text:
Now that the weather is finally cooling down, it's actually pleasant to hop on your bike and cruise around town. But isn't it time you gave your trusty steed the same kind of attention you bestow on your wardrobe this time of year? After all, a mini-makeover in the form of a classy basket or a charming bell can only make your city sojourn more enjoyable. So, before you hop back in the saddle, outfit your ride with some of these totally-chic accessories, and put the "babe" back in "biker babe."
Want even more R29? Get the latest news, tips, and can't-resist stories delivered straight to your newsfeed, in real time. Like us on Facebook — we'll see you there!


text:
Ken Reid suffered from a tubercular hip during his early life. Lying in his bed, he took to drawing. His talent was immediately recognized, and when he was recovered sufficiently, he went to Salford Art School. In 1938, his 'Adventures of Fudge the Elf' appeared in the Manchester Evening News. Reid continued to write and draw this strip until 1961.
Jonah (The Hornet #492)
During the 1950s, Ken Reid worked for Comic Cuts by Amalgamated Press, before moving over to D.C. Thomson to draw 'Roger the Dodger', 'Jonah' and 'Grandpa' for the Beano, and 'Angel Face' and 'Bing Bang Benny' for the Dandy. In 1958, 'Jonah' made his debut, and immediately became the favorite feature of many readers of the Beano.
During the 60s, Reid was the writer and artist of 'Frankie Stein', appearing in Wham! and in the 70s, he started 'Faceache' in IPC's Buster, which he drew until his death in 1987. Reid's work also appeared in Shiver & Shake, Whoopee!, Monster Fun and Wow!.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Rob Cohen To Direct 'Bullet Run'
Briefly: Rob Cohen directed The Fast and the Furious, kicking off a billion-dollar franchise for Universal. Now he's set up to direct Bullet Run, based on a script by Andrew Hilton. The movie is an action thriller that is already being called The Fast and the Furious in a desert. (So... something like Fast & Furious?)
Here's the plot, as given up by Deadline: "The head of an elite private protection team and his former CIA agent wife infiltrate the closed borders of Iran to abduct a man who killed their daughter. The extraction goes awry and they force to rely on their world-class driving skills and a fleet of high-performance street cars to travel 200 miles through a hail of bullets to keep alive the man they really want dead."
Sounds utterly ludicrous, but also potentially fun. Where do the street cars come from? Hopefully they're 'liberated' from old Hussein holdings, or perhaps just taken right off the streets of Dubai, where bankrupt investors left them to rot while fleeing the city.


text:
Paddy Ashdown – or Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon – to give him his proper title, former Royal Marine, intelligence service officer and leader of the Liberal Democrats has an opinion piece in the Times entitled 'If you're opposed to drones, then think again' (paywall).
Ashdown rehashes what are probably the top three pro-drone arguments. Firstly that drones are not indiscriminate like cluster munitions so can't be objected to because they deliver 'smart' bombs; if we don't use drones our citizens and soldiers will be killed; and finally there is nothing new about remote warfare, indeed he suggest "it goes back to the Roman trebuchet."
We have pointed out the flaws in these arguments many times before and will no doubt have to do so again. The myth of 'smart' or 'precise' bombing is just that – a myth. It has been well documented that many hundreds of innocent civilians have died in drone strikes in Pakistan alone. Secondly drones are not increasing security just the opposite with, for example, drones proving counter-productive by creating anti-western sentiment. Finally drones are simply not like a roman trebuchet or a cruise missile as Ashdown claims. The ability of drones to loiter for hours, days and weeks looking for 'targets of opportunity' makes them intrinsically different from other one-shot remote weapons.
Ashdown however brings two new, rather startling, arguments to bear. Firstly he claims that drones are "democratic" because the very remoteness from the battlefield means that they are "thousands of miles closer to the politicians who have to be accountable." Let's leave aside for the moment the inconvenient fact for Ashdown that British drones are actually controlled by RAF pilots sitting in a US base outside Las Vegas, thousands of miles away from Whitehall. The real inconvenient fact is that drones have done completely the opposite to what Ashdown is claiming. Drones have enabled a wholesale expansion of the US extrajudicial targeted killing programme which has killed thousands of people in Pakistan and Yemen for example, countries with which the US is not at war. In addition, the secrecy surrounding the use of drones – in particular the legal justification for the US targeted killing programme and the refusal of the UK MoD to answer basic questions about the day-to-day use of British drones in Afghanistan – means that the use of drones is anything but democratic.
Bizarrely Ashdown recognises that drones have been used extraterritorially, to carry out military operations in countries where lethal force has not been authored by the UN, counter to international law. However he merely says that it is "nothing new," indeed he revels that he himself took part in a secret British military operation inside Indonesia in the 1960s. As a former UN official one would expect Ashdown to have more regard for international law. And what is worse from a legal point of view – and a key point that he quietly omits – is that these drone strikes are not being aimed at members of a nations armed forces, but rather at non-state actors, a very significant legal difference.
One of the real problems with drones – and an issue that Lord Ashdown simply does not engage with – is that drones lower the threshold when it comes to launching military intervention. The potential of TV shots of grieving families awaiting returning coffins of young men and women sent to fight overseas is a real restraint on political leaders tempted to use lethal military force to 'solve' a problem rather than engage in messy political and diplomatic compromises. Take away that potential political cost by using unmanned drones and it makes it much easier to opt for lethal force – a real and significant danger to global peace and security.
Ashdown suggests that no new laws are needed to control drones as the old laws apply. This is perhaps true, but the way in which current international laws as well as human rights are being eroded by drones should at the very least give us all – including Paddy Ashdown –pause for thought.


text:
One month after her wedding, Cami Walker was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Two years later, she was depressed, angry and addicted to prescription pain medication. Though at first reluctant, she decides to follow a recommendation from her friend, Mbali Creazzo, a healer from South Africa. The advice: give away something every day, for 29 days.
In shifting her focus from herself (and her difficulties) to others, Walker also becomes more open to receiving gifts. By Day 29, she is not only healthier and happier, but she has created a worldwide giving movement, 29 Gifts. In some ways, with it's message of being positive, the book is reminiscent of The Secret by Rhonda Bryne. However, because it recounts her journey of dealing with a serious illness, it seems more personal, a factor that is enhanced by the inclusion of the stories of others who relate their own experience of giving for 29 days.
It's realistic enough to make me want to try it. What kind of world might this be if we all did?


text:
03 March 2011
Tomra Systems ASA has today purchased 47,500 own shares at an average price of
NOK 42.24 per share at Oslo Stock Exchange. After this transaction Tomra holds
284,517 treasury shares. The shares will later be sold to employees as part of
the employee share purchase program.
For further information please contact CFO Espen Gundersen, telephone
+47 97 68 73 01.
Asker, 3 March 2011
Tomra Systems ASA


text:
I have a server with a very limited used whom I want to be able to run two very specific (and custom) instructions through SSH. In order to do that, I have set the shell for that limited user to be a custom BASH script that will only accept those two "commands".
This is the
/etc/passwd for that user:
This is the
limited_shell.bash script (well, what I have so far, which is not working properly):
readonly RECORDER_SCRIPT="/usr/sbin/record.py"
echo "Verifying params: \$1: $1, \$2: $2"
case $1 in
nc -z localhost $1 < /dev/null >/dev/null 2>&1
if [[ $result -eq 0 ]]
echo "O"
echo "C"
exit $result
exit $?
exit 0
exit 0
As you might deduce from the script, the two commands I want
limited_shell.bash to accept are: a number and a "record" string. When
limited_shell.bash is called with a number, it will return whether it corresponds with an opened or closed local port. The other allowed command triggers a call to a python script (
/usr/sbin/record.py) which then records some video from an input. This second command needs to be called with extra arguments, and that's where the problems start.
When, in another machine I try to remotely execute the
record command...
ssh [email protected] record -option1 foo -option2 bar
... what actually arrives to
limited_shell.bash is:
-c 'record -option1 foo -option2 bar' (technically two arguments, one of them being
-c and the second one being the whole string command+args that I want to execute)
I thought about shifting the first argument (the
-c), and split the second argument (the actual
record command with arguments) by space, but that is dirty and will give me a lot of troubles if one of the parameters I want to pass to the
record.py script is an string containing an space.
What is the right way of parsing the commands? I'm sure there has to be a better way than shifting and splitting.


text:
Aminoglycoside antibiotics can damage the hair cells of the inner ear, leading to hearing loss and balance disorders. Improved treatment paradigms have reduced the risk of adverse effects associated with these antibiotics, but permanent inner ear damage is still common. Hair cells are susceptible to damage because of their tendency to take up and retain aminoglycosides, whereas less vulnerable cells do not accrue aminoglycosides after exposure. To better understand the mechanisms that contribute to aminoglycoside toxicity, David Raible's lab at the University of Washington imaged fluorescently-labeled aminoglycosides in the hair cells of live zebrafish. They found that the degree of aminoglycoside-induced toxicity was linked to how rapidly the antibiotic was distributed into lysosomes, suggesting that monitoring the kinetics of lysosomal delivery may be an effective way to evaluate different aminoglycoside treatment paradigms.
In the accompanying video, a time-lapse of zebrafish hair cells (green) shows the transit of fluorescently-labeled aminoglycosides (red) from the intracellular space into lysosomes. At the beginning of the video, aminoglycosides are visible as a diffuse pool in the cytosol. Within 20 minutes, the diffuse signal decreases as aminoglycosides merge into puncta, indicating their uptake into lysosomes.
Aminoglycosides (AGs) are broad-spectrum antibiotics that are associated with kidney damage, balance disorders, and permanent hearing loss. This damage occurs primarily by killing of proximal tubule kidney cells and mechanosensory hair cells, though the mechanisms underlying cell death are not clear. Imaging molecules of interest in living cells can elucidate how molecules enter cells, traverse intracellular compartments, and interact with sites of activity. Here, we have imaged fluorescently labeled AGs in live zebrafish mechanosensory hair cells. We determined that AGs enter hair cells via both nonendocytic and endocytic pathways. Both routes deliver AGs from the extracellular space to lysosomes, and structural differences between AGs alter the efficiency of this delivery. AGs with slower delivery to lysosomes were immediately toxic to hair cells, and impeding lysosome delivery increased AG-induced death. Therefore, pro-death cascades induced at early time points of AG exposure do not appear to derive from the lysosome. Our findings help clarify how AGs induce hair cell death and reveal properties that predict toxicity. Establishing signatures for AG toxicity may enable more efficient evaluation of AG treatment paradigms and structural modifications to reduce hair cell damage. Further, this work demonstrates how following fluorescently labeled drugs at high resolution in living cells can reveal important details about how drugs of interest behave.
Dale W. Hailey, Robert Esterberg, Tor H. Linbo, Edwin W. Rubel, David W. Raible


text:
|Einstein for Everyone
Back to main course page
D. Norton
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Pittsburgh
|Black holes are some of the most interesting pathologies in space and time delivered by Einstein's general theory of relativity. They form when matter collapses gravitationally onto itself, such as when massive stars burn out. They are a region of space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing--not even light--can escape. Hence John Wheeler called them "black holes." There is more. They incorporate singularities in spacetime structure: points where Einstein's theory breaks down, since the curvature of spacetime becomes infinite. And they can supply bridges to new universes
John Wheeler with Hideki Yukawa and Einstein
We tend to associate black holes with Einstein's general theory of relativity. Yet their origins lie firmly in classical, Newtonian physics. They depend on a potentially catastrophic instability that resides merely in the fact that masses attract gravitationally and attract more strongly the closer together they are. So once gravitational collapse starts, its gets harder and harder to stop. This means that fully collapsed bodies that don't allow light to escape are already possible in Newtonian theory.
So far we only have a singular gravitational field. Newton's space and time are unaffected. Now add the idea brought by general relativity that gravity goes with a curvature of spacetime. We find that a singularity in the gravitational field corresponds to a singularity in the structure of space and time itself.
Black holes tend nowadays to be accepted as a routine part of physical theory. That certainly was not always so. Theorists of earlier decades viewed them skeptically. Peter Bergmann, one of Einstein's assistants, remarked that through such singularities, general relativity contains the seeds of its own destruction. Einstein himself tried to argue (unsuccessfully) that they could not form.
Now we are so confident that there are black holes that the issue is not so much whether they exist, but where we should point our telescopes to see one. They arise either as collapsed stars or as the massive centers of galaxies. The object Cygnus X-1 has long been a strong candidate for a black hole. It is an unseen companion to a visible star that is 33 times as massive as our sun. The star HDE 226868 orbits around a second object so massive and compact that it must be a black hole. That object is Cygnus X-1, a strong candidate for a black hole.
Here is an image of HDE 226868 and its invisible companion taken with an optical telescope at the Palomar Observatory (http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/YBA/cyg-X1-mass/cygX1-image.html)
Here's an artist's impression of Cygnus X-1, whose powerful gravity drags matter from its companion star into the black hole accretion disk. (http://agile.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/objects/binaries/cygx1_artists.html)
|The process is more dynamic. The two objects orbit each other with a period of 5.6 days as this sped up animation shows (http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/binary.html).
The images above were drawn from the NASA website, http://www.nasa.gov/, January 21, 2007. NASA provides these images copyright free subject to the restrictions on http://www.simlabs.arc.nasa.gov/copyright_info/copyright.html
The considerations above were the early steps in the identification of black holes. Since then, much has happened. We now know that there are many more black holes scattered throughout space. There is a giant black hole at the center of our galaxy. In 2015, the LIGO project detected the distinctive "chirp" in gravitational waves emitted by a binary star system undergoing gravitational collapse. In April 2017, the Event Horizon Telescope combined signals from several widely spaced X-ray telescopes to produce an image of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, 55 million light years from earth. The black hole is 6.5 billion time as massive as our sun. Here is their famous image. The shadow of the black hole is in the center.
Stable systems are inherently self-correcting. If something disturbs them from their equilibrium state, they naturally correct themselves and return to the equilibrium.
|Consider a heavy office desk. Lift the corner and release it. It falls back to its regular position. It's weight is so positioned that it corrects deflections from the normal position. Things do not spontaneously get hot. If we heat something, it tends to lose heat faster as it gets hotter. Heat a potato in the oven and we can only keep it hot by leaving it in the oven; it spontaneously cools once we take it out.
An example closer to what is to come is electric charges. They naturally tend to distribute themselves. If we clump a lot of positive charges together, they repel, opposing the clumping. The more we force them together, the stronger the forces of repulsion become. The more they resist.
Unstable systems are not self-correcting under perturbations. They are the opposite. If we disturb them, their natural dynamics magnifies the disturbance.
|Consider a tall, thin bookcase. It is not stable. If we tip it away from its normal upright position sufficiently far, it will fall. Once the center of the weight passes the support, the weight no longer acts to oppose the deflection; it reinforces it. The deflection grows and the greater the deflection, the faster it grows.
If temperature behaved similarly, our world would be very different. Imagine that, once a body got hot enough, that would somehow trigger it getting yet hotter, and so on indefinitely. We would be standing forever on the abyss of possible runaway processes that yield infinite temperatures.
Now consider gravitational collapse. As Newton first told us over 300 years ago, all bodies gravitationally attract all other bodies. So matter naturally wants to clump together in ever denser, smaller clumps. This process is gravitational collapse.
It is not a self-limiting process. The more matter clumps together, the stronger become the forces that drive the clumping. That is an immediate consequence of Newton's inverse square law. The gravitational force between bodies varies inversely with the square of the distance between them.
As two bodies near and the distance between them reduces from 3 to 2 to 1, the gravitational force pulling them together increases ninefold: from 1/9 to 1/4 to 1.
The same thing happens if we have a large sphere of matter collapsing gravitationally.
|The figure shows the force on a unit of mass
located at the surface of the sphere. As the size of the sphere
reduces from 3 to 2 to 1, the force on the unit mass at the surface
increases ninefold: 1/9 to 1/4 to 1.
For experts only: It is not immediately obvious that this follows from Newton's inverse square law since the force on the mass at the surface will be the total force due to all the other masses in the sphere. These other masses are at many different distances from the unit mass and the forces due to each must be summed. A familiar theorem in Newtonian mechanics tells us that the gravitational force of masses in a sphere on bodies outside it is the same as the force due to a point with equal mass located at the sphere's center. So we can figure out the force on the unit mass by pretending that the masses of the sphere are all located at its center.
In short, if we have a cluster of masses that fall together under their mutual gravitational attraction, those forces of attraction will grow stronger as the masses come closer together. There is nothing in the properties of gravity to prevent the continued collapse. In this sense, gravitation forever threatens a catastrophic, runaway collapse.
The process of gravitational collapse just described is the process by which stars, galaxies and planets are formed. Cosmic debris, hydrogen or other elements, coalesce under their own gravity to produce these celestial objects. What prevents their collapsing to a point? Other forces intervene.
There are three types of forces that halt continuing collapse. Each force has its limit.
|Gravitational collapse of...
|is halted by...
|But that halting force can be overcome by...
|Galaxies and planetary systems.
Their matter forms great, orbiting swirls as they collapse together.
|The orbital motion of stars in galaxies and planets in solar systems lead to centrifugal forces that prevent the stars and planets falling to the centers of the systems
|If these motions are lost due to collisions, collapse can ensue.
They become very hot as they form from gravitationally collapsing clouds of cosmic matter.
|Their high temperatures yield high pressures that balance the continuing pull of gravity.
|Stars are radiating away their heat. Even though nuclear reactions contribute more heat, eventually they will burn out and the stars will cool.
|The mechanical rigidity of the rocks and incompressibility of the molten core of rocky planets prevent further collapse. The gas pressure of gas giants prevent their collapse.
|If the gravitational forces are strong enough because a lot of matter is collapsing, these mechanical forces can be overcome.
The table summarizes how three different effects prevent complete gravitational collapse. The circumstances with stars needs a little more explanation.
Stars are huge spheres of gases, heated to very high temperatures by the energy released in gravitational collapse and then by thermonuclear reactions ignited by the rising temperatures. Those high temperatures cause the gases to expand. If those expanding gases were somehow trapped in a chamber so the expansion was halted, very high pressures would result. The gravitation of the star itself provides just such a chamber. The gravitational attraction of each part of the star for all other parts pulls back on the other parts, stopping the expansion and producing high pressure.
The stability of the star consists in a perfect balance of the outward pressure forces and the inward gravitational forces. It is a temporary balance, since the nuclear fuel of the stars will eventually burn out.
What makes black holes black is that light cannot escape from them. In this regard, there is a simple analog to the black holes of general relativity in Newtonian physics.
One way to gauge the intensity of the gravitational field of a collapsing body is to determine its "escape velocity." If we have an object on the surface of one of these entities and hurl it straight up, the escape velocity is the minimum speed it would need in a vertical direction to escape the gravitational pull of the entity. On the surface of our earth, that escape velocity is 11 kilometers per second vertically--a quite prodigious speed.
That means that a body hurled directly upward at more than 11 kilometers per second would escape the pull of the earth's gravity with some speed to spare. An object hurled upward at less than 11 kilometers per second would always fall back. The closer the speed gets to 11 kilometers per second, the higher the object would rise before falling back. At 11 kilometers per second, the object has exactly the minimum velocity needed to escape the earth; once it was far away from the earth, all its velocity would be used up by the escape and it would approach rest.
Here is what happens when the object
is not given enough vertical speed to escape the earth.
Here is what happens if the object
is flung more powerfully.
The idea of being shot out of a canon as a way of escaping our earth has a venerable place in science fiction. It is how Jules Verne imagined that we might take a trip to the moon in an 1865 novel.
Click here for 7MB animation from George Melies' 1902 movie of Jules Verne's story of a trip to the moon.
If the earth were to undergo gravitational collapse, that
escape velocity would increase as the collapsing
earth's size decreases. The increase is not as fast as you might
expect. It grows only with the square root of the change in size. The
table illustrates this growing.
|Decrease size by ratio:
|Increase escape velocity by ratio:
|So reduce the radius of the earth by a factor of 100 (from 6500 kilometers to 65 kilometers) and the escape velocity increases by a factor of the square root of 100; that is, by a factor of 10. So it becomes 110 kilometers per second.
|The precise formula, if you want to know, is just
To see the formation of a Newtonian black hole, just continue this collapse process, as in the figure. The Newtonian black hole forms when the collapsing earth's radius passes 1/3". That is an astonishingly small size into which all the matter of the earth must be squeezed. But if it is done, the gravity at the surface is so strong that an object hurled upward at c=300,000 km/sec=186,000 miles/sec could only just escape. Nothing traveling any slower could escape. If the collapse continued to anything smaller than 1/3", then not even objects moving at c could escape.
|The object formed with radius 1/3" from the earth
is a Newtonian black hole. It has many properties in common with the
black holes of general relativity. Most importantly, they both have
the same size.
As the collapse proceeds, energy is released in larger and larger amounts. If the collapse continued to a point, an infinite amount of energy would be released (but would not be carried off by light moving at c!).
|For experts only. The formula for the size rbh
of a Newtonian black hole is easy to compute. The potential energy
of a mass m on the surface of a sphere of mass M and radius rbh
is negative and is just -GMm/rbh, where G is the
universal constant of gravitation. If the mass m moves at speed c
directly upwards, it has kinetic energy (1/2)mc2. If the
mass is just able to escape, these two energies must sum to zero.
Solving we find
rbh = 2GM/c2
Curiously, this is the same formula as general relativity gives for the "Schwarschild radius" that designates the event horizon of a general relativistic black hole.
The existence of the Newtonian black holes and their similarities to the black holes of general relativity is striking. However the significance of their similarities should not be overestimated.
Light cannot escape a Newtonian black hole only if a particular way of escaping is chosen and particular assumptions are made about light: that the light can only escape if it is shot directly upwards like a stone from a catapult and if the maximum speed it has when released from the catapult is c. Newtonian physics would allow things to escape the Newtonian black hole by gentler means. Imagine a rocket ship that fires its motors so as to generate an upward acceleration that is greater than the attraction of gravity. As long as that upward acceleration just exceeds that of gravity, the rocket ship would gently rise and escape. That is not possible, as we shall see, for a black hole in general relativity.
We need not fear that our planet earth will undergo gravitational collapse. The mechanical incompressibility of rock is an enduring feature.
It is not so for stars, such as our sun. The gas pressure that resists collapse depends on the high temperature of the star. Stars radiate and constantly lose the energy that sustains the high temperature. That energy is resupplied by nuclear reactions in the star. When stars form initially from collapsing clouds of hydrogen gas, the hydrogen fuses to form Helium, liberating vast amounts of energy. After that, more fusion reactions occur producing more elements.
These reactions cannot proceed indefinitely. Eventually the nuclear fuel will be spent and the gases will start to cool. When they do, the pressure produced by the high temperature will drop as well. And when that happens, the balance of inward gravitational force and outward pressure will be disrupted in favor of the gravitational forces. The star will begin to collapse in onto itself. The stability of stars is only a temporary circumstance.
What happens next is not so simple. There are many possibilities and astrophysicists have developed detailed histories of how different stars will fare under gravitational collapse.
The most important factor in deciding their fate is the mass of the star. The unit commonly used is "solar mass"--the mass of the star in relation to our sun's mass. "Two solar masses" means twice the mass of our sun. Smaller stars tend to burn out quietly, larger stars are more likely to collapse catastrophically and produce a black hole. The table summarizes some of the major trends.
|Stars of..
|In gravitational collapse...
|Less than 1.3 solar masses.
|Form black dwarves.
|2 to 3 solar masses.
|Form neutron stars ("pulsars"); or may fragment in supernova explosions.
|More than three solar masses
|Nothing halts gravitational collapse; black holes form.
While the eventual fate of our sun is clear, we are in no immediate danger. The times required for these processes is of the order of billions of years. Our sun has been gently burning its hydrogen for 4.5 billion years and will continue to do so for another 5 billion.
One might expect that larger stars would live longer since they have more fuel. However the reverse is true. They burn their nuclear fuel even faster so they have shorter lives.
Black holes can form in both Newtonian theory and general relativity. However there are significant differences between them.
|Newtonian black hole
|Singular point of infinite matter density and field strength.
|Space and time unaffected.
|Infinite energy is released in the collapse that forms the black hole.
|General relativistic black hole
|Singularity in spacetime curvature.
|Causal structure of space and time affected; there are causally isolated regions of space and time.
|Finite energy is released in the collapse that forms the black hole.
A Newtonian black hole is less radical than a relativistic black hole in so far as the Newtonian black hole involves no disturbance to space and time. Such a disturbance is inevitable in general relativity, since Einstein's gravitational field equations connect matter density and gravitation to spacetime geometry. So if the matter density and gravitational field becomes singular, we should expect similar pathologies in space and time.
A Newtonian black hole, however, is far more radical that a relativistic hole in another sense. In formation, a fully collapsed Newtonian black hole must shed an infinite amout of energy. While we talk of infinities all the time, we should not be casual about such an amount. The release of an infinity of energy in our neighborhood would overwhelm everything. In general relativity, the formation of a black hole does not call for an infinity of energy to be released.
Let us now trace how spacetime is affected by the formation of a black hole in general relativity. The spacetime diagram below shows a sphere of matter undergoing gravitational collapse. It is the simplest case of an uncharged, non-rotating sphere of matter and produces a so-called "Schwarzschild" black hole.
|At the bottom of the figure is a spatial slice of
a fairly ordinary spacetime, in which a sphere of matter begins its
gravitational collapse.
The collapse continues as we proceed up the figure. The sphere becomes smaller and smaller, until it eventually it is so small and dense and its gravity so strong that not even light can escape its surface. That is the formation of a black hole and it happens at a radial position known as the "Schwarzschild radius." For an object the size of the earth, we already saw that radius is 1/3". For an object the size of the sun, it is 2.95 km. (Note that neither the earth nor sun have enough mass to overcome stabilizing forces and produce a black hole.)
The radial position from where light can longer escape is called the "event horizon." It is an important boundary in spacetime. Outside the event horizon, rapidly moving bodies that have strayed too close to the black hole can still escape, if they can move fast enough. Once they stray within the event horizon, no escape is possible. The fastest speed relativity theory admits, that of light, is no longer enough to allow escape.
Once the collapsing matter has collapsed within the event horizon, the collapse continues all the way to zero size. What results is a point of infinite matter density and therefore a point of infinite spacetime curvature. It is a singularity. Once these two quantities have become infinite, Einstein's gravitational field equations have ceased to function; the theory breaks down.
Within the event horizon, all motion of matter and light is towards that singularity. It is everyone's future. In this sense, the directions of space and time are switched within the event horizon. Time now points towards the singularity, for that is everyone's future.
In a Minkowski spacetime, the light cones mapped out the possible motions and the possibilities for causal connections. In that spacetime, the lightcones were uniformly distributed in spacetime, with no regions of spacetime causally distinct from others. In a black hole, it is otherwise.
|In a black hole spacetime, lightcones far away
from the event horizon are oriented as expected.
As we near the event horizon, the light cones tip over to face the singularity.
At the event horizon itself, the light cones have tipped over so far that only motions faster than light can escape falling into the singularity.
Within the event horizon, the light cones futures are all pointed towards the singularity.
A presumption in the literature on black holes is that nothing travels faster than light. We noted earlier that relativity theory does in principle admit faster than light motions--a particle executing them would be a tachyon. However no such particle has been detected.
When we look at these diagrams, it is clear that the event horizon marks a special boundary in spacetime. It marks the point of no return for travelers falling into the black hole. However there is nothing special, locally, at the event horizon that is different from neighboring events. As the traveler passes the event horizon, there are no special flags or markers that the traveler sees. Spacetime around the event horizon will be highly curved but otherwise no different from the spacetime on either side. In brief, the traveler "feels no bump" when the event horizon is passed.
The event horizon gets its special properties from its relation to the global structure of the spacetime and specifically to the singularity and the exterior of the black hole. For it marks the boundary past which a traveler's future must lie in the singularity and can no longer lie in the exterior of the black hole. It is something like the position computed by demographers called the "mean center of the US population." When you stand at that position, which is somewhere in Missouri, the average distance to all peoples in the US comes out to zero. Move an inch to the west and you are now on average closer to people in the west; move an inch to the right and you are now on average closer to people in the east. Of course it is nothing locally about the position in Missouri that gives it this property. It is the relation between that position and all the people spread out over the US.
Image source: US Dept of Commerce, US Census, http://www.census.gov/geo/www/2010census/centerpop2010/centerpop_mean2010.pdf
What would it be like to fall into a black hole? In brief, it would be a mistake one would not want to repeat--although you would not get the chance to repeat it!
The figure shows the worldline of a planet near a black hole and the worldline of a spaceship that imprudently came too close to the black hole and fell in.
The first part of the curve represents that portion of the spaceship's motion that an observer outside the black hole would see. The spaceship would fall rapidly at first towards the black hole. However, as it got closer, it would slow and eventually freeze just outside the event horizon. In the entire lifetime of the outside observer, the body would never actually reach the event horizon. That would be true even if the planet observer lived and observed indefinitely.
All this would be hard to see. Other objects falling into the black hole would be emitting bursts of radiation that would blanket the observer's view. Also, as the spaceship gets closer to the event horizon, light from it would be ever more red shifted and thus weakened and dimmed.
The view of this journey for the spaceship in would be quite different. The outside world appear to speed up and huge amounts of outside time would elapse in the short time the spaceship would take to reach the event horizon. The observer would pass the event horizon feeling no bump in spacetime at all. The final stage of the journey would be completed extremely rapidly as the spaceship reached the singularity.
The diagram is not a good representation of the journey. The spaceship's trajectory is shown in two disconnected parts. It is not a matter that the figure is truncated at the top. If we drew extensions of the figure upward, the two parts of the trajectory would never connect, no matter how big the extension. This is a seriously misleading aspect of the figure. In fact the worldline is a continuous trajectory in spacetime with no break.
The experience for the occupants within the spaceship falling in would be rapid. But it would not be pleasant. The reason is tidal forces.
When we stand on the earth, our feet are slightly closer to the center than our heads. So the gravitational force on our feet is slightly greater than on our heads. These differences of forces are known as tidal forces since they also produce the earth's tides. On earth the effect is so slight that we cannot perceive it.
|If we were to fall feet first into a black hole,
it would be quite different. Once we are close to the black hole,
the gravitational pull at our feet would be very much greater than
at our heads. We would literally be pulled
apart by the difference, as cruelly as if we were placed on
a medieval torture rack that stretched our feet from our heads.
In science fiction movies of spaceships falling into black holes, these tidal forces are usually represented as rather interesting optical effects, somewhat like looking at a distorted reflection in a fun house mirror. The voyagers emerge merely ruffled as if they had enjoyed a rather energetic roller coaster ride. In gruesome reality, they would be lucky to be anything other than a bloody pulp.
This gruesome end would likely be painless. The time taken between the onset of painful tidal forces and termination in the singularity turns out to be independent of the mass of the black hole. A plausible computation puts it at 0.067 seconds. it is less than the time a pain nerve signal takes to propagate to the brain.
The calculation is in Thomas A. Moore, A General Relativity Workbook: Instructor's Solutions Manual. University Science Books, 2013, Problem 19.9, p. 158. I thank Joshua Norton (no relation) for pointing out this calculation.
These tidal forces may seem familiar. Recall that we gauged
the curvature of space-time sheets by the extent to which free
fallilng bodies converged or diverged. These convergences and divergences
are experienced by the falling bodies as driven by external forces and
they are the tidal forces in question here.
They are called "tidal" because they are responsible for the ocean tides on earth. Our planet is in free fall toward the moon. The portion of the ocean's water closer to the moon experiences a stronger attraction than the portion furthest away. That elongates the waters that jacket the earth into two lobes. The earth rotates under these two lobes, once every day, producing two high tides.


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A Must Read List for Growing Leaders
A client requested a list of resources I referenced in the presentation I gave last Tuesday. Here it is…
- The Leadership Challenge, James Kouzes and Barry Posner "The five functions of leadership."
- Dare to Lead, Brene' Brown.
- Daring Greatly, Brene' Brown. (Vulnerable leadership.)
- Are You Fully Charged, Tom Rath. "11% had a great deal of energy yesterday."
- Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey, William Oncken Jr. and Donald L. Wass. (HBR article) "The monkey is the next step."
- Bad is Stronger than Good, by Roy Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, and Catrin Finkenauer. (Research paper) "You need three positives to balance one negative."
- Our Brain's Negative Bias, Hara Estroff Marano. (Online article from Psychology Today) "The brain reacts more strongly to stimuli it deems negative."
- Praise Is Fleeting, but Brickbats We Recall, Alina Tugend. (New York Times) "… almost everyone remembers negative things more strongly and in more detail."
- Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman. "Nothing is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it."
- Touch Points, Doug Conant and Mette Norgaard. Reference to 30,000 handwritten thank you notes.
- StrengthsFinder 2.0, Tom Rath.
- What Makes Michael Phelps So Good? Adam Hadhazy. (Scientific American) "Energy in strengths."
- When, Daniel Pink. "The last 10 minutes of the day."
- Everyday Leadership, Drew Dudley. (YouTube video)
- Radical Candor, Kim Scott. "Care personal. Challenge directly."
- It's Hard to be Humble, Mac Davis. (YouTube video)
- The No Asshole Rule, Robert Sutton.
- Scaling Up Excellence, Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao. – "What if I'm wrong?"
- The Outward Mindset, Arbinger Institute. – "Intense curiosity about people."
- Mindset, Carol Dweck. – "What did you learn?"
- Focus, Heidi Grant. Insights into promoters and protectors. (Doers and Dreamers)
- No Respect, Rodney Dangerfield. (YouTube video)
- Start with Why, Simon Sinek. "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it."
What leadership book or resource has helped you develop as a leader?
Bonus: I also met with the Directors of the region. You might find Amy Edmondson's, The Fearless Organization, useful. "Building safe environments."


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News | May 15, 2012
Mild fire forecast
By Kathryn Hansen and Janet Wilson,
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and University of California, Irvine
Forests in the Amazon Basin are expected to be less vulnerable to wildfires this year, according to the first forecast from a new fire severity model developed by university and NASA researchers.
Fire season across most of the Amazon rain forest typically begins in May, peaks in September and ends in January. The new model, which forecasts the fire season's severity from three to nine months in advance, calls for an average or below-average fire season this year within 10 regions spanning three countries: Bolivia, Brazil and Peru.
"Tests of the model suggested that predictions should be possible before fire activity begins in earnest," said Doug Morton, a co-investigator on the project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This is the first year to stand behind the model and make an experimental forecast, taking a step from the scientific arena to share this information with forest managers, policy makers, and the public alike."
The model was first described last year in the journal Science. Comparing nine years of fire data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite, with a record of sea surface temperatures from NOAA, scientists established a connection between sea surface temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and fire activity in South America.
"There will be fires in the Amazon Basin, but our model predictions suggest that they won't be as likely in 2012 as in some previous years," said Jim Randerson of the University of California, Irvine, and principal investigator on the research project.
Specifically, sea surface temperatures in the Central Pacific and North Atlantic are currently cooler than normal. Cool sea surface temperatures change patterns of atmospheric circulation and increase rainfall across the southern Amazon in the months leading up to the fire season.
"We believe the precipitation pattern during the end of the wet season is very important because this is when soils are replenished with water," said Yang Chen of UC Irvine. "If sea surface temperatures are higher, there is reduced precipitation across most of the region, leaving soils with less water to start the dry season."
Without sufficient water to be transported from the soil to the atmosphere by trees, humidity decreases and vegetation is more likely to burn. Such was the case in 2010, when above-average sea surface temperatures and drought led to a severe fire season. In 2011, conditions shifted and cooler sea surface temperatures and sufficient rainfall resulted in fewer fires, similar to the forecast for 2012.
Building on previous research, the researchers said there is potential to adapt and apply the model to other locations where large-scale climate conditions are a good indicator of the impending fire season, such as Indonesia and the United States.
Amazon forests, however, are particularly relevant because of their high biodiversity and vulnerability to fires. Amazon forests also store large amounts of carbon, and deforestation and wildfires release that carbon back to the atmosphere. Predictions of fire season severity may aid initiatives – such as the United Nation's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation program – to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases from fires in tropical forests.
"The hope is that our experimental fire forecasting information will be useful to a broad range of communities to better understand the science, how these forests burn, and what predisposes forests to burning in some years and not others," Morton said. "We now have the capability to make predictions, and the interest to share this information with groups who can factor it into their preparation for high fire seasons and management of the associated risks to forests and human health."
To see the 2012 prediction and UC Irvine disclaimer clause, visit:
Related story, "Ocean Temperatures Can Predict Amazon Fire Season Severity":


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Online Masters in Supply Chain Management Degrees & MSSCM Programs
What are Online Masters in Supply Chain Management Degrees & MSSCM Programs?
Earning an online masters in supply chain management could place a graduate in high demand and offer many employment prospects. An online masters in supply chain management program entails all of the activities necessary to distribute a product to consumers. This includes planning, predicting, purchasing, assembly, moving, storing, and tracking a product during its transition from conception to consumer possession. Online masters programs in supply chain management prepare students to become assistant purchasing managers, purchasing managers, supply managers, or directors of materials management. Currently, there is a shortage of highly trained professionals in the field of supply chain management. As such, earning a master's in supply chain management could place a graduate in high demand and offer many employment prospects.
The challenge of enhancing your career while also working to support yourself and your family is one that countless professionals such as yourself face. Many may reach a point where in order to continue their workplace ascent, advanced education is required. Yet if you're like most, halting your career pursuits to earn a graduate degree is not an option. Plus, many prospective employers may require that you supplement your studies with real world experience. This could potentially leave you facing quite a conundrum, one that earning an online master's in supply chain management may solve.
Popular schools with Supply Chain Management Masters Online Degrees
Filter your selection by location to find the best supply chain masters program near you or around the world!
Earning a master's degree in supply chain management can be a challenge if your current situation doesn't allow you them time to pursue on-campus studies. Luckily, there may be an equal number of opportunities to earn your degree online. The curriculum of online graduate courses often mirrors that of on-campus programs, so the concern about your online degree not being valued much may not apply. Your particular learning style may just be better suited for an online environment, anyway. If you prefer to work at your own pace, then you could find online learning to be ideal. Plus, there's the added bonus of actually having the time free to pursue potential employment opportunities in supply chain roles while pursuing your degree.
Facts about a Potential Career with an Online Masters in Supply Chain Management
If the idea of possibly pursuing or enhancing your career working within the supply chain interests you, consider these facts exclusive to supply chain managers:
- As of 2020, 907,600 professionals nationwide classified themselves as management analysts and consultants.
- The median salary earned by these professionals is $87,660 annually.
- The job outlook for this particular career path is projected to grow by 14 percent in the coming years, which is faster than that of other occupations (BLS)
|Annual Mean Wage
|New York
|New Jersey
|Metro Area
|Annual Mean Salary
|San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
|New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA
|Visalia-Porterville, CA
|Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA
|San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA
What are Potential Career Paths for Graduates of an Online Masters in Supply Chain Management Degree Program?
The understanding and skills that you could develop through your graduate program could help to prepare you to pursue potential career opportunities including:
- Logistician
- Market research analyst
- Job analysis specialist
- Purchasing manager
- Cost estimator
- Budget analyst (BLS)
Skills and Qualities of Online Supply Chain Management Master's Degree Students
How are you to know if a career working in supply chain management is right for you? After all, a major factor in career satisfaction is being able to apply your own skills and interest to your job.
Here are just a few of the skills and traits valued in supply chain managers:
- An analytical mind: Getting products to market will often require developing innovative solutions. You need to be able to thoroughly analyze an issue in order to determine which course of action will best help to resolve it.
- Effective communication skills: As a supply chain manager, you may likely be called upon to correlate the efforts of multiple organizations and parties. Being able to pass the right message on to those with whom you're working is vital.
- Sound comprehension: As you may be working with various people on complex issues, you need to be able to understand information as it's presented both in written form and orally (O*Net).
Countless potential career opportunities may be out there awaiting you. Knowing this, you may simply not be able to pass on the opportunity to build upon your educational background by earning an advanced degree. Fortunately, an online masters in supply chain management may help place you in the ideal position to pursue of such chances. Through it, you could develop all of the same skills and attributes acquired through a traditional on-campus degree program, while also simultaneously gaining valuable workplace experience. In the end, that combination may just be the key to placing you at the front of the line when it comes to filling management roles within the supply chain.
GradSchools.com offers 18 Supply Chain Management Master's Degree Programs
Florida Institute of Technology
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
University of Denver
SUNY Maritime College
Arizona State University
University of Michigan - Dearborn
University of Maryland Global Campus
Southern New Hampshire University
Virginia International University
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Cleveland State University
Pennsylvania State University


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Excel VBA Programming For Dummies
Excel VBA Programming For Dummies | 10.94 MB
English | 411 Pages
Title: Excel® VBA Programming For Dummies®, 3rd Edition
Author: Walkenbach, John
Year: 2004
Having Excel and just using it for standard spreadsheets is a little like getting the ultimate cable system and a 50″ flat panel plasma HDTV and using it exclusively to watch Lawrence Welk reruns. With Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming, you can take advantage of numerous Excel options such as: creating new worksheet functions; automating tasks and operations; creating new appearances, toolbars, and menus; designing custom dialog boxes and add-ins; and much more. This guide is not for rank Excel amateurs. It's for intermediate to advanced Excel users who want to learn VBA programming (or whose bosses want them to learn VBA programming). You need to know your way around Excel before you start creating customized short cuts or systems for speeding through Excel functions. If you're an intermediate or advanced Excel user, Excel VBA For Dummies helps you take your skills (and your spreadsheets) to the next level. It includes:
- An introduction to the VBA language
- A hands-on, guided, step-by-step walk through developing a useful VBA macro, including recording, testing, and changing it, and testing it
- The essential foundation, including the Visual Basic Editor (VBE) and its components, modules, Excel object model, subroutines and functions, and the Excel macro recorder
- The essential VBA language elements, including comments, variables and constants, and labels
- Working with Range objects and discovering useful Range objective properties and methods
- Using VBA and worksheet functions, including a list and examples
- Programming constructions, including the GoTo statement, the If-Then structure, Select Case, For-Next loop, Do-While loop, and Do-Until loop
- Automatic procedures and Workbook events, including a table and event-handler procedures
- Error-handling and bug extermination techniques, and using the Excel debugging tools
- Creating custom dialog boxes, also known as UserForms, with a table of the toolbox controls and their capabilities, how-to for the dialog box controls, and UserForm techniques and tricks
- Customizing the Excel toolbars
- Using VBA code to modify the Excel menu system
- Creating worksheet functions and working with various types of arguments
- Creating Excel add-ins such as new worksheet functions you can use in formulas or new commands or utilities
Author John Walkenbach is a leading authority on spreadsheet software and the author of more than 40 spreadsheet books including Excel 2003 Bible and Excel 2003 Power Programming with VBA. While this guide includes tons of examples and screenshots, Walkenbach knows there's no substitute for hands-on learning. The book is complete with:
- A dedicated companion Web site that includes bonus chapters plus all sample programs to save you a lot of typing and let you play around and experiment with various changes
- Information to help you make the most of Excel's built-in Help system so you can find out other stuff you may need to know
What are you waiting for? Sure, learning to do VBA programming takes a little effort, but it's a Very Big Accomplishment.


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- FDA Will Begin to Regulate Thousands of Lab Tests
- Want a Healthy Old Age? Get Your Finances in Order Now
- COVID Triggered More Cases of Deadly Sepsis During Pandemic Than Thought
- Biden Administration Says Insurance Issues With COVID Shots Mostly Fixed
- Jimmy Carter 'Happy' in At-Home Hospice Care as 99th Birthday Nears
- Getting COVID Shot During Pregnancy Helps Protect Newborns, CDC Study Finds
- Most Older Americans Object to Cancer Screening Cutoffs Based on Life Expectancy: Poll
- Childbirth Can Leave New Parents in Serious Medical Debt
- Brains of Patients With Post-Op Delirium Could Be More Vulnerable
- Kids With Eczema May Need Further Allergy Tests
HPV-Linked Throat Cancer May Have Telltale First Symptoms
The first symptoms of throat and mouth cancer — also known as oropharyngeal cancer — may differ depending on whether the condition is caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), a small study suggests.
Oropharyngeal cancer arises in the throat, soft palate, tonsils or base of the tongue. Smoking is a major risk factor, as is chronic infection with certain strains of HPV — which causes warts in the genitals, mouth and anus, and is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States.
Although oropharyngeal cancer is relatively uncommon, the rate of HPV-linked cases has been rising — particularly among white adults younger than 55. The reasons aren't clear, but experts suspect that changes in oral sex practices have a lot to do with it.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year about 8,400 Americans are diagnosed with HPV-related oropharyngeal cancer.
"We're seeing this in younger, healthy people who don't smoke," said Dr. Terry Day, senior researcher on the new study and a specialist in head and neck cancers at the Medical University of South Carolina, in Charleston.
Despite the concerning rise in oropharyngeal cancers, Day said, there has been a lack of research into the initial symptoms — including whether the signs of HPV-linked tumors are distinct.
So his team looked at records for 88 patients diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer at their center between 2008 and 2013. Most — 71 — had HPV-positive cancer, and for them the most common first symptom was a lump in the neck.
Half of those patients had a "mass" in the neck, versus only 18 percent of patients with HPV-negative cancer, Day's team reported in the March 20 online issue of JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery.
For the patients without HPV infection, a persistent sore throat and difficulty swallowing were the most common first signs. More than half complained of a sore throat, while 41 percent had problems with swallowing.
Some patients with HPV-linked cancer had those symptoms, too, but less commonly: 28 percent had a stubborn sore throat, and only 10 percent had trouble swallowing, the findings showed.
An expert who reviewed the study called the findings "interesting," but said they should be interpreted with caution.
Larger studies are needed to confirm the results, said Maria Worsham, research director in the department of otolaryngology/head and neck surgery at Henry Ford Hospital, in Detroit.
Plus, Worsham said, the symptoms these study patients reported are not unique to cancer. So people should not assume that a lump in the neck means they have cancer — or oral HPV, she said.
Another expert not involved with the study said that a lump could indeed be an infection that just needs a round of antibiotics.
But if the mass persists, see your doctor again, added Dr. Dennis Kraus, director of the Center for Head and Neck Oncology at Lenox Hill Hospital, in New York City.
According to Kraus, the findings help "codify" what many doctors have noted: that people with HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancer tend to have no symptoms, but instead notice a lump.
The "good news," Kraus said, is that HPV-positive cancers generally have a better prognosis. Patients with HPV-negative cancers tend to have a more-aggressive disease — and, therefore, obvious symptoms like an irritated throat and difficulty swallowing.
Kraus agreed with Day that the face of oropharyngeal cancer has changed from years ago. HPV-positive tumors are now more common than HPV-negative ones, he said.
According to the CDC, about 7 percent of Americans have oral HPV, though only 1 percent have the particular strain (HPV-16) that's linked to oropharyngeal cancer.
Usually, the immune system is able to clear HPV from the body, and most people never know they were infected.
But for reasons that aren't clear, some people harbor chronic HPV infections. Persistent infection with a cancer-linked strain is the big worry: Nearly all cases of cervical cancer, for instance, are caused by HPV.
There are, however, two vaccines against the most common cancer-linked HPV strains — including HPV-16. Experts recommend all children ages 11 and 12 be vaccinated. Older girls and women up to age 26 should get "catch-up" shots if they've never been vaccinated. The same advice goes for boys and men ages 13 to 21.
The vaccines — Gardasil and Cervarix — are known to ward off genital and anal HPV infections. Studies on whether the vaccines prevent oral infections are just starting. But, Kraus noted, they do target the major HPV strain linked to oropharyngeal cancer.
More information
Learn more from the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance.
Source: HealthDay
Copyright © 2023 HealthDay. All rights reserved.


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Obviously, photos can be great educational tools with English Language Learners and with any students (see The Best Ways To Use Photos In Lessons). I post about many photo galleries, also called slideshows. To do it in a little more organized way, though, I recently began this weekly feature called "Photo Galleries Of The Week." This post is a "round-up" of online slideshows I'm adding to various "The Best…" lists:
Iconic photos tucked away in mountain mine is a fascinating slideshow from CBS News.
Travel Photographer of the Year 2011 competition: winners' gallery is from The Telegraph. I'm adding it to The Best Travel Photographs Of The Year.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2011 comes from The News Of Australia.
Amazing images that show America's steely resolve in bitter aftermath of Pearl Harbor is from The Mail Online. I'm adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About Pearl Harbor.
Pictured: A World at 7 Billion is an amazing New York Times project. I'm adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Our World's Population Of 7 Billion.


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SJU LaCrosse Club Constitution
I. Purpose
The lacrosse club offers students at SJU an opportunity to actively learn, participate in and enjoy the sport of lacrosse. Members of the Club represent SJU in competition within the Upper Midwest Lacrosse League, a subdivision of Men's Collegiate Lacrosse Association.
II. Membership
Any member of the SJU student body is eligible to join the Club, pending academic eligibility as determined by the UMLL and the MCLA. Club members must:
- Take the sport seriously
- Work hard to improve/polish their lacrosse skills
- Represent the Club and his school respectably
- Attend all practices and schedule events
Failure to meet any previously state expectations will result in a penalty to be determined by the officers and coaches. Club officers reserve to right to suspend or expel any current member from the team for any conduct detrimental to the team.
Officers of the Club will do everything in their power to ensure fair treatment of all team members but cannot be held responsible for the actions of all Club members. Should a concern arise, any member of the team may request a meeting with the Club Officers to discuss the matter and decide a proper course of action.
Should any member of the Club decide that they do not wish to continue participation, he must inform the Club Officers either in writing or verbally. Should the termination of participation occur prior to the start of the spring season, the player shall be reimbursed 1/2 of the dues paid by that member.
III. Dues
The Club reserves the right to charge dues to all club members as needed throughout the season. The largest portion of the dues will be collected in two payments: one prior to the start of the fall season and one prior to the spring season. Dues from each player will cover costs incurred by the team which include, but are not limited to: league dues, travel expenses, equipment expense, fines, etc. The Club also requires participation from all members in any organized fund-raising activities. Although the Club makes all efforts to defray costs, members must be made aware that substantial personal monetary expenditure may be necessary in order to maintain full participation in the sport. The amount of dues required from each player will be determined by the Club Officers prior to the beginning of the fall season.
The Club also requires each player to write one deposit check, which will not be cashed, at the beginning of the fall season covering all uniforms and equipment issued by the team. If the member does not return his uniform or team-issued equipment after the spring season, his check will be deposited into the Club's account.
IV. Club Board
The Club Board will be made up of Club Officers. The Club Officers include: the President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary of Travel and Accommodations, and Secretary of Fields and Equipment. Elections of new officers will be held after the completion of the spring playing season. The officers are nominated by active members of the Club Board and confirmed by a majority vote of that Club Board. An officer may be impeached for improper, or lack of, performance of duties. A verbal or written warning by the President will initiate a vote by the entire team. The impeached officer will be relieved of duties if a 2/3 majority of active Club members vote in favor of such action. Impeachment of the President requires a warning from the Vice President and a 3/4 majority vote by active Club members. The President has sole veto power over any impeachment other than his own.
V.Officers' Duties
President: The President is expected to oversee the organization of the Club in accordance with the CSB/SJU Benedictine tradition. The President will delegate any duties deemed necessary for the efficient operation of the team to officers and/or Club members. The President will work towards assuring a positive experience for all members of the Club and will be responsible, within reason, for assuring a positive experience for all members. The President will oversee the scheduling of games, tournaments, and team functions. The President of the Club will be expected to conduct himself in a respectable manner befitting his position and should lead by example in all his activities and behaviors pertaining the club.
Vice President: The Vice President is expected to follow the duties set by the President and aid in overseeing the other officers and Club members. The Vice President is to be considered the liaison for the Lacrosse Club to all members, current and prospective, and will be responsible for maintaining good relations with the school offices, the student body, and other teams within the league. The Vice President answers directly to the President, and all operations perform by him must be approved by the President.
Treasurer: The Treasurer will perform all duties assigned to him by the President and will be responsible for the team's finances. Financial duties of the Treasurer include, but are not limited to: establishing a budget to present to the Student Senate for allocation of Club funds, establishing a budget for team travel, completing Club audit forms, and overseeing the Club's account(s).
Secretary of Travel and Accommodations: The Secretary of Travel and Accommodations will be responsible for arranging means of travel and accommodations for all organized team trips. The Secretary of Travel and Accommodations will perform duties assigned to him by the President, and all actions taken must be approved by the President.
Secretary of Fields and Equipment: The Secretary of Fields and Equipment will be responsible for designing, ordering, and distributing all team apparel, equipment, and uniforms. He will also be responsible for assuring that our home field or venue is reserved and satisfactorily prepared for use prior to each home game, practice, or team function. The Secretary of Fields and Equipment will perform duties assigned to him by the President, and all actions taken must be approved by the President.
VI. Board Meetings
Meetings will be held when deemed necessary by the President or another officer, with approval from the President. Members of the Club Board will be required to attend every meeting, and meetings will scheduled at a time convenient for the majority of the Board. Each meeting will be scheduled at least one week in advance, though emergency meetings may be scheduled spontaneously should the situation warrant.
VII. Hazing and Discrimination
Hazing, defined as "1. to persecute or harass with meaningless, difficult, or humiliating tasks, or 2. to initiate, as into some group, by exacting humiliating performances from or playing rough practical jokes upon without consent from the individual" will be tolerated in no fashion by the Club. Any member found to be hazing younger teammates or forcing other members to do anything they do not want to do will be immediately suspended. The member caught hazing will go before the Club Board, the matter will be discussed, and an appropriate punishment will be levied, ranging from a period of suspension to expulsion from the Club.
Discrimination, defined as " treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit" will also not be practiced or tolerated by the Club. All members of the club will be evaluated by the coaching staff, and positions on the team and playing time will be allotted to players based on their skills, be those athletic leadership or organizational skills.
VIII. Purpose of the Constitution
The purpose of this Constitution is to protect the rights of the Lacrosse Club, its officers, and active members. The Constitution will be relied upon mandate the operation of the club, the expectation of its members, and the responsibilities of its officers. The Constitution will be made available to each member of the Club and should be relied upon for clarification of any rule or guideline within the Club.


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Necessary Vitamins, Trace Minerals and Essential Amino Acids for Color and
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VII.10 Air and Ténéré Natural Reserves (Niger)
The Committee at its twentieth (Merida, 1996) and twenty-first (Naples, 1997) sessions had called for a site visit to evaluate the state of conservation in order to determine whether the site could be removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger.
The Committee was pleased to note that the findings of the Centre/State Party/IUCN mission to the site, undertaken from 21 September to 3 October 1998, and those of previous exploratory field missions of the IUCN Office in Niger undertaken with the assistance of the Swiss Development Co-operation (SDC), have indicated that the numbers of most wildlife species are recovering. The flora appears to be intact in most parts, except in some valleys where over-use by local people was noted. Some wildlife species like the ostrich however, continue to be seriously threatened by poaching and international trade in live animals and its by-products. Population size of ostrich in the Reserves has been found to be less than 10% of the 1990-91 estimates. IUCN Niger has progressed in the preparation of a new programme, in co-operation with SDC and DANIDA, for the conservation of the area, with the aim of establishing conditions for conservation of the Reserves and decentralized sustainable use initiatives. The programme will attempt to increase the economic value of the Reserves to local communities through eco-tourism, agriculture and animal husbandry.
The Committee noted with satisfaction that the Peace Agreement signed between the Government and rebels has been effectively implemented. Impact of rebel activities in the area on the integrity of the site has been less severe than expected. Furthermore, the Committee was informed that the State Party has submitted an emergency programme for the rehabilitation of the site which foresees the implementation of the following activities: (i) restoration of sites which were used as bases by the rebels in the past; (ii) strengthening surveillance and protection capacity; (iii) ostrich breeding in partially enclosed areas; (iv) rapid evaluation of impacts on populations of key faunal species; (v) establishment of a Committee for development and management of the site; and (vi) training workshops for selected target groups like border police, customs officers etc., on threats to natural heritage. The Committee noted that detailed proposals for each of these activities need to be elaborated in consultation with possible donors, such as UNDP so as to ensure their rapid implementation.
The Committee commended the State Party for ensuring the protection of this site in spite of rebel activity and uncertain security conditions and welcomed the interest of SDC, DANIDA, UNDP and other donors to contribute to the conservation of this site. The Committee requested the Centre and IUCN to cooperate with the State Party and all other stakeholders to explore modalities for financing the implementation of the emergency rehabilitation plan and to identify priority activities for consideration of support from the World Heritage Fund. The Committee requested the Centre and IUCN to co-operate with the State Party to submit to the twenty-third session of the Bureau, a plan of action for implementing the emergency rehabilitation programme and a recommendation as to whether the Aïr and Ténéré Natural Reserves could be removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger at its twenty-third session in 1999.


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Land, biodiversity, water and air are integral parts of Australia's environment and are inextricably linked. For example, changes in the health of inland waters, such as reduced river flow, can affect biodiversity, while changes in land use can affect inland waters and biodiversity. Not only do Australia's plants, animals and ecosystems sustain life, but they are also key contributors to economic growth as inputs to production.
The Land and biodiversity section outlines the unique biodiversity in Australia and the pressures placed on it, including the loss of habitat caused by land clearing and the adverse impact on native species by weeds and pests. It also examines measures for the conservation of biodiversity including the management of threatened species and the establishment of protected areas.
Water is fundamental to the survival of people and organisms and is a valuable resource for much of our economy, especially agriculture. Australia's rainfall varies considerably year-to-year, season-to-season and region-to-region and water shortages and drought conditions experienced throughout much of Australia in recent years have exacerbated the pressure on water supplies. The Water section in this chapter provides information about water availability, storage and use.
The Air section examines both greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and air quality. Greenhouse gases are a natural part of the atmosphere and maintain the Earth's surface temperature at levels able to support life by trapping warmth from the Sun. However, human activities, especially burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The enhanced greenhouse effect from greenhouse gas emissions has been implicated in climate change. The major contributors to GHG emissions and Australia's progress towards meeting its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol are discussed in this section. The discussion on air quality also looks at air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, ozone (photochemical smog) and particulate matter, all of which can have deleterious effects on the health of humans and other organisms.
The chapter contains an article on Australia's most important food-producing region, the Murray-Darling Basin.


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A monthyly treatment for those struggling with alcohol and opiod dependence addiction
In 2010, the FDA approved the Vivitrol Shot, a once a month injection to treat opiod dependence. Viivitrol is a long-acting formulation of naltrexone (ReVia) and is already approved to treat alcohol dependence. Vivitrol joins other pharmacologic treatments for addiction including Suboxone.
Vivitrol is an opiod antagonist which blocks the brain's opiod receptors, leaving the patient at a loss of feeling if they attempt to abuse opiods. Methadone, on the other hand is an opiod agonist which acts as an opiod, and gives an opiod "high." Suboxone is a partial agonist giving the patient just a taste of the opiod.
Jade Wellness Center is the premier drug addiction facility in Pittsburgh to prescribe Vivitrol and Suboxone.
The American Phsychological Association found that 90% of patients on Vivitrol have opiod-free urine screens over a six month period, compared with only 35% of those on a placebo injection. Also, 13% more patients stayed on the treatment.
10,000 patients per year currently use Vivitrol Shot to treat alcohol dependence since its approval in 2006.
Vivitrol Shot is best used in conjunction with a well-balanced treatment plan including counseling, group counseling and 12-step work.
Monthly Shot Preferable to Daily Oral Doses
Daily oral doses of Vivitrol allow for human error and can end in relapse much more easily than a monthly injection. The injection (into the person's hip) leads to a slow release of the drug over the course of the ensuing month.
Vivitrol Shot side effects
Do not use narcotic drugs or alcohol while you are being treated with Vivitrol, nor attempt to overcome the effects of it with larger quantities of opiods or alcohol to avoid fatal risks. Consult your physician about over the counter cold, cough and diarrhea medicine during your treatment.
You may notice a slight irritation, or bruising at the injection site. You should consider wearing a medical alert tag indicating that you're currently being treated with a Vivitrol Shot.
Before taking the Vivitrol Shot
Consult your position if you have an addiction to narcotics or history of alcohol or if narcotic drug use was in the past 7 to 10 days or drug or alcohol withdrawal symptoms. For receiving the Vivitrol shot tell your doctor if you're allergic to any drugs or if you have kidney disease liver disease or bleeding disorders such as hemophilia.