Grammar Terms Beginning With Letter G

A gerund is a verb form which acts like a noun. In English, the gerund ends in –ing. A gerund does have some verbal properties but it turns the entire verb phrase containing it into a noun phrase. Consider the verb read and consider the example ‘I like reading short stories’. Here reading is the gerund form of the verb read. By taking the object ‘short stories’ it exhibits verbal properties. Here the entire verb phrase (a phrase containing a verb) ‘reading short stories’ is a noun phrase functioning as the object of the verb ‘like’.

In English, a gerund can occupy any noun-phrase position.

It can be a subject:
Reading stories is a good pastime.
It can be an object:
I like swimming.
It can be the object of a preposition:
We are thinking of visiting Kashmir.

The label gradable refers to any adjective or adverb which denotes a property which can be present to a greater or lesser degree. Examples are: beautiful, nice, clever, fast, high, slowly, big etc. Gradable adjectives can be used with degree modifiers like very, rather, more, most etc.

Very interesting
Rather unpleasant
Most beautiful
Quite big

Not all adjectives and adverbs are gradable. Examples of non-gradable adjective and adverbs are: alive, perfect, round, immediately, topmost etc. Non-gradable adjectives and adverbs cannot be used with degree modifiers. For example, we cannot say ‘most alive’ or ‘rather topmost’.

Grammatical morpheme
The label grammatical morpheme refers to a morpheme which has little or no meaning but which serves a grammatical function. There are few grammatical morphemes in English. Examples are: the, of, the plural suffix –s and the past tense suffix –ed.

Group genitive
The label group genitive refers to the English construction in which the possessive –’s is added to the final word of a noun phrase. Examples are given below:
The Queen of England’s ancestors

Here the ancestors belong to the Queen, and not to England even though the –’s is added to England.


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The Master by Jonny Greenwood - film score review

Jonny Greenwood: The Master - film score soundtrack album cover Hailed as one of the best films of 2012 by many critics, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master is a movie that defies categorisation. Ostensibly, it is the story of a disturbed World War II veteran named Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) who is accepted into a cult movement known as The Cause, run by the mysterious Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). However, as with all of Anderson's movies to date, The Master shatters any notion of a straightforward narrative, demanding that the viewer fill in the logical and emotional gaps for themselves.

The film is many things: an examination of a country on the cusp of change, a character study and a dissection of cult mentality. It's also the latest collaboration between Anderson and musician Jonny Greenwood, following the acclaimed There Will Be Blood in 2007. Best known as the keyboardist and lead guitarist for the band Radiohead, Greenwood's astringent and disturbed music for There Will Be Blood drew much acclaim for its ability to convey the operatic psychosis of the central character played by Daniel Day Lewis.

Jonny Greenwood: The Master - image 1 That score was denied a chance at an Oscar nomination due to a technicality but, given the attention The Master has received, it seems highly unlikely that Greenwood won't be recognised this time. Put simply, his score for The Master operates on similar principles to the score for There Will Be Blood, frequently placed at the forefront of the soundscape by Anderson in order to heighten the intellectual qualities of the narrative. Greenwood is therefore well-served by his director, whose formal, cine-literate approach places a great deal of emphasis on the importance of music.

It's unusual nowadays for films to foreground the manipulative role of the score to such an extent but Anderson actively challenges the cinema audience, snapping them out of apathy and using music almost as a separate language to that of the image itself. Very often, what's happening on-screen may be fairly mundane but when combined with Greenwood's music, the director conveys numerous disturbed undercurrents that make viewers squirm in their seats (the opening sequence of There Will Be Blood is a noteworthy example).

Jonny Greenwood: The Master - image 2 Bearing the avant-garde hallmarks of both Radiohead's alternative rock aesthetic and Greenwood's idol, Krzysztof Penderecki (with whom Greenwood has released an album), The Master is an uncompromising work. Performed by The London Contemporary Orchestra and the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra, with a selected ensemble on certain tracks, the purpose of the music is to give an incomplete picture, to leave an unresolved feeling of psychosis and mania, perfectly reflecting what Anderson does on-screen. Throughout, Greenwood draws on both his classical education and his experience in Radiohead to create a striking, experimental soundscape, while interspersed throughout are period-specific songs from the likes of Ella Fitzgerald that complement Greenwood's score very well.

Jonny Greenwood: The Master - image 3 The first track "Overtones", is a twisted overture of sorts, featuring a wash of strings that, although languidly paced and somewhat appealing, features a real undercurrent of darkness. It's an announcement of sorts that listeners are going to be taken on an uncomfortable journey. Every track works on two layers: "Time Hole" for example places emphasis on attractive woodwind solos courtesy of Andy Finton, David Fuest and Anthony Pike, which eventually become somewhat discordant as the instruments are pitted against one another, never quite playing in sync, to unsettling effect.

Jonny Greenwood: The Master - image 4 "Back to Beyond" is one of the score's more accessible tracks, developing a lush sense of melodrama through morbid strings and winds. One can imagine the harmonic structure of the piece suiting a Technicolor weepie from the period in which the film is set, but as ever, the music is underscored with a sense of emotional turbulence that reflects Freddie's tortured persona. "Alethia" is possibly the most attractive and hypnotic piece on the album, an insistent harp melody working its way up and down behind a calm woodwind section (it was also heard in the film's trailer). Again, the dramatic purpose of the track is two-fold: its deceptively intimate layers indicate the family dynamic of The Cause into which Freddie is invited, yet at the same time the music is possessed of a woozy quality, making us doubt Dodd's motives.

Jonny Greenwood: The Master - image 5 "Atomic Healer" returns the listener to the woodwind solos, this time more unnerving and jagged than before. Different instrumental textures also appear as the score goes on. The first strains of percussion appear in "Able-Bodied Seamen" (also heard in the film's trailer) as Tom Skinner's drums mingle with bass, woodwinds and groaning strings. There's also a segment of dialogue from the movie's opening scene. "The Split Saber" meanwhile introduces an organ, which pulsates away beneath the anguished string section. "Baton Sparks" develops into a chilling mass of atonal, shrieking strings reminiscent of Penderecki's Polymorphia, which was used in Stanley Kubrick's classic horror, The Shining. "His Master's Voice", as the title suggests, indicates how Dodd holds sway over his pupil, Freddie through the sheer power of his vocabulary, starting with an intimate string/piano ensemble before turning fractious and jumpy, effectively summing up their love-hate relationship.

Jonny Greenwood: The Master - image 6 As the longest track in the score, "Application 45 Version 1" runs the gamut of emotions from elegance to atonal, string-led turbulence, building to a truly unsettling finale prior to the closing track, "Sweetness of Freddie" which, in its unerringly pensive tone, leaves the listener hanging, waiting for a resolution that will never arrive. Although the strings are more harmonious at the end of the score than they were previously, there's always a sense that something is being held back, that the picture is incomplete. In this regard, Greenwood's score matches the outlook of the movie perfectly.

What's really surprising about Jonny Greenwood's score for The Master is how it's both listenable and deeply unnerving at the same time. A fair degree of the music is actually quite harmonious and pleasant, yet underneath, there's an angrier side itching to get out.

Jonny Greenwood: The Master - image 7 Yet it's a score that really demands to be heard in context, always the most important factor with film scores. Although it's a compelling listen on its own terms, the music really comes to life when placed alongside the film's stunning 65MM photography, where it both complements the visuals and fights against them, lending an operatic sense of self-awareness that jolts the viewer out of their comfort zone. Of course, Anderson also deserves much credit for placing so much emphasis on the music in the first place; it's truly refreshing to have a director who recognises the importance of a film score. In terms of getting beneath the skin of the movie it accompanies, Greenwood's distinctive, unusual and striking work is among the best of 2012, an acute musical distillation of a tormented state of mind.

Greenwood's score is available as both a CD release and MP3 download - see these links and

Reviewer: Sean Wilson

Jonny Greenwood: The Master - CD Track Listing


Study: Fracking Waste Poses Severe Threat To Wildlife

By @TrishaMarczakMP |
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    Think fracking spills pose little threat to fish and wildlife? Think again.

    A new study conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey is drawing attention to the devastating impacts of fracking wastewater spills, profiling a 2007 Kentucky incident that left in its wake a decrepit environment unsuitable for animal inhabitation.

    The site of the study was located in Knox County, Ky., where four fracking wells owned by Nami Resources Company were responsible for a spill that sent contaminated water into Acorn Fork, a tributary of Stinking Creek and a designated state resource water. The fracking well waste was disposed of in an open retention pit — one that overflowed, resulting in the contamination.

    When a well is fracked, a combination of water, chemicals and silica sand is shot deep into the earth, where the pressure and cocktail blend forces open areas where oil or gas is hidden, allowing the resource to be extracted. When the oil or gas is separated from the fluid mixture, the remaining water contains metals found below the earth’s surface, along with chemicals used in the fracking process.

    Six years after the spill, researchers monitoring the area have discovered that populations of fish in the area were harmed and killed by heavy metals and hydrochloric acid, byproducts of fracking wastewater. Specifically, examined fish were discovered to have gill lesions, as well as liver and spleen damage.

    According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the fracking water “killed virtually all aquatic wildlife in a significant portion of the fork, including fish and invertebrates.”

    “Our study is a precautionary tale of how entire populations could be put at risk even with small-scale fluid spills,” U.S. Geological Survey Scientist Diana Papoulias said in a press release. “This is especially the case if the species is threatened or is only found in limited areas, like the Blackside dace is in the Cumberland.”

    The blackside dace is one type of fish impacted by the spill, which is now classified as “primarily threatened” after the fracking wastewater contamination. While highlighting the importance of protecting fish habitats from fracking contamination, authors of the report also drove home the message that such waters serve humans, too.

    “This is an example of how the smallest creatures can act as a canary in a coal mine,” Fish and Wildlife Ecologist Tony Velasco said in a press release. “These species use the same water as we do, so it is just as important to keep our waters clean for people and for wildlife.”

    The joint study comes on the heels of an information campaign by the oil and gas industry to downplay the potential impacts of fracking. Jay Ambrose of the Centennial Institute indicates the threat posed by fracking waste to be overblown, claiming “much-diluted chemicals used in tiny amounts would have to rise thousands of feet to pass through solid rock without benefit of fracking to reach aquifers above.”

    Unless, of course, that water, which is extracted in the fracking process, happens to leak from the above-ground, open-air pits it’s stored in, resulting in cases like the one profiled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

    In Colorado alone, the state’s regulatory body (the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission) has recorded more than 5,100 spills. While spills vary in size and impact, the statistics illustrate the frequency of spills.

    In February, a PDC Energy spill sent more than 80,000 gallons of fracking fluid into nearby land. While streams and ponds were not believed to be contaminated, it was not known at the time whether that fluid contaminated groundwater, according to the Denver Post.

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    • Diogenes22

      And what of the fauna. Will they be poisoned by their contaminated drinking water or the noted increase of polluted air around fracking holes?

    • Diogenes22

      Fracking must stop. The gas obtained from fracking will be sold to foreign countries for private profit and the devastation left behind will not go with it.


Judge Berman said officer-written tickets were unconstitutional because they carry stiffer penalties than when a camera catches a red light violator.

Under Florida law, camera violators mail in a $158 fine and receive no notation on their driver license.  An officer-written citation carries a penalty of $264, plus court costs and a possible three points assessed against the violators driver license.

While police officers ticket drivers that are personally responsible for their actions, camera violations cite the vehicle owner who is held responsible whether they were driving or not.

The state cannot punish people differently for the same crime, Berman ruled.  This violates the equal protection clauses in both the U.S. and Florida Constitutions.

"This could be the beginning of the end for red light cameras,'' stated Ted Hollander, the Fort Lauderdale attorney defending the violator.  "Cities are going to have to choose between officers and cameras and will not be allowed to do both.  If it is really about safety, they are going to have to stay with officers issuing tickets because that affects points and driver's licenses.''

“In our view, Judge Berman did not apply the appropriate standard of review,” stated Jennifer Krell Davis, a spokeswoman for Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.  “From here, we will be weighing all of our options to challenge his ruling, including an appeal to the circuit court.”

"The cities and court system would be incredibly burdened if every ticketed owner was forced to go to trial to avoid getting points on his or her license," the state argued before Berman.

The state had argued that red light cameras serve a public purpose — catching more violators.  Penalties can legally vary because the camera process is different.

Although Judge Berman's order is binding only in his court, a Miami-Dade judge is already considering the same argument.  Hollander also plans to raise it next week in a similar Palm Beach county case.  No matter the ruling, the red light issue will likely rise through the appellate courts until a unified statewide decision is rendered.

“We have just become aware of Judge Berman’s ruling,” stated Broward Sheriff Al Lamberti.  “Although we respect the Court’s decision, whether or not to appeal is a decision that rests with the Florida Attorney General.”

Red-light cameras were initially approved by the Legislature in 2010, but lawmakers considered banning them the following session with HB 4087. Representative Richard Corcoran, R-New Port Richey – the bill sponsor - argued that red light cameras did not improve safety at intersections, but actually caused more rear-end collisions as drivers stopped more quickly in fear of being cited by a camera.

Despite the bill passing the House by a 59-57 vote, the Senate did not take the bill up for consideration.


Browse Dictionary by Letter

Dictionary Suite
oral spoken, as opposed to written; accomplished by speaking. [3 definitions]
oral history historical data, often tape-recorded, that comprises firsthand oral accounts and recollections relating to historical events or traditions. [2 definitions]
oral surgery a branch of dentistry that uses surgery as treatment for certain disorders of the teeth, gums, and jaws.
orange a spherical fruit with a reddish yellow rind and a sweet, acidic, edible pulp on the inside. [5 definitions]
orangeade a soft drink made with orange juice or orange flavoring.
Orangeman a member of a secret society of Irish Protestants that was formed in 1795. [2 definitions]
orange pekoe a black tea of India or Sri Lanka.
orangewood a hard, fine-grained wood obtained from orange trees.
orate to speak in a formal or pompous manner.
oration a formal, usu. long speech, esp. one given on an important occasion. [2 definitions]
orator a person who delivers a public speech, or one skilled at formal public speaking.
oratorical of, pertaining to, or characteristic of oratory or an orator. [2 definitions]
oratorio a musical composition for voices and orchestra without costumes or scenery, usu. dramatizing a biblical subject.
oratory1 the art of public speaking. [2 definitions]
oratory2 a small chapel or room for private worship or prayer.
orb a spherical body such as a globe or planet. [3 definitions]
orbicular shaped like an orb; spherical. [2 definitions]


Homosexuality in body, brain and behaviour

The New York Magazine has an in-depth article on the science of sexual orientation and whether the biological factors which may make someone more likely to be gay, also make them more likely to appear gay to others.

There are now a range of established findings that suggest that gay men are likely to have a number of physical traits not shared by straight men (the findings on gay women are a lot less clear-cut it seems).

For example, a 2004 study [pdf] found that gay men were much more likely to have a counter-clockwise hair whorl (as pictured) than straight men.

Other studies have found differences in finger lengths, size of structures in the hypothalamus (a deep brain area), and on a number of psychological abilities like mental shape rotation and navigation to name but a few.

Some researchers believe that the same biological conditions that increase the chances of homosexuality, also increase the chances of some of these body, brain and mind differences.

While genetics is thought to play a part, researchers are also interested in the time when an unborn child is developing in the womb.

Interestingly, many of the differences are linked to hormone exposure in the womb and can be seen to different degrees in both gay and straight men.

One of the critical questions is still how much of the influence is to do with biological factors and how much with social influence, opportunity and freedom of expression.

The New York Magazine is a fantastic guide to the science of sexual orientation, but is also a wonderful commentary on how this research is perceived by parts of the gay community and what it might mean for gay politics.

The only slight drawback is that it repeats the ‘scientists tried to turn sheep gay’ myth, but apart from that, it’s a compelling read.

UPDATE: Discover Magazine just had a feature article on the genetics of homosexuality which accompanies this piece nicely.

Link to article ‘The Science of Gaydar’.

Mirror touches

Nature reports on a recently discovered form of synaesthesia where affected individuals actually feel a sensation when they observe someone else being touched.

Synaesthesia is a condition where senses become crossed, so people might seeing colours when they encounter numbers, or tastes when they hear certain words.

This new form of synaesthesia was found by accident, during a talk by neuropsychologist Dr Jamie Ward:

“We first came across the mirror-touch synaesthesia by chance,” says Ward. The sensation of touch was being discussed at a UCL neuroscience seminar, and someone suggested, as a thought experiment, imagining that people felt what they saw. A colleague of Ward’s objected, vigorously insisting that everyone does, in fact, feel what they see. It was the first time Ward had realised such a condition could exist.

“There may be a lot of such people around, since they are unaware that that they have the condition. They think it is normal,” says Ward. When he started to look for people who experience mirror-touch synaesthesia, he had little trouble finding them, he says.

Ward collaborated with Michael Bannisy to study the condition and they found that they affected people were more likely to confuse an observed touch with a real touch than unaffected people under experimental conditions.

They also found that people with the condition were especially sensitive to other people’s emotions, rating much higher on measures of emotional empathy.

The study is published in Nature Neuroscience but I’ve just discovered there’s also a great write-up over at The Neurophilosopher.

Link to Nature news story.
Link to write-up from the The Neurophilosopher.

Encephalon 25 hits the tubes

Link to Encephalon 25.

Natalie Portman, cognitive neuroscientist

Natalie Portman is best known for her roles in Hollywood movies like Star Wars, Cold Mountain and V for Vendetta. What is less known is that she was co-author of a scientific paper on the neuroscience of child development. This is about her research.

Portman, whose real name is Natalie Hershlag, left acting to pursue a psychology degree at Harvard during 2000.

While there she was employed as a research assistant in Prof Stephen Kosslyn’s neuropsychology lab where she got involved in a study investigating the link between frontal lobe development and visual knowledge in infants.

The study investigated object permanence – the ability to understand that objects do not disappear from the world when they are out of sight, something that typically develops in the first year of life.

Researchers have argued that the frontal lobes are particularly important for this skill, but the trouble is, you can’t put babies in conventional brain scanners to easily test the idea. They just wriggle about too much.

Portman’s study, led by neuroscientist Dr Abigail Baird, used a relatively new method for measuring brain function called near-infrared spectroscopy.

This technology relies on the fact that near-infrared light can penetrate the skull, and that blood carrying oxygen, and blood that has given up its oxygen, absorbs the light differently.

The idea is that the device beams light into the frontal lobes, and you can work out how hard this area is working from how much oxygen-rich blood there is.

The advantage is that this technology is safe for children, and can be worn as a sort of high-tech hat, meaning there’s less of a problem if the child being tested moves about.

During the study, infants were shown a toy, which was then hidden under a cloth. Children who have object permanence – who know that it hasn’t disappeared – look for it under the cloth.

Children without this skill just ignore the cloth and look for something else to do, because the memory of the toy is gone.

The study tested 20 infants, every four weeks, from the ages of 5-12 months. To see what changed in the brain as the ability emerged, the researchers compared infrared light absorption from a time when the kids first looked for the toy, to an earlier time, when they just forgot that it existed when it was out of sight.

The team discovered that the frontal lobes suddenly kicked in when children develop the knowledge that hidden objects still exist, providing an understanding of which brain areas are involved in this important mental function.

The study also demonstrated that near-infrared spectroscopy could be used successfully to study the brain development of very young children.

The paper was eventually published in the journal Neuroimage, under Natalie’s real name, with the title ‘Frontal lobe activation during object permanence: data from near-infrared spectroscopy’.

It has since been cited by at least 20 different studies that have built on its findings.

And if you want to read the study in full, it is available as a pdf file at the link below.

pdf of Neuroimage paper.

Amazon tribe challenges the structure of language

Chomsky famously argued that a core property of all language was recursion – the ability to include units of meaning inside other units. Anthropologist Daniel Everett argues in an article for Edge that the language of the Pirah√£ people is not like this, and might suggest that our understanding of the structure of language needs to be re-thought.

Language researchers like Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker are often called ‘nativists’, meaning they think our core language abilities are inherited and suggest that all the individual languages have the same underlying components.

Research based on this idea looks at the structure and neuroscience of language to try and work out the basic elements.

Chomsky and colleagues argued in a 2002 paper [pdf] that human language has only one core property – recursion, which Everett also describes in his article:

The essence of human language is, according to Chomsky, the ability of finite brains to produce what he considers to be infinite grammars. By this he means not only that there is no upper limit on what we can say, but that there is no upper limit on the number of sentences our language has, there’s no upper limit on the size of any particular sentence. Chomsky has claimed that the fundamental tool that underlies all of this creativity of human language is recursion: the ability for one phrase to reoccur inside another phrase of the same type. If I say “John’s brother’s house”, I have a noun, “house”, which occurs in a noun phrase, “brother’s house”, and that noun phrase occurs in another noun phrase, “John’s brother’s house”. This makes a lot of sense, and it’s an interesting property of human language.

Finding a language which doesn’t have the supposedly ‘universal’ property of recursion challenges the Chomsky theory and, potentially, the whole idea that a ‘language instinct’ is somehow genetically inherited.

Everett argues that the Pirah√£ language doesn’t have recursion (or numbers and few colour names), presumably partly as a result of the particular habitat that the tribe lives in.

Everett’s article is also fascinating as it describes his first encounter with the Pirah√£ as a Christian missionary, and his subsequent rejection of his missionary work and focus on linguistics.

It also describes the culture and mindset of the people and has some of Everett’s personal reflections on his research and experiences.

There’s also a video about the topic and its possible effect on our understanding of language on the same page, and a recent NPR radio show investigated the Pirah√£ controversy in more detail.

UPDATE: Many thanks to Austin for sending in a link to an enjoyable article from The New Yorker that is a fantastic guide to the language and its impact on science.

UPDATE 2: There are some fantastic comments, corrections and additional links in the comments that are definitely worth reading. Thanks to everyone who’s contributed!

Link to ‘Recursion and Thought: Why the Pirah√£ don’t have numbers’.
Link to NPR radio show.

Smuggling drugs into the brain

Open-access science journal PLoS Biology has a fascinating article on the latest developments in getting drugs across the blood-brain barrier – the body’s strict border control that keeps the brain free of foreign substances.

The blood-brain barrier is a filtering system in the capillaries, the smallest blood vessels in the brain, to prevent molecules over a certain size reaching the brain itself (click image for larger version).

This makes good biological sense as it keeps the brain free of a whole range of potential poisons and infections but is a pain for drug designers.

There are many drugs which would have an effect but can’t get from the blood into the brain because the molecules are too big.

For example, Parkinson’s disease involves the death of dopamine neurons in the nigrostriatal pathway of the brain – a key circuit for movement – which is partly why the disease causes tremor and rigidity.

The obvious thing to do would be to give people dopamine to make up for the lost neurons, but it turns out that dopamine molecules are too big to cross the blood-brain barrier. If you swallow a dopamine pill, it won’t reach the brain.

Eventually someone hit on the idea of giving people levodopa or L-DOPA – a molecule that the body eventually transforms into dopamine and is small enough to cross the barrier.

So, you swallow an L-DOPA pill, it crosses the barrier and is changed into dopamine inside the brain itself. Clever.

Substances given with the intention that the body will transform them into the desired drug are called prodrugs and finding prodrugs small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier is one method for getting round the delivery problem.

This is fine if what you’re trying to deliver can be transformed into something useful but for many drugs this isn’t possible, so other methods have to be found.

New techniques are being developed which take advantage of the fact that the blood-brain barrier makes special exceptions for certain essential proteins.

The idea is that a drug molecule will be ‘wrapped up’ in a familiar protein and so will be smuggled across the barrier, only to be released when it reaches the other side.

Other techniques involve a mechanical approach to the problem where a device is implanted to pump the drug straight into the brain. Needless to say this direct intervention approach is favoured by neurosurgeons (the armed wing of the neuroscience world).

The PLoS Biology article discusses these are other developments and looks at how this problem is now becoming a core focus of drug development as useful medicines have sometimes been invented only to be found to be unusable in practice.

Link to PLoS Biology article ‘Bridging the Blood-Brain Barrier’.

Fatherhood in the mind and brain

It’s also interesting how stories on fatherhood are presented.

Link to Time on the psychology of fatherhood.


I've been struggling to get my business going for the past few years, but I've been handicapped by a lack of funds and resources. Now a competitor has been acquired and, with new resources, has announced projects I've had planned for more than two years. I still have one project in my back pocket but no money or resources to execute. I've heard of similar setbacks happening to other entrepreneurs who have gone on to do amazing things. I'm trying to decide whether I should keep pushing or if I'm just in denial while I'm racking up debt.

Also, start looking at your "lack" in a more flexible way. Is there a way to leverage current resources at little or no more out-of-pocket cost? Is there an option for you to joint venture or cross-promote your resources with another company or companies to tap into a new or different market?

If you are clear about your end result, it doesn't matter how you get there. And who knows? By getting your own products in front of new audiences, you may find yourself the target of a buyout down the road.

All the best.
Brad Sugars


Public Release:

University of California - Santa Barbara

IMAGE: David Awschalom is a researcher at University of California - Santa Barbara. view more

Credit: UCSB

"Although interactions between a quantum bit ('qubit') and its environment tend to corrupt the information it stores, it is possible to dynamically control qubits in a way that facilitates the execution of quantum information-processing algorithms while simultaneously protecting the qubits from environment-induced errors," said UCSB physicist David Awschalom. He and his group were responsible for developing the electron and nuclear spins used as the quantum bits -- the quantum version of the computer bit -- in their demonstration and for helping to analyze the results.

Dynamical protection of quantum information is essential for quantum computing as the qubits used for information processing and storage are highly susceptible to errors induced by interactions with atoms in the qubits' environment. The scientists' previous research has shown that quantum information stored in qubits can be effectively protected through successive control operations (rotations) on a qubit that filter out these unwanted interactions. However, these control operations also filter out the interactions between qubits that are essential for the realization of logic gates for quantum information processing. Thus, until recently, quantum information stored in protected qubit states could not be used for quantum computations.

The research team, which also included members from the University of Southern California, showed that by precisely synchronizing the rotations of an electron spin with the rotation of a nearby nuclear spin, they could realize dynamical protection of both qubits from the environment while maintaining the interactions between the two spins that are necessary for quantum information processing. As a proof of principle, the researchers demonstrated the high-fidelity execution of a quantum search algorithm using this two-qubit system. Quantum search algorithms, if executed on a larger number of qubits, could provide search results of certain databases considerably faster than search algorithms performed on a classical computer.

"This demonstration of performing a quantum algorithm at the subatomic level with single spins suggests a pathway to build increasingly complex quantum machines, using qubit control protocols that circumvent the expected limitations from real materials," said Awschalom.


Samuel Sevian wins 20th Metropolitan Chess Invitational

Samuel Sevian wins 20th Metropolitan Chess Invitational

PanARMENIAN.Net - 11-year-old Armenian chess player Samuel Sevian scored 7 points out of 9 to win the first prize at the 20th Metropolitan Tournament in Los Angeles. Samuel fulfilled an International Master norm for the second time within the last two months.

Meanwhile, Armenian grandmaster Tatev Abrahamyan scored 4,5 points out of 5 to win the chess open in Woodlands Hills, USA.

The tournament brought together 41 chess players, armchess.am reported.

 Top stories
Avagyan lifted a total of 330kg above his head in 85kg category of U17 competitions, and was followed by Polish and Russian lifters.
Competing in the U15 77 kg category, Margaryan raised a total of 280 kg above his head, setting a new European record for that weight class.
The election is a race between Dutchman Michael van Praag and Slovenian Ceferin who have both promised to initiate major changes.
Armenian weightlifter Greta Vardanyan took the fifth spot in the women’s 55 kg category at the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

How to Measure Liquid Ingredients

Let's get through one more bit of basic baking "How To" before we move onto more recipes. We have covered How to Properly Measure Flour and Brown Sugar and some Essential Basic Baking Equipment. Now let's move on to measuring liquid ingredients.

Liquid ingredients should be measure using a liquid measuring cup.  Now, to be honest I have many times measured my liquid ingredients using a standard dry cup measure and the result has been fine but to be most accurate a liquid measure should be used.  The reason for this is two fold.

First, a dry measure is replicating a measure by weight, while a liquid measure is measuring volume so there can be a slight difference if you use a dry measure cup.

Second, and probably the more practicle reason, is the chance of spilling is greater with the dry cup measure as you have to fill the liquid right to the rim to get an accurate measure. Any loss of liquid by spilling can again potentially affect the finished product.

To measure using a liquid measuring cup pour the ingredient into the vessel. You will have to bend down and look at eye level to ensure the liquid is level with the appropriate mark on the glass. Then add the liquid according to the directions in your recipe.

One other added benefit to using the liquid measuring cup is that you do not need to dirty a second bowl if you have to mix ingredients together before adding them to the rest of the recipe.  Say you need to whisk your eggs into your milk or combine a couple of liquid ingredients, then just choose a liquid measure that can hold the combined volume and do it all in that one cup.

So, that is the skinny on measuring liquid ingredients.  Next we are going to move away from baking for a bit and look at a couple of chicken recipes. Any of you who have been following Radishes and Rhubarb know I posted Roast Chicken and Chicken Stock recipes a while ago, but I am going to go through them again with a tutorial that provides better step by step insructions.

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Friday, February 17, 2012

How to Make Your Own Brown Sugar

We have already covered essential baking equipment and how to measure dry ingredients, now it is time to start "MIYing".  Let's start with a kitchen staple, brown sugar.

Brown Sugar is very easy to make. It is one of those things that you never really need to buy. I like it because the homemade version is moister and has a distinctive molasses aroma and taste. It is definitely cheaper than the store bought version.

It is made with just two ingredients.  It can be made with a whisk, but for time's sake I made this batch in a food processor.

To make brown sugar you need:

1 cup of granulated sugar
1 - 2 tablespoons of fancy molasses (1 for light brown sugar, 2 for dark brown sugar)

That's it. Whisk or process until the molasses is evenly distributed in the sugar.

Now, if you are worried about the molasses, just a couple of notes on that.

First, Fancy Molasses have a milder flavour than Cooking Molasses, so it is the best type to buy for this recipe and it is useful in many other ways as well. You can use it for homemade ketchup and barbeque sauce, it is a necessity in baked beans and it adds a rich flavour to bread recipes. It is also, of course, one of the star performers in gingerbread. Lastly, it keeps forever.

**One final note, the recipe above does not make 1 cup of brown sugar, because as you remember from the article on how to measure brown sugar, it needs to be packed down. If your recipe calls for 1 cup of brown sugar I would double the recipe above. You will use about 3/4 of the doubled recipe to make one cup of PACKED brown sugar.

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Wednesday, February 15, 2012

How to Measure Brown Sugar

This post will be short and sweet (ha ha), because measuring out brown sugar is a very simple process. Brown sugar is the one dry ingredient that is not measured according to the method used the measure flour, granulated sugar or cocoa powder.

99% of recipes will tell you to measure out PACKED brown sugar. (Having said that there is that 1% of recipes that do call for UNPACKED brown sugar, which means that you would measure it the way you measure flour.)

To properly measure packed brown sugar, you have to start with a proper dry measuring cup in the unit required for the recipe (1 cup, 1/2 cup, etc).

Fill the measuring cup past capacity, so that the brown sugar is mounded up over the edge of the cup, (as seen in the first picture).

Use the heal of your hand and press the brown sugar down inside the cup. Add more, if needed, and continue to pack down until the sugar is firm and completely level with the top edge of the cup.

You know have packed the brown sugar down properly if it retains the shape of the measuring cup when you tip it out.

Next, I will show you how to make your own brown sugar. It's easy and so much cheaper than the store bought variety.

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Sunday, February 12, 2012

How to Measure Flour

I am going to start MIY Kitchen with an article on how to properly measure flour.  This may seem like a topic that does not require a lot of discussion but I believe incorrectly measuring flour is probably the biggest source of baking frustration.

If you have ever had something at a friend's house, asked for the recipe and then could not get it to taste the same when you made it at home, it was most likely how you measured the flour. The key to light, delicate and tender baked goods is not adding excess flour.

Flour should NEVER be scooped directly out of the bag or canister with your measuring cup.  Because of the fine texture and weight of flour it can be compacted down, thereby adding more.

The most accurate measure is by weight.  A cup of flour is the equivalent of 4.25 ounces (120 grams). As a test I scooped a cup of flour directly from the bag and weighed it.  It came out at 6 ounces (170 grams). That is a considerable amount of excess flour and added up over the 2 -3 cups that a recipe requires it can have a significant effect on the texture and taste of your finished product.

However, baking by weight is not required if you follow the following steps when measuring out flour.  This is how I measure flour for most of my recipes with consistent results.

First, it is important that you use a proper measuring cup. Using a liquid measuring cup can add more volume as you will have to compact the flour to get an accurate measure.  I have provided a photo list of essential baking equipment here.

Now you are ready to measure your flour.

Using a separate spoon or scoop fluff the flour in your bag or canister to add air and lighten the texture. Then, lightly scoop the flour into your measuring cup.

Now, being careful not to compact the flour draw the straight edge of a knife across the edge of the cup to level it. There, perfectly measured and accurate enough that you will find your baked goods turn out the same every time.

Your white sugar, icing sugar and cocoa powder should all be measured the same way (although you may have to sift the icing sugar or cocoa to remove lumps before you scoop them into the measuring cup). I will be providing articles on how to measure brown sugar, liquid ingredients and butter.  Happy Baking!

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Essential Baking Equipment

The items you need to make most baked goods are not as varied or expensive as you might imagine. Stand mixers, fancy baking pans and other similar premium equipment actually fall under the "nice to have" category.

To make most recipes you just need a few simple items. For most of my early married life I made do with this list and was able to get along just fine:

Measuring Cups
A good set of measuring cups is essential.  Baking is an exact science.  While there are some elements of a recipe that can be changed to suit your taste it is important to exactly measure the base ingredients (such as flour, sugar, cocoa) to ensure the you get the desired results. (It is also important to measure out these dry ingredients the right way.)  I  use metal cups that indicate both metric and imperial measurements.  I choose metal because they will not warp with heat or lose the markings that indicate their size and I have chosen a sturdy set that I bought at a department store because I was sure of their accuracy.

Liquid Measuring Cups

Liquid ingredients such as milk, oil and water should be measured using a liquid measuring cup to ensure accuracy and to avoid spillage.  I use glass cups and I have a few different sizes as they are also great for mixing up things like salad dressing or pancake batter.

Measuring Spoons

As with measuring cups, a good set of measuring spoons is very important to ensuring that your baked goods turn out the way you want them to.  Like the measuring cups, I chose metal spoons for their durability and accuracy.  I chose these ones with the long thin spoon because they fit inside small spice jars.

A Set of Mixing Bowls
You will need bowls of a few different sizes to mix batters. Some recipes call for you to mix ingredients separately before combining them into larger bowls, so it is important to have a few sizes on hand.  I use ceramic. I recommend that or glass over plastic (because plastic can retain odours and flavours) and metal (some metals can cause a reaction with your baking ingredients).

A Good Whisk
This is the item I think a lot of people neglect to have in their kitchen.  A good sturdy whisk can perform a number of tasks and can save time.  Use it for creaming together eggs and sugar when making a cake, for whipping cream or egg whites, or for folding in ingredients with a gentle touch. The uses are endless.

Wooden Spoons
These are your kitchen work horses.  I use them for everything. Get a set with strong handles and your can use them to mix cookie dough, mix bread dough, make cakes, and on the stove for anything from melting chocolate to stirring stew.  The wood will not conduct heat so you can safely stir anything hot.

Cake Pans
You do not need a lot of these, just 2 -3 will be sufficient to cover most recipes. A couple of 9 inch round pans will do for most layer cake recipes and, if a single layer cake recipe call for an 8 or 9 inch square pan, the round pan will work just as well.  The only other size I would recommend is a larger rectangular pan, like a 9 X 11 inch for brownies or squares and it can also double for a lasagna pan.

Cookie Sheet
A good heavy sided cookie sheet is another must have. The one I have pictured here is obviously well used. The heavy rounded edges prevent it from warping under high heat.  You can make cookies, bread, sheet cakes and you can use it when cooking to broil, roast or bake.

Muffin Tins
Muffin tins for muffins, cupcakes and even baking eggs. A couple of strong metal muffin pans will serve you well.

Loaf Pan
And lastly, a loaf pan for bread and quick bread.

There, that is the list. Having said all this, you do need to keep in mind that things may take a little longer to put together and require a little more elbow grease than when you are using a stand mixer or hand mixer. Nonetheless, with these items you will have a well stocked kitchen and can make most baking recipes.

I will follow this up with a post about the "nice to have" items and then we will move on to cooking essentials.

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USA, c.1930s. Hand-Made Vintage Rustic and Primitive Warehouse Slatted Wooden Large Bread Delivery Bakery Box. Time Worn Canvas, Steel, Wire, and Cast Iron Detailings. Deep Hued Colors and Patina. Remnants of Mercantile Company names, and location; Philadelphia. In Rare Condition, Appears to be an all original survivor, with no apparent repairs, all honest wear.

W: 25½ x D: 16½ x H: 12¼ in.


Given below is the Road distance between Guruvayoor and Trivandrum. The road travel distance from Guruvayoor to Trivandrum displayed below is the accurate while traveling between the two cities. Find the road distance to Trivandrum from Guruvayoor. Also find distance from Guruvayoor to several other places in Kerala.

Distance Between Guruvayoor and Trivandrum

Distance from Guruvayoor to Trivandrum : Given below is the road disatnce between Guruvayoor and Trivandrum in Kilometers.

Travel Distance between Guruvayoor and Trivandrum is : 330 km

The approximate Road Travel Distance to Trivandrum from Guruvayoor is 330 Kilometres
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Distance From Guruvayoor to various places in Kerala : Given below is distance to various other cities in Kerala from Guruvayoor. Click the link below to find the distance to other cities from Guruvayoor.

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Nutjitsu coming to Xbox One

Microsoft’s [email protected] program is essential to the future success of the Xbox One. Basically, it allows indie game developers to publish their games directly to the Xbox One without the need for a separate publisher. That’s what everyone in the industry thinks should be the default arrangement anyway, but Xbox-branded games for the Xbox 360, Windows Phone, and Windows 8 still require a separate publisher.

Much about the [email protected] program remains secret to the public at this point. But a recent tweet from Microsoft’s Phil Spenser has revealed two early games set to be released under the program: Worms Battlegrounds from UK developer Team 17 and Nutjitsu from Utah-based developer NinjaBee Studios. More details after the break!

Nutjitsu for Windows 8

From the makers of Fusion: Sentient and A World of Keflings comes this classic arcade-style maze game. Players take on the role of a ninja squirrel who must rescue his clan’s acorns from the evil kitsune samurai.

Each level contains a main filled with samurai guards that the ninja must avoid. Objectives vary but usually involve picking up as many acorns as possible. As you play through a level, more and tougher enemies start to appear, making it tougher for the ninja to go undetected. Even if he does get caught, he’ll still earn XP that contributes to his overall rank.

Nutjitsu is already available on Windows 8, where it can be played with keyboard, mouse, or touch-screen. Keyboard is much more accurate than mouse, so I expect it will play great with a controller on the Xbox One. The graphics aren’t anything to write home about, but the gameplay captures some of the magic of classic maze games like Pac-Man.

Worms Battlegrounds

Worms Battlegrounds logo

Team 17 previously released several Worms games for the Xbox 360, but they always had to do it through a publisher. Signing on with a publisher cuts into the profits a developer receives from their games, so in most cases studios like Team 17 will opt for self-publishing if given the opportunity.

We don’t know much about Worms Battlegrounds other than it will be coming to both Xbox One and Playstation 4 this year. The new game will likely continue the advances to graphics and physics found in the last entry, Worms Revolution. All of the Worms games share a cheeky sense of humor and are a blast in multiplayer, so we’re looking forward to Battlegrounds.

Source: Phil Spenser via Eurogamer


37 Ratings

Directed by Brett Leonard
United States, 1995
Horror, Thriller

Hatch Harrison had a traffic accident with his car. At first the doctors said he was dead but then they succeeded to bring him back to life. But Hatch starts to have strange sensations in following time and discovers that he is now united with a mad killer who had entered his mind during his death.

Directed by Brett Leonard

Awards & Festivals

Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival

1995 | Nominee: Best Film

What are people saying?


The Community for Technology Leaders
Green Image
The methodology for designing state-of-the-art microprocessors involves modeling at various levels of abstraction. In the pre-synthesis phase, this can range from early-stage (microarchitectural) performance-only models to final-stage, detailed register-transfer-level (RTL) models. Hierarchical modeling requires the use of an elaborate validation methodology to ensure inter- and intra-level model integrity. The RTL model, often coded in a hardware description language (e.g. Verilog or VHDL) captures the logical behavior of the entire chip: both in terms of function and cycle-by-cycle pipeline flow timing. It is this model that is subjected to simulation-based architectural validation prior to actual "tape-out" of the processor. The validated RTL specification is used as the source reference model for synthesizing the gate- and circuit-level descriptions of the processor.
Todd M. Austin, Pradip Bose, Thomas M. Conte, "Guest Editors' Introduction: Challenges in Processor Modeling and Validation", IEEE Micro, vol. 19, no. , pp. 9-14, May/June 1999, doi:10.1109/MM.1999.768495
98 ms
(Ver )


Transition Metal Chemistry 1

transition metals

The term Transition metal chemistry is first used by Mendeleev to describe the group 8 triads such as iron, cobalt and nickel. This is because in this periodic table some of their properties resemble that metals such as Chromium and Manganese that proceeded them, in that same role and some properties resemble elements like copper which follows at the beginning of the1st row. The triads are seen as a gradual transition btw the elements at the end of one row and those at the beginning of the next rows

In the modern form of the periodic table , Mendeleev's term transition elements has been taken up with an enlarged meaning . The elements from period four which separates typical elements from the left from those on the right are called TRANSITION ELEMENTS.

Thus, historically transition elements are those elements in the periodic table which bridge the gap btw the electropositive group 1 and 2 and electronegative non-metals of groups 13 to 17.

Based on this definition, these elements have some common properties

1. They are metals with good thermal and electrical conductivities

2. They have high melting and boiling points

3. They have and electropositive character towards aqueous solution of non oxidizing acids

We may take these set general on the basis of these broad definitions . The first 2 elements in the Zn sub group and Cd can be included . However it will be difficult to call Hg a transition element as it is a liquid at room temperature and has a relatively low boiling point and exhibit no electropositive character

transition elements can also be defined based on the electronic configuration of these elements.

According to this definition, transition elements are defined as the elements whose atoms or ions have a partially filled "d" or "f" orbital.

Based on this definition some characteristics of transition elements (T.M) are :

1. formation of colored compounds

2. paramagnetism

3. variable oxidation states

4. tendency to form complexes

IUPAC defines a transition element has an element whose atom has an incomplete d sub shell or which gives rise to cations with an incomplete d sub shell. This definition excludes Zn,Cd and Hg from the the transition elements since they have a d-10 configuration.

They do form ions with +2 oxidation states but retains the d-10 configuration. Thus this definition corresponds to groups 3-11 on the periodic table (PT)

Scandium has the electronic structure [Ar] 3d1 4s2. When it forms ions it always looses the 3 outer electrons and ends up with an [Ar] structure. The scandium 3 ions has no d electrons . Hence it is not a transition element. The coinage metals, Cu, Au, Ag since cu2+ has a 3d9 configuration, Ag2+ has a 4d9 and Au3+ a 5d8 configuration. They have a partially filled orbital. So they are transition metals.

Transition elements are those in the d block of the PT. This definition emphasizes the 4 blocks of elements in the periodic table (PT). This definition is rather unsatisfactory because it leads to the inclusion of Sc and Zn as transition elements.

Reason is that :

1. they have only 1 oxidation state in their compound (Scandium 3+ and zinc 2+) whereas others have 2 or more.

2. there compounds are usually white unlike compounds of othe transition metals that are generally colored.

3. they show little catalytic activity

The transition elements may strictly be defined as elements having partly filled d or f shells in any of their commonly oxidation states. consequently the coinage metals, cu Ag, Au are treated as transition metals because they have partially filled d orbitals

General Properties

1. They are all metals

2. They are practically all hard strong, high melting and boiling elements.

3. They form alloys with one another and other metallic elements

4. Many of them dissolves in mineral acids while few are unaffected by simple acids

5. with few exceptions they exhibit variable oxidation states.

6. They form colored ions and compounds in 1 if not all oxidation states

7. They form some paramagnetic compounds

They are about 56 transition elements that is subdivided into 3 main groups

a) the main transition elements or d block elements (DBE)

b) the lanthanides elements

c) the actinides elements

The main transition group or d block include those that correspond to the filling of the 3d, 4d and 5d respectively, the elements SC,Ti,V,Cr,Mn,Fe,Co,Ni,Cu, all have potentially filled 3d shells either in their ground states or the free atoms, all except copper or in one or more of the chemically important ions. All except Sc are called first transition elements.

The 2nd transition elements start with Y [Ar]4d15s2 others are Zr,Nb Mo,Tc,Ru,Rh,Bd,Ag.They all have partially filled 4d shells either in the free elements (all but Ag) or more of their chemically important ions (all but Y)

The third transition elements begins with Hf [Ar]6s25d2 and includes Ta,W,Re,Os,Ir,Pd,Au they have partially filled 5d shells in one or more chemically important oxidation states (OS) as well as (except Au) in the natural atom. The groups of the d block contains only three elements and corresponds to the filling of the 3d 4d and 5d shell respectively. In btw the 4d and the 5d levels is interposed first "f" level. The 4f shell which fills after lanthanides

Zn,Cd, and Hg form no compound in which the d shell is other than full that is they are fully filled d orbitals, Hence they are known transition elements metals are softer with low BP (boiling point) and Mp (melting point) because the d orbital is complete. Zn and Cd are considerably more electropositive than their neighbors in the transition groups lower than their ability to form complexes with NH3 amino,amide ions and Cyanide makes them similar to the other d group of the transition elements.

The ability to exist in more than one oxidation states is the most likely features of the transition elements e.g. Fe3+ and Fe2+, Cu2+ and Cu+, Co2+ and Co3+ and Co4+ and Co5+. This is in contrast to the S block elements , where the number of valence electrons equals a group number and P block elements where the valence electrons either equals the group number 8 minus the group No. For the P block element inert pair effect is common.

The variable oxidation states exist because of the little difference in energy btw the (n-1)d and nS. i.e. the two orbital 3d and 4s,4d and 5s, 5d and 6s. Consequently the ionization energy for the removal of electron from thus orbital is quite similar. In the formation of compound, electrons are removed from both orbital are removed.

Elements Atomic no. E config Oxidation No.

Sc 21 3d1, 4s2 *+2 or +3

Ti 22 3d2, 4s2 +2,+3,+4

V 23 3d3, 4s2 +2,+3,+4,+5

Cr 24 3d5,4s2 +2,+3,+4,+5,+6

Mn 25 3d5, 4s2 +2,+3,+4,+5,+6,+7

Fe 26 3d6, 4s2 +2,+3,+4,+5,+6

Co 27 3d7,4s2 +2,+3,+4,*+5

Ni 28 3d8,4s2 +2,+3,+4

Cu 29 3d10,4s2 +1,+2,+3,

Zn 30 3d10,4s2 +2

*doubt about their existence

Certain pattern in oxidation states (OS) emerge across the period for transition elements. For instance, the No. of the OS of each ion increases up to Mn; once the d5 configuration is exceeded, the tendency of all the d electrons to participate in bonding decreases. Later transition metals have a stronger attraction btw protons and electrons. Hence more energy is required to remove electrons. Thus, Fe has a maximum OS of +6 though the 2nd and 3rd elements in this group attain a maximum OS of +8 in RuO4 and OsO4. The observe difference btw Ru, Os and Fe is attributed to the size increase.

Note: except in Cr and Cu no +1 OS exits and even then Cu +1 disproportionate (complex that give insoluble compound) except when complexing ions are present in solution .

i.e 2Cu ----------------> Cu+ + Cu

Cu ----------------> Cu+ ---------------> Cu2+

+1.05v +0.52v

Compounds are regarded as stable if they exist at room temperature and not oxidized by the air and not hydrolysed by water vapor and do not disproportinate or decompose at room temperature.

Within each of the transition group 3-12 there is a diference in stability of the various OS that exist.

generally the 2nd and 3rd transition series exhibit higher cordination no. and their high OS are more stable than the corresponding 1st transition series.

1. The elements Cu, Ag, and Au show OS of +1, +2, +3 however, the only simple hydrated ions found in solution are Cu2+ and Ag+. The univalent ions Cu+ and Au+ disproportionate in water consequently only exist as a soluble compound or complexes. It is doubtful if Cr+ exist except when stabilized in a complex

2. For all the elements, +2 and +3 states are known and are the most stable states. The +2 ions across the period start as a strong reducing agents (RA) and become more stable while the +3 ions start stable and become strong oxidizing agents (OA)

+2 more stable +3 more stable

Mn Cr

Co Fe

3. When the elements are in lower OS they can be found as simple ions. However, transition metals in higher OS are usually bonded covalently to electronegative elements like O, N, F, Cl. The +3, +2 states exists as aqua ions due to the combination with the higher electronegative combinations

Give two definitions of THE and the relative merits and demerits of each.

On the basis of your answer to 1a justify why Zn, Cd, Hg, cannot be classified as transition metals.

Give 2 reasons to justify their classification as transition metals.

Explain why Eu exhibit only +2 and +3 OS but Uranium (Ur) forms compound in which the metal exhibit +3 to +6 oxidation states.

Answer to question 2

This is due to the difference in size. Ur is larger in size compared to Eu therefore; it is easier to remove electrons from Ur than Eu since the electrons of Ur are less bound to the nucleus compared to the electrons of the Eu atom

In +4 state

4 VO 2+ MnO2 TiO2+ oxo cations

5 V O2 +

6 CrO3 HcrO 4 - MnO4 2- CrO4 2- oxo cations

7 MnO4 -

In higher OS charge is high and size is small i.e. charge/radius ratio is very large. Consequently, polarizing power of the ion is very large. Thus ions readily form covalent ions with the oxygen to form oxo ions

In high OS these ions are highly acidic e.g. Mangenic acid H2MnO4nbut they are basic in low OS

There's a difference in number of OS from Mn to Zn. This is because the pairing of the electrons occur after Mn (Hund's rule) which in turn decreases the no. of available no. of unpaired electrons and hence the nos. of OS

The stability of higher OS decreases in moving from Sc to Zn. Mn and Fe6 are powerful OA and the higher OS of Co, Ni, Zn are unknown. The relative stability of +2 state with respect to higher OS particularly the +3 states increases in moving from left to right. This is justifiable since it will be increasingly difficult to remove the d electrons from the d orbital.

There's a tendency of intermediate OS to disproportionate

2Mn+6 ---------------------->Mn+4 + Mn+3

The lower OS are usually found in ionic compound and higher OS tend to be involved in covalent compound.

RELATIVE stability of OS is an extremely important topic in transition metal chemistry in is usually discussed in terms of the standard reduction potential E* values.

There are 3 main methods of summarizing the thermodynamic stabilities of OS of elements in aqueous solutions.

1 and 2 are restricted to extremes of standard 1 molar H+ pH = 0 or standard OH- solutions pH= 14

3 expresses the variation in stabilities of OS as a function of pH btw values of 0 to 14 hence, more comprehensive.

In Latimer diagram is a list of the various OS of an element arranged in descending order from left to right with the appropriate standard reduction potentials placed btw each pair of states. The diagram for chromium in acid solution is written below.

Cr2O7 2- ----------------->Cr3+ --------------->Cr2+ --------------->

1.33v -0.41v -0.91v

MnO4 - ----->MnO4 2---->MnO4 3----->MnO2------>Mn3+------>Mn2+--->Mn

0.564v 0.274v 4.27 0.95 1.51 -1.18

1. Write a balanced half rxn for all of the redox steps shown in th latimer diagram

2. Determine the redox potential for MnO2 conversion to Mn3+ at pH =4

This reaction is in acidic medium

The standard redox potential E* and the uunbalanced redox couples rxns for elemental Mn, reduction and Tc in acidic medium are listed in the table below

Redox rxn E*

TcO2 -------->Tc2+ +0.60v

Tc2+ -------->Tc +0.40v

TcO4 - -------->TcO2 +0.74v

Use the info in the table to answer the following questions.

Construct latimer diagrams for the elements

TcO4 - -------->TcO2 -------->Tc2+ -------->Tc

0.74 0.60 0.40

The application of thermodynamics to inorganic solutions chemistry was introduced in the simplest type of diagram by Wendell Latimer. In Latimer diagram for an element, the value for the standard potential in volts is written over a horizontal line connecting species with the elements in difference OS. The most highly oxidized from of the element is on the left and the species to the right is successfully of lower OS.

The Latimer diagram for Mn in acidic phase is;

MnO4- ---->MnO4 2- --->MnO4 3- ---->MnO2 ---->Mn3+ ---->Mn2+ -

0.564v 0.274v 4.27v 0.95v 1.51

It is no crime if oxidation number is written under or above the specie

ClO4- -------->ClO3- -------->ClO2 -------->HClO -------->Cl2 -------->Cl-

+7 +5 +4 +1 0 -1

1.20 +1.18 -1.65 +1.63 1.36

In the Latimer diagram for chlorine in acidic medium

Comments 22 comments

bunmy 7 years ago

very good write up!

bunmy 7 years ago

very good write up!

ajwa 6 years ago

ajwa 6 years ago

nidhi 6 years ago

nyc work... bt shud hv more focused on latimer diagram....

akinlolu profile image

akinlolu 6 years ago Author

thanks you all i will work on your comments.

johnsams profile image

johnsams 6 years ago

Enjoyed your hub very much. It would have been nice if you included more details pertaining to frost diagrams too..

Me 5 years ago

U only spoke of latimer how about d remaining two methods.

femi 4 years ago

This write up is good

anuj 4 years ago

we don"t like it

SODIQ 4 years ago

Gud and intrestin

awksb 4 years ago

nice work thanksssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Mission A. Shadrach 4 years ago

excellent. It really helped me greatly!!

laurence 4 years ago

complete brilliance needs more about cat food though

LOL just jokin it means nothin to me since i gave up chem in 4th form

fidel 4 years ago

i need more on transition metals to be sent to my e_mail;

haleem 4 years ago

very very thankful

sterling 4 years ago

why does Sc and Zn exhibit in one oxidation state +3 and +2.plz i nid ansa nw

fiffy 4 years ago

Thankssss..... :-)

hiit 4 years ago

Glad I noticed this on hubs.

best regards,

Ron from Fitness

Mereesomius 3 years ago

When i used to get high on lifestyle although recently We have piled up the amount of resistance.

Mereesomius 3 years ago

I employed to receive at the top of living yet as of late I have built up the resistance.

rosalind 3 years ago

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Companies need to re-evaluate security to handle advanced cyber attacks, in the wake of Google's recent travails. We look at how to do this.

The recent attack on Google are a good example of what some call the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) confronting a growing number of commercial entities.

The term has been used for some time in government and military domains to describe targeted cyberattacks carried out by highly organised state-sponsored groups with deep technical skills and computing resources.

In many cases, the attacks target highly placed individuals within organisations who are tricked into visiting malicious sites or downloading malicious software onto their systems.

The goal in most of these attacks is to steal trade secrets rather than personal or financial data.

Government organisations have been the target of such advanced persistent threats for years. But as the attacks against Google and others show, these threats are spilling over into the commercial side.

Writing in a blog, security vendor McAfee's chief technology officer George Kurtz noted that APTs had begun to change the threat landscape.

"These attacks have demonstrated that companies of all sectors are very lucrative targets," Kurtz said.

APTs, he noted, have become "the equivalent of the modern drone on the battlefield. With pinpoint accuracy they deliver their deadly payload and once discovered - it is too late".

Confronting the threat does not always require the implementation of new technologies. But it does require rethinking some of the strategies that companies may be adopting to protecting data, Kurtz and others said. Among the steps:

1. Your adversaries are not just organised crime any more

Given the enormous growth in organised cybercrime over the past few years, most companies have implemented defences for protecting personal and financial data from theft.

While that's important, it's also essential for companies to think about protecting their intellectual property data, said Ed Skoudis, co-founder of InGuardians, security consultancy.

"The threat has shifted," Skoudis said.

"If you go back over 10 years, the primary threats we faced were from hobbyists. Then the landscape changed, and the primary threat we most had to deal with was organised crime. And now it has shifted again," he said.

Many cyberattackers are more are interested in corporate espionage and in stealing intellectual property than they are in going after credit card numbers or patient health data.

"There's still the concern about people stealing 27 million cards," Skoudis said. But a failure to adequately protect IP and corporate secrets against similar theft could result in far more long-term damage, he said.

"You got to realise what your threat is and how to look for it," he said.

NEXT PAGE: Network monitoring

  1. Three internet security lessons every company needs to be aware of
  2. Network monitoring

2. Add network monitoring to the task list

Advanced persistent threats by definition are designed to get around firewalls, antivirus software, intrusion detection systems and other controls a company might have in place for blocking illegal access to data.

So companies need to have tools for monitoring anomalous behaviour on their network, and for detecting unusual long-term persistent network connections and other 'outlier behaviour' Skoudis said.

Companies might also want to consider using more ‘white-listing' approaches to block all but a very narrow and specific set of 'known good' activities on their systems and networks, Kurtz said.

"A lot of infections and zero-day threats can be eliminated using white listing because only trusted code can run on the system," he said.

Also vital is the need for companies to monitor their logs closely, Skoudis said.

Looking at firewall logs, network based IDS alerts and web proxy server logs can help companies identify suspicious activity on their networks, he said.

Companies need to establish a baseline for normal behaviour on their networks and then regularly compare log data against this baseline to detect malicious activity, he said.

"The APT tries to be the needle in the haystack. You need to go through the information you already are gathering to find it," he said.

"You've got to be looking for those outliers," he said.

3. Most web attacks still require human intervention to succeed

Targeted attacks depend on humans clicking on something or browsing over to a malicious website, Kurtz said.

McAfee's analysis of the attacks against Google and other companies showed that intruders gained access to an organisation by sending a tailored attack to one or a few targeted individuals.

The attacks were probably designed to look like they came from a trusted source, leading the target to click on a link or file.

"There's much more upfront reconnaissance taking place these days," with intruders lurking in social networking sites and elsewhere to gather information on targets, he said.

Strong user authentication and access control measures can help mitigate this issue, Kurtz said.

Tools are also available that can help companies verify the authenticity of links that users might click on, to help prevent them from browsing to a malicious website or downloading malware, he said.

Lastly, companies need to continue emphasising user education and training, he said.

"A lot of these attacks involve a human element. There is no patch" against that.

See also: Stay safe when using Internet Explorer

  1. Three security lessons every company needs to be aware of
  2. Network monitoring


FALSE: A Universal Force

Albert Einstein did not describe love as a 'universal force' in a letter to his daughter, Lieserl.

Claim:   Albert Einstein described love as a "universal force" in a letter to his daughter, Lieserl.

Example:   [Collected via e-mail, April 2015]

This was on Facebook and it doesn't seem consistent with other things that I've read about Albert Einstein. Do you know if this is really true?

This universal force is LOVE.

For love we live and die.
Love is God and God is Love.

Your father Albert Einstein
Origins:   Lieserl Einstein is one of the great mysteries connected with the life of her father, the famed physicist Albert Einstein. Her very existence was completely unknown to biographers until 1986, when a batch of letters between Einstein and his first wife, Mileva Maríc, were discovered by Einstein's granddaughter Evelyn (ultimately published in the 1992 book The Love Letters).

Those letters revealed a child named Lieserl was born to Einstein and Maríc in January 1902, a year before the couple married, in what is now the country of Serbia. Mileva cared for the child for a time while Einstein was away working in Switzerland, then joined him in that country without bringing Lieserl along. After that, aside from
a few scattered mentions of her preserved in Einstein's early 20th century letters, there are very few clues about Lieserl's life or her fate. She was never referenced in any of Einstein's preserved correspondence after 19 September 1903, when he expressed concern about her having scarlet fever.

Other than those few tantalizing clues, whatever happened to Lieserl remains a matter far more of speculation than of fact. In her 1999 book Einstein's Daughter: The Search for Lieserl, author Michele Zackheim combed through the available evidence and reached the conclusion that Lieserl was born with a severe mental handicap and died of the scarlet fever her father had referenced in a 1903 letter (when Lieserl was but 21 months old). Robert Schulmann of the Einstein Papers Project advanced the theory that Lieserl (who was blind from childhood) was adopted by Helene Savíc, a close friend of Mileva's, and lived into her 90s under the name Zorka Savíc. (Milan Popovíc, Helene's grandson, refuted this claim in his 2003 book In Albert's Shadow: The Life and Letters of Mileva Maríc, Einstein's First Wife, stating that he also believed Lieserl died of scarlet fever in 1903.)

In any case, it's simply not possible that Lieserl Einstein "donated 1,400 letters written by Albert Einstein to the Hebrew University in 1980s," as nobody knows whether Lieserl even survived her infancy. And there isn't a single preserved letter from Albert Einstein to Lieserl herself, as the physicist didn't so much as mention her in his correspondence after 1903, when she was less than two years old. (Someone seems to have confused Lieserl Einstein, Albert Einstein's little known daughter, with Evelyn Einstein, the adopted daughter of Albert Einstein's oldest son, Hans Albert Einstein.) So the purported letter from Albert Einstein reproduced above in which the scientist described love as a "universal force" certainly does not stem from the any correspondence with his daughter Lieserl.

Is it possible that is a genuine letter from Albert Einstein to someone other than Lieserl? Probably not, given that:

  • This letter is very much unlike, in tone and content, any other extant correspondence or writing of the famed scientist, particularly in the latter part of his life. (The reference to Einstein's famous mass/energy equivalence E = mc2 would date this letter to no earlier than 1946, as that was the first time Einstein expressed the equivalence in that form.)
  • Even allowing for the vagaries of translation (in letters that may have been written in German rather than English), searches on resources such as the Einstein Archives Online and the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein fail to turn up any matches on any of several distinctive phrases from the letter.
  • We found no reproduction of, or reference to, this alleged letter in print or online prior to its seemingly sudden appearance on the Internet in April 2015.

This appears to be another case of someone's trying to get readers to pay attention to words by attributing them to a well-known, respected figure whom the public views as knowledgeable in the subject matter at hand. And who could possibly know more about God and love and other "universal forces" than the most renowned scientific genius of our time?

Last updated:   28 April 2015


what i look for in a yoga teacher
Photography by apryl ryder

what i look for in a yoga teacher

by Ira Israel ira israel
Teachers | Types | What is Yoga? | Teachers | Vinyasa yoga |

What I admire most in a yoga teacher is his or her passion and love for yoga.  The history of yoga is vast, complex, and ornate; when a teacher shows knowledge of one or more of the sundry lineages it makes me feel more comfortable that he or she knows how to lead me though a practice with the proper emphases.

The main focus of yoga practice is uniting the mind, spirit and body through the breath or prana.  Concentrating on the breath cultivates equanimity and peace of mind.  Yoga and meditation developed over thousands of years for spiritual reasons: to enable devotees to go beyond their mental soundtracks and realize their essential divine natures.  Now many people employ these wonderful tools for psychological reasons: for a respite from their busy mental “to-do” lists, for a few moments of solace during their stressful days, to empty their minds and reboot their psychic and emotional hard-drives.

Awesome yoga teachers usually have an overall intention about the series they are teaching but are sufficiently flexible to be able to adjust for the sundry levels and temperaments of the students.

In my understanding of yoga, the first part of the practice is to generate tapas, to heat up the body, get the blood flowing, and start moving the kundalini energy up the sushumna nadi; once the body is warmer and looser, the second part of the practice consists of twists to remove toxins from the internal organs; the third part of the practice is a combination of going into deeper stretches in seated poses as well as cooling down and leading towards sivasana.  This overall structure for an asana series makes sense to me but I’m sure that there are other ways of structuring a class.  The main point is that awesome teachers know the purpose of which asanas go during what part of a series depending on how the class is devised.

The next three characteristics I look for in a yoga teacher are sometimes difficult to juxtapose but here goes:

Firstly I want to know that the teacher walks the walk.  If a teacher reeks of cigarettes and alcohol then it’s difficult to discern the transformational role that yoga has played in his or her life.  I want to know that yoga is an essential part of my teacher’s life and that his or her dedication to the practice is something that I should emulate.

This personal integrity relates to the next characteristic that makes an awesome yoga teacher: authenticity.  How can I know about the role that yoga has played in my teacher’s life if he or she doesn’t share that with the class?  I don’t need to know thesturm und drang of my teacher’s entire emotional past, but I want my teacher to be authentic, to be “real” in class.

However, in contrast to authenticity, I also believe that there is a performance aspect to teaching yoga that is seldom discussed.  It is the ability to command attention in a subtle manner, to “hold” the space.  For some teachers, this requires an ability to act or perform in a manner that risks being diametrically opposed to authenticity and integrity.  And I’ve even spoken to teachers who deny acting or performing in class.  But if you’ve ever been in a class where the teacher is speaking in the same tone he or she would employ to ask you to pass the salt at a quiet dinner table, then you understand what I mean.  Also, have you noticed how many of the “celebrity” yoga teachers trained in theater and film before becoming yoga teachers?

So on the one hand, an awesome teacher is authentic about the transformational role yoga plays in his or her life; on the other hand, he or she commands the room like a conductor conducting an orchestra, with a confident voice that inspires students to work for the next 60-90 minutes to attain some of that passion, clarity, integrity, ease, grace, authenticity, compassion, equanimity and love that the teacher embodies.

Marianne Schwerdtfeger


Serbia seeks evidence against 2 Croatian generals freed by UN war crimes tribunal

Serbia on Monday asked U.N. war crimes prosecutors to hand over evidence against two Croatian generals whose convictions have been overturned, reigniting tensions between the Balkan wartime rival states.

Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac were released earlier this month by a U.N. war crimes court after the appeals judges reversed convictions for atrocities, including the murder of hundreds of Serbs and the illegal deportation of hundreds of thousands of people during a 1995 Croatian military offensive known as Operation Storm.

Serbia’s war crimes prosecutors said they have asked U.N. prosecutors to hand over the evidence used in the trial of the two generals so they can consider whether to indict them in Serbia.

Read more

Washington Post


The Tale of Two Murals in Downtown L.A.

Shepard Fairey and RISK murals in downtown Los Angeles. February, 2014. Photo: Ed Fuentes | viewfromaloft

G. James Daichendt, aka Professor Street Art, has some thoughts on those new murals appearing in downtown's Skid Row. Daichendt is the author of the new book "Shepard Fairey Inc. Artist/Professional/Vandal" and "Stay Up! Los Angeles Street Art" and a guest editorial regular here at KCET Departures, via Writing on the Wall. He is a Professor and Associate Dean at Azusa Pacific University in southern California.

by G. James Daichendt

Giants of the graffiti and street art world descended upon Skid Row in Los Angeles to paint two large murals this past February. RISK, born Kelly Gravel, is an international star in the world of graffiti. Pioneering the limits of illegal and legal work, he founded a clothing company and his work is a mainstay in urban centers. Shepard Fairey, aka OBEY, is arguably one of the most influential artists in the world. His design company, clothing line, and infamous portrait of Barack Obama made him a household name. Combined they are match in lowbrow heaven as they set their sights on two walls of the Rossmore Hotel on the corner of East Sixth Street and Ceres Avenues.

The artists collaborated to produce some very colorful and notable contributions to the neighborhood. RISK painted the background of each image in an abstract drip style that he has manufactured quite well. The cool green and blue colors juxtapose the warm tones on opposing sides. Fairey then painted the foreground using a stencil that features a number of his reoccurring motifs, like the peace sign and his stylized Andre the Giant face. The words "justice tonight," "good times," and "bad times" are all featured prominently and reference the unstable conditions in Skid Row. The project is admirable for its scale and certainly better than a blank wall. The murals are intended to beautify the neighborhood and the design and execution are quite good. It's certainly a win for the community in my book, and I enjoyed looking at them.

However, the names RISK and OBEY are featured more prominently than the message. It's quite clear by their sheer size and placement in the center that the art on display has little critical engagement beyond beatification and a living memorial to these names. If you forget who the artists are, it does not take long to jog your memory.

Skid Row City Limit  I Photo: General Jeff
Skid Row City Limit I Photo: General Jeff

As a scholar who studies street art, I am encouraged when street art takes a political stance and can provoke dialogue. The power of the anonymous artist whose message is more important than their identity is admirable. Shepard Fairey is noted for being a lighting rod for debate, and it's a trait I find admirable. However, both of these rebel artists would probably agree with me that a much more subversive and impactful piece of street art was installed within a few days on a much more modest budget, that is ripe for comparison.

Down the street on Sixth and San Julian in the heart of Skid Row, a piece of street art popped up. It's a replica of an official city sign that reads, "Skid Row City Limit," with the sub-text, "Population: Too Many." It's not necessarily an aesthetically beautiful mural, and the names of the artists are practically invisible, with a small group of signatures placed below the sign: Issues & Solutions, General Jeff, WDS, Chris Como, Wild Life, Azure, and Tre. The purpose of the street work is more about critiquing one of the largest stable populations of homeless people in the United States, rather than brightening the moral conditions that the city refuses to address. It's a commendable trait since it does not point back at the artists who created it.

The three most powerful aspects of street art is 1) the ability to recognize it as art outside the gallery or museum, 2) the power of context specific messages, and 3) the immediacy of its impact. Recognizing it as art is a reversal of so much of the conceptual work that has dominated contemporary art since the 1960s. The power of context moves street art beyond graffiti, and acknowledges the importance of location and its relationship to the message provoked. The immediacy is critical since the audience is on the move and it must be cognized in an instance.

While the RISK and Shepard Fairey murals certainly entertain and bring two popular artists to the city through recognizable symbols and aesthetics, the artists involved in the Skid Row City Limits sign embrace all three categories, and will likely leave a much stronger impact for action and change. It's a work of art that acknowledges its location and is prodding you to join them.


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Topic Suggestion Description

View Topic Suggestion Disposition (PDF) 129 kB

Date submitted: June 01, 2011

Briefly describe a specific question, or set of related questions, about a health care test or treatment that this program should consider.
For patients with advanced or metastatic solid tumors such as non-small cell lung cancer, what is the comparative effectiveness of usual care plus interdisciplinary palliative care versus usual care alone in improving net health outcomes?
Does your question include a comparison of different health care approaches? (If no, your topic will still be considered.)
If yes, explain the specific technologies, devices, drugs, or interventions you would like to see compared:
Palliative care (provided by a multidisciplinary team of health professionals) integrated with standard oncologic care, as compared with standard oncologic care alone.
What patients or group(s) of patients does your question apply to? (Please include specific details such as age range, gender, coexisting diagnoses, and indications for therapy.)
Adults with advanced or metastatic cancer (both hospice and non-hospice care)
Are there subgroups of patients that your question might apply to? (For example, an ethnic group, stage or severity of a disease.)
Advanced (Stage III) or metastatic disease
Describe the health-related benefits you are interested in. (For example, improvements in patient symptoms or problems from treatment or diagnosis.)
Improvements in survival duration, quality of life, mood (e.g., anxiety, depression), and symptom severity over time (e.g., pain); as well as less use of aggressive care near the end-of-life (e.g., chemotherapy within 14 days before death, lack of hospice care, or hospice admission shortly before death).

Improvements in intermediate outcomes, such as patient and family satisfaction and use of health care services as a result of less use of aggressive care.
Describe any health-related risks, side effects, or harms that you are concerned about.
Impact on survival, quality of life, or patient and family satisfaction.

Appropriateness for EHC Program

Does your question include a health care drug, intervention, device, or technology available (or likely to be available) in the U.S.?
Which priority area(s) and population(s) does this topic apply to? (check all that apply)
EHC Priority Conditions (updated in 2008)
  • Cancer
AHRQ Priority Populations
  • Low income groups
  • Minority groups
  • Women
  • Elderly
  • Individuals with special health care needs, including individuals with disabilities or who need chronic care or end-of-life health care
Federal Health Care Program
  • Medicaid
  • Medicare

Describe why this topic is important.
Palliative care provided earlier in the course of disease, with its focus on management of symptoms, psychosocial support, and assistance with decision making, has the potential to have a meaningful effect on patients' quality of life and end-of-life care. Patients with advanced or metastatic disease such as non–small-cell lung cancer have a substantial symptom burden and often receive aggressive care at the end of life. There is significant toxicity associated with aggressive therapy, usually with minimal possibility of benefit from treatment.
What specifically motivated you to ask this question? (For example, you are developing a clinical guideline, working with a policy with large uncertainty about the appropriate approach, costly intervention, new research you have read, items in the media you may have seen, a clinical practice dilemma you know of, etc.)
This topic was given the highest priority by a multi-disciplinary stakeholder panel (including patient advocates/representatives) convened to identify and select research questions on cancer of importance for systematic review.

There is a gap in current knowledge among clinicians and patients on palliative care. There is a need for standardization of approaches used for palliative care, as different sets of interventions and outcome measures are used across research studies to assess its clinical impact. A comprehensive systematic review would synthesize current findings on palliative care and convey that information to clinicians, patients, and other decision makers. It also might suggest which of the approaches used within research studies might be most fruitful for further investigations.
Does your question represent uncertainty for clinicians and/or policy-makers? (For example, variations in clinical care, controversy in what constitutes appropriate clinical care, or a policy decision.)
If yes, please explain:
There currently is uncertainty among both clinicians and patients about the impact of
early introduction of palliative care in terms of survival and improvements in quality of life and mood. A recent study (Temel et al, 2010)* had surprising findings indicating that the use of palliative care might even modestly increase survival. This research has spurred interest in developing a better understanding of the effect of palliative care.

* Temel JS, et al. Early Palliative Care for Patients with Metastatic Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer. N Engl J Med 2010; 363:733-742.

Potential Impact

How will an answer to your research question be used or help inform decisions for you or your group?
A report would inform clinical decision-making for patients, payers and providers.
Describe the timeframe in which an answer to your question is needed.
Describe any health disparities, inequities, or impact on vulnerable populations your question applies to.
Elderly patients with cancer near the end of life and their caregivers are a particularly vulnerable population. It is reasonable to hypothesize that testing and optimizing ways to integrate palliative care early after diagnosis with advanced or metastatic disease could help alleviate the burden of disease symptoms and adverse effects of treatment. The impact of palliative care on other AHRQ priority populations (e.g., women, minority groups) can also be examined, to the degree that evidence is available.

Nominator Information

Other Information About You: (optional)
Please choose a description that best describes your role or perspective: (you may select more than one category if appropriate)
  • Other
Are you making a suggestion as an individual or on behalf of an organization?
Organization - BlueCross BlueShield Association Technology Evaluation Center
Please tell us how you heard about the Effective Health Care Program
The BlueCross BlueShield Association Technology Evaluation Center is an Evidence-based Practice Center of AHRQ.


Democracy: Should We Bother?

What could be less controversial than the principle that the public should be consulted about transportation policy? In future posts, I’m going to write about why puppy dogs are despicable and why we should all root for the Miami Heat, but for today I’m going to question this seemingly unquestionable proposition.

There is good reason that one of modern transportation planning’s most fundamental precepts is that the public should be consulted on policies large and small, from constructing a new subway line to changing a humble bus schedule. This is the product of very real abuses, particularly during the creation of the Interstate Highway System. At that time, government had virtual carte blanche to displace residents and bulldoze neighborhoods. For example, for Los Angeles’s Harbor Freeway in the late 1940s, the condemnation resolution for the right-of-way was approved by the court the day after it was filed by the state. The following day, every piece of property along the route was posted with a fifteen day notice to vacate. And less than three weeks after the filing of the condemnation resolution, the Division of Highways began clearing the property.

An Alternative to Democracy?

With the U.S. presidential election nearly here, everyone seems to have politics on their mind.  Unlike most people, economists tend to have an indifference towards voting.  The way economists see it, the chances of an individual’s vote influencing an election outcome is vanishingly small, so unless it is fun to vote, it doesn’t make much sense to do so.  On top of that, there are a number of theoretical results, most famously Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, which highlight how difficult it is to design political systems/voting mechanisms that reliably aggregate the preferences of the electorate.

Mostly, these theoretical explorations into the virtues and vices of democracy leave me yawning.

Last spring, however, my colleague Glen Weyl mentioned an idea along these lines that was so simple and elegant that I was amazed no one had ever thought of it before.  In Glen’s voting mechanism, every voter can vote as many times as he or she likes.  The catch, however, is that you have to pay each time you vote, and the amount you have to pay is a function of the square of the number of votes you cast.

Question of the Day: Should We Just Let Murderers Do Their Thing?

A reader named Mark Kozel writes to say:

I heard that Chicago will be pouring up to $14 million into police overtime to prevent murder and violent crime.

It got me thinking: is it cheaper to prevent this kind of crime, or to just let it happen and clean up the mess afterwards?

It would be hard to find many people, even economists, who would arguing that "just letting it happen" isn't an outcome that society should even think about accepting.

Democracy, Live and in Concert

At Saturday’s concert by the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, the program offered a menu for the second half: The audience was to vote on whether it wished to hear the Tschaikovsky Serenade, the Dvorák Serenade, or Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet (arranged for small string orchestra). After the intermission, the conductor briefly discussed each composer and described each piece, then asked for a show of hands.

I was worried: What if a plurality favored the Schubert (my choice), but the Dvorák had been a close second, with a majority of people vehemently against hearing the Schubert performed by anything other than four string instruments? I don’t imagine that second-preference voting would have been possible (fancier voting schemes regrettably generate larger transactions costs), so we would have listened to the Schubert even though more people would have been better off with the Dvorák.

Fortunately, a small majority of the audience shared my preference and we achieved the first-best (and heard a wonderful performance)!