetching cups of tea. Nothing much has changed, except that now, there’s an exhibition travelling around the Country that tells an important story, an exhibition I can take my kids to and know that they won’t grow up ignorant in the same way I did. | <urn:uuid:9f9c2aaf-24f9-4e0b-8c8c-9f9f0c9c7520> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://australianmuseum.net.au/blogpost/At-The-Museum/Ask-a-curator-What-is-Yiwarra-Kuju | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976009 | 1,937 | 2.78125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Pizzas And Things
Count groups of two to 6
Use equipment to model and add sets of twos.
Devise and use problem solving strategies (draw a picture, use equipment, guess and check, be systematic).
This is a simple problem about doubling and halving. These are important basic skills as they can be used to estimate numbers of objects and some students use them as the basis for their own non-standard number algorithms.
Doubling is the first step towards finding any multiple of a number and halving is the beginning of work with fractions.
At this stage it is useful to use the two things together as they are inverse operations. This means that one operation will cancel out the other. If students can operate comfortably with inverses then they have a really good understanding of the process involved. Hence it is useful, where possible, to develop the operation and it’s inverse, side by side.
Other examples of inverse operations are multiplying by four and finding quarters. A lot of mathematics is based around inverse operations. They are important, for instance, in solving equations. One side of an equation can be simplified by using an inverse operation to cancel out the operation on that side. In a simple example, if four times something equals 12, then we can undo the ‘four times’ by applying its inverse – ‘taking a quarter’. So a quarter of four times something is the something itself. And a quarter of 12 is 3. The something then, is 3. This application of inverses occurs at every level including calculus at Levels 7 and 8 (the inverse of differentiation is integration) and things called matrices at university level.
Our local Pizza Place has only two tables but they are quite big. If each table holds 7 people, how many people can be seated altogether?
The Chicken N Chips next door to the Pizza Place also has two identical tables. The Chicken N Chips can seat 16 people. How many people can sit at each table?
- Introduce the lesson with some guessing games, for example,
I am a number which is half of 10 what number am I?
I am a number which 4 more than 3 what number am I?
I am a number which is 5 less than 10 what number am I?
- Read the problem to the class.
- Brainstorm for ways to solve the problem.
- As the students work on the problem ask questions that focus on the number strategies that they are using.
Tell me how you got your answer?
Can you think of a way to check that you are correct?
- Share solutions.
This problem can be done in the context of animals (how many legs have two dogs?), people in two cars, or even just guessing games (half the number I’m thinking of is 6, what am I thinking of?).
Extension to the Problem
You could try using more than one table.
Perhaps the students will do this by using blocks to represent the people. Putting down 7 blocks for each table gives 14 blocks altogether. Therefore the Pizza Place can hold 14 people.
Now put 16 blocks down. Share them out equally into two piles. Each pile holds 8 blocks. So the tables at The Chicken N Chips can seat 8 people. | <urn:uuid:ee8026fb-1d19-48c7-b444-5e01175704bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/resource/pizzas-and-things?parent_node= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944004 | 673 | 4 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Throughout Art History, the use of drapery has been a fundamental expressive tool of the artist. Many periods can clearly be delineated by how the artists handled drapery, or the clothed figure. This series of lessons is designed to give you the basic knowledge and skills needed to use drapery in an authoritative and convincing way, either working from imagination or from life.
First we will discuss the basic elements that affect how drapery looks and hangs. Second, we will make a detailed study of the seven basic folds. The final part of this series will deal with the use of folds for expression and defining the action.
Before we get started discussing drapery, I would like to make a few general remarks. If you have not studied the basic drawing lessons in my book, the Vilppu Drawing Manual, it would be a good idea to do so. Many of the elements discussed in the lessons are taken for granted, especially those lessons that deal with the rendering of form.
I would like to repeat again some of the basic concepts I have discussed so often. First: there are no rules just tools! Folds have patterns that are created by fundamental elements that have a cause and effect relationship. As such, they are not rules, but the laws of nature itself. In categorizing the folds and giving them names we acquire recognition and control. There are three distinctly different elements in using drapery. The first is understanding how drapery naturally appears and is affected by the real physical world, i.e. gravity, the type of material and the forms it is in contact with. The second is the way we use the drapery to further our artistic intentions. The third element is the basic technique used to render the drapery. I will discuss these elements separately, but in practice they all come into play simultaneously. In studying, it is important to see these elements separately so that you will have a greater flexibility in how you use them. The careful building of one element upon another is the surest way of achieving a mastery and true freedom of expression.
Gravity is the first basic element that you need to take into consideration in drawing drapery. Without gravity drapery would have no real form. Gravity, in conjunction with the type of material being used, is what creates a large portion of the folds we see. In the drawing above, notice how the folds start at the points that the fabric leaves the underlying supporting form. These points are the points of origin of the fold and define the form that is underneath. This brings us to the next major element affecting the shape of the drapery and the use of drapery, the underlying form, which will be the subject of the next lesson.
By Glenn Vilppu
This article was taken from the Drawing Drapery Manual. | <urn:uuid:01d9aadb-7872-410a-a211-477d7126d998> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://vilppustore.com/vilppublog/2011/08/drawing-drapery-the-nature-of-drapery/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954396 | 576 | 3.234375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Chemical Inputs and Outputs at Subduction Zones
In this activity the student analyzes global geochemistry data to create hypotheses regarding possible geochemical inputs at subduction zones, and the range of compositions associated with this type of convergent boundary. The exercise utilizes the EarthChem federation of online geochemical databases, GeoMapApp and Excel. The activity focuses on Central America, an NSF-MARGINS Focus Site, and Cascadia, an NSF-MARGINS allied study site.
2. The intent is introduce to students to the chemical similarities and differences between MORB and arc volcanism and begin to explore ways in which magmatic sources can be traced.
Context for Use
Students should perform the task on Mac or PC computers loaded with the following software: a web browser, Excel or text editor, and GeoMapApp.
The assignment can be modified for an upper-level undergraduate petrology class by including additional sites and having the students create hypotheses regarding magma source components by examining trace element patterns, incompatible element ratios, and isotopic variation.
Students should be familiar with tectonic plate interactions, the major oceanic and continental rock types, and with the basic geometry of subduction zones.
Description and Teaching Materials
Assignment Sheet (Microsoft Word 1.2MB Jul30 09)
Central America Excel Spreadsheet (Text File 4.8MB May29 09)
Cascadia Excel Spreadsheet (Text File 776kB Jul30 09)
Teaching Notes and Tips
- Instructors should explore the EarthChem Portal and member databases PetDB, NAVDAT, USGS and GEOROC. Help is available in the EarthChem Help (http://www.earthchem.org/help) and Education (http://www.earthchem.org/education) pages.
- The instructor should be prepared to deal with any technical hang-ups that will occur as a function of students' computer expertise.
- Students may benefit from an in-class introduction to the databases and GeoMapApp.
- Subaerial data often lack precise geospatial location. Therefore, data points may overlap each other and give the impression in map view that fewer samples are available than is actually the case.
- The data used in this activity is obtained directly from the literature via online databases and will thus contain the full and messy range of possible compositions associated with this particular convergent margin. | <urn:uuid:fde40a9b-af5a-4991-b8a3-b6967440926f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://serc.carleton.edu/margins/minilessons/17590.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.826132 | 496 | 3.25 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Click here to view an interactive map of the Northern Ireland dataset as currently collated by CEDaR.
The map is generated through the NBN Gateway using their Interactive Mapping Tool.
Coregonus autumnalis pollan Thompson
Pollan is a glacial relict of an Alaskan-Siberian whitefish species and is not found anywhere in Western Europe outside of Ireland. It is a good example of the importance of correct taxonomy in determining conservation importance. For most of the twentieth century, pollan was regarded as one or other of two coregonid species found in Britain. However, molecular studies in the 1970s showed conclusively that it was C. autumnalis, but that there were sufficient differences to regard it as a distinct subspecies C. a. pollan. In a recent revision, Kottelat has suggested that it should be designated as a full species C. pollan rather than a subspecies, which would make it an endemic Irish species. Further work is required to validate this proposal. Irrespective of its exact classification, pollan is one of the most unique elements of the Irish fauna. Pollan entered the Shannon system as a migratory fish at the end of the last Ice Age, some 14,000 years ago, and from there it spread to Loughs Erne and Neagh, all of which were interconnected in the period of glacial retreat. As the sea temperature and salinity increased, pollan lost its migratory habit and became restricted to freshwater. However, pollan have been found in the Erne estuary at Ballyshannon and downstream of Coleraine on the Lower River Bann. Since Neagh, Erne and Shannon (Ree and Derg) stocks have been isolated for over 10,000 years, undoubtedly genetic differences have evolved among them as a result of adaptation to local conditions and by genetic drift. There is also some evidence of distinct populations within Lough Neagh, presumably maintained as a result of natal homing to separate spawning areas.
Pollan is a silvery trout-shaped fish, with a dark greeny-blue back. Superficially, it resembles a herring but is easily recognised due to the presence of the diagnostic salmonid adipose fin, a small fleshy dorsal fin just in front of the tail.
Pollan spawn in December and January in shallow rocky areas of the loughs where wave action provides good oxygenation for the developing eggs. The young fish feed on animal plankton and on larger invertebrates as they grow older. $Mysis relicta$, a glacial relict crustacean, is an important food source in Lough Neagh, as are the abundant larvae of chironomid midges. Spawning takes place from about three years of age and individuals can generally live for about five years, although a seven-year-old has been recorded from Lower Lough Erne.
There are no similar freshwater species present in Ireland but two related whitefish species are found in Scotland, Cumbria, and Wales, although several populations of these have become extinct in recent decades.
How to see this species
Lough Neagh pollan are fished for commercially and can be seen as fishermen land their catches at various quays around the lough. They can be bought in some fish markets and shops during the fishing season (March to October). Pollan sometimes move down the Lower River Bann and they have been caught by anglers downstream of Coleraine.
Although still common in Lough Neagh, pollan is no longer found in Upper Lough Erne and has become very rare in Lower Lough Erne since the 1970s. It was abundant in Lough Erne in the early part of the twentieth century where it formed the subject of a substantial commercial fishery. Exploitation of Lough Neagh pollan is controlled by Fisheries Legislation, enforced by the Fisheries Conservancy Board Northern Ireland.
Why is this species a priority in Northern Ireland?
Pollan is not found anywhere else in Western Europe outside Ireland
Threats/Causes of decline
Pollan require water with a good level of oxygen and so eutrophication, due to nutrient enrichment, and climatic warming are major threats, especially in the deeper lakes where oxygenation due to wind-mixing is reduced. The other major threat is increase of non-native species such as pike, roach and zebra mussel, which have been linked to the decline in Lower Lough Erne, possibly as a result of predation and decline in zooplankton availability. The recent introduction of zebra mussel into Lough Neagh presents a serious threat to pollan in this lough.
Conservation of this species
An all-Ireland Species Action Plan was published in 2005. There is also a UK Species Action Plan which was published in 1995.
What you can do
Support the restoration of Northern Ireland lakes to high water quality status. Help prevent the further spread of zebra mussels within Lough Neagh.
Text written by:
Professor Andrew Ferguson | <urn:uuid:3d115573-ceb8-403a-9b3f-375339858b21> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.habitas.org.uk/priority/species.asp?item=42768 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959903 | 1,049 | 3.546875 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Alternative forms
- acousticks (obsolete)
Audio (US) (file)
See -ics regarding the treatment of such nouns as singular.
- The physical quality of a space for performing music.
- (physics) The science of sounds, teaching their nature, phenomena and laws.
- Acoustics, then, or the science of sound, is a very considerable branch of physics. - Sir John Herschel.
Usage notes
- The science was previously divided by some writers into diacoustics, which explains the properties of sounds coming directly from (sic! Webster) the ear; and catacoustica, which treats of reflected sounds or echoes. This division is now obsolete.
Related terms
quality of a space for doing music
physics: a science of sounds
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations. | <urn:uuid:48cb395a-8ea3-4ee8-a473-4e98f269603f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/acoustics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.861346 | 221 | 2.625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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or Mugala Town
: 木尕拉镇, Pinyin
: Mùgǎlā Zhèn; Ugyhur
: كېرىيە / Keriyə), is a town in Keriya County
, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region
, on the old Southern Silk Road
. As the commercial and administrative centre of Keriya County, it is about 166 km east of Khotan
, 80 km east of Qira, and 120 km west of Niya
. Yutian County has a population of about 160,000.
During the Han Dynasty
the kingdom based on the Keriya Oasis
was known as Jumi
(拘彌). The Hou Hanshu
records that during the Later Han Dynasty
(25-220 CE) there were "2,173 households, 7,251 individuals, and 1,760 people able to bear arms" in Jumi.
The small modern town of Keriya is situated on the western bank of the Keriya River. Approximately 180 km north along the Keriya River is the ancient fortified site of Karadong where the world's oldest Buddhist murals have been found. It was abandoned in the 4th century CE. Another site, Yuan Sha, some 40 km north of Karadong, dates from the Iron Age but was abandoned by about 130 BCE.
There is a village about 75 km south of Keriya called Pulu. There are a number of peaks over 6,000 metres to the south of the oasis including Qong Muztag at 6,962 m (22,841 ft) in the upper Keriya River Valley. About 100 families of the distinctive Keriya Uyghurs, who are said to be quite distinct from other Uyghurs, live at Tangzubasti Village, about 170 km north of the town of Yutian. It is said to be on the ruins of the ancient city of Keladun where artifacts from the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-222 CE) have been found.
Marco Polo visited the oasis in the late 13th century. He described it as being five day's journey in extent, but with sandy deserts to both east and west. Both the Province and the "most splendid" capital city were called Pem. He notes that the people "all worship Mahomet" and that there were many towns and villages. "It is amply stocked with the means of life" with rich estates including orchards, vineyards, and lots of cotton. He also mentions that "jasper" (probably nephrite jade) and chalcedony were found in the rivers and the people "live by trade and industry" and were "not at all war-like."
Gold mines were reported near Keriya in the 19th century.
- Baumer, Christoph. 2000. Southern Silk Road: In the Footsteps of Sir Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin. White Orchid Books. Bangkok.
- Bonavia, Judy 2004. The Silk Road From Xi’an to Kashgar. Revised by Chrisoph Baumer. 2004. Odyssey Publications. ISBN 962-217-741-7
- Hill, John E. 2003. "Annotated Translation of the Chapter on the Western Regions according to the Hou Hanshu." 2nd Draft Edition.
- Hulsewé, A. F. P. and Loewe, M. A. N. 1979. China in Central Asia: The Early Stage 125 BC – AD 23: an annotated translation of chapters 61 and 96 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty. E. J. Brill, Leiden.
- Latham, Ronald. 1958. The Travels of Marco Polo. Translated and Introduced by Ronald Latham. Reprint 1982 by Abaris Books, New York. ISBN 0-89835-058-1
- Mallory, J. P. and Mair, Victor H. (2000). The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West. Thames & Hudson. London. ISBN 0-500-05101-1
- Skrine, C. P. 1926. Chinese Central Asia. Methuen, London. Reprint: Barnes & Noble, New York. 1971.
- Stein, M. Aurel 1907. Ancient Khotan: Detailed report of archaeological explorations in Chinese Turkestan, 2 vols. Oxford. Clarendon Press.
- Stein, M. Aurel 1912. Ruins of Desert Cathay: Personal narrative of explorations in Central Asia and westernmost China, 2 vols. Reprint: Delhi. Low Price Publications. 1990.
- Stein, M. Aurel 1921. Serindia: Detailed report of explorations in Central Asia and westernmost China, 5 vols. London. Oxford. Clarendon Press. Reprint: Delhi. Motilal Banarsidass. 1980.
- Yu, Taishan. 2004. A History of the Relationships between the Western and Eastern Han, Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Western Regions. Sino-Platonic Papers No. 131 March, 2004. Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania.
- Slideshow of archaeological sites along the Keriya River
- 3000 year old archaeological finds at Liushui Village, Yutian County
- Archaeological GIS and Oasis Geography in the Tarim Basin
- Description of the Keriya Uyghur people by a Christian evangelical group.
- Site showing photos of the mosque and a statue in Keriya town. | <urn:uuid:e5dfb595-4204-4e0d-8bb3-ae4f4678f2dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Keriya_Town | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.898254 | 1,194 | 2.65625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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This practice describes preparation processes of titanium and titanium alloys to produce adherent electrodeposits of good quality by electroplating. Not all of the processes that have been reported as successful are described, but rather three basic ones that have had the widest use. The purity of reagents and water that shall be used in each process are given. The three processes consist of (1) cleaning by conventional methods such as vapor degreasing, alkaline cleaning, grinding, or blasting, and (2) activating. The first process involves activation by chemical etching which shall be done in the following order of procedure: pickling, rinsing, etching, rinsing, electroplating, and heat treatment. The second process involves activation by electrochemical etching which shall be done by the same procedure as the first process, without the heat treatment step. The third process involves activation by liquid abrasive blasting which shall be done in the following order of procedure: blasting, electroplating, and heat treatment.
This abstract is a brief summary of the referenced standard. It is informational only and not an official part of the standard; the full text of the standard itself must be referred to for its use and application. ASTM does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents of this abstract are accurate, complete or up to date.
1.1 This practice describes processes that have been found to be successful in producing adherent electrodeposits of good quality on titanium and certain titanium alloys. Not all of the processes that have been reported as successful are described, but rather three basic ones that have had the widest use. A rather complete listing of the published work on electroplating on titanium is given in the list of references which appear at the end of this practice.
1.2 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety and health practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use. For a specific hazard statement, see 3.1.
2. Referenced Documents (purchase separately) The documents listed below are referenced within the subject standard but are not provided as part of the standard.
B343 Practice for Preparation of Nickel for Electroplating with Nickel
titanium; titanium alloys; electroplating; electrodeposits;
ICS Number Code 77.150.50 (Titanium products)
ASTM International is a member of CrossRef.
Citing ASTM Standards
[Back to Top] | <urn:uuid:3b4fc2b4-93d3-4e92-9e51-14e5c9ade0a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.astm.org/Standards/B481.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938544 | 533 | 2.5625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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The research team was trying to come up with a solution to the fact that most people who are killed in building fires are asleep or elderlyeither way, they dont hear the alarm. But its hard to ignore the eye-watering burn of wasabi, so the researchers tried to use that to their advantage. First, they isolated the compound in wasabi responsible for the characteristic stinging sensation, allyl isothiocyanate. This chemical isnt an odor, its a "somatosensation." The nervous system perceives it as a painful, stinging feeling. "In contrast to olfactory processing, somatosensory processing persists during sleep," team member Makoto Imai tells PM. "Thats why subjects can wake up after inhalation of air-diluted wasabi." Their invention is now registered under a patent called "Odor Generation Alarm and Method for Informing Unusual Situation."
For their tests, Imai and colleagues filled canisters of the compound, waited until their test subjects were deeply asleep, and then filled the room with wasabi gas. Of the 14 test subjectsincluding four who were deaf13 woke within 2 minutes. (It turned out that the fourteenth person had a blocked nose). The team actually tested about 100 odors, including rotten eggs. Wasabi stood alone as the premier waker-upper.
Last week, their innovation earned them an Ig Nobel prize, an award handed out by the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, which every year spoofs the Nobel Prizes awarded a week later. "At first, we wondered what happened," Imai says of the odd honor. "But then, we were very delighted with this prize."
Seems, Inc., a Tokyo-based company, used the teams research to develop the alarm, which has been available since April 2009 for about $600. The company is working to create a less expensive model.
Here are the other nine Ig Nobels:
Physiology: Scientists from the University of Vienna trained a tortoise to yawn on command, then let it loose among its friends to see if its yawns would trigger the contagious yawning that humans experience. They didnt.
Medicine: An international team that showed how having a strong urge to urinate affects your decision-making capabilities.
Psychology: Karl Halvor of Norway for his paper "Is a Sigh Just a Sigh?" in which he made a surprisingly thorough attempt to figure out why humans sigh.
Literature: John Perry of the United States for his theory of structured procrastination, which the committee summarizes: "To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something thats even more important."
Biology: Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz, who were in Australia researching a different project entirely when they discovered that a certain kind of beetle likes to try to mate with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle.
Physics:Researchers from France and the Netherlands, for finding out why discus throwers get dizzy while spinning.
Mathematics: Individuals across the globe who predicted that the world would end at various times, for "teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations."
Public Safety: John Senders from Canada, who ran a series of experiments in which the test subject navigated a major highway while a visor repeatedly flapped down over his face, blinding him.
Peace Prize: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, who did what anyone whos ever been trapped by a double-parker has wanted to do: run over illegally parked cars with an armored tank. | <urn:uuid:6ffd0234-f8c2-4148-a283-37616e6607e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/gonzo/our-favorite-ig-nobel-the-wasabi-fire-alarm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965134 | 760 | 2.5625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Tim the Plumber wrote:
The idea that you can predict the climate based on it's temperature behaviour between 1970 and 1998 is silly. Just as the statement that the absence of warming since 1998 and 2011 cannot utterly disproove AGW the rise between 1970 and 1998 cannot 100% proove the theory that CO2 is a significant greenhouse gas at the levels we have today.
Nobody is trying to predict temperatures based on historically temperatures over the last 40 or so. The predictions are based on our understanding of earth's climate over hundreds of millions of years and particularly the last 4 million years of recurring ice ages. The climate while complicated has to obey some very simple basic physical rules that is the energy coming in has over time to equal the energy going out. Change that simple relationship in some way and the temperature will change change until such time as the equation is back in balance. It is certain that greenhouse gases reduce the amount of energy that leaves the earth.
Northern Europe is having a wet and cool summer, it's just America which is having a long, hot and dry one.
No my original statement is correct
According to NOAA:-http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/6
The Northern Hemisphere land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2012 was the all-time warmest June on record, at 1.30°C (2.34°F) above average.
The Northern Hemisphere average land temperature, where the majority of Earth's land is located, was record warmest for June. This makes three months in a row — April, May, and June — in which record-high monthly land temperature records were set. Most areas experienced much higher-than-average monthly temperatures, including most of North America and Eurasia, and northern Africa. Only northern and western Europe, and the northwestern United States were notably cooler than average.
Tim the Plumber wrote:
When thinking about such climatic events it is vital to have a sense of proportion and not see a tiny change over 3 decades as a reason to think that there will be a drastic "exponential" continuation of this.
The temperatures changes over the last 3 decades simply confirms our basic understanding of the climate.
It is akin to having a graph of the speed of your car traveling along a highway. When the speed is 55mph your pasenger is happy, when the graph plots up to 57 mph the pasenger panics because the car is about to accelerate untill the machine disintergrates at the sound barrier. When the graph shows a slowing to 53mph the panic is of the sudden stopping of the car and the trafic behind slamming into the back of the car.
No it is more being in a car where the cruise control is stuck and the speed just keeps increasing.
Climate varies about quiote a lot.
Because we live fairly short lives we do not rember the droughts of the dust bowl. We do not rember the medevil warm period. We do not rember the frost fairs on the frozen Thames.
This is why we maintain weather data which shows that the current conditions are both worst and different.
We should take these dire warnings with a big pinch of salt.
Dire warnings should be assessed on the merits and action taken if necessary but never ignored
The sea level rose by 18cm last centuary, how many cities flooded because of this? This centuary looks like it could be twice as bad, maybe.
So as long as we split the sea level rises into 18 cm chunks it will be no problem ?
I am reminded of camels transporting straw. | <urn:uuid:19f0ac3e-e73a-454a-9cba-d004cc56a732> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.envirolink.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=19521&start=60 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954595 | 746 | 2.703125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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The First Watch in Space
On April 12, 06:07 GMT, 1961
Juri Gagarin, at the controls of Vostok One, ushered in a new era,
one of manned space flight, and the world was forever changed. The
technology that put this man in space and brought him safely home,
was some of the newest and most modern equipment available.
Ironically, on his wrist was a technology that was already centuries
old-- watch making. It may seem odd to us now in this time of
extremely accurate quartz watches, but at the time, the mechanical
wrist watch was an important piece of gear, and itís accuracy and
reliability were of paramount concern. In light of these concerns,
the choice of watch Gagarin took with him would not have been a
decision made in haste.
The STURMANSKIE, (or ШТУРМАНСКИЕ in
Cyrillic,) which had been issued to new graduates of the prestigious
Orenberg Flight School along with their diplomas since the late 1940ís, was
a logical choice, due to the high quality of the movement and inherent
accuracy of the watch. Gagarin would have been supplied with such a 1st
Moscow Watch Factory Sturmanskie opon graduation from Orenberg as well, but
it is doubtful that he would have received the Sturmanskie he wore into
space at that time. Most likely, he would have been awarded a 15 jewel watch,
very similar to the one he wore in space but lacking some of the newer
features that were unavailable at that time.
Based on an earlier French design, the Lip R26, from which the Soviets
purchased the machinery to produce the watch. The Sovietís had updated the
design by adding a central seconds complication and a hacking feature that
allowed the watch to be precisely stopped and synchronized with a given time
signal. A critical detail on any military watch, but especially so on a
Navigatorís watch, where often location would be ascertained by correctly
estimating where the aircraft was by accurately measuring time to distance.
The Sturmanskie Gagarin wore into space
had a highly finished (including Geneva striping!) 17 jewel, shock protected
movement. The movement was housed in a chrome plated, two-piece case
measuring 33 mm across, 12 mm high, with a 16 mm lug size and had a
stainless steel screw back. Unlike the earlier watchís stainless steel snap
back, the new watch was fully gasketed providing better water resistance.
matter of fact, the Sturmanskieís movement and case, were virtually
identical to the civilian Sportivnie (Спортивные). Only the dial separated
the two watches visually from each other. After his world famous flight, the
watch Gagarin wore was donated to what was soon to become ПОЛЕТ or Poljot,
meaning flight, in honor of Gagarinís groundbreaking mission. Where it
currently resides as part of their present day collection.
In adition to the Soviets putting the first man in space, the Soviets were
also first in putting a women into space as well. On June 16, 1963,
Valentina Tereshkova, on board Vostok 6, spent three days in space orbiting
the earth 48 times before re-entering the atmosphere and parachuting safely
to earth. Tereshkova, seen here in the photo, is wearing what
appears to be a Sturmanskie.
This watch is on display in the
Museum of "Zvezdny Gorodok" (Star City), the Russian cosmonauts training
center near Moscow.
picture copyright by
Time for a Space Walk
Without question, Gagarinís flight has
left an indelible mark on the annuls of manned space flight. But Gagarin was
not alone in being first among his peers. On June 12, 1965, Cosmonaut Alexi
Leonov became the first person to leave his space capsule and perform a
space walk. He had on his wrist an equally special and well made wrist watch
as the one Gagarin sported.
The Strela, (СТРЕЛА in Cyrillic meaning arrow) was a column wheel
chronograph of an earlier Venus base design. The watch had two registers, a
45 minute elapsed time totalizer and constant seconds hand, as well as a
central chronograph hand that measured seconds. The watch had a chrome
plated, base metal construction and was fitted with a stainless steel snap
back. On early watches, the inside of the watches back are heavily
Damascened, in an engine turned manner. The watch, introduced in 1959 was
originally only available for use by the BBC, the Soviet air force.
The watch was available with various dials with both non-luminous and
luminous types, with tacymetric and telemetric chapter rings. There seems to
be some debate about which version of the Strela Leonov wore. However, most
seem to feel it was either a non-luminous Cyrillic marked watch or an early,
white-dialed luminous piece. The Strela was a central piece of flight gear
issued to cosmonauts for over 20 years, and the watch has gained the
reputation of being the Russian equivalent to the Speedmaster.
This Sekonda was worn by Aleksey
Aleksandrovich Gubarev on the Sojus 28 mission in march 1978.
Picture from the Book
Copyright OMEGA SA
The Soviets retired the Strela in 1979, three years after the introduction
of their new 3133 caliber chronograph. Recently, new versions of the watch
has been reissued by Poljot. The watches differ in that they are in larger,
all stainless steel cases, and utilize Poljot's 3133 caliber movement. They
are otherwise very faithful renditions of the original watch.
'NII' is an abreviation for
something like 'Science Technical Institute'. There was at least 2 'NII's
associated with watchmaking.
NII-Chasprom was the most elite Horological institute of the Soviet era, who
not only designed and built experimental electronic watches, but also did
the certification of marine chronometers. In the early 1960s NII-Chasprom
made some 'electronic' watches specifically for use in the space program.
The format was 24-hour with date. Whether balance-wheel or tuning-fork is
not explained anywhere, but certainly it wasn't quartz, because such
technology did not yet exist in wristwatch size. A total of 29 were made.
Belyaev allegedly wore one on the Voskhod-2 mission and Artyukhin on the
A Changing Tide
The Soviets introduced a new chronograph caliber in 1976. Called the ОКЕАН,
meaning Ocean, the watch was solely intended for use by the BMF, the naval
branch of the military. Later, other official versions, such as the
Sturmanskie, were introduced. Whether or not the 3133 was meant as a
replacement for the Strela, it soon became clear that that was precisely
what it was. Based on the Valjoux 7734 of which the soviets had purchased
the machinery from the Swiss in 1974 to begin their own production of their
new caliber. The new 31 mm movement was a less complex and more robust
movement than the jewel-like 3017. A simple cam design replaced the earlier
watches more complex, and costly to produce, column wheel activation. And
for the first time in history a Russian chronograph was equipped with shock
At 38 mm wide and 12 mm high, with 18 mm sized lugs, the watch was equipped
with unique crystal that protruded from the case a fairly steep 3 mm high.
The watch came in both chrome plated and stainless steel cases. Stainless
steel cases having stainless steel crowns and pushers and chrome cased
watches chromed crowns and pushers. All early versions of the watch had a
crown at nine that turned a bezel under that purposefully high crystal that
had a second hour chapter ring printed on it, making keeping track of a
second time zone effortless. Like the earlier Strela, many different
versions of the 3133 made there way into space on various missions. Of note
was the ill fated Soyez 23 mission, that left two cosmonauts for dead atop a
cracked, frozen lake bed overnight until rescue teams could safely reach
The 3133 was for official-use only until 1983, when it became available to a
larger public marketplace, including export varients. The 3133 is still in
A slight variation of the standard 3133 is the hacking
31659 caliber version Sturmanskie that was, like earlier Sturmanskies, an
air force-only piece. The watch is essentially a standard 3133 that has been
re-engineered with a small lever that applies pressure to the outside of the
balance when the crown is pulled out, freezing the balance and hacking the
watch. Interesting to note, in regard to this watch, is the lack of the
rotating bezel and subsequently the crown at nine.
Below to the left is a picture of Japanese journalist-cosmonaut, Toyohiro
Akiyama taken during his historical flight.
Another Soviet space first, Akiyama was the first private citizen to buy
passage on a space flight. Akiyama was a member of the Soyez TM-11 mission
that linked up with the Mir space station. The cost, a reported 28 million
dollars, was paid by TBS, the Tokyo Brodcasting System. While in space,
Akiyama sent a series of live broadcasts back to the earth. The watch
Akiyama wore was an all stainless steel, Soviet Air Force, 31659 caliber,
Of course, these few watches are not the only watches to be worn by
cosmonauts. Just about any watch that the Soviets produced could have been
worn in space. The list of the watches that were permitted for space flight
was not as strictly regulated as say, NASA does.
And it is not entirely
uncommon to see cosmonauts wearing any variety of seemingly inappropriate
types of watches. So, if the watch kept accurate time and possessed no real safety threat, it
was considered allowable gear.
Vostoks and the quartz digital watch, the
Elektronika, (like the one seen on cosmonaut V M Afanasyev in the photo
very often accompanied cosmonauts on their trips to the cosmos almost as
often as Poljotís were.
Digital Watches and the
Soviet Space Program
Based on available
footage it would appear that from about 1980 digital watches enjoyed
widespread use in the Soviet space program. This is most likely due to the
majority of missions being long duration within the confines of a space
station. Under such circumstances, a compact watch with built-in alarm and
chronograph would be highly useful. However an LCD cannot be safely used in
open space, and there have been concerns regarding the shielding of the
electronic components from the ravages of cosmic radiation. So for EVA
duties the standard was, and remains, mechanical watches only.
Pictured above, is a Belarusian-built
Elektronica 52b. The Elektronika watches had quartz digital modules, came in
chrome-plated cases made of base metal. The watches did, however, have
corrosion resistant stainless steel backs.
German Democratic Republic (GDR)
Pictured below is the Ruhla
East German Cosmonaut Sigmund Jšhn was wearing this watch in 1978 on board
of the soyuz-31 Mission.
It was the first analogue quartz wrist-watch generation from the Ruhla
Factory and was very similar to the Ruhla Cal. 24 Mechanical.
This is presumably the only
watch besides the
NII electric that was specifically designed for spaceflight and
actually used for that purpose.
History of creation:
Story by Vladimir А.
Dzhanibekov, twice the Hero of Soviet Union, pilot-cosmonaut of USSR:
September of 1985. "Salute Ė 7" station. It is midnight in Moscow.
It is also our local time. Maintenance work going on... Ice age. The
Flood at the station has already pasted. Victor Savinyh is cozily
sleeping in a sleeping-bag in front of me. The "deaf" circuits
without communication with Center are going.
- I wonder where we are flying? - I'm asking almost in sleep,
- Above clouds I assume...
Falling asleep I idly
thinking that it would be great to have a watch with globe like the
one at on the central stand. Or, with a map on the dial. But to have
it on my hand... and without need to leave the warm sleeping bag to
check... and soon getting back in again thinking that I was right
and we were actually over clouds and under clouds were waters of the
Atlantic ocean... all right,.. water is there where clouds are. Why
our planet called the Earth and not the Water?.. This was the way
the idea of "COSMONAVIGATOR" was born
That Salyut-7 rescue was a
classic bit of flying by Dzhanibekov. He had to dock the spacecraft to a
tumbling station with no beacon, just a laser rangefinder, sharp eyes and
November 2004 Yuri Shargin has tested his
private Shturmanskie based on a Poljot 31681 movement (complication variant
of the famous 3133) in space expedition.
Gallery of space related watches
Unknown watch used
during a spacewalk
for all the writing and the | <urn:uuid:201a15ae-24a5-4d76-bc21-68a494ce2473> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.netgrafik.ch/russian_space_watches.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960073 | 3,015 | 3.40625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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I've recently become hooked on the TV series Downton Abbey. I'm not usually one for costume dramas, but the mix of fine acting, the intriguing social relationships, and the larger WW1-era story make for compelling viewing. (Also: Maggie Smith is a treasure.)
Despite the widespread criticial acclaim, Downton has met with criticism for some period-innapropriate uses of language. For example, at one point Lady Mary laments "losing the high ground", a phrase that didn't come into use until the 1960s. But is this just a random slip, or are such anachronistic phrases par for the course on Downton? And how does it compare to other period productions in its use of language?
To answer these questions, Ben Schmidt (a graduate student in history at Princeton University and Visiting Graduate Fellow at the Cultural Observatory at Harvard) created an "Anachronism Machine". Using the R statistical programming language and Google n-grams, it analyzes all of the two-word phrases in a Downton Abbey script, and compares their frequency of use with that in books written around the WW1 era (when Downton is set). For example, Schmidt finds that Downton characters, if they were to follow societal norms of the 1910's (as reflected in books from that period), would rarely use the phrase "guest bedroom", but in fact it's regularly uttered during the series. Schmidt charts the frequency these phrases appear in the show versus the frequency they appear in contemporaneous books below:
(Click to enlarge.) Words above the zero horizontal line, and especially those near the top of the chart, appear far too often for the period (e.g. "black market" didn't gain currency until WW2). Phrases below the line don't appear in the show often enough (e.g. "little chap", whose usage actually peaked around Downton's time).
But of course, Downton isn't a documentary: it's entertainment, written by modern screenwrights and for the ear of a modern audience. And Downton's writers don't have period-accurate source material to refer to, as the makers of the BBC's "Pride and Prejudice" did. (And as Schmidt points out, there's a lot it does get right: WW1-era phrases like "old chap", "who shall" and "newspaper man" are accurately represented in Downton.) So how does Downton's use of language compare to other period dramas? By applying the Anachronism Machine to other movies and series set in the Georgian era, Schmidt makes the comparison:
Heartbreak House was published in 1919 -- and it's safe to assume George Bernard Shaw had a good grasp of WW1-era language -- so it acts as a kind of a control here. Shows higher on the vertical scale have more "extremely anachronistic language"; those further to the right have more "somewhat modern" language than expected. (The numbers are individual episodes within the series.) Remains of the Day does quite well: very few howlers, and just a few more modern phrases than you'd expect.
The real kicker here though is "Gosford Park" -- a thoroughly excellent Robert Altman movie, also on the "upstairs, downstairs" theme. Gosford Park was written by Julian Fellowes ... who is also the creator of Downton Abbey. So the Anachronism Machine not only detects misuse of period language, it can also pinpoint a specific period writer's style. Pretty amazing, huh?*
(*Though no-one from Downton would say such a thing.)
Sapping Attention: Making Downton more traditional | <urn:uuid:db969e69-f118-42a7-b4ec-2c15bb46d11e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2012/03/anachronism-machine.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954163 | 776 | 2.609375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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New mangrove finch fledglings
14 June 2012 | News story
During the last breeding season of the Galapagos Islands' mangrove finch, the SOS project team identified at least 13 fledged nests out of which have emerged around 19 juveniles. This is a real boost for the population which is thought to number only around 100 individuals. The SOS-funded project aims to protect the Critically Endangered Mangrove Finch (Camarhynchus heliobates) by extending the bird's natural range and protecting its habitat, the mangrove forests.
During the first four months (November 2011 – February 2012) of the last breeding season, nesting success was low and no chicks were confirmed to have fledged. Nests were being abandoned and breeding adults would immediately re-nest nearby; some of them built five nests over five months. Reasons for nest failure included early nestling death by botfly parasitism and desertion due to flooding.
The breeding season of the mangrove finch started in November 2011 with the onset of the rainy season. At this time the males began to sing and establish territories, build nests and find mates. Mangrove finch project field staff (from Charles Darwin Foundation and Galapagos National Park) spent at least two weeks of every month throughout the field season camping at the field sites to conduct population monitoring and surveying for nests.
Trapping of adult Philornis downsi, an introduced parasitic botfly that causes high nestling mortality in Galapagos passerines, was trialed by placing traps throughout the mangrove forest. There is still no effective control method for the fly making it the biggest threat to nest success for the mangrove finch.
The project team followed all breeding pairs and observed their nests to determine fledging success. They set ropes in the nest trees to enable tree climbing so that the nests could be brought down once abandoned to be checked for presence of botfly larvae. Mist netting focused on catching un-ringed adults and new fledglings for marking.
"After so many months of nest failures, it’s great to have confirmed fledging success and to finally find the young birds moving through the forest,” said Francesca Cunningham, project leader. | <urn:uuid:93c26c1d-5c24-4c47-acd2-c1ee77891cc3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cms.iucn.org/es/noticias/noticias_por_tema/patrimonio_mundial_news/?10137/new-mangrovefinch-fledglings | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94969 | 467 | 3.34375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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WEDNESDAY, Oct. 31 (HealthDay News) -- Every junk-food meal you eat damages your arteries, while Mediterranean-type meals do no harm -- and may even have a beneficial effect, according to a new study.
Junk-food meals are composed mainly of harmful saturated fat, while Mediterranean-style meals are rich in good fats such as mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids, according to the researchers from the Montreal Heart Institute, which is affiliated with the University of Montreal.
The study included 28 nonsmoking men who ate a Mediterranean-style meal first and then a junk-food meal a week later. The Mediterranean meal included salmon, almonds and vegetables cooked in olive oil. The junk-food meal included a sandwich made with sausage, egg and cheese, along with three hash browns.
The researchers assessed how the meals affected the inner lining (endothelium) of the blood vessels. Endothelial function, which determines how well blood vessels dilate (or open), is closely linked to the long-term risk of developing heart disease.
After eating the junk-food meal, the participants' arteries dilated 24 percent less than they did when they hadn't eaten. After the Mediterranean meal, the participants' arteries dilated normally and maintained good blood flow, the investigators found.
The researchers also measured the participants' triglyceride levels. Triglycerides are a type of fat in the blood that can cause narrowing of the arteries. The study authors found that people with higher blood triglyceride levels seemed to benefit more from the Mediterranean meal. Their arteries responded better to the meal than the arteries of people with low triglyceride levels.
"We believe that a Mediterranean-type diet may be particularly beneficial for individuals with high triglyceride levels ... precisely because it could help keep arteries healthy," study leader Dr. Anil Nigam, director of research at the Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation Center at Montreal Heart Institute, said in a university news release.
The study was scheduled for presentation Tuesday at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Toronto. The data and conclusions of research presented at medical meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
The American Heart Association has more about the Mediterranean diet.
SOURCE: University of Montreal, news release, Oct. 30, 2012
Copyright © 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
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Reader comments on this article are listed below. Review our comments policy.
Submit your opinion:
Are you a Doctor, Pharmacist, PA or a Nurse?
Join the Doctors Lounge online medical community | <urn:uuid:ac74ad94-ffac-4654-8bff-03037a507088> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.doctorslounge.com/index.php/news/hd/33222 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933723 | 553 | 2.875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Nearly 1 million children potentially misdiagnosed with ADHD, study finds
Nearly 1 million children in the United States are potentially misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder simply because they are the youngest – and most immature – in their kindergarten class, according to new research by a Michigan State University economist.
These children are significantly more likely than their older classmates to be prescribed behavior-modifying stimulants such as Ritalin, said Todd Elder, whose study will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Health Economics.
Such inappropriate treatment is particularly worrisome because of the unknown impacts of long-term stimulant use on children’s health, Elder said. It also wastes an estimated $320 million-$500 million a year on unnecessary medication – some $80 million-$90 million of it paid by Medicaid, he said.
Elder said the “smoking gun” of the study is that ADHD diagnoses depend on a child’s age relative to classmates and the teacher’s perceptions of whether the child has symptoms.
“If a child is behaving poorly, if he’s inattentive, if he can’t sit still, it may simply be because he’s 5 and the other kids are 6,” said Elder, assistant professor of economics. “There’s a big difference between a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old, and teachers and medical practitioners need to take that into account when evaluating whether children have ADHD.”
ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed behavioral disorder for kids in the United States, with at least 4.5 million diagnoses among children under age 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, there are no neurological markers for ADHD (such as a blood test), and experts disagree on its prevalence, fueling intense public debate about whether ADHD is under-diagnosed or over-diagnosed, Elder said.
Using a sample of nearly 12,000 children, Elder examined the difference in ADHD diagnosis and medication rates between the youngest and oldest children in a grade. The data is from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort, which is funded by the National Center for Education Statistics.
According to Elder’s study, the youngest kindergartners were 60 percent more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than the oldest children in the same grade. Similarly, when that group of classmates reached the fifth and eighth grades, the youngest were more than twice as likely to be prescribed stimulants.
Overall, the study found that about 20 percent – or 900,000 – of the 4.5 million children currently identified as having ADHD likely have been misdiagnosed.
Elder used the students’ birth dates and the states’ kindergarten eligibility cutoff dates to determine the youngest and oldest students in a grade. The most popular cutoff date in the nation is Sept. 1, with 15 states mandating that children must turn 5 on or before that date to attend kindergarten.
The results – both from individual states and when compared across states – were definitive. For instance, in Michigan – where the kindergarten cutoff date is Dec. 1 – students born Dec. 1 had much higher rates of ADHD than children born Dec. 2. (The students born Dec. 1 were the youngest in their grade; the students born Dec. 2 enrolled a year later and were the oldest in their grade.)
Thus, even though the students were a single day apart in age, they were assessed differently simply because they were compared against classmates of a different age set, Elder said.
In another example, August-born kindergartners in Illinois were much more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than Michigan kindergartners born in August of the same year as their Illinois counterparts. That’s because Illinois’ kindergarten cutoff date is Sept. 1, meaning those August-born children were the youngest in their grade, whereas the Michigan students were not.
According to the study, a diagnosis of ADHD requires evidence of multiple symptoms of inattention or hyperactivity, with these symptoms persisting for six or more months – and in at least two settings – before the age of seven. The settings include home and school.
Although teachers cannot diagnose ADHD, their opinions are instrumental in decisions to send a child to be evaluated by a mental health professional, Elder said.
“Many ADHD diagnoses may be driven by teachers’ perceptions of poor behavior among the youngest children in a kindergarten classroom,” he said. “But these ‘symptoms’ may merely reflect emotional or intellectual immaturity among the youngest students.”
The paper will be published in the Journal of Health Economics in conjunction with a related paper by researchers at North Carolina State University, Notre Dame and the University of Minnesota that arrives at similar conclusions as the result of a separate study. | <urn:uuid:9e9336ec-828b-4198-8dfc-9cb6ac50efb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://research.msu.edu/stories/nearly-1-million-children-potentially-misdiagnosed-adhd-study-finds | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968899 | 991 | 2.53125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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ZomeTools - Zome Systems
The ZomeTools - Zome System
, is a fantastic Geometry Education system. Made of precision molded ABS plastic, the ZomeTools Geometry kits are versatile manipulative tools for problem solving and hands-on exploration of math, geometry and science concepts for first graders through grad students. Color and shape coded parts integrate the concepts of shape, number and vector into one coherent geometry system. The result is the best educational geometry construction system on the market. Zome System / ZomeTools components are designed to incorporate the Fibonacci sequence and the Golden Proportion - the very same proportions that govern the growth of cells, crystals and other natural forms.
connector node provides 62 buildable directions in space. This allows thousands of geometrical Zome structures
that can't be built in any other system.
With the help of Zometools you can continue to explore: Why so many everyday items like balls, pizzas, and can lids are round. The hows and whys of the development of our number system by the ancient Greeks. Why geometric shapes show up so often in art, science and board games. What properties attributed to the spiral make it the most widespread shape in nature, from embryos and hair curls to hurricanes and galaxies. How the human body shares the design of a corn plant and the solar system. How a snowflake is like Stonehenge, and a beehive like a calendar. How our ten fingers hold the secrets of both a lobster and a cathedral. Zometools provide an introduction to the geometric code of nature and the universe. | <urn:uuid:63c9a260-1d93-4db5-bbb6-9126d821ed64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.naturestapestry.com/zomesystems.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.871543 | 329 | 3 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Expanding community resources: A collaborative effort
- Chapter 7. Teaching and Learning Basic Invasion-Game Tactics in 4th Grade: A Descriptive Study From Situated and Constraints Theoretical Perspectives. Rovegno, Inez; Nevett, Michael; Brock, Sheri; Babiarz, Matthew // Journal of Teaching in Physical Education;Jul2001, Vol. 20 Issue 4, p370
Focuses on the description of invasion-game tactics using theoretical perspective. Implication of the content, instruction and learning; Recognition of the qualitative data; Identification of the high-ability and low-ability group.
- The learning revolution: Perched at the millennium. O'Banion, Terry // Community College Week;01/12/98, Vol. 10 Issue 12, p4
Opinion. Comments on the shift which has emerged in education in the United States, focusing on that change in community colleges. What this shift emerged initially as; How some observers characterized this shift; Need for overhauling the architecture of education.
- Feedback. Kelley, Susan; Jones, Barbara; Gordon, Brian // Community College Week;07/27/98, Vol. 10 Issue 26, p5
Presents several feedback from educators on the learning revolution. Problems with student learning; Measurement of the effectiveness of teaching; Support for and conversation about learning colleges.
- What's your learning style? // Current Health 1;Oct96 1 of 2, Vol. 20 Issue 2, p23
Describes a variety of learning styles. Visual learning; Aural learning; Cooperative learning; Highlights of a teacher-students discussion on learning styles.
- The notebook. White, Elizabeth Ross // Christian Science Monitor;6/16/98, Vol. 90 Issue 140, pB2
Offers news briefs related to learning. Gorp.com, a web site that provides outdoor recreation information; Details on the Children's Scholarship Fund; Maine College of Art exchange program with Hanoi Fine Arts College in Vietnam; Ministers to teach religion in a public high school in Buena...
- Alignment and gategory learning. Lassaline, Mary E.; Murphy, Gregory L. // Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory & Cognition;Jan1998, Vol. 24 Issue 1, p144
Presents information on a series of studies which shows that alignment is involved in category learning. Details on the experiments; Results of the experiments; Discussion on the experiments.
- Dynamic changes in hypermnesia across early and late tests; A relation/item-specific account. McDaniel, Mark A.; Moore, Brent A.; Whiteman, Howard L. // Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory & Cognition;Jan1998, Vol. 24 Issue 1, p173
Presents information on experiments which tested predictions derived from R.R.Hunt, and M.A.McDaniel's relational/item-specific account of hypermnesia. Methodology of the experiments; Results of the experiments; Discussion on the experiments.
- Influences of temporal organization on sequence learning and transfer: Comments on Stadler (1995).. Dominey, Peter Ford // Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory & Cognition;Jan1998, Vol. 24 Issue 1, p234
Investigates the hypothesis that both the serial order of events and their temporal organization influence the internal representation of a sequence and thus influence its learnability. Methodology of the investigation; Results of the investigation; Discussion on the investigation.
- Helping your child learn. // Humpty Dumpty's Magazine;Dec96, Vol. 44 Issue 8, p34
Suggests techniques to encourage learning in children. Promotion of reading by setting up a home library; Telling of family stories; Meeting with teachers. | <urn:uuid:9b24622c-19cd-408c-8e09-9b3d6022ddf5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/9709205168/expanding-community-resources-collaborative-effort | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.849458 | 782 | 2.625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Pain Management and Bioelectric Therapy
- Introduction to bioelectric therapy
- What conditions are treated with bioelectric therapy?
- How effective is bioelectric therapy for pain relief?
- What happens during bioelectric therapy?
- What are the side effects of bioelectric therapy?
- How often should people get bioelectric therapy?
- How do people prepare for bioelectric therapy?
Introduction to Bioelectric Therapy
Bioelectric therapy is a safe, drug-free treatment option for people in pain. It is used to treat some chronic pain and acute pain conditions. It relieves pain by blocking pain messages to the brain. When you are injured, pain receptors send a message to the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord). The message is registered as pain by certain cells in the body. Using bioelectric currents, bioelectric therapy relieves pain by interrupting pain signals before they reach the brain. Bioelectric therapy also prompts the body to produce endorphins which help to relieve pain.
What Conditions Are Treated With Bioelectric Therapy?
Bioelectric therapy can be used to treat chronic and acute pain conditions including:
- Complex regional pain syndrome, also known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy or RSD.
- Back pain.
- Muscle pain.
- Headaches and migraines.
- Disorders of blood flow in the upper and lower limbs.
- Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) syndrome (which affects the jaw).
- Disorders of the nervous system, such as diabetic neuropathy.
- Pain and ulcers of the skin resulting from poor circulation or scleroderma (a chronic condition that can cause thickening or hardening of the skin).
Bioelectric therapy isn't right for everyone. It is not recommended for people who:
- Have a pacemaker.
- Are pregnant.
- Have thrombosis (blood clots in the arms or legs).
- Have a bacterial infection.
Chronic Pain/Back Pain
Find tips and advances in treatment. | <urn:uuid:4fd3037a-b829-4827-8fa6-c3aeb3e57890> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rxlist.com/bioelectric_therapy/article.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.864889 | 418 | 3.015625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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History of geography
|History of geography|
The history of geography includes various histories of geography which have differed over time and between different cultural and political groups. In more recent developments, geography has become a distinct academic discipline. 'Geography' derives from the from Greek γεωγραφία - geographia, a literal translation of which would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes (276-194 BC). However there is evidence for recognizable practices of geography, such as cartography (or map-making) prior to the use of the term geography.
The oldest known world maps date back to ancient Babylon from the 9th century BC. The best known Babylonian world map, however, is the Imago Mundi of 600 BC. The map as reconstructed by Eckhard Unger shows Babylon on the Euphrates, surrounded by a circular landmass showing Assyria, Urartu and several cities, in turn surrounded by a "bitter river" (Oceanus), with seven islands arranged around it so as to form a seven-pointed star. The accompanying text mentions seven outer regions beyond the encircling ocean. The descriptions of five of them have survived.
In contrast to the Imago Mundi, an earlier Babylonian world map dating back to the 9th century BC depicted Babylon as being further north from the center of the world, though it is not certain what that center was supposed to represent.
Greco-Roman world
The ancient Greeks saw the poet Homer as the founder of geography. His works the Iliad and the Odyssey are works of literature, but both contain a great deal of geographical information. Homer describes a circular world ringed by a single massive ocean. The works show that the Greeks by the 8th century BC had considerable knowledge of the geography of the eastern Mediterranean. The poems contain a large number of place names and descriptions, but for many of these it is uncertain what real location, if any, is actually being referred to.
Thales of Miletus is one of the first known philosophers known to have wondered about the shape of the world. He proposed that the world was based on water, and that all things grew out of it. He also laid down many of the astronomical and mathematical rules that would allow geography to be studied scientifically. His successor Anaximander is the first person known to have attempted to create a scale map of the known world and to have introduced the gnomon to Ancient Greece.
Hecataeus of Miletus initiated a different form of geography, avoiding the mathematical calculations of Thales and Anaximander he learnt about the world by gathering previous works and speaking to the sailors who came through the busy port of Miletus. From these accounts he wrote a detailed prose account of what was known of the world. A similar work, and one that mostly survives today, is Herodotus' Histories. While primarily a work of history, the book contains a wealth of geographic descriptions covering much of the known world. Egypt, Scythia, Persia, and Asia Minor are all described in great detail. Little is known about areas further a field, and descriptions of areas such as India are almost wholly fanciful. Herodotus also made important observations about geography. He is the first to have noted the process by which large rivers, such as the Nile, build up deltas, and is also the first recorded as observing that winds tend to blow from colder regions to warmer ones.
Pythagoras was perhaps the first to propose a spherical world, arguing that the sphere was the most perfect form. This idea was embraced by Plato and Aristotle presented empirical evidence to verify this. He noted that the Earth's shadow during an eclipse is curved, and also that stars increase in height as one moves north. Eudoxus of Cnidus used the idea of a sphere to explain how the sun created differing climatic zones based on latitude. This led the Greeks to believe in a division of the world into five regions. At each of the poles was an uncharitably cold region. While extrapolating from the heat of the Sahara it was deduced that the area around the equator was unbearably hot. Between these extreme regions both the northern and southern hemispheres had a temperate belt suitable for human habitation.
Hellenistic period
These theories clashed with the evidence of explorers, however. Hanno the Navigator had traveled as far south as Sierra Leone, and it is possible other Phoenicians had circumnavigated Africa. In the 4th century BC the Greek explorer Pytheas traveled through northwest Europe, and circled the British Isles. He found that the region was considerably more habitable than theory expected, but his discoveries were largely dismissed as fanciful by his contemporaries because of this. Conquerors also carried out exploration, for example, Caesar's invasions of Britain and Germany, expeditions/invasions sent by Augustus to Arabia Felix and Ethiopia (Res Gestae 26), and perhaps the greatest Ancient Greek explorer of all, Alexander the Great, who deliberately set out to learn more about the east through his military expeditions and so took a large number of geographers and writers with his army who recorded their observations as they moved east.
The ancient Greeks divided the world into three continents, Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa). The Hellespont formed the border between Europe and Asia. The border between Asia and Libya was generally considered to be the Nile river, but some geographers, such as Herodotus objected to this. Herodotus argued that there was no difference between the people on the east and west sides of the Nile, and that the Red Sea was a better border. The relatively narrow habitable band was considered to run from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to an unknown sea somewhere east of India in the east. The southern portion of Africa was unknown, as was the northern portion of Europe and Asia, so it was believed that they were circled by a sea. These areas were generally considered uninhabitable.
The size of the Earth was an important question to the Ancient Greeks. Eratosthenes attempted to calculate its circumference by measuring the angle of the sun at two different locations. While his numbers were problematic, most of the errors cancelled themselves out and he got quite an accurate figure. Since the distance from the Atlantic to India was roughly known, this raised the important question of what was in the vast region east of Asia and to the west of Europe. Crates of Mallus proposed that there were in fact four inhabitable land masses, two in each hemisphere. In Rome a large globe was created depicting this world. That some of the figures Eratosthenes had used in his calculation were considerably in error became known, and Posidonius set out to get a more accurate measurement. This number actually was considerably smaller than the real one, but it became accepted that the eastern part of Asia was not a huge distance from Europe.
Roman period
While the works of almost all earlier geographers have been lost, many of them are partially known through quotations found in Strabo. Strabo's seventeen volume work of geography is almost completely extant, and is one of the most important sources of information on classical geography. Strabo accepted the narrow band of habitation theory, and rejected the accounts of Hanno and Pytheas as fables. None of Strabo's maps survive, but his detailed descriptions give a clear picture of the status of geographical knowledge of the time. A century after Strabo Ptolemy launched a similar undertaking. By this time the Roman Empire had expanded through much of Europe, and previously unknown areas such as the British Isles had been explored. The Silk Road was also in operation, and for the first time knowledge of the far east began to be known. Ptolemy's Geographia opens with a theoretical discussion about the nature and techniques of geographical inquiry, and then moves to detailed descriptions of much the known world. Ptolemy lists a huge number of cities, tribes, and sites and places them in the world. It is uncertain what Ptolemy's names correspond to in the modern world, and a vast amount of scholarship has gone into trying to link Ptolemaic descriptions to known locations.
Pliny the Elder's Natural History also has sections on geography. For the most part Ancient Greek geography was an academic field. There is little evidence that maps or charts were used for navigation. It does, however, seem that at least in Athens the people were acquainted with maps and that several were on public display. It was the Romans who made far more extensive practical use of geography and maps.
In China, the earliest known geographical Chinese writing dates back to the 5th century BC, during the beginning of the Warring States (481 BC-221 BC). This was the 'Yu Gong' ('Tribute of Yu') chapter of the book Shu Jing (Classic of History). The book describes the traditional nine provinces, their kinds of soil, their characteristic products and economic goods, their tributary goods, their trades and vocations, their state revenues and agricultural systems, and the various rivers and lakes listed and placed accordingly. The nine provinces in the time of this geographical work was very small in terrain size compared to what modern China occupies today. In fact, its description pertained to areas of the Yellow River, the lower valleys of the Yangtze, with the plain between them and the Shandong peninsula, and to the west the most northern parts of the Wei River and the Han River were known (along with the southern parts of modern day Shanxi province).
In this ancient geographical treatise (which would greatly influence later Chinese geographers and cartographers), the Chinese used the mythological figure of Yu the Great to describe the known earth (of the Chinese). Apart from the appearance of Yu, however, the work was devoid of magic, fantasy, Chinese folklore, or legend. Although the Chinese geographical writing in the time of Herodotus and Strabo were of lesser quality and contained less systematic approach, this would change from the 3rd century onwards, as Chinese methods of documenting geography became more complex than found in Europe (until the 13th century).
The earliest extant maps found in archeological sites of China date to the 4th century BC and were made in the ancient State of Qin. The earliest known reference to the application of a geometric grid and mathematically graduated scale to a map was contained in the writings of the cartographer Pei Xiu (224–271). From the 1st century AD onwards, official Chinese historical texts contained a geographical section, which was often an enormous compilation of changes in place-names and local administrative divisions controlled by the ruling dynasty, descriptions of mountain ranges, river systems, taxable products, etc. The ancient Chinese historian Ban Gu (32–92) most likely started the trend of the gazeteer in China, which became prominent in the Southern and Northern Dynasties period and Sui Dynasty. Local gazeteers would feature a wealth of geographic information, although its cartographic aspects were not as highly professional as the maps created by professional cartographers.
From the time of the 5th century BC Shu Jing forward, Chinese geographical writing provided more concrete information and less legendary element. This example can be seen in the 4th chapter of the Huainanzi (Book of the Master of Huainan), compiled under the editorship of Prince Liu An in 139 BC during the Han Dynasty (202 BC-202 AD). The chapter gave general descriptions of topography in a systematic fashion, given visual aids by the use of maps (di tu) due to the efforts of Liu An and his associate Zuo Wu. In Chang Chu's Hua Yang Guo Chi (Historical Geography of Szechuan) of 347, not only rivers, trade routes, and various tribes were described, but it also wrote of a 'Ba Jun Tu Jing' ('Map of Szechuan'), which had been made much earlier in 150. The Shui Jing (Waterways Classic) was written anonymously in the 3rd century during the Three Kingdoms era (attributed often to Guo Pu), and gave a description of some 137 rivers found throughout China. In the 6th century, the book was expanded to forty times its original size by the geographers Li Daoyuan, given the new title of Shui Jing Zhu (The Waterways Classic Commented).
In later periods of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), there were much more systematic and professional approaches to geographic literature. The Song Dynasty poet, scholar, and government official Fan Chengda (1126–1193) wrote the geographical treatise known as the Gui Hai Yu Heng Chi. It focused primarily on the topography of the land, along with the agricultural, economic and commercial products of each region in China's southern provinces. The polymath Chinese scientist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) devoted a significant amount of his written work to geography, as well as a hypothesis of land formation (geomorphology) due to the evidence of marine fossils found far inland, along with bamboo fossils found underground in a region far from where bamboo was suitable to grow. The 14th century Yuan Dynasty geographer Na-xin wrote a treatise of archeological topography of all the regions north of the Yellow River, in his book He Shuo Fang Gu Ji. The Ming Dynasty geographer Xu Xiake (1587–1641) traveled throughout the provinces of China (often on foot) to write his enormous geographical and topographical treatise, documenting various details of his travels, such as the locations of small gorges, or mineral beds such as mica schists. Xu's work was largely systematic, providing accurate details of measurement, and his work (translated later by Ding Wenjiang) read more like a 20th-century field surveyor than an early 17th century scholar.
The Chinese were also concerned with documenting geographical information of foreign regions far outside of China. Although Chinese had been writing of civilizations of the Middle East, India, and Central Asia since the traveler Zhang Qian (2nd century BC), later Chinese would provide more concrete and valid information on the topography and geographical aspects of foreign regions. The Tang Dynasty (618-907) Chinese diplomat Wang Xuance traveled to Magadha (modern northeastern India) during the 7th century. Afterwards he wrote the book Zhang Tian-zhu Guo Tu (Illustrated Accounts of Central India), which included a wealth of geographical information. Chinese geographers such as Jia Dan (730–805) wrote accurate descriptions of places far abroad. In his work written between 785 and 805, he described the sea route going into the mouth of the Persian Gulf, and that the medieval Iranians (whom he called the people of the Luo-He-Yi country, i.e. Persia) had erected 'ornamental pillars' in the sea that acted as lighthouse beacons for ships that might go astray. Confirming Jia's reports about lighthouses in the Persian Gulf, Arabic writers a century after Jia wrote of the same structures, writers such as al-Mas'udi and al-Muqaddasi. The later Song Dynasty ambassador Xu Jing wrote his accounts of voyage and travel throughout Korea in his work of 1124, the Xuan-He Feng Shi Gao Li Tu Jing (Illustrated Record of an Embassy to Korea in the Xuan-He Reign Period). The geography of medieval Cambodia (the Khmer Empire) was documented in the book Zhen-La Feng Tu Ji of 1297, written by Zhou Daguan.
Medieval Islamic world
||This article may be unbalanced towards certain viewpoints. (April 2010)|
In the Middle East, Muslim geographers such as al-Idrisi, al-Yaqubi, al-Masudi, Ibn Khurdadhbih, Ibn al-Faqih, al-Istakhri, Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun, etc. maintained the Greek and Roman techniques and developed new ones. The Islamic empire stretched from Spain to India, and Arab and Jewish traders (known as Radhanites) travelled throughout Eurasia, Africa and the Indian Ocean. The Arabs added a great deal of knowledge to expand and correct the classical sources. There were some representatives of the West that produced geographical works of quality, such as the Syrian bishop Jacob of Edessa (633-708), but this paled in comparison to the virtual mountain of work published by Islamic writers of the Middle Ages (who were largely responsible for the foundations of knowledge present in later Western geography).
During the Muslim conquests of the 7th and early 8th centuries, Arab armies established the Islamic Arab Empire, reaching from Central Asia to the Iberian Peninsula. An early form of globalization began emerging during the Islamic Golden Age, when the knowledge, trade and economies from many previously isolated regions and civilizations began integrating due to contacts with Muslim explorers, sailors, scholars, traders, and travelers. Subhi Y. Labib has called this period the Pax Islamica, and John M. Hobson has called it the Afro-Asiatic age of discovery, in reference to the Muslim Southwest Asian and North African traders and explorers who travelled most of the Old World, and established an early global economy across most of Asia, Africa, and Europe, with their trade networks extending from the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Indian Ocean and China Seas in the east, and even as far as Japan, Korea and the Bering Strait. Arabic silver dirham coins were also being circulated throughout the Afro-Eurasian landmass, as far as sub-Saharan Africa in the south and northern Europe in the north, often in exchange for goods and slaves. In England, for example, the Anglo-Saxon king Offa of Mercia (r. 757-796) had coins minted with the Shahadah in Arabic. These factors helped establish the Arab Empire (including the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates) as the world's leading extensive economic power throughout the 7th–13th centuries.
In the 9th century, Alkindus was the first to introduce experimentation into the Earth sciences. An early adherent of environmental determinism was the medieval Afro-Arab writer al-Jahiz, who explained how the environment can determine the physical characteristics of the inhabitants of a certain community. He used his early theory of evolution to explain the origins of different human skin colors, particularly black skin, which he believed to be the result of the environment. He cited a stony region of black basalt in the northern Najd as evidence for his theory. In the early 10th century, Abū Zayd al-Balkhī, originally from Balkh, founded the "Balkhī school" of terrestrial mapping in Baghdad. The geographers of this school also wrote extensively of the peoples, products, and customs of areas in the Muslim world, with little interest in the non-Muslim realms. Suhrāb, a late 10th century Muslim geographer, accompanied a book of geographical coordinates with instructions for making a rectangular world map, with equirectangular projection or cylindrical equidistant projection. In the early 11th century, Avicenna hypothesized on the geological causes of mountains in The Book of Healing (1027).
In mathematical geography, Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, around 1025, was the first to describe a polar equi-azimuthal equidistant projection of the celestial sphere. He was also regarded as the most skilled when it came to mapping cities and measuring the distances between them, which he did for many cities in the Middle East and western Indian subcontinent. He often combined astronomical readings and mathematical equations, in order to develop methods of pin-pointing locations by recording degrees of latitude and longitude. He also developed similar techniques when it came to measuring the heights of mountains, depths of valleys, and expanse of the horizon, in The Chronology of the Ancient Nations. He also discussed human geography and the planetary habitability of the Earth. He hypothesized that roughly a quarter of the Earth's surface is habitable by humans, and also argued that the shores of Asia and Europe were "separated by a vast sea, too dark and dense to navigate and too risky to try" in reference to the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean.
At the age of 17, al-Biruni calculated the latitude of Kath, Khwarazm, using the maximum altitude of the Sun. Al-Biruni also solved a complex geodesic equation in order to accurately compute the Earth's circumference, which were close to modern values of the Earth's circumference. His estimate of 6,339.9 km for the Earth radius was only 16.8 km less than the modern value of 6,356.7 km. In contrast to his predecessors who measured the Earth's circumference by sighting the Sun simultaneously from two different locations, al-Biruni developed a new method of using trigonometric calculations based on the angle between a plain and mountain top which yielded more accurate measurements of the Earth's circumference and made it possible for it to be measured by a single person from a single location. By the age of 22, al-Biruni had written several short works, including a study of map projections, Cartography, which included a method for projecting a hemisphere on a plane.
John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson write in the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive:
"Important contributions to geodesy and geography were also made by al-Biruni. He introduced techniques to measure the earth and distances on it using triangulation. He found the radius of the earth to be 6339.6 km, a value not obtained in the West until the 16th century. His Masudic canon contains a table giving the coordinates of six hundred places, almost all of which he had direct knowledge."
The Arab geographer Al-Idrisi's Mappa Mundi incorporated the knowledge of Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Far East gathered by Arab merchants and explorers with the information inherited from the classical geographers to create one of the most accurate maps of the world to date. The Tabula Rogeriana was drawn by Al-Idrisi in 1154 for the Norman King Roger II of Sicily, after a stay of eighteen years at his court, where he worked on the commentaries and illustrations of the map. The map, written in Arabic, shows the Eurasian continent in its entirety, but only shows the northern part of the African continent.
Ibn Battuta (1304–1368) was a traveler and explorer, whose account documents his travels and excursions over a period of almost thirty years, covering some 73,000 miles (117,000 km). These journeys covered most of the known Old World, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the west, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China (then the Mongol Yuan Empire) in the east, a distance readily surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary Marco Polo. The universal use of Arabic in the Muslim world and his status as judge trained in law gave him access to royal courts at most locations he visited.
Medieval Europe
During the Early Middle Ages, geographical knowledge in Europe regressed (though it is a popular misconception that they thought the world was flat), and the simple T and O map became the standard depiction of the world.
The trips of Venetian explorer Marco Polo throughout Mongol Empire in the 13th century, the Christian Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries, and the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of exploration during the 15th and 16th centuries opened up new horizons and stimulated geographic writings.
During the 15th century, Henry the Navigator of Portugal supported explorations of the African coast and became a leader in the promotion of geographic studies. Among the most notable accounts of voyages and discoveries published during the 16th century were those by Giambattista Ramusio in Venice, by Richard Hakluyt in England, and by Theodore de Bry in what is now Belgium.
Early modern period
Following the journeys of Marco Polo, interest in geography spread throughout Europe. From around c. 1400, the writings of Ptolemy and his Islamic successors provided a systematic framework to tie together and portray geographical information. The great voyages of exploration in 16th and 17th centuries revived a desire for both accurate geographic detail, and more solid theoretical foundations. The Geographia Generalis by Bernhardus Varenius and Gerardus Mercator's world map are prime examples of the new breed of scientific geography.
The Mongols also had wide ranging knowledge of the geography of Europe and Asia, based in their governance and ruling of much of this area and used this information for the undertaking of large military expeditions. The evidence for this is found in historical resources such as The Secret History of Mongols and other Persian chronicles written in 13th and 14th centuries. For example, during the rule of the Great Yuan Dynasty a world map was created and is currently kept in South Korea. See also: Maps of the Yuan Dynasty
The Muslim Ottoman cartographer Piri Reis drawn navigational maps in his Kitab-ı Bahriye. The work includes an atlas of charts for small segments of the Mediterranean, accompanied by sailing instructions covering the sea. In the second version of the work, he included a map of the Americas. The Piri Reis map drawn by the Ottoman cartographer Piri Reis in 1513 is an early surviving map to show the Americas.
19th century
By the 18th century, geography had become recognized as a discrete discipline and became part of a typical university curriculum in Europe (especially Paris and Berlin), although not in the United Kingdom where geography was generally taught as a sub-discipline of other subjects.
One of the great works of this time was Kosmos: a sketch of a physical description of the Universe, by Alexander von Humboldt, the first volume of which was published in German in 1845. Such was the power of this work that Dr Mary Somerville, of Cambridge University intended to scrap publication of her own Physical Geography on reading Kosmos. Von Humboldt himself persuaded her to publish (after the publisher sent him a copy).
In 1877, Thomas Henry Huxley published his Physiography with the philosophy of universality presented as an integrated approach in the study of the natural environment. The philosophy of universality in geography was not a new one but can be seen as evolving from the works of Alexander von Humboldt and Immanuel Kant. The publication of Huxley physiography presented a new form of geography that analysed and classified cause and effect at the micro-level and then applied these to the macro-scale (due to the view that the micro was part of the macro and thus an understanding of all the micro-scales was need to understand the macro level). This approach emphasized the empirical collection of data over the theoretical. The same approach was also used by Halford John Mackinder in 1887. However, the integration of the Geosphere, Atmosphere and Biosphere under physiography was soon over taken by Davisian geomorphology.
Over the past two centuries the quantity of knowledge and the number of tools has exploded. There are strong links between geography and the sciences of geology and botany, as well as economics, sociology and demographics.
The Royal Geographical Society was founded in England in 1830, although the United Kingdom did not get its first full Chair of geography until 1917. The first real geographical intellect to emerge in United Kingdom geography was Halford John Mackinder, appointed reader at Oxford University in 1887.
The National Geographic Society was founded in the USA in 1888 and began publication of the National Geographic magazine which became and continues to be a great popularizer of geographic information. The society has long supported geographic research and education.
20th century
In the West during the second half of the 19th and the 20th century, the discipline of geography went through four major phases: environmental determinism, regional geography, the quantitative revolution, and critical geography.
Environmental determinism
Environmental determinism is the theory that a people's physical, mental and moral habits are directly due to the influence of their natural environment. Prominent environmental determinists included Carl Ritter, Ellen Churchill Semple, and Ellsworth Huntington. Popular hypotheses included "heat makes inhabitants of the tropics lazy" and "frequent changes in barometric pressure make inhabitants of temperate latitudes more intellectually agile." Environmental determinist geographers attempted to make the study of such influences scientific. Around the 1930s, this school of thought was widely repudiated as lacking any basis and being prone to (often bigoted) generalizations. Environmental determinism remains an embarrassment to many contemporary geographers, and leads to skepticism among many of them of claims of environmental influence on culture (such as the theories of Jared Diamond).
Regional geography
Regional geography was coined by a group of geographers known as possibilists and represented a reaffirmation that the proper topic of geography was study of places (regions). Regional geographers focused on the collection of descriptive information about places, as well as the proper methods for dividing the earth up into regions. Well-known names from these period are Alfred Hettner in Germany and Paul Vidal de la Blache in France. The philosophical basis of this field in United States was laid out by Richard Hartshorne, who defined geography as a study of areal differentiation, which later led to criticism of this approach as overly descriptive and unscientific.
The Quantitative revolution
The quantitative revolution in geography began in the 1950s. Geographers formulated geographical theories and subjected the theories to empirical tests, usually using statistical methods (especially hypothesis testing). This quantitative revolution laid the groundwork for the development of geographic information systems. Well-known geographers from this period are Fred K. Schaefer, Waldo Tobler, William Garrison, Peter Haggett, Richard J. Chorley, William Bunge, and Torsten Hägerstrand.
Critical geography
Though positivist approaches remain important in geography, critical geography arose as a critique of positivism. The first strain of critical geography to emerge was humanistic geography. Drawing on the philosophies of existentialism and phenomenology, humanistic geographers (such as Yi-Fu Tuan) focused on people's sense of, and relationship with, places. More influential was Marxist geography, which applied the social theories of Karl Marx and his followers to geographic phenomena. David Harvey and Richard Peet are well-known Marxist geographers. Feminist geography is, as the name suggests, the use of ideas from feminism in geographic contexts. The most recent strain of critical geography is postmodernist geography, which employs the ideas of postmodernist and poststructuralist theorists to explore the social construction of spatial relations.
See also
- Human geography
- Physical geography
- Economic geography
- Royal Scottish Geographical Society
- Royal Geographical Society
- List of maritime explorers
- List of explorers
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- Al-Monaes, Walled A. (December 1991), "Muslim contributions to geography until the end of the 12th century AD", GeoJournal (Springer Science+Business Media) 25 (4): 393–400, doi:10.1007/BF02439491
- Alavi, S. M. Ziauddin (1965), Arab geography in the ninth and tenth centuries, pp. 104-5, Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University Press
- Roman K. Kovalev, Alexis C. Kaelin (2007), "Circulation of Arab Silver in Medieval Afro-Eurasia: Preliminary Observations", History Compass 5 (2), pp. 560–80.
- Mayor of London (2006), Muslims in London, p. 14, Greater London Authority.
- Plinio Prioreschi, "Al-Kindi, A Precursor Of The Scientific Revolution", Journal of the International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine, 2002 (2): 17-19.
- Lawrence I. Conrad (1982), "Taun and Waba: Conceptions of Plague and Pestilence in Early Islam", Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 25 (3), pp. 268-307 .
- E. Edson and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Views of the Cosmos, pp. 61-3, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
- David A. King (1996), "Astronomy and Islamic society: Qibla, gnomics and timekeeping", in Roshdi Rashed, ed., Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, Vol. 1, p. 128-184 . Routledge, London and New York.
- James S. Aber (2003). Alberuni calculated the Earth's circumference at a small town of Pind Dadan Khan, District Jhelum, Punjab, Pakistan.Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, Emporia State University.
- Lenn Evan Goodman (1992), Avicenna, p. 31, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-01929-X.
- www.travel-university.org: History of Geography, Al Biruni and Al Idrisi
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Al-Biruni", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
- E. Edson and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Views of the Cosmos, pp. 113-6, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
- Edson and Savage-Smith (2004), p. 106
- Dutch, Steven.The Piri Reis Map. University of Wisconsin–Green Bay
- Hamdani, Abbas (July - September , 1981), "Ottoman Response to the Discovery of America and the New Route to India", Journal of the American Oriental Society (American Oriental Society) 101 (3): 327.
- McIntosh, Gregory C. The Piri Reis Map of 1513. Athens, Georgia: University of George Press, 2000
- Hsu, Mei-ling. "The Qin Maps: A Clue to Later Chinese Cartographic Development," Imago Mundi (Volume 45, 1993): 90-100.
- Martin, Geoffrey J. All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
- Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 3. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd.
- Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Part 3. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd.
- Harley, J.B. and David Woodward. eds. The History of Cartography series Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987-
- The encyclopædia of geography: comprising a complete description of the earth, physical, statistical, civil, and political, 1852, Hugh Murray, 1779–1846, et al. (Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea) at the University of Michigan Making of America site.
- The Story of Maps at Google Book Search, a history of cartography; why North is at the "top" of a map, how they surveyed all of Europe and other interesting facts.
- Encyclopedia of Historical Geography of the Islamic World, Series of comprehensive and concise information on the cities of the Islamic World | <urn:uuid:a5c4da4c-2450-4f1c-a689-6d2cfed4624d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954271 | 7,771 | 3.484375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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A. Mitchell PalmerArticle Free Pass
A. Mitchell Palmer, in full Alexander Mitchell Palmer (born May 4, 1872, Moosehead, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died May 11, 1936, Washington, D.C.), American lawyer, legislator, and U.S. attorney general (1919–21) whose highly publicized campaigns against suspected radicals touched off the so-called Red Scare of 1919–20.
A devout Quaker from his youth, Palmer—later nicknamed the “Fighting Quaker”—was educated at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1893, practiced law at Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and became active in state Democratic Party affairs. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1909–15) and played a prominent role in securing the Democratic presidential nomination for Woodrow Wilson in 1912. He ran for the Senate in 1914 but was defeated. Upon U.S. entry into World War I, Palmer was appointed alien-property custodian. In 1919 he was named U.S. attorney general by President Wilson. During his two years at that post, he used the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 as a basis for launching an unprecedented campaign against political radicals, suspected dissidents, left-wing organizations, and aliens. He deported the self-avowed anarchist Emma Goldman and others suspected of subversive activities. On January 2, 1920, government agents in 33 cities rounded up thousands of persons, many of whom were detained without charge for long periods. The disregard of basic civil liberties during the “Palmer raids,” as they came to be known, drew widespread protest and ultimately discredited Palmer, who nevertheless justified his program as the only practical means of combating what he believed was a Bolshevik conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. Although he lost the Democratic presidential nomination in 1920, Palmer remained active in the Democratic Party until his death, campaigning for, among others, presidential candidates Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
What made you want to look up "A. Mitchell Palmer"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:c1927eff-c81c-4ee1-a31e-768c00b05910> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/440159/A-Mitchell-Palmer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974728 | 439 | 2.734375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Edgar Degas (1834–1917)
Rosa Adelaide Aurora Degas, the Duchess Morbilli, ca. 1858
Black, gray, and pink wash, with white gouache, over graphite
13 13/16 x 7 5/16 inches (350 x 186 mm)
Thaw Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum; EVT 274
See CORSAIR catalog record for this item »
Degas' grandfather fled the revolution in France and settled in Naples, though his eldest son—Degas' father—would later return to Paris. The artist's Neapolitan relatives appear in numerous painted and drawn portraits that were executed while he was in Italy.
Rosa (1805–1879), the eldest sister of Degas' father, married Giuseppe Morbilli, Duca di S. Angelo a Frosolone, who died in 1842, leaving her with seven children to support. Her eldest son, Gustavo, died during the 1848 revolution in Italy. This early watercolor—a technique Degas rarely used—was likely executed about 1858 in Naples. The intelligent countenance of the artist's fifty-three-year-old aunt renders her among his most compelling familial subjects.
About this department
List of works
Text only list | <urn:uuid:f05c4e1a-6543-470f-8464-7b146e5f510f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.themorgan.org/collections/collectionsEnlarge.asp?id=603 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949639 | 271 | 2.796875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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"text": "1. Who was Edgar Degas and what was his main interest in art?\n A. Edgar Degas was a French artist, known for his artwork in dance and ballet. He was best known for his paintings, drawings, and pastels.",
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Web edition: August 1, 2012
Print edition: September 8, 2012; Vol.182 #5 (p. 15)
New evidence from three independent studies supports the idea that solid tumors in the brain, colon and skin can arise from a few bad cells known as cancer stem cells.
Cancer researchers have debated whether every cell in a tumor is capable of re-creating the tumor, or if only a few special cells have that capacity. To answer the question, researchers have transplanted tumor cells from human cancers into mice, producing mixed results.
Now, in separate attempts to settle the issue, three research groups have taken a similar approach: tagging mouse cells with fluorescent proteins to trace various cells’ fates as tumors develop within the animal’s body. In each case, tumors seem to arise from a small group of cells that act like stem cells, researchers report online August 1 in Nature and Science. Cancer stem cells are thought to be able to re-create tumors the way that normal stem cells replenish tissues.
While the studies don’t definitively demonstrate that only cancer stem cells are capable of re-creating tumors, the three papers are signposts pointing to the direction research should go, says Phil Jones, a stem cell biologist at the Hutchison/MRC Research Centre in Cambridge, England. Researchers investigating cancer stem cells need to move away from the transplant experiments and study cancer cells in their native environments, Jones says.
In one study, researchers found that about 20 percent of cells in benign skin tumors called papillomas are a type of rapidly growing cell. But skin cancers called squamous cell carcinomas have a much higher proportion of these purported stem cells, Gregory Driessens of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium and colleagues report in Nature. The finding could mean that for tumors containing large numbers of cancer stem cells, it may appear as if any cell in the tumor can cause a recurrence of the cancer, Driessens says.
While squamous cell skin cancers may be densely populated by cancer stem cells, a deadly type of brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme relies on only a small pool of such cells to generate the tumor, researchers led by Luis Parada, a molecular geneticist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, report in Nature. Parada’s team genetically engineered mice to make green fluorescent protein in all stem cells in the brain. The mice also carried three genetic mutations that cause some normal brain stem cells to develop into glioblastomas. A chemotherapy drug called temozolomide killed dividing cells in the tumor, but didn’t eliminate the cancer stem cells, which are mostly dormant but have bursts of growth. When chemotherapy stopped, the stem cells began to divide and caused the tumor to grow again.
The finding suggests that the only way to cure this type of cancer is to kill the stem cells, Parada says. And doctors may need to re-evaluate how they measure a cancer treatment’s success. “A shrinking tumor doesn’t necessarily mean an efficacious therapy,” he says.
A third study, published online in Science, shows that a benign colon tumor called an adenoma grows from stem cells normally responsible for replacing intestinal cells. “The tumor is really a caricature of the normal situation,” says study coauthor Hugo Snippert, a molecular geneticist at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands.
J. Chen et al. A restricted cell population propagates glioblastoma growth after chemotherapy. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature11287.
G. Driessens et al. Defining the mode of tumour growth by clonal analysis. Nature.c i:10.1038/nature11344.
A.G. Schepers et al. Lineage tracing reveals Lgr5+ stem cell activity in mouse intestinal adenomas. Science. doi: 10.1126/science.1224676.
T. Hesman Saey. Chemo drug drives growth of some tumors. Science News Online, January 23, 2012.
L. Sanders. Possible prostate cancer culprit. Science News. Vol. 177, March 13, 2010, p. 11. Available online: [Go to]
J. Travis. The bad seed. Science News. Vol. 165, March 20, 2004, p. 184. Available online: [Go to] | <urn:uuid:9b88ff30-df2d-4d99-82cd-3b84d4fc5fb4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/342731/description/Select_cells_appear_to_spawn_tumors | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909155 | 920 | 3.359375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Discussion of everything related to the Theory of Evolution.
2 posts • Page 1 of 1
Elephant: The First Primate?
April 16, 2012
Humans and elephants appear to be evolutionary versions of the same species quite closely related on the family tree. Take another look and consider that humans evolved from elephant ancestors.
Our big brother is still with us today. Note the opposable thumbs.
Despite their large size elephants are otherwise just like ourselves and our skeletons are basically the same. The hands of the elephant are just like ours complete with opposable thumbs. Gomphotherium sp., early elephant ancestor [3.6 - 13.6 mya] still had enamel on its incisors/tusks* which might be an indicator of when our two species diverged. It may be the case that some monkey species split off from the elephant without ever crossing evolutionary paths with humans which would explain a lot since some monkeys do not seem to have much in common with humans at all. At the very least we must now consider the possibility of direct elephant/human evolution when we examine our links from the past.
What else is similar between human and elephant?
Both are mammals.
Both have the same life span.
Both are highly intelligent.
Both have complex language and communication.
Both care for their young over a long time.
Elephants have humor.
They are highly social creatures just like us.
They play, they learn, they morn, they remember.
The elephant brain is larger than ours, however, and it appears to be more complex.
We have similar body hair and baldness.
They have molars like ours while our incisors are like their tusks*.
They even have chins just like us.
Elbows, knee caps, heels are all the very same.
Hips, neck, and shoulder bones are the same, too.
We still even sport a little trunk we call a nose.
We have two nipples and our legs bend in the same way.
Elephants have arms and legs just like ours.
Elephants are compassionate and they empathize.
Continue adding to list.
Genetics and Human Evolution
According to a recent scientific paper, "Genetics has played an increasingly important role in studies of the last two million years of human evolution. It initially appeared that genetic data resolved the basic models of recent human evolution in favor of the “out-of-Africa replacement” hypothesis in which anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa about 150,000 years ago, started to spread throughout the world about 100,000 years ago, and subsequently drove to complete genetic extinction (replacement) all other human populations in Eurasia. Unfortunately, many of the genetic studies on recent human evolution have suffered from scientific flaws, including misrepresenting the models of recent human evolution, focusing upon hypothesis compatibility rather than hypothesis testing, committing the ecological fallacy, and failing to consider a broader array of alternative hypotheses. Once these flaws are corrected, there is actually little genetic support for the out-of-Africa replacement hypothesis. Indeed, when genetic data are used in a hypothesis-testing framework, the out-of-Africa replacement hypothesis is strongly rejected. The model of recent human evolution that emerges from a statistical hypothesis-testing framework does not correspond to any of the traditional models of human evolution, but it is compatible with fossil and archaeological data*."
- Wikipedia, 4/16/2012 "Unlike modern elephants, the upper tusks of Gomphotherium sp. were covered by a layer of enamel."
- "Genetics and Recent Human Evolution", http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 0164.x/pdf, 4/19/2007, doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.2007.00164.x, by Alan R. Templeton, Dept. of Biology, Washington University, Missouri and The Society for the Study of Evolution, Evolution 61-7: 1507–1519
Primates are certainly more closely related to odd toed ungulates than to even, but I think that is about as far as it goes. Very interesting thought though. Are we equally closely related to walrus or narwhal, or manatees? The origina mermaids! Wouldn't that be a turn up for the books!
Seriously though, I always thought that ivory was thick enamel. Are they different substances then?
2 posts • Page 1 of 1
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest | <urn:uuid:b66d3467-c53d-4c6e-915c-ec41f0ed39fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biology-online.org/biology-forum/about24748.html?p=141572&hilit=Span | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932733 | 957 | 3.046875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Naxalites are a group of people who aim to create a classless society and fight for the rights of poor labourers and tribal people living in the most backward areas of the country. Naxals believe in the Maoist ideology that power flows from the barrel of the gun and thus take on the authorities and system in their fight for justice and equality. However, most of these people are poor and illiterate and do not understand the meaning of these terms, they are just angry about the way they have been treated and join the movement as they do not have any other alternative.
The Naxalite movement in India started in a place called Naxalbadi in West Bengal in the year 1967, when a group of oppressed peasants started a revolution against the landlords for redistribution of land and wages. India’s independence from British rule brought no difference to the lives of these people as they were still subjected to atrocities by local authorities and Zamindaars. These landless farmers and peasants faced centuries of ill treatment and neglect and even post independence were constantly ignored by the Governments who were busy laying out the foundation of modern India without taking into account these poor and downtrodden people.
The crime against these helpless people never caught the attention of the media and public as they lived in the most interior parts of the country and constituted the most backward class of the country. In fact the very existence of these miserable people living in the most inhuman conditions was also unknown to contemporary India until they decided to make their presence felt.
The Naxal movement was a desperate attempt by these destitute people to draw the attention of so called ‘Shinning India’ towards them. They took the path of looting, rioting and killing to let their frustration out. Initially some intellects and a few communist parties supported them.
However, over the years the Central and State governments kept ignoring the Naxalite menace and now it has become an endemic in the country. Naxal attacks are becoming more frequent and devastating day by day. These people are armed with latest weapons and skillfully trained and the police are clueless about how to tackle them.
The Home Minister recently described Naxalism as the biggest internal threat to the sovereignty of the nation. Some people even call them terrorists. But out casting these people as ‘Terrorists’ would not help us solve the problem. We need to realise that these are the people of India and like most of us, their concerns are genuine.
India proudly claims to be the largest democracy in the world. However, in this manic dance of democracy, almost everyone is dissatisfied with the way our country is being run. While others like OBCs, Jats, Gujjars and Dalits use Bandhs, Chakka jams, damaging of public property to express their anguish, Naxals have moved a step forward using killings to get the attention of the nation. Although killing of innocent people can never be justified but these people need to be involved in the democratic framework before they lead to anarchy in the country.
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The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas, certain Atlantic and Pacific oceanic islands to which the closest continental shelf is that of the Americas (such as Bermuda), and sometimes Oceania (Australasia). The term originated in the early 16th century, shortly after America was discovered by in the age of discovery, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the Middle Ages, who had thought of the world as consisting of Africa, Asia, and Europe only: collectively now referred to as the Old World. The term was first coined by Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The Americas were also referred to as the "fourth part of the world".
The terms "Old World" vs. "New World" are meaningful in historical context and for the purpose of distinguishing the world's major ecozones, and to classify plant and animal species that originated therein.
One can speak of the "New World" in a historical context, e.g., when discussing the voyages of Christopher Columbus, the Spanish conquest of Yucatán and other events of the colonial period. For lack of alternatives, the term is also still useful to those discussing issues which concern the Americas and the nearby oceanic islands, such as Bermuda and Clipperton Island, collectively.
The term "New World" is used in a biological context, when one speaks of Old World (Palearctic, Afrotropic) and New World species (Nearctic, Neotropic). Biological taxonomists often attach the "New World" label to groups of species which are found exclusively in the Americas, to distinguish them from their counterparts in the "Old World" (Europe, Africa and Asia), e.g. New World monkeys, New World vultures, New World warblers. In this context, the "New World" label does not encompass Australasian species, which are in a distinct ecozone of their own (Australasia) and usually referred to separately.
The label is also often used in agriculture. Africa, Asia and Europe share a common agricultural history stemming from the Neolithic Revolution, and the same domesticated plants and animals spread through these three continents thousands of years ago, making them largely indistinct and useful to classify together as "Old World". Common Old World crops (e.g. wheat, barley, rye, oats, peas, lentils) and domesticated animals (e.g. sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, chickens, horses) did not exist in the Americas until they were introduced by post-Columbian contact in the 1490s (see "Columbian Exchange"). Conversely, many common crops were originally domesticated in the Americas before they spread worldwide after Columbian contact, and are still often referred to as "New World crops". Maize, squash and common beans (phaseolus) - the "three sisters" - as well as the avocado, tomato and wide varieties of capsicum (bell pepper, chili pepper, etc.) and the turkey were originally domesticated by pre-Columbian peoples in Mesoamerica, while agriculturalists in the Andean region of South America brought forth the potato, peanut, cassava, quinoa and domesticated animals like the llama, alpaca and guinea pig. Other famous New World crops include rubber, tobacco, cocoa, vanilla, cashew, sunflower and fruits like the pineapple, papaya and guava. There are rare instances of overlap, e.g. the calabash (bottle-gourd), yam, cotton and the dog are believed to have been domesticated separately in both the Old and New World, their early forms possibly brought along by Paleo-Indians from Asia during the last ice age.
Origin of term
The term "New World" ("Mundus Novus") was first coined by the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci, in a letter written to his friend and former patron Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de' Medici in the Spring of 1503, and published (in Latin) in 1503-04 under the title Mundus Novus. Vespucci's letter contains arguably the first explicit articulation in print of the hypothesis that the lands discovered by European navigators to the west were not the edges of Asia, as asserted by Christopher Columbus, but rather an entirely different continent, a "New World".
Vespucci first approached this realization in June of 1502, during a famous chance meeting between two different expeditions at the watering stop of "Bezeguiche" (the Bay of Dakar, Senegal) - his own outgoing expedition, on its way to chart the coast of newly-discovered Brazil, and the vanguard ships of the Second Portuguese India armada of Pedro Alvares Cabral, returning home from India. Having already visited the Americas in prior years, Vespucci probably found it difficult to reconcile what he had already seen in the West Indies, with what the returning sailors told him of the East Indies. Vespucci wrote a preliminary letter to Lorenzo, while anchored at Bezeguiche, which he sent back with the Portuguese fleet - at this point only expressing a certain puzzlement about his conversations. Vespucci was finally convinced when he proceeded on his mapping expedition through 1501-02, covering the huge stretch of coast of eastern Brazil. After returning from Brazil, in the Spring of 1503, Amerigo Vespucci composed the Mundus Novus letter in Lisbon to Lorenzo in Florence, with its famous opening paragraph:
In passed days I wrote very fully to you of my return from new countries, which have been found and explored with the ships, at the cost and by the command of this Most Serene King of Portugal; and it is lawful to call it a new world, because none of these countries were known to our ancestors and all who hear about them they will be entirely new. For the opinion of the ancients was, that the greater part of the world beyond the equinoctial line to the south was not land, but only sea, which they have called the Atlantic; and even if they have affirmed that any continent is there, they have given many reasons for denying it is inhabited. But this opinion is false, and entirely opposed to the truth. My last voyage has proved it, for I have found a continent in that southern part; full of animals and more populous than our Europe, or Asia, or Africa, and even more temperate and pleasant than any other region known to us.
Vespucci's letter was a publishing sensation in Europe, immediately (and repeatedly) reprinted in several other countries.
While Amerigo Vespucci is usually credited for coming up with the term "New World" (Mundus Novus) for the American continent in his 1503 letter, certainly giving it its popular cachet, similar terms had nonetheless been used and applied before him.
The Venetian explorer Alvise Cadamosto had used them term "un altro mundo" ("another world") to refer to sub-Saharan Africa, which he explored in 1455 and 1456 on behalf of the Portuguese. However, this was merely a literary flourish, not a suggestion of a new "fourth" part of the world. Cadamosto was quite aware sub-Saharan Africa was firmly part of the African continent.
The Italian-born Spanish chronicler Peter Martyr d'Anghiera often shares credit with Vespucci for designating the Americas as a new world. Peter Martyr used the term Orbe Novo (literally, "New Globe", but often translated as "New World") in the title of his history of the discovery of the Americas as a whole, which began to appear in 1511 (cosmologically, "orbus" as used here refers to the whole hemisphere, while "mundus" refers to the land within it). Peter Martyr had been writing and circulating private letters commenting on Columbus's discoveries since 1493 and, from the start, doubted Columbus's claims to have reached East Asia ("the Indies"), and consequently came up with alternative names to refer to them. Only a few weeks after Columbus's return from his first voyage, Peter Martyr wrote letters referring to Columbus's discovered lands as the "western antipodes" ("antipodibus occiduis", letter of May 14, 1493), the "new hemisphere of the earth" ("novo terrarum hemisphaerio", September 13, 1493), and in a letter dated November 1, 1493, refers to Columbus as the "discoverer of the new globe" ("Colonus ille novi orbis repertor"). A year later (October 20, 1494), Peter Martyr again refers to the marvels of the New Globe ("Novo Orbe") and the "Western hemisphere."("ab occidente hemisphero").
Christopher Columbus touched the continent of South America in his 1498 third voyage. In his own 1499 letter to the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, reporting the results of his third voyage, Columbus relates how the massive waters of the Orinoco delta rushing into the Gulf of Paria implied that a hitherto-unknown continent must lie behind it. However, bowing to the classical tripartite division of the world, Columbus discards that hypothesis and proposes instead that the South American landmass is not a "fourth" continent, but rather the terrestrial paradise of Biblical tradition, not a previously unknown "new" part of the world, but a land already "known" (but location undiscovered) by Christendom. In another letter (to the nurse of Prince John, written 1500), Columbus refers to having reached a "new heavens and world" ("nuevo cielo e mundo") and that he had placed "another world" ("otro mundo") under the dominion of the Kings of Spain.
The Vespucci passage above applied the "New World" label to merely the continental landmass of South America. At the time, most of the continent of North America was not yet discovered, and Vespucci's comments did not eliminate the possibility that the islands of the Antilles discovered earlier by Christopher Columbus might still be the eastern edges of Asia, as Columbus continued to insist down to his dying day. A critical step in the transition was the conference of navigators (Junta de Navegantes) assembled by the Spanish monarchs at Toro in 1505, and continued at Burgos in 1508, to digest all existing information about the Indies, come to an agreement on what had really been discovered, and set out the future goals of Spanish exploration. Amerigo Vespucci attended both conferences, and seems to have had an outsized influence on them - Vespucci ended up being appointed the first piloto mayor, the chief of navigation of Spain, at Burgos. Although the proceedings of the Toro-Burgos conferences are missing, it is almost certain that Vespucci articulated his recent "New World" thesis to his fellow navigators there. It was during these conferences when Spanish officials seem to have finally accepted that the Antilles and the known stretch of Central America were definitely not the Indies they had originally sought, and Columbus had insisted they were, and set out the new goal for Spanish explorers: to find a sea passage or strait through the American landmass which would permit them to sail to Asia proper.
While it became generally accepted after Vespucci that Columbus's discoveries were not Asia but a "New World", the geographic relationship between the two continents was still unclear. That there must be a large ocean between Asia and the Americas was implied by the known existence of vast continuous sea along the coasts of East Asia. Even prior to Vespucci, several maps, e.g. the Cantino planisphere of 1502 and the Canerio map of 1504, placed a large open ocean between China on the east side of the map, and the inchoate largely water-surrounded American discoveries on the western side of map. However, out of uncertainty, they depicted a finger of the Asian land mass stretching across the top to the eastern edge of the map, suggesting it carried over into the western hemisphere (e.g. the Cantino Planisphere denotes Greenland as "Punta d'Asia" - "edge of Asia"). Some maps, e.g. the 1506 Contarini–Rosselli map and the 1508 Johannes Ruysch map, bowing to Ptolemaic authority and Columbus's assertions, have the northern Asian landmass stretching well into the western hemisphere and merging with known North America (Labrador, Newfoundland, etc.). These maps place the island of Japan near Cuba and leave the South American continent - Vespucci's "New World" proper - detached and floating below by itself. The Waldseemüller map of 1507, which accompanied the famous Cosmographiae Introductio volume (which includes reprints of Vespucci's letters) comes closest to modernity by placing a completely open sea (with no stretching land fingers) between Asia on the eastern side and the New World on the western side - which that same map famously labels simply "America". However, Martin Waldseemüller's map of 1516 retreats considerably from his earlier map and back to classical authority, with the Asian land mass merging into North America (which he now calls Terra de Cuba Asie partis), and quietly drops the "America" label from South America, calling it merely Terra Icognita.
The western coast of the New World - the Pacific Ocean - was only discovered in 1513 by Vasco Núñez de Balboa. But it would take a few more years - Ferdinand Magellan's voyage of 1519-22 - to determine that the Pacific definitely formed a single large body of water separating Asia from America. It would be several more years before the Pacific Coast of North America was mapped, dispelling lingering doubts. Of course, until the discovery of the Bering Straits in the 17th century, there was no absolute confirmation that Asia and America were not connected, and some European maps of the 16th century still continued to hopefully depict North America connected by a land bridge to Asia (e.g. the 1533 Johannes Schöner globe).
- M.H.Davidson (1997) Columbus Then and Now, a life re-examined. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, p.417)
- This preliminary letter from Bezeguiche was not published, but remained in manuscript form. It is reproduced in F.A. de Varnhagen (1865: p.78-82).
- English translation of Mundus Novus as found in Markham (1894: p.42-52)
- Varnhagen, Amerígo Vespucci (1865: p.13-26) provides side-by-side reproductions of both the 1503 Latin version Mundus Novus, and the 1507 Italian re-translation "El Nuovo Mondo de Lengue Spagnole interpretato in Idioma Ro. Libro Quinto" (from Paesi Nuovamente retrovati). The Latin version of Mundus Novus was reprinted many times (see Varnhagen, 1865: p.9 for a list of early reprints).
- Cadamosto Navigationi, c. 1470, as reprinted in Giovanni Ramusio (1554: p.106). See also M. Zamora Reading Columbus, (1993: p.121)
- de Madariaga, Salvador (1952). Vida del muy magnífico señor Don Cristóbal Colón (in Castilian) (5th ed.). Mexico: Editorial Hermes. p. 363. ""nuevo mundo", [...] designación que Pedro Mártyr será el primero en usar"
- J.Z. Smith, Relating Religion, Chicago (2004: p.268)
- E.G. Bourne Spain in America, 1450-580 New York: Harper (1904: p.30)
- Peter Martyr, Opus Epistolarum (Letter 130 p.72)
- Peter Martyr, Opus Epistolarum, Letter 133, p.73
- Peter Martyr Opus Epistolarum (Letter 138, p.76)
- Peter Martyr Opus Epistolarum, Letter 156 p.88
- "if the river mentioned does not proceed from the terrestrial paradise, it comes from an immense tract of land situated in the south, of which no knowledge has been hitherto obtained" (Columbus 1499 letter on the third voyage, as reproduced in R.H. Major, Select Letters of Christopher Columbus, 1870: p.147)
- J.Z. Smith, Relating Religion, Chicago (2004: p.266-67)
- Columbus 1500 letter to the nurse (in Major, 1870: p.154)
- Columbus's 1500 letter to the nurse(Major, 1870: p.170)
- F.A. Ober Amerigo Vespucci New York: Harper (1907: p.239; 244)
- S.E. Morison The European Discovery of America, v.2: The southern voyages, 1492-1616.(1974: p.265-66).
- For an account of Vespucci at Toro and Burgos, see Navarette Colección de los viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV(1829: v.iii, p.320-23)
- C.O. Sauer The Early Spanish Main. Cambridge (1966: P.166-67)
- J.H. Parry, The Discovery of the Sea (1974: p.227)
- Verrazzano, Giovanni da (1524)."The Written Record of the Voyage of 1524 of Giovanni da Verrazzano as recorded in a letter to Francis I, King of France, July 8th, 1524". Citing: Wroth, Lawrence C., ed. (1970). The Voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano, 1524-1528. Yale, pp. 133-143. Citing: a translation by Susan Tarrow of the Cellere Codex.
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- Tiếng Việt | <urn:uuid:2fff087b-2b0b-415f-8d23-109868867cfb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.mobile.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928884 | 3,988 | 3.921875 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Scientists studying submerged sinkholes in the Great Lakes off the coast of northern Michigan have stumbled onto something they never expected to find: life-forms akin to those found in some of Earth's most extreme environments.
As groundwater leaks upward into Lake Huron, it redissolves an ancient seabed and creates a salty underwater environment that is supporting mats of primitive purple microbes -- cousins to bacteria that live in deep-sea hydrothermal vents and ice-locked Antarctic lakes.
The discovery in Huron's Thunder Bay underscores how little is known about the forms that life takes on Earth, or even where they might be found.
In this case, scientists wonder if the microbes may be truly primordial.
Researchers found that the purple bacteria can photosynthesize as easily in sulfur-rich water as they can in freshwater, an ability suited to the dim and sulfur-rich conditions of shallow, primeval seas that existed billions of years ago.
"We see this as a peek into the ancient world," said research ecologist Bopaiah Biddanda of Grand Valley State University in Michigan. "This sort of life was not supposed to be occurring in the Great Lakes."
The exposed limestone bedrock at the bottom of the lake -- a landform called karst -- was once the floor of a Silurian Sea that 300 million years ago blanketed what would become North America.
The Great Lakes were formed by glaciers, and most of the water in them now comes from rain and snowfall. But the sinkholes in the lake bed are filled with groundwater rich in salts and dissolved sulfur.
The source of those dissolved minerals is unknown, but scientists hope to find clues by trying to more accurately determine the age of the groundwater this summer.
Certainly, say scientists, it is very old.
"The question is whether it's several tens of thousands of years old, or several hundreds of thousands of years old," said Wayne State University geology professor Mark Baskaran.
The science community learned about the microbial ecosystems in Lake Huron's Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary when archeologists from the Institute for Exploration were searching in 2001 for uncharted shipwrecks in the sinkholes.
Instruments on the group's remote-controlled, deepwater submersible robot found unexpected pockets of very salty, slightly warmer water in the holes, which pockmark the limestone bedrock that straddles northern Michigan between Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay and northern Lake Huron.
Cameras on the submersible recorded something divers had seen and talked about for years -- vast purple carpets mottling the bottom of the shallower sinkholes, where dim surface light still reaches.
In deeper, darker water, the submersible found white microbial mats similar to those around deep-ocean heat vents.
"The more they saw them, the more they brought in other folks with particular expertise to look at this stuff," said Cathy Green, education coordinator at the national marine sanctuary. In the nearby industrial town of Alpena, Mich., residents who once talked about shipwrecks offshore now talked about the scientists who returned each summer.
One thing the researchers tried to figure out was what those purple colonies were.
They found that the single-celled microbes banded together to form filaments that in turn joined to form mats. When debris fell on the mats, the bacteria got on top by crawling toward the light. The sticky ooze could climb a pebble in a laboratory water tank in a few hours and crawled up the sides of beakers.
The bacteria also could eat sulfur, a primitive metabolic ability mostly abandoned when bacteria figured out how to use oxygen for photosynthesis billions of years ago.
Last spring, gene sequencing produced a startling result, said University of Wisconsin-Stout biologist Stephen Nold. When the DNA sequence was fed into a computer to compare with other species, the closest match was Phormidium autumnale, a rare bacterium found on an Antarctic lake floor.
The implication was that this kind of bacteria had once been everywhere but now survives only in pockets of inhospitable, salty, dim water -- what the world was like before plants.
Researchers will return to the unusual ecosystem again this summer, hoping to determine the age of the water source, how the sinkholes can be safely explored by divers in the marine sanctuary and how many more sinkhole ecosystems may exist elsewhere in the limestone-rich lower Great Lakes.
"Here we have this example of what early Earth must have looked like -- 70 feet down," Nold marveled. "It's not even that deep."
What do you think?
One online reader responded with a joke, but you can do better at chicagotribune.com/sinkhole | <urn:uuid:80d1f8e1-4523-4702-a853-44b267057b0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-04-27/news/0904260150_1_sinkholes-great-lakes-ancient-world | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947735 | 974 | 3.875 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and founded the University of Virginia. Yet, over the course of his life, Jefferson owned 600 people. His way of life always depended on the labor of people he held in slavery.
How could the author of the Declaration of the Independence own slaves? How could twenty percent of the population of the new United States, founded on the principles of liberty and equality, live in bondage? What was life like for enslaved people in the early republic? This online exhibition uses Monticello as a lens through which to examine these questions. | <urn:uuid:98d3f143-994c-4bf2-ae6e-852b95bda637> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.monticello.org/slavery-at-monticello/site/blog-and-community/posts/monticello-remains-open-following-louisa-co-va-earthquake | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967573 | 123 | 4.125 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Making Better Maps of Food Deserts
Neighborhoods with little or no access to healthful food can be located and studied using GIS mapping
Food deserts—areas where consistent access to healthful food is limited or nonexistent—have gained attention recently. Michelle Obama has launched an initiative to end them in the United States by 2017. But in many areas, we still lack comprehensive, fine-grain knowledge of where food access is most challenging.
“It’s something that kind of snuck up on us as a scientific community,” says Kirk Goldsberry, a professor in the Department of Geography at Michigan State University. Goldsberry and his colleagues Chris Duvall and Phil Howard, also of MSU, have made a new series of maps showing access to fresh produce in the Lansing, Michigan, area.
The team wanted to measure food access using a deeper level of data than is often available. So, Goldsberry says, they visited every fresh-produce retailer in the area, locating 447 distinct produce items for sale. Then, using GIS (Geographic Information Systems), they mapped where each item could be bought.
Next they estimated routes and times that shoppers, both pedestrians and drivers, might take to the store, using a 10-minute walk (with an average speed of 3 miles per hour) and a 10-minute drive as their respective limits. Putting all the layers together yielded an interactive atlas of fresh-produce accessibility.
Jason Gilliland, a geographer at the University of Western Ontario who studies food deserts, likes the map’s design. “It’s one of the most visually appealing food-desert maps in terms of cartography,” he says. The atlas is already being used, says Goldsberry, to determine where to place community gardens. He hopes it will inform other community action and policy-making decisions, and that its techniques will be replicated. “We hope that people in Denver, Colorado, or people in Austin, Texas, see this map and say, ‘I want to see how my city looks through this lens,’” he says.
“Standardization of methods is critical for comparing results,” says Gilliland. Using higher-resolution data, as Goldsberry’s team has, is a good start. But Gilliland notes that we need better studies to help define map parameters. How long does the average pedestrian commute to a food source actually take, for instance? Alternately, maps could show availability in 100-meter increments rather than using a time limit. “Then you’d have a true accessibility surface,” he says.
And there are other factors competing for space on such maps. Something Goldsberry would like to add is change in availability of produce over time. In addition, maps would ideally reflect all the transit modes and food sources people use. So public-transit and bicycling data are valuable. Existing community gardens and food banks are important access points to include, Gilliland notes. And getting help from community members with data gathering can improve accuracy.
Then there are things that may not even be mappable, but that nonetheless affect people’s lives. “Much more goes into food access than can ever be captured by a GIS map,” says Tim Stallmann, a Ph.D. student in geography at the University of North Carolina and a member of the Counter Cartographies Collective. “There’s a whole dimension around money and differential access to stores, how different stores make different groups of people feel welcomed. There’s the amount of time folks have to go shopping in the first place, and when they have it.”
As geographers work to refine maps of food deserts, what can be done about the problem itself? A three-year study by Gilliland and Kristian Larsen, published in 2009 in the journal Health and Place, documented a 12-percent drop in average prices for healthful foods in an underserved neighborhood in London, Ontario, after a farmer’s market opened there. This decrease occurred even as prices at supermarkets in London rose by 9 percent.
Increasing access to healthful food could have dramatic results for public health. As Gilliland puts it, “We know you are what you eat, and that includes, you are where you eat.” | <urn:uuid:02493922-03ab-4e48-aa9a-4c0dc006684e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.12414,y.0,no.,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948715 | 912 | 3.171875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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What does NEPAD stand for?
The New Partnership for Africa's Development.
What are the origins of NEPAD?
The NEPAD strategic framework document was prepared by the leaders of the five initiating states (Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa), in response to a mandate given to them by the Summit of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The 37th Summit of the OAU in July 2001 formally adopted the strategic framework document.
What is NEPAD?
NEPAD is a VISION and STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK FOR AFRICA'S RENEWAL.
NEPAD is a programme of the African Union (AU), adopted in 2001 by African leaders, with the primary objectives of poverty eradication, promotion of sustainable growth and development, and the empowerment of women through building genuine partnerships at country, regional and global levels.
NEPAD is a blueprint for Africa's development in the 21st century and provides unique opportunities for Africa to address the critical challenges facing the continent, including the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other continental and international agreed upon goals.
Why is there a need for NEPAD?
NEPAD is designed to address the current challenges facing the African continent. Issues such as the escalating poverty levels and underdevelopment of African countries and the continued marginalisation of Africa from the global economy needed a radical new intervention, spearheaded by African leaders - that would bring forth a new Vision for Africa's Renewal.
What is the NEPAD programme of action?
It is a detailed action plan derived from the NEPAD Strategic Framework document and the NEPAD Initial Action Plan, adopted by the African Union Summit in Durban in June 2002. The NEPAD Programme of Action is a holistic, comprehensive and integrated sustainable development initiative for the revival of Africa.
What are the NEPAD primary objectives?
What are the principles of NEPAD?
What are the elements of NEPAD's strategic focus?
In sum, NEPAD calls for adapted policy reforms and increased investments in the areas of agriculture and food security, science and technology, environment, trade and market access, governance, infrastructure (energy, transport and water sanitation, and information and communication technologies), gender and capacity development.
How is the NEPAD programme governed?
The work of the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency – which is tasked with the implementation of the NEPAD Programme – is overseen by the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee (HSGOC) and a Steering Committee.
The Chairperson of the African Union Commission exercises supervisory authority over the Agency.
Basically, the main features of the AU/NEPAD governance structure include the African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government (AU Assembly); NEPAD Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee (HSGOC) and a Steering Committee.
What is the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (NEPAD Agency)?
The NEPAD Agency was established by the 14th African Union Summit decision as the institutional vehicle for implementing the African Union Development agenda. Designated as the technical body of the African Union, the core mandate of the NEPAD Agency is to facilitate and coordinate the implementation of regional and continental priority programmes and projects and to push for partnerships, resource mobilisation and research and knowledge management. | <urn:uuid:f719a404-47c8-4aab-bc52-a5ce965f66dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nepad.org/nepad/frequently-asked-questions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911259 | 704 | 2.5625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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Are chemicals making us fat?
The rate of obesity in very young children — even infants — continues to climb. Evidence is building that obesity-promoting chemicals called obesogens are contributing to this alarming trend.
Some of these obesogens are pesticides that — as the ongoing study of endocrine disruption clarifies — can act at very low doses to interfere with all kinds of physiological processes. This includes, it turns out, triggering increased fat cell production.
With children affected so early in life, it's become increasingly clear that genetic and behavioral factors alone cannot explain the rising rates of obesity. Scientists are now examining the contribution of environmental factors, researching whether chemical exposures may be promoting obesity, and if so, how.
A fungicide that promotes fat
A recent study of triflumizole (TFZ) suggests that this fungicide is a likely obesogen. In 2010, over 40,000 pounds of TFZ's active ingredient was used in over 6,000 agricultural applications in the state of California alone. Widely used on food and ornamental crops, TFZ is not particularly toxic nor carcinogenic — but it does promote fat cells.
Researchers found that TFZ treatment of human stem cell cultures activated the pathway leading to fat cell production. Stem cells have the potential to become different kinds of cells (i.e., a stem cell can become a bone cell or fat cell).
The study also examined pre-birth exposure to TFZ in the drinking water of female mice. The lowest dose produced a significant increase in stored fat, while higher doses had no effect. This type of dose response — when different levels of exposure lead to different effects — is showing up in more and more studies, leading EPA to rethink how it evaluates pesticide risk.
In addition, stem cells prepared from the fat of female mice exposed to TFZ had significant genetic changes. Expression of a genetic marker that inhibits fat cell production was reduced, while genes known to promote fat cell production had increased expression.
Evidence growing stronger
Findings from this study suggest that exposure to a widely used fungicide may promote the rate of fat cell production from stem cells, and that female offspring exposed to TFZ in utero may have genetic changes that lead to increased fat cell production.
And the TFZ paper is just one of many recent studies on pesticides and obesogens. While this is a fairly new field of study, evidence is accumulating that chemicals are likely contributors to the obesity epidemic.
In our recent report, A Generation in Jeopardy, we discussed recent epidemiological studies focusing on children's health and putative obesogens. At this point, most of the studies focus on adult and teenage obesity.
The widespread public health consequences of the obesity epidemic suggest that we should pay very close attention to this rapidly emerging science. | <urn:uuid:2464026c-3ad1-49a1-a7b9-b270b059630a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.panna.org/blog/are-chemicals-making-us-fat?quicktabs_1=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944387 | 574 | 3.171875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu | [
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End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
Dataset Card for joelniklaus/finephrase
Dataset Summary
Synthetic data generated by DataTrove:
Model:
HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM2-1.7B-Instruct(main)Source dataset:
HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-350BT(sample-350BTconfig,trainsplit).Generation config:
temperature=1.0,top_p=1.0,top_k=50,max_tokens=2048,model_max_context=8192Speculative decoding:
{"method":"suffix","num_speculative_tokens":32}System prompt:
NoneUser prompts (from column
text):faq prompt
Rewrite the document as a comprehensive FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Extract or infer the key questions a reader would have about this topic, then provide clear, direct answers. Order questions logically—from foundational to advanced, or by topic area. Each answer should be self-contained and understandable without reference to other answers. Ensure the FAQ works as a standalone document. Output only the FAQ, nothing else.
Document: [[DOCUMENT]]math prompt
Rewrite the document to create a mathematical word problem based on the numerical data or relationships in the text. Provide a step-by-step solution that shows the calculation process clearly. Create a problem that requires multi-step reasoning and basic arithmetic operations. It should include the question followed by a detailed solution showing each calculation step. Output only the problem and solution, nothing else.
Document: [[DOCUMENT]]table prompt
Rewrite the document as a structured table that organizes the key information, then generate one question-answer pair based on the table. First extract the main data points and organize them into a clear table format with appropriate headers using markdown table syntax with proper alignment. After the table, generate one insightful question that can be answered using the table data. Provide a clear, concise answer to the question based on the information in the table. Output only the table followed by the question-answer pair, nothing else.
Document: [[DOCUMENT]]tutorial prompt
Rewrite the document as a clear, step-by-step tutorial or instructional guide. Use numbered steps or bullet points where appropriate to enhance clarity. Preserve all essential information while ensuring the style feels didactic and easy to follow. Output only the tutorial, nothing else.
Document: [[DOCUMENT]]
🔄 Generation Progress
faq: [●●●●●●●●●○○○○○○○○○○○] 49% • 166,843,197 (≈166.8M)/339,347,842 (≈339.3M) docs
⏱️ < 1m remaining • 📅 Feb 25 2026, 08:00 UTC
⏱️ 1d 3h remaining • 📅 Feb 20 2026, 12:49 UTC
tutorial: [●●●●●●●●●●●○○○○○○○○○] 56% • 191,563,560 (≈191.6M)/339,347,842 (≈339.3M) docs
⏱️ 2h 23m remaining • 📅 Feb 27 2026, 02:38 UTC
⏱️ 21h 52m remaining • 📅 Feb 20 2026, 06:04 UTC
math: [●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●○○○○] 82% • 278,455,889 (≈278.5M)/339,347,842 (≈339.3M) docs
⏱️ < 1m remaining • 📅 Feb 25 2026, 08:38 UTC
⏱️ 10h 13m remaining • 📅 Feb 19 2026, 17:06 UTC
table: [●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●○○] 93% • 317,202,478 (≈317.2M)/339,347,842 (≈339.3M) docs
⏱️ 31m remaining • 📅 Feb 27 2026, 05:59 UTC
⏱️ 6h 57m remaining • 📅 Feb 19 2026, 15:12 UTC
Last updated: 2026-02-27 05:27:42 UTC
You can load the dataset using
from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("joelniklaus/finephrase", "all") # all subsets combined
ds_faq = load_dataset("joelniklaus/finephrase", "faq")
ds_math = load_dataset("joelniklaus/finephrase", "math")
ds_table = load_dataset("joelniklaus/finephrase", "table")
ds_tutorial = load_dataset("joelniklaus/finephrase", "tutorial")
Dataset Stats
Generation in progress. Final statistics will be available upon completion.
Licensing Information
License: odc-by
Contributions
Thanks to @joelniklaus for adding this dataset.
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