Water in the Atmosphere

Two recent papers of the atmospheric scientists Prof. Dr. Bjorn Stevens and Dr. Sandrine Bony address the Earth system´s essential component: water (in: "Science" and "Physics Today", see references below). Prof. Stevens is Managing Director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg and leader of the department "The Atmosphere in the Earth system". Dr. Bony works at the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL) in Paris.

In an overview article in "Physics Today", the authors address the essential role of water in the atmosphere. Water - H2O - is a small molecule with big impact. It exists in Earth's atmosphere in all three states of matter (solid, liquid, gas), with the distribution of each being strongly regulated by temperature. Water also interacts strongly with radiation, both in condensed and vapor forms and is the most important atmospheric constituent for Earth's energy cycle. Water's radiative effects also power the hydrological cycle, making it a crucial meteorological component of the Earth system that is linked to the dynamics of Earth's atmosphere. In every respect water is fundamental to an understanding of the atmosphere and climate. Based on an understanding of robust and fundamental properties of water the authors' argue that the likely range of the climate sensitivity (the warming Earth will experience for a doubling of atmospheric CO2) is better constrained than usually is thought, with a value between 2.2 and 3.4 K. But they go on to show that much of what we don't understand about weather and climate is closely linked to what we don't understand about water ... like why the cloud responses are so different in different models as shown in the figure below.

The authors take up this point in a perspectives article published by "Science" magazine, where they argue that despite its importance the climate community has failed to focus sufficient attention on water, the atmospheres most important constituent. They point out that in the current climate and Earth system models, the representation of clouds and convection, or even more general, the coupling between the atmospheric water and circulation remains unsatisfactory, and that this distors their representation of the climate system and climate change. These distortions are particularly evident in the tropics (as shown in simple experiments with a water world, e.g., Fig.) where the coupling of water and circulation is performed by smaller-scale processes that cannot be resolved by present day global models.

Fig.: The response patterns of clouds and precipitation to warming vary dramatically depending on the climate model, even in the simplest model configuration. Shown are changes in the radiative effects of clouds and in precipitation accompanying a uniform warming (4°C) predicted by four models from Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) for a water planet with prescribed surface temperatures.

Although we know enough about water to recognize global warming as a major and serious challenge, we do not know enough about the coupling of water with the circulation systems to predict regional changes with certainty, which are fundamental for the development of adaptation strategies. Understanding the coherence between water in the atmosphere and the large circulation systems, and thus the energy budget, is therefore also essential for progress in climate research. The authors come to the conclusion that what climate models are missing most is not a more comprehensive treatment of the Earth system, rather an adequate treatment of water. But fundamental progress, and eventually improvements in Earth system models, requires greater emphasis on these basic questions.

Recently the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) has endorsed these ideas through the identification of a focus on "Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity" which they asked Dr. Sandrine Bony and Prof. Bjorn Stevens to lead. Within this research program, the objective will be to guide the international community in articulating solvable problems related to water in the atmosphere and thus move climate research forward past some of the fundamental roadblocks that it now confronts.

1. Stevens, B., & Bony, S. (2013). What are climate models missing. Science, 340(6136), 1053-1054.
Opens external link in current windowdoi:10.1126/science.1237554.
2. Stevens, B., & Bony, S. (2013). Water in the atmosphere. Physics Today, 66(6), 29-34.
Opens external link in current windowdoi:10.1063/PT.3.2009.

Further information:

WCRP - Grand Challenges: Opens external link in current windowhttp://www.wcrp-climate.org/index.php/gc-clouds

Prof. Dr. Bjorn Stevens
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Phone: +49 - 40 41173 422 (Assistant: Angela Gruber)
Email: Opens window for sending emailbjorn.stevens@we dont want spammpimet.mpg.de


The attractive sounds of Nordic Romanticism of Wilhelm Stenhammar

Musiken by Georg Pauli
Musiken by Georg Pauli

Swedish pianist Wilhelm Stenhammar was one of the few composers who remained faithful to the ideas of Romanticism in the turbulent beginning of the 20th century when musical experiments prevailed over the classical foundation.

Being primarily a self-taught composer, he spent much time exploring the counterpoint theory which imbued his works with a sensitive grace. As a conductor, Wilhelm Stenhammar also achieved strong success heading the Gothenburg Symphony.

Wilhelm was born in 1871 in Stockholm into the family of architect Per Ulrik Stenhammar who mainly designed village church buildings and, as a self-educated organist and composer, wrote a number of religious pieces.

In the highly creative environment of his musical family, Wilhelm's talent for composition first began showing as early as his childhood years when he started writing for the Stenhammar Quartet made up of his elder siblings. After leaving the school, Stenhammar focused entirely on the study of piano and composition for which he took both private lessons and formal training in the academies of Stockholm and Berlin.

In 1894, he saw his first success in Stockholm when his Piano Concerto in B minor was noticed by critics who marked him as a young artist of great genius and promise. This event also brought Stenhammar into contact with Danish composer and impresario Henrik Hennings, who served as his publisher and concert agent.

Wilhelm Stenhammar by Robert Thegerström:

Initially taking the publishing contract very positively, Stenhammar was forced to interrupt it at the end of the century due to his disinclination to be a "compositional factory laborer". In the early 20th century, he also became disillusioned with his European career outside of Sweden, believing that he was capable of:

"...carrying out a great and significant mission and occupying a well-deserved place in modern Swedish culture."

The situation was resolved in 1907 when Stenhammar accepted an offer to be the conductor for Gothenburg Orchestral Society. He stayed in Gothenburg for fifteen years during which he facilitated the orchestra's rise into one of the best in the Nordic region.

Listen to Stenhammar's early work Excelsior Symphonic Overture performed by Neeme Järvi with Gothenburg Symphony:

Stenhammar, distressed by modernist movements in music, began his in-depth studies of counterpoint theory in the 1910s. Skeptical of atonal principles of the Second Viennese School and its leader Arnold Schoenberg, Stenhammar was searching for a guiding principle that allowed creativity in the age of modernism without breaking the tradition itself:

"In these times of Arnold Schoenberg, I dream of an art far removed from Arnold Schoenberg, clear, joyful and naive."

In his search for the special Nordic sound, Stenhammar communicated with famous composers of his time including Jean Sibelius and Carl Nielsen.

In the 1920s he moved to Stockholm where he was offered the post of conductor at the Royal Swedish Opera. However, his stint as chief conductor at the opera was short-lived. In 1927 Stenhammar died following a brain hemorrhage.

Stenhammar is considered to be one of the most important Scandinavian composers of his era, and his works—including songs, choral and orchestral pieces—represent the best Swedish music at the turn of the century.

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Code Rocket White paper: Outsourcing with Confidence

Download the PDF here, or read the report below.

Outsourcing with Confidence Front Page Graphic

Outsourcing of software development work requires careful considerations and practices to alleviate the potential challenges involved.

This white paper summarizes the challenges and describes Code Rocket: a software visualization and documentation system which offers invaluable assistance for supporting recommended best practices for outsourcing.

Outsourcing challenges

Managing requirements on a software project is a difficult challenge at the best of times. Ensuring that the requirements accurately reflect the real business needs and then being able to successfully coordinate their translation into implemented software is often cited as one of the most significant factors that can threaten the success of a software project.

When undertaking outsourced or subcontracted projects development typically has to be coordinated across external service providers, including the possibility of managing remote or virtual teams in different countries, time zones, and cultures. This can make the following challenges more pronounced:

  • ensuring a clear definition of and a correct understanding of requirements provided to external contractors;
  • tracing the progress of those requirements into the detailed stages of development;
  • being able to maintain visibility of the progress of development and to assess the quality/standard of development.

Outsourcing: Where Code Rocket Helps

Allow clients and subcontractors to talk the same language when discussing detailed system requirements – to ensure correct understanding and agreement.

Provide improved visibility of the detailed stages of outsourced development – to enhance project management and quality control.

Provide comprehensive, high quality documentation throughout the project – to assist reporting, review, communication and code maintenance beyond the end of the project.

Support for creating detailed up front specifications – allowing you to clearly define the scope of work and requirements, to enforce standards in design, and to define Intellectual Property before hand-off to contractors.

With outsourcing also come considerations in relation to Intellectual Property – protecting it and being able to make a clear distinction in its ownership.

Outsourcing failures can be attributed to many factors such as poor communication, unclear expectations, interests becoming less aligned over time, selecting incompatible providers, cost cutting measures which may force providers to cut corners, and poor selection of projects to outsource, e.g. offloading work because it is less attractive to do in house rather than selecting projects which make more sense for the company’s objectives and are more suited to an outsourced context.

Key best practices to adopt when undertaking outsourcing include the following:

  • Establishing clear objectives and a clearly defined scope and schedule for the project - this includes a clear definition of the project requirements up front, making sure the service provider understands the project specifications, ideally being as detailed and precise as possible.
  • Choosing the correct service provider – ensuring they are a good fit, that they have the experience that your type of project requires and are compatible with your company’s culture and objectives.
  • On-site presence – i.e. someone to oversee development, to keep communications fluid, to manage changes in scope or direction, to maintain visibility of quality and progress. However, this can be expensive if you need to use some of your key resources to achieve this such as senior developers.
  • Communications - regular reporting of progress, ensuring agreement, preventing interests and understanding from becoming misaligned.

How Code Rocket Helps

Code Rocket assists in the following key areas:

  • Providing a clear definition of scope and requirements up front.
  • Improving communication between client and contractor to ensure a correct understanding of the requirements prior to development.
  • Assisting ongoing review and discussion of requirements during development, to retain alignment.
  • Improving visibility of the detailed stages of development to assist with monitoring quality, progress and correctness of work.
  • Clearer demarcation of Intellectual Property.

Clear definition of requirements

With its detailed design support, Code Rocket allows in house senior developers or architects to efficiently define the core functionality and business requirements expected for the project to a much more precise level than other tools, taking you right down to the algorithmic level if required. Therefore helping to reduce the grey area where ownership of (intellectual) property becomes fuzzy and also helping to more clearly define the scope of work.

Code Rocket achieves this by bringing together tried and tested software design principles (such as pseudocode and flowcharts) in an innovative way, making them a seamlessly integrated part of a designer’s toolkit. Intuitive, automated, time saving strategies ensure that designers can focus their efforts on the content and quality of their designs, rather than struggling with inefficient drawing and editing tasks. Unlike many other software engineering tools which focus on higher level architecture designs, Code Rocket goes further, taking your design right down into the algorithmic / business process level. Combined with subsequent forward engineering of high quality code skeletons from these detailed designs, this provides your onsite team with much finer control of what is handed over to contractors, setting expectations for standards to be adopted and providing a clear definition of implementation requirements.

Improving communication and ensuring development remains aligned with objectives

No matter how hard one tries, there are inevitably challenges in ensuring a correct understanding of, and reaching agreement on the requirements of what is being developed. Things are missed out, not correctly understood or just not written down correctly. It is difficult to talk about the detailed functionality of a system in a way that everyone can clearly visualize and understand without ambiguity.

This is where Code Rocket really shines. Code Rocket allows you to define and discuss very detailed system requirements in a way that anyone can understand, including non-programmers. Code Rocket achieves this by providing two simple but powerful views of the requirements that have to be implemented: pseudocode and business-process type flowcharts. This not only allows you to create detailed upfront specifications of the system requirements, for review and clarification. It also allows you to reverse engineer these views from code – allowing people to review what has actually been implemented. Thereby further enhancing the capability to ensure the system is conforming to expectations. These views facilitate more effective communication of the system requirements to ensure that everybody remains on the same page. Therefore, even as development is progressing, an ongoing accurate reflection of what has actually been implemented can be obtained in a palatable format, helping to ensure that development remains aligned with the objectives of the project.

Improving project management cost effectively

With its simple but powerful mechanisms for visualizing code, Code Rocket provides project managers with improved visibility of the detailed stages of software development. This allows them to assess code quality and progress quickly and efficiently, providing visibility of the business requirements expected to be implemented and possible adherence to development standards and code quality. For example, assessing how well commented the code is, being able to easily visualize complex pathways in the code where testing effort should be focused and/or performance testing. It is very easy to identify large, sprawling, rambling flowcharts which give an indication of code that requires possible quality improvements. Code Rocket can provide automated documentation reports throughout the development stages of a project, not just at the end. Therefore, offering continuous monitoring of the development status and its conformance to expectations and assisting contractors to fulfill their reporting and documentation requirements.

Clearer demarcation of Intellectual Property

By providing deeper definitions of designs and requirements, including possible skeleton code for handover to contractors, Code Rocket assists with making clear the distinction between Intellectual Property that has been developed onsite, prior to hand over to contractors.

Outsourcing of software development work presents many challenges. Adopting recommended best practices can help to alleviate the risks involved. With its automated design and reporting support for detailed stages of development, Code Rocket provides valuable assistance for achieving these best practices: providing a clear definition of scope and requirements up front; improving communication between client and contractor to ensure a correct understanding of the requirements prior to development; ongoing review and discussion of requirements during development, to retain alignment; improving visibility of the detailed stages of development to assist project management monitoring quality, progress and correctness of work; offering a clearer demarcation of onsite Intellectual Property.

About Rapid Quality Systems

Rapid Quality Systems Limited develops innovative software tools to support the detailed design, visualization and documentation of software systems. Our Code Rocket software makes documentation a seamlessly integrated part of the development process and delivers cost and quality benefits in the following key areas: Project management; Quality assurance; Communication amongst diverse stakeholders; Visualization support for software developers designing, implementing and reviewing complex business processes, algorithms and methods.

Our vision is to open the development process up to domain experts to allow anyone to see what code really does, providing views that don't require an intimate knowledge of programming languages.

Please join us online at:

Code Rocket

Code Rocket is a code visualization and documentation system designed to reduce software development time and costs.

It integrates seamlessly with existing development environments (Microsoft Visual Studio, Eclipse) where it provides automatic design and code visualization support for software developers during coding activities. It offers productivity support during code construction and provides documentation which assists project managers during review and quality assurance tasks. Code Rocket generates documentation in a format that is readily understandable to programmers and non-programmers, therefore enhancing ease of communication amongst diverse stakeholders on a software project when discussing and reviewing the detailed requirements and functionality of a system.

Code Rocket is also deployed as a standalone system. This offers the capability for performing up front design of software systems right down to procedural / algorithmic level. Or, through a code import, to inspect, redesign and document the contents of existing or legacy code.

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The minimum wage dilemma

After Illinois passed a new $15 minimum wage law to take place in 2025, the role of what the minimum wage does for the Midwest has come under question

Back on Feb. 19, Illinois became the first Midwestern state and the fifth U.S. state to approve a $15 per hour minimum wage by 2025. While this is a victory for people who work for a minimum wage, it raises questions regarding how people approach the minimum wage and how raising the minimum wage would affect other areas of the Midwest.

The promise of a $15 minimum wage has been a campaign promise from new Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat.

While the Illinois minimum wage increase is important in many ways, there are different exceptions in how the law will be implemented for workers.

“It’s actually coupled with what we call wage subsidies, in that with firms with less than 50 employees, the state is gonna pay up to 25 percent, for some time period, of the cost of raising wages,” says Alexander Bartik, an economics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “And second, the law does kind of maintain the partial exemption of tipped workers in tip wage laws. So, the non-tipped wage does not have to reach the minimum wage.”

The third area where the $15 minimum wage has an exemption is younger workers who do not work full-time, making this change easier to stomach for employers.

The minimum wage increasing to $15 within the United States overall has been an important topic for more progressive Democrats in recent years, especially with the idea of a “living wage” that can help cover expenses that currently can’t be covered by working full-time under minimum wage.

The Illinois state legislature voted on a minimum wage bill quickly after the new session started, which newly elected Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law on Feb. 16. Picture by Daniel Schwen via Wikimedia Commons.

“You do often hear discussion about the need for the minimum wage to provide a living wage,” says Evan Totty, an economist at the U.S. Census Bureau. Much of this discussion comes from the fact that the minimum wage’s actual value has fallen substantially since that last federal minimum wage hike decades ago, Totty continues.

“Many states, counties, and cities have begun taking this issue into their own hands through their own minimum wage policies, but many states do not have their own minimum wage and instead rely on the federal minimum,” Totty says. “Therefore, the lack of any change in the federal minimum wage in a decade has caused growing dissatisfaction among many workers in these states.”

However, Peter Orazem, an economics professor at Iowa State University is skeptical about the concept of the “living wage” that is central to many of the Democratic Party’s approaches to the minimum wage, as Orazem thinks it is not well defined.

“You don’t pay people more if they’re single and pay them less if they are married to a spouse who makes a lot of money,” Orazem says. “So to some extent the term is a misnomer. It’s not true that they’re tying needs to the pay to the needs of the individual.”

Logan Lee, an economics professor at Grinnell College, says the issue of minimum wage has become more pronounced because of an increasingly robust economy.

“In general, minimum wage increases make the most sense when the economy is strong and unemployment is low,” Lee says. “We are in a period like that right now.”

While wage increases work for many workers in large cities, such as Chicago, there might be some problems getting a minimum wage increase statewide to smaller, less robust economies in rural areas of states.

“Cities like Chicago face significantly higher costs of living than the surrounding rural areas. Essentials like food, clothing, and especially housing just cost a lot more,” Lee says. “Given this difference, it is cheaper to live in rural areas and one can live more comfortably with less income. Given the gaps in cost of living and the prices of goods, minimum wage increases should be expected to have different effects in different areas.”

Therefore, it can be hard to definitively know whether or not a $15 minimum wage will be more beneficial than not for rural areas in states like Iowa or Nebraska.

“Cities like Chicago face significantly higher costs of living than the surrounding rural areas. Essentials like food, clothing, and especially housing just cost a lot more. … Given this difference, it is cheaper to live in rural areas and one can live more comfortably with less income.”

Logan Lee, Grinnell College economics professor

“If the minimum wage policy is well-designed then it can raise earnings, reduce poverty, reduce income inequality, and do these things without reducing employment,” Totty says. “To meet this goal, some individuals have advocated that a more optimal minimum wage policy may be to have local minimum wages that are a fraction of the local median wage.”

But there are still debates about the effectiveness of minimum wage increases.

“Economists are actually pretty divided on whether higher minimum wages are good or bad overall. Workers who stay employed clearly benefit, but some minimum wage workers will lose their jobs, and prices for goods that rely on minimum wage labor will go up,” Lee says. “Recent evidence from Seattle suggests that the net effect of recent minimum wage increases was bad on average for low wage workers, but when the policy is implemented statewide it is more difficult for firms to shift production outside of the area with the higher minimum wage.” However, this was at least in part because many businesses in Seattle moved out of city limits to avoid the minimum wage requirements, Lee asserts.

Bartik says there may be mixed results for rural workers under the minimum wage increase, however.

“There are negative employment effects that also might be larger in more rural areas,” Bartik says. “Some of the potential benefits might be higher, but some of the costs might be higher. It’s an empirical question on how this plays out.”

Bartik says much of the literature on the minimum wage increase is based on smaller wage increases like only a few dollars, so a wage hike might need to be looked into more based on more empirical evidence.

“Smaller minimum wage increases tend to in general … although there’s some dispute about this … be that they don’t have super large negative employment effects and they do have earnings benefits to the worker,” Bartik says. “However, I think the jury’s out on larger minimum wage increases, like the one that was just passed in Illinois, and, to some extent, the jury’s still out about what the long-run implications of what these minimum wage increases will be.”

The $15 minimum wage also does not have the same kind of effects as it might compared to the coastal states, especially because living conditions are generally cheaper in the Midwest.

“Higher wages on the east coast and west coast reflect the fact that the cost of housing is so high there,” Orazem says. “A $15 minimum wage is not gonna bite on the east coast or west coast. It’s gonna bite a lot more in the West and the Midwest and the South. … It makes more sense to have a minimum wage that’s tied to local costs. But remember, if you wanted to have a living wage, you would in fact have those tied to local costs of living, but that’s not what the proposals are.”

As the minimum wage debate continues into the new presidential election season, the long-term effects of a minimum wage increase will continue to be central to the discussion.

Graphic by Mia Tirado. Picture by Daniel Schwen via Wikimedia Commons.

Jacob Reynolds
Content Producer | + posts

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Essay on No Second Troy By William Butler Yeats

Essay on No Second Troy By William Butler Yeats

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On the surface, William Butler Yeats’s poem No Second Troy, tells the narrative of a man questioning his unrequited loves morality and ideology. However, further reading of the poem gives the reader insight into Yeats’s own feelings towards Irish radical, Maud Gonne, a woman to whom he proposed on numerous occasions unsuccessfully. Gonne had always been more radical than Yeats within her efforts to secure Ireland’s independence from Britain in the first decades of the 20th century, but Yeats persisted in receiving her love, dedicating many of his poems to her, thus showing his obsession to the radical actress. The poem can be split into four rhetorical questions; first the speaker asks “why” he should blame her, for his own unhappiness; next he questions “what” else she could have done with her “noble” mind; following this, the speaker, seemingly speaking to himself, accepts that she is who she is and that cannot be changed, lastly the speaker questions whether there is anything else that could have been an outlet for her “fiery” temperament.

Initially, the poem can be viewed as a sonnet, however, true sonnets contain fourteen lines, in contrast to No Second Troy’s twelve, thus making it a douzaine. Like a sonnet, the rhyme scheme can divide the poem into three quatrains, with the lack of last rhyming couplet accounting for the lack of the last two lines. This coupled with a loose iambic pentameter gives the poem a controversial tone throughout, as it does not follow conventional ‘Love’ poem tradition. This transgression of rules can be seen to reflect the controversial nature of the Irish fight for independence, and even Gonne’s own controversial actions, such as her involvement in the 1916 Easter uprising.

From the onset Yea...

... middle of paper ...

In conclusion, Yeats’s poem No Second Troy contains many formal features, such as a loose iambic pentameter and an untraditional form to convey the conflicting emotions of the speaker, and Yeats himself. In addition, the use of rhetorical questions throughout the poem heightens the confusion and internal uncertainty the speaker explicitly feels towards the woman. The coupling of form and language, to create a tone of confusion and conflict, allow a reader or listener to engage and empathise with the man’s feelings towards a woman who does not love him back. Although the poem requires knowledge of the Trojan War to contextualise the poem, Yeats uses simplistic language throughout, creating an emphasis on the feelings portrayed. This makes the poem easy to read and understand, giving a reader a clear insight into the speaker, and Yeats’s feelings towards the woman.

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Donald Davidson

Donald Davidson, in full Donald Grady Davidson, (born Aug. 8, 1893, Campbellsville, Tenn., U.S.—died April 25, 1968, Nashville, Tenn.), American poet, essayist, and teacher who warned against technology and idealized the agrarian, pre-Civil War American South.

While attending Vanderbilt University, Nashville (B.A., 1917; M.A., 1922), Davidson became one of the Fugitives, a group of Southern writers determined to conserve their region’s distinctive literature and rural economy. They published a journal, The Fugitive (1922–25), and contributed essays to the book I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (1930). In time, fellow Fugitives—Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, and John Crowe Ransom—altered their views, but Davidson, who taught for many years at Vanderbilt, remained passionately devoted to his early ideals. In his verse collections, including The Tall Men (1927), Lee in the Mountains, and Other Poems (1938), and Poems, 1922–1961 (1966), and in his prose, including The Attack on Leviathan: Regionalism and Nationalism in the United States (1938), Why the Modern South Has a Great Literature (1951), and Still Rebels, Still Yankees, and Other Essays (1957), he praises historic Southern heroes, defends racial segregation, and warns against “the fiery gnawing of industrialism,” the enemy of spiritual values. His two-volume The Tennessee (1946–48) is a history of the Tennessee River and its valley. The manuscript of a novel by Davidson on the 1950s country-music industry was discovered in the early 1990s and was published as The Big Ballad Jamboree (1996).


What is ankle osteoarthritis?

Osteoarthritis of the ankle joint is the name given to arthritis which gives pain in the ankle. This also causes the affected joint to become stiff with reduced range of movement.

The process of osteoarthritis involves wearing or thinning of the smooth cartilage joint surfaces as well as stiffening to the soft tissue surrounding the joint. Swelling, inflammation and pain are potential consequences.

Several factors normally combine to cause symptoms of osteoarthritis:

  • Increased bodyweight
  • Age (risk increases with age)
  • Family history (genetics)

General exercise such as walking, cycling and playing sport does not increase the risk of developing or increase the rate of deterioration of ankle osteoarthritis.

Ankle osteoarthritis

Common symptoms

Most commonly, pain is felt across the front of the ankle joint. Sometimes the pain may also be felt in the sides or back of the ankle joint area. Some individuals may suffer from referred pain radiating into the top of the foot. Fortunately, the presence of ankle osteoarthritis does not always cause pain so it is quite possible to be pain-free despite reasonably advanced arthritis. In addition, the ankle undergoes a ‘wear and repair’ cycle so pain can improve with appropriate treatment.

Pain and stiffness on walking and ascending or descending stairs is often the main aggravating activity. If ankle osteoarthritis becomes more severe the ankle area may become increasingly swollen and the movements of the ankle may become increasingly stiff.

How is ankle osteoarthritis diagnosed?

X-rays are not routinely required but may be requested if symptoms are severe enough that ankle replacement surgery is being considered.

How is ankle osteoarthritis treated?

Non-surgical management

In the majority of cases, the symptoms of ankle osteoarthritis can be managed effectively by non-invasive measures as described below.

The two most important things you can do to improve your symptoms are:

  • Maintain activity levels within your pain tolerance
  • Lose excess weight

These measures can have significant effects on your symptoms, with no side effects or complications. They have the added benefit of improving your general health.

Exercises. Regular exercises to maintain flexibility and strength to the affected ankle joint.

3 x 15 repetitions 2x per day

5×30 second holds, 2x per day

5×30 second holds, 2x per day

Weight management. Losing weight reduces the load which weighs down on your joints as you move about. Evidence shows that weight loss can result in significantly better mobility; there is also some evidence to suggest that weight loss alone may actually help to reduce pain. However, in combination with exercise, the results can be significant.

For many people, losing weight feels like an uphill struggle. However, there is lots of support and advice available. For example, you can find some excellent ideas, including recipes and advice on making healthy food choices, on the NHS “Change 4 Life” website (this also has a link where you can find out about healthy activities in your area).

You can read more in the NHS recommended guidelines on physical activity.

You can use a BMI calculator to tell you if it might be advisable for you to try to lose some weight.

Using painkillers when needed. Over-the-counter analgesia is available through pharmacies when needed. Paracetamol is most commonly prescribed. Anti-inflammatories, such as Ibuprofen, are also used, but as there is little or no inflammation involved in osteoarthritis these are best avoided without discussing with your GP. Side effects are even more common than with paracetamol so please ensure to take appropriate medical advice There is a good booklet from Arthritis Research UK with information about the various drug options.

Use a walking stick if needed:

Corticosteroid injection therapy. For individuals with ankle OA who continue to suffer disabling symptoms in spite a course of non-surgical management (outlined above) or for patients who are unable to commence a supervised exercise program due to pain levels, a corticosteroid injection can be offered as the next line of treatment. You can read more about local corticosteroid injections here.

Surgical management

Ankle arthrodesis (fusion) and ankle replacement surgery outcomes are far less effective than those for hip replacement or knee replacement surgery. As such, this option is usually only considered for patients who…

  • Have trialed a course of non-surgical management without success
  • Have consistent, disabling pain significantly limiting mobility or affecting sleep pattern


Solar Heating

Solar Heating in Greater Charlotte

solar heating in North Carolina

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The terms "solar heating" and "solar thermal heating" are sometimes used interchangeably. It's more accurate to say that solar thermal is one type of solar heating system. A solar thermal system uses the solar energy to heat water that can be used for heating, washing or both.

GSM Services can service your solar thermal system to ensure maximum efficiency. We will also provide a free quote for installing a new solar thermal system that can cut your water heating expenses by up to 80%.

We are your trusted resource for solar heating in Huntersville, Gastonia, Mount Holly, Fort Mill, Matthews, Hickory, Denver, Lincolnton, Rock Hill, Gaffney, and the surrounding cities and towns within North Carolina.

The basic anatomy of a typical solar thermal system isn't difficult to understand. The sun heats an anti-freeze solution in a solar collector. When the liquid in the collector reaches a preset temperature, it is pumped down to a heat exchanger located inside a hot water tank.

If the water stored in the tank isn't sufficiently warmed by the heat exchanger, an auxiliary heater (electric or gas) can make up the difference until the water is hot enough to use. On a sunny day, no auxiliary heat may be necessary. At other times, electricity or gas may have to provide all the energy to heat the water.

A solar thermal system can be sized and designed to only heat water used for washing, or to provide hot water as part of a hydronic heating system.

Passive solar heating

Passive Solar Heating in North Carolina

The simplest way to use the solar energy to reduce heating costs is to apply passive solar heating concepts. These include having a generous number of south-facing windows to admit winter sunlight into the living space, and utilizing thermal mass to store and radiate solar heat. A dark tile or masonry floor does a good job of absorbing and storing solar heat. Providing that the house is well insulated, a high-mass floor can remain warm for hours after the sun goes down with this home heating system.

Obviously, incorporating passive solar heating features into a house is much easier to do when a new house is being designed. But if your house has good southern exposure on one side, you could consider taking advantage of this solar exposure by installing new insulated windows and perhaps a tile floor that can be warmed by the sun.

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Call 1-844-691-4184 or contact us online to schedule a home heating system inspection and solar heating estimate. We also offer a comprehensive home energy audit.

our service area

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North CarolinaSouth Carolina Our Locations:

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Gastonia, NC 28052


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Beautifully and intricately sculpted, then casted, these hand crafted, 4" beeswax spheres are a sight to behold.  These candles are truly amazing while burning, casting a luminescent glow through their unique design. Each candle will burn for over 50 hours.
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Freestanding works in glass can be as magical as a fixed window. The captivating translucency, texture and colour of glass will present unexpected and ever changing layers of movement, shapes and shadows, depending on the strength of the light, or time of day.


Rhythmic, atmospheric and relaxing track with a dramatic guitar theme. Strong and expressive beat flows into gentle and romantic melody accompanied by a beautiful woman’s voice throughout all song. “Don’t close the door” is perfect for adverts, films, documentaries, presentations, Youtube ambient music videos, theatrical performances and romantic events.


Treating Sort 2 Diabetes

Diabetes is a situation that results in excessive levels of blood glucose (or sugar) within the body. Through the Nineteen Nineties, landmark trials such as the Diabetes Control and Problems Trial (DCCT) eleven and UK Potential Diabetes Examine (UKPDS) 12 demonstrated that improving glucose management could reduce the incidence of microvascular problems eleven,12, prompting a decrease-is-better philosophy concerning glucose targets and diabetes symptoms.

The purpose of this article is to debate these challenges, the advantages of early intervention—with emphasis on the prevention trials showing that development to kind 2 diabetes will be delayed by addressing prediabetes—and the prevailing proof-based pointers which have been drawn to optimize the standards of care at the prediabetes and overt type 2 diabetes levels.

Although the totally different DPP4 inhibitors have some differences including efficiency, half-lives and metabolism there does not appear to be any significant difference of their capability to decrease blood sugar and this is in all probability why there are just about no head to head research (one face to face examine confirmed no distinction between saxagliptin and sitagliptin when mixed with metformin.

Overweight and obese patients with sort 2 diabetes who have misplaced weight during the 6-month intensive behavioral life-style intervention should be enrolled in long-term (≥1-yr) comprehensive weight loss maintenance packages that provide not less than month-to-month contact with a skilled interventionist and give attention to ongoing monitoring of body weight (weekly or extra incessantly), continued consumption of a decreased calorie food plan, and participation in excessive levels of physical activity (200-300 min/week).

Nathan DM, Buse JB, Davidson MB, Ferrannini E, Holman RR, Sherwin R, et al. Medical administration of hyperglycemia in sort 2 diabetes: a consensus algorithm for the initiation and adjustment of therapy: a consensus statement of the American Diabetes Association and the European Association for the Examine of Diabetes.


Geolocation possibilities on the iPhone

Now that a decent set of developer tools has been put together by hackers, there is the possibility of adding something like this. A few other people, including the famed [geohot](, have also expressed interest in such a project. This is a summary of my endeavor so far to add some sort of location finding tool to the iPhone.

### Cell Tower Triangulation / Trilateration ###

The basic idea behind cell tower [triangulation]( and [trilateration]( is to locate the phone’s position relative to the cell towers by using the angles and distances between them, respectively.

### Issues with Trilateration ###

There’s *supposedly* more complete databases, such as [](, but again I don’t think they have the cell tower IDs, and even worse they charge $500 per COUNTY. There’s also []( but it apparently just repackages the ASR data. I’m sure there’s others, but nothing I’ve come across is suitable. Let me know if you find something.

### Signal Strength Signatures ###

A project that’s similar to this, but with Series 60 phones, exists at []( but they only have very limited data in a few scattered locations, and they appear to have pretty much abandoned the project.

### GPS ###

A built in GPS receiver in the iPhone would be the ideal solution, but of course this is out of the question at least until iPhone “2.0” (wink wink Apple).

Bluetooth GPS support for the iPhone would be awesome as well. It would require the Bluetooth serial port profile, which I would be surprised if the iPhone already has. iPhone uses the [BLUEmagic Bluetooth stack]( which is “modular”… it’s unlikely that Apple would pay for unnecessary modules or include them if they did. Maybe someone could port an existing open source Bluetooth stack to the iPhone ([Bluez](, perhaps? OS X probably isn’t similar enough to Linux for that to be easy). Worst case, we could use a laptop as the missing link (iPhone -> WiFi -> laptop <- serial/USB/bluetooth <- GPS) but that seems like a really poor solution. Maybe iPhone <- serial <- GPS? ### Moving Forward ### The first thing that needs to be done is to figure out how to get the cell tower IDs, signal strength, etc programmatically from the iPhone. Obviously this is possible since is able to do it. I don't think it's as simple as sending AT commands directly to the baseband, since you can't do that unless CommCenter is disabled, which of course disables the phone features (obviously unacceptable in this case). Also, I have tried disabling CommCenter and sending "AT+CREG=2" then "AT+CREG", which should give signal strength, but wasn't getting anything useful back (perhaps because CommCenter was disabled and the phone wasn't connected to any cells?) Once that's done, we could interface with but again, their coverage is extremely sparse, and I don't think their approach is the best (they don't store signal strengths, which would be good for fingerprinting). It would be a good first step though. The mapping of fields in to the database fields is as follows: Notes
# Net #1
Network Net #2
Location LAC
Rx Level

Once we’re able to get cell tower IDs and signal strength correlated to lat/lon coordinates we can either add to the database or start our own. GSMLoc’s database of coordinate/cell id pairs seems too simplistic for accurate fingerprinting or trilateration.

### Another Option: WiFi ###

One more possibility would be to use the known locations of WiFi access points for geolocation. There are already free and open repositories of millions of WiFi access points: []( seems to be one of the largest.

### Conclusion ###

If you’re interested in helping, email me at .

Update: it appears a company called Navizon has released [a product exactly like this]( Unfortunately it costs money, but supposedly the money goes to the users who upload new cell tower locations and WiFi access points. $20 for 1000 unique cell towers or 5000 unique WiFi access points doesn’t seem like a very good deal though.

Open new Terminal window in current (or other specified) directory

A lot of times I find myself wanting to open another (Mac OS X) Terminal window in the same directory as my current one. This little shell script, which executes a little AppleScript, makes that trivial:

if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then

osascript -e "tell application \"Terminal\"" -e "do script \"cd $PATHDIR\"" -e "end tell"

Save this script somewhere in your $PATH with executable permissions. Now instead of hitting Command-N then typing “cd really/long/path/to/your/current/directory”, you can simply type the name of the script (I used “term”):

Chain them together to open multiple windows. The following would open three new windows with the same current directory:

term; term; term

It can also take an optional directory path argument to override the current directory:

term /System/Library/

iPhone Accelerometer Fun-ness

If you’re an Apple geek like myself, you might remember back in 1999 when WiFi was a brand new technology, and [Phil Schiller]( demonstrated the new iBook’s Airport feature by jumping off a balcony holding an iBook with an attached accelerometer, which sent the accelerometer data wirelessly to Steve’s demo machine for display (see below).

Well, when I found out someone figured out [how to access the raw accelerometer data]( from the iPhone I decided it would be cool to do something with it, and I used Phil’s demo as inspiration.


What are the historical sources for Arthur?

As Arthur is potentially an historical character, the documents naming him must form the starting point for any investigation. This is where the difficulties begin, as there are no contemporary documents naming him. Nor are there coins or inscriptions (we will see how several supposed inscriptions are irrelevant).

The earliest evidence

A page from the manuscript Book of Aneirin, containing the only text of Y Gododdin

Y Gododdin

The oldest possible reference comes from a cycle of poems known as Y Gododdin, ‘The Votadini’, ascribed to a poet named Aneirin, who is supposed to have lived in the later sixth century. The verse in question reads:

gochore brein do aruur
caer – ceni bei ef arthur –
rug ciuin uerthi ig disur
ig kynnor guernor guaur

“He sent down black crows from the wall
of the fort – although he was not Arthur –
among men mighty in feats
before the alder grove: Gorddur”

Like so much early Welsh verse, the language is terse and full of allusions to stories that the listener would have known in much greater detail than we can. All we can reasonably infer from this verse is that Arthur was a famous warrior. And the date at which it was written is another problem: the only surviving manuscript (MS 2.81 of Cardiff Library, better known as the Book of Aneirin) dates from the late thirteenth century. To make matters worse, it is a composite of three variant texts belonging to two separate versions and the verse naming Arthur occurs in only one of them (the B2 text, for the technically minded), which is known to contain additions later than the supposed date of composition. This has led some commentators to believe that the verse was composed in the ninth or tenth century; on the other hand, the linguist John Koch sees traces of Primitive Welsh in the text, especially in its rhyming scheme, which would argue for an early seventh-century date for composition, at the latest. Whilst this remains a tantalising possibility, it is nothing more.

A page from a manuscript of the Historia Brittonum, listing the battles of Arthur

The Historia Brittonum

The earliest definite references to Arthur come from a complex and poorly studied text, the so-called Historia Brittonum (‘History of the Britons’), often ascribed to a Welsh scholar known as Nennius (or Nemniuus), although the preface naming him as author is only found in two late versions. The text tells us that it was composed in the fourth year of Merfyn Frych, king of Gwynned 825-844, placing its composition in 828/9; there are possible hints of a late eighth-century version. Famously, there is a section devoted to the battles of Arthur, who pugnabat contra illos in illis diebus cum regibus brittonum, sed ipse dux erat bellorum (‘fought against them (i.e. the Saxons) in those days, with the kings of the Britons, but he was leader of battles’). Twelve battles are named (one of them four times, so only nine separate locations are mentioned), including duodecimum… bellum in monte badonis, in quo corruerunt in uno die nongenti sexaginta uiri de uno impetu arthur; et nemo prostrauit eos nisi ipse solus (‘the twelfth battle… on the Mount of Badon, in which nine hundred and sixty men fell together on one day from one charge of Arthur; and no-one laid them low except he alone’). We are fortune that the Battle of the Badonic Mount is mentioned as a victory for the British against the Saxons by a near contemporary text, the so-called de Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (‘About the Destruction and Conquest of Britain’) by a British writer known as Gildas, who is generally believed to have written in the early sixth century. Unfortunately, Gildas does not name the victorious commander (there was no reason for him to), but we can at least be confident that this was a real victory for the Britons. On the other hand, the tale that no-one other than Arthur was responsible for enemy deaths looks more like legend than history. Still, this is not any reason to discount the text.

There are other references to Arthur in the Historia Brittonum. The first reads est aliud mirabile in regione quae dicitur buelt. est ibi cumulus lapidum et unus lapis superpositus super congestum cum uestigio canis in eo. quando uenatus est porcum troit, impressit cabal, qui erat canis arthur militis, uestigium in lapide et arthur postea congragauit congestum lapidum sub lapide in quo erat uestigium canis sui, et uocatur carn cabal. et ueniunt homines et tollunt lapidem in manibus suis per spatium diei et noctis et in crastino die inuenitum super congestum suum (‘There is another wonder in the region that is called Builth. There, there is a pile of stones and one stone placed on the pile with the paw-print of a dog on it. When the boar Trwyth was being hunted, the dog Cafall (which was the dog of Arthur the soldier) pressed his print into the stone and afterwards Arthur brought together a pile of stones beneath the stone in which there was the print of his dog, and it is known as Corn Gafallt. And men come and take away the stone in their own hands for the length of a day and a night, and on the next day, the stone is found back on its pile’). The second reads est aliud miraculum in regione quae uocatur ercing. habetur ibi sepulcrum iuxta fontem, qui cognominatur licat amr, et uiri nomen, qui sepultus est in tumulo, sic uocabatur amr: filius arthuri militis erat et ipse occidit eum ibidem et sepeliuit. et ueniunt homines ad mensurandum tumulum in longitudine aliquando sex pedes, aliquando nouem, aliquando duodecim, aliquando quidecim. in qua mensura metieris eum in ista uice, iterum non inuenies eum in una mensura, et ego solus probaui (‘There is another wonder in the region that is called Ergyng. There, there is a tomb next to a spring, which is known as Gamber Head, and the name of the man who was buried in the mound was thus called Amr: he was the son of the soldier Arthur, and he himself killed him and buried him there. And men come to measure the mound and sometimes it is six feet in length, sometimes nine, sometimes twelve, sometimes fifteen. Whatever measurement you will have measured it on one occasion, you will never find it the same measurment again, and I have tested it myself’).

These are at the same time impressive and problematic pieces of text. Arthur is clearly a well known character and he is a soldier. This confirms what we have already discovered. But he is associated in the first with the hunting of the boar Trwyth, an episode found in a much later story, Kulhwch ac Olwen (‘Culhwch and Olwen’), where the boar is in Ireland and is said to have been a king transformed into the beast for his sins. The magical elements of the Kulhwch ac Olwen story already appear to be present in the apparently folkloric origin story for the dog’s footprint. It should also be noted that cafal is Old Welsh for ‘horse’, which would be an odd name for a dog, so it looks as if there is alreay a degree of confusion in the tale. The site is today Corn Gafallt, near Rhaeadr, where there are indeed some burial mounds south of the summit. With the story of Llygad Amr, we have similarly magical details. The tomb ought to be beside Gamber Head, a spring whose name derives from the Old Welsh Amr. A tomb has been found here, which is an element in a spectacular collection of Bad Archaeology investigated by Time Team in 2001. The location of the original tomb is unknown, although it has been suggested that the nearby but destroyed Wormelow Tump may have been the site of the ‘wonder’.

The Historia Brittonum is the mainstay of those who wish to present Arthur as an historical figure, but as we can see, there are enormous difficulties with those parts of the text naming him that make it impossible to read as a straightforward historical narrative. Instead, when we look at the document as a whole, we can see that it was compiled from largely legendary material. Even so, it has to be said that the other main figures it names from the Roman and early medieval periods were genuinely historical rather than mythological, even if clearly legendary stories have been woven around them.

Manuscript A of the Annales Cambrię; the entry dealing with the Strife of Camlann is at the bottom right; Badon is just above middle right

Annales Cambrię

The next historical source to mention Arthur is known as Annales Cambrię (‘Annals of Wales’), a chronicle of Welsh history that survives in three separate versions. The oldest, contained in a late eleventh-century manuscript (Harleian MS 3859), extends only as far as 954, which is probably close to the date at which this version was written. It has two separate entries: at ‘Year 72’, it reads Bellum badonis, in quo arthur portauit crucem Domini nostri ihu xp’i tribus diebus & tribus noctibus in humeros suos & brittones victores fuerunt (‘The Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders and the Britons were victors’), while the second, at ‘Year 93 ’ reads Gueith camlann in qua arthur et medraut corruerunt, et mortalitas in brittannia et in hibernia fuit (‘The strife of Camlan, in which Arthur and Medrawd perished, and there was a great mortality in Britain and Ireland’). The B version of the text, written in the late thirteenth century, has the entries slightly differently: the first reads Bellum Badonis, in quo Rex Arturus portauit crucem Domini nostri ihu xpi tribus diebus & tribus noctibus in humeris suis. In illo proelio ceciderunt Colgrinus et Radulphus Anglorum duces (‘The Battle of Badon, in which King Arthur carried the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders. In that battle, Colgrin and Radulf, leaders of the English, were killed’). We now have Arthur called “King” and the insertion of the names Colgrin and Radulf. The second entry reads: Bellum Camlan, in quo inclitus Arthurus et Modredus proditor suus, mutuis uulneribus corruerunt (‘The Battle of Camlan, in which the famous Arthur and Modred, his betrayer, perished from mutual wounds’). Here, Arthur is now “famous” and Modred has betrayed him. Where did these additional pieces of information come from? They derive from the early twelfth-century work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, of which more below.

The dating of the annals is a source of debate: unlike many other early medieval chronicles, it does not give dates anno domini but a list of years, which, in the A text, are divided into decades. The later entries can be dated with reference to other documents, which allows its first year to be calculated as AD 444. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that logically: ‘Year 9’ corresponds to AD 451, as this was when Pope Leo confirmed the correct method of calculating the date of Easter, which would make 443 ‘Year 1’. Some decades as counted in the manuscript contain eleven years, some only nine, so when historians calculate the date for the Battle of Mount Badon as AD 516 and the Battle of Camlann as AD 437, we must ask whether that is a correct deduction. Badon is placed five years before the birth of Saint Columba and death of Saint Brigid, which are given in Irish annals as occurring in 522 or 523, which might suggest a date for the battle around 517 or 518. At a mere seven years before the death of Ciaran, calculated by Irish annalists as 548, then Camlann ought to be dated to 541. No matter how we look at these numbers, it is clear that we cannot trust them to give us accurate dates.

Other documents

There are no other historical sources naming Arthur before Geoffrey of Monmouth (c 1100-1155) composed his almost entirely fictional Historia Regum Britannię around 1136. True, there is literature in which his name occurs (not always as certainly as we might hope), but these are folkloric literature and poetry. They can tell us about how the legend evolved, not about the history behind the name. And it is quite clear that Geoffrey of Monmouth invented much of his story, which then became authoritative and infected all subsequent literature.


Is there an easy way to integrate scaladoc into IntelliJ Idea?

How do I use/generate scaladoc from within IntelliJ Idea (running on ubuntu)? Most preferably I would like to configure Tools/generate javadoc to also generate scaladoc, though that might be hard as of the differences between both according to this thread.

The scaladoc support in IntelliJ is pretty basic for now: some keywords are highlighted in comments, but there is no "generate scaladoc" option in tools. We'll create an issue in the tracker to keep it in mind. Thanks.

Cheers! Ilya

Need Your Help

OData Search with Office 365 Mail API .NET Client

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I need to perform an OData query $search = "subject:pizza" using the OutLook 365 API but using the Outlookservicesclient (found the in the outlook 365 sdk, this nuget

Can we change InterfaceOrientations from SKScene in spritekit?

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In my spritekit game has more than one level. Some of the level are in landscape mode and some of are in portrait mode. Since the first level is in the landscape mode so when I call the first SKSce...


An Early Autumn?

Doesn't the background look literally like the middle of Autumn? I have no idea what is going on in this one area of Prague but it is not ready for the new seasons. So, as I tend to do, I themed my outfit to the location. You've seen this jacket before, and as the temperature is bumping up I'm getting more and more wear out of it and I love it so much. Very Easter appropriate also what with all the little lambs running around - I'd totes fit in! This top is also awesome for Spring and Summer - I can definitely see it being a staple on summer holidays with some light denim shorts and brown strappy sandals - perfect! It's really light weight and breezy to wear. This is just a typical cas look for me - jeans, boots and a backpack. The jacket dresses it up a bit and makes it a bit more fash! I've also been living in this hairstyle - these twists are like dutch braids easy little sister (sounds wrong, but you know what I mean) and they look like a lot more effort than it takes!

Jeans/ Boots - Primark
Coat - H&M


By E. Luca. The Scripps Research Institute. 2019.

Chest x-ray based on clinical indication alone may have signifcantly reduced the number of infants exposed to radiation discount benzac 20gr with mastercard. Other Relevant Studies and Information: • Study authors followed febrile infants 29–60 days old for an additional 3 years afer the original 5-year study period ended discount 20gr benzac otc, producing a total of 388 classifed as low risk for serious bacterial infection. Summary and Implications: is study showed that febrile infants 1– 2 months old may be safely cared for in the outpatient seting without antibiotics as long as a full sepsis evaluation— including both experienced clinical judgment and laboratory testing— and reliable follow-up are secured. It extends the work of Baskin and colleagues by demonstrating the efcacy and cost savings of outpa- tient treatment of febrile infants without antibiotics. His parents have not noticed any change in his urine output and deny any symptoms other than fever. T ere are no signs consistent with bacterial infection on examination of his ears, lungs, sof tissue, or bones. Given his young age and normal exam fndings, a full sepsis evaluation is performed. He has a white blood cell count of 14,300 cells/mm3 with 1,000 bands/ mm3 and 10,000 neutrophils/mm3. Based on the results of this study, how does this boy’s risk for serious bacte- rial infection infuence your management decision? Suggested Answer: As before, the frst step is to ensure the screening criteria apply to this case. Similar to the infants enrolled in the study, this near-fve-week-old fts the designated age range (29–56 days old), has a documented rectal temperature ≥38. Despite his young age, he meets each of the Philadelphia low-risk crite- ria, both the initial set and the modifed criteria, which add requirements for immunocompetence and band-to-neutrophil ratio <0. According to this profle, he is a good candidate for observation without antibiotics. In the study, low-risk patients were randomized to inpatient or outpatient observation without antibiotics.

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As the individual adapts to training discount benzac 20gr visa, the duration of the work interval can be gradually increased purchase benzac 20gr without prescription, whereas the rest interval can be decreased. Initially, a total exercise time of 15 min can be used, and this can be increased within tolerance to achieve up to 20–60 min of continuous activity. Depending on the clinical status and functional capacity of the individual, the initial intensity selected for training should be light (i. Special Considerations Hemodialysis Exercise should ideally be performed on nondialysis days. Performing exercise immediately postdialysis may increase the risk of a hypotensive response. If exercise is performed during dialysis, it should typically be done during the first half of the treatment to avoid hypotensive episodes, although some individuals may use late dialysis exercise to counteract a hypotensive response. Exercise modes typically used during dialysis are pedaling and stepping devices which can be used while seated in a dialysis chair. During dialysis, patients should not exercise the arm with permanent arteriovenous access. Peritoneal dialysis Patients on continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis may attempt exercising with fluid in their abdomen; however, if this produces discomfort, then they should be encouraged to drain the fluid before exercising (138). Recipients of kidney transplants During periods of rejection, the intensity of exercise should be reduced, but exercise can still be continued (212).

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Aadhar Bill: All you want to know !!

The Lok Sabha has recently passed the Aadhaar bill to provide a unique identity to residents and give legal teeth to the government in ensuring that its subsidies and services directly reach the beneficiaries in entirety.

The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016, was passed by a voice vote after a brief debate, during which finance minister Arun Jaitley assured the house that details provided for the card will not be misused in any manner.

Here’s all you need to know about Aadhaar:

What is Aadhaar?

It is a 12 digit biometric auto-generated unique identity number created after taking one’s finger prints and iris scan. The biometric data collected is sent to the Bangalore office of UIDAI for de-duplication, meaning that two persons cannot have same Aadhaar number. There is a detailed protocol for collecting and storing biometric data of each Indian resident.

How to enroll for Aadhaar?

Any person above the age of five is eligible for getting enrolled in Aadhaar. The government has listed number of documents such as driver’s licence, passport and electricity bill as proof of residence. Those not having any documents can be introduced by a person having an Aadhaar number. The government considers it as a proof of identity but not of address.

What Aadhaar does?

Aadhaar number is the window to avail government benefits and subsidies. The proposed law clearly states that only those who have Aadhaar will get government benefits. A large number of states now seek Aadhaar number for registration of property, for getting driving license, marriage certificate and even ration card.

What is Aadhaar authentication?

Government agencies can authenticate one’s home and demographic details instantly through online Aadhaar authentication system. The system replies only in Yes or No without sharing any details with the agency. However, the bill provides that if needed authorities can seek more information but after taking consent of Aadhaar number holder.

What the Aadhaar bill says?

The bill for the first time defines privacy and says that while enrolling a person should be informed the purpose for which the information was being collected. It also provides for prior consent of a person for sharing his or her personal information and that biometric data not to be shared with anyone. The privacy provision can be exempted only for national security. The bill also provides penalties for theft of data and its misuse.

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How Dumb Distribution Spending Crowds out a Smart Clean Energy Future

A version of this article was published on Greentech Media on November 5, 2018

By Ric O’Connell – GridLab

Utilities have doubled down on distribution spending as a primary growth opportunity.  Capital expenditures on the distribution and transmission system have skyrocketed since 2008.  However, this investment in the grid threatens to crowd the value of key distributed technologies that are building blocks for a clean, cheap, resilient energy future.

Load growth, wholesale prices, and utility business models

Falling wholesale generation costs and low load growth are major trends dramatically reshaping utility business models.  As wholesale prices fall and customer load declines, utilities’ primary revenue source decreases and they struggle to grow, fundamentally transforming how utilities recover costs and seek new growth opportunities.

Forecasted load growth is a key input supporting utility investment plans.  Based on forecast increased energy usage, utilities will build capital-intensive power plants and grid infrastructure, using the increased revenue to cover costs, often without raising prices.  These infrastructure investments are what shareholders care about; while wholesale energy costs are typically recovered dollar for dollar through customer rates, infrastructure costs are recovered at a premium, receiving a regulated return on equity that ranges from 8-12 percent. Utilities then recover those costs through increased sales revenue.  Energy use increases, utilities grow, and they continue to satisfy their shareholders.

However, declining load causes gross revenue declines, making it harder for utilities to recover capital investment costs without increasing prices or increasing customer fixed charges.  While shareholders expect growth, it’s increasingly difficult for utility managers to justify more investment to regulators in the face of declining energy use.

Satisfying shareholders in the face of stagnating load

To adapt, utilities are nevertheless finding ways to grow through three traditional investment areas: generation, transmission, and distribution.

New capital-intensive thermal power plants (mostly gas and some ill-advised nuclear plants) and renewable energy projects are getting built, but finding room for new kilowatt-hours (kWh) in an environment of declining energy demand can be difficult, often at the expense of existing generators.  Today markets are awash in generating capacity and low prices, so there’s little incentive to build these plants. Even despite the difficult economics, more than 100 gigawatts (GW) of new natural gas generation are being proposed around the country.

Public policy and economics can nevertheless justify building new generation, even in today’s oversupplied, low-price marketplace.  In many regions, the marginal cost of operating a coal plant exceeds the all-in cost of new wind and solar generation, and hundreds of GW of wind and solar sit in interconnection queues.  Regulated utilities won’t own much of this capacity, however, partly due to some financial barriers around the federal tax incentives, but much of it is driven by the historical bias to clean energy being developed by independent power producers (non-utility generators).

However, vertically integrated utilities like Xcel Energy are starting to get into the solar and wind generation game.  Xcel recently articulated substituting “steel for fuel” as an investment strategy that retires old coal units (fuel) and replacing those kilowatt-hours (kWh) with cheaper renewables (steel) that earn returns for shareholders for decades.  Still, the prospect of building new generation can be difficult in low-growth and low wholesale price environments lacking a clean energy policy.

Utilities can also invest in the transmission system. Transmission is notoriously difficult to build, is hard to justify with regulators, tends to spark local and vocal opposition, and often requires long, arduous planning and permitting processes.  But still, annual transmission spending for investor-owned utilities (IOUs) has almost doubled since 2010, when the trend of flattening load began in earnest.  Increasing connectivity between regions tends to lower wholesale energy costs, as places where generation options are limited by transmission congestion gain access to low-cost energy.

Utilities can further invest in the distribution grid, which links the bulk system to end-use customers at lower voltages. In the past, distribution investments were lower than transmission and generation.

But given the barriers to build new transmission or new generation, we are now seeing an explosion of growth in distribution infrastructure.

IOU distribution assets per customer grew an average of $217.50 per year between 2010 and 2016, a compound annual growth rate of about 4.5 percent, well above the rate of inflation over the same period.  Overall distribution system costs grew from around $30 billion in 1997, to $50 billion in 2017, with almost all of the growth coming from capital investment – meaning utilities are increasingly building large, expensive infrastructure on the distribution system.

Source: GridLab, Modernizing the Grid in the Public Interest: A Guide For Virginia Stakeholders

As a result of this investment strategy shift, the cost of delivering energy through transmission and distribution systems has grown relative to the cost of generating electricity.  Major investor-owned utility data shows what percentage of each delivered unit of energy (kWh) is due to generation costs and delivery costs. Delivery costs have expanded from 22 percent of overall costs in 2006, to 36 percent in 2016, while generation costs have fallen from 69 percent to 54 percent.

Exelon is a large investor-owned utility that exemplifies this trend, indicating in a recent investor presentation its plans to double distribution system spending, from $1.5 billion annually now, to $3 billion annually through 2020. Part but not all of this increase is due to Exelon’s acquisition of PEPCO, the utility that serves Washington, D.C. and surrounding areas.

Why does it matter that utilities are spending less on generation and more on distribution?

“Dumb” distribution spending that only focuses on reliability or resilience can crowd out spending on infrastructure to support a grid transition to a cleaner, affordable, reliable grid.  If the dollars go to “grid hardening” like undergrounding lines, then distribution infrastructure that supports value from distributed energy resources (DER), electric vehicle (EV) charging, advanced metering infrastructure, and foundational distribution software will fall to the wayside.

Even more importantly, distribution dollars should go to economic, clean non-wires solutions (NWS) that use non-traditional solutions to generation, transmission, and distribution needs.  These non-traditional solutions include distributed generation, energy storage, energy efficiency, demand response, or grid software and controls.

NWS opens up markets for DER, reduces risk, and moves the distribution system from a closed system to a more open platform. There are high institutional barriers to NWS, as it opens up to competition what was an exclusive domain of distribution utilities.  But as GridLab details in a recent paper, DERs can play an integral role in reducing customer costs and increasing the flexibility of the grid to help handle more renewable energy.

Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) Oakland Clean Energy Initiative Project provides an example where infrastructure spending would otherwise crowd out a local clean energy solution.  Here, the retirement of a 40-year old gas-fired peaking plant posed risks to local transmission reliability. To replace the plant, the California grid operator (CAISO) and PG&E evaluated whether a portfolio of DER could replace traditional investment options, such as building new gas turbines or transmission lines. The resulting proposal, approved by CAISO, allows PG&E to procure 20 – 45 MW of clean energy and DER, including 19.2 MW of demand response, 10 MW of battery storage, a mix of local generation and energy efficiency upgrades, and some traditional grid upgrades to transformers and substations for a total cost of $102 million — $400 million cheaper than the traditional wires upgrade.

DER can provide a wide range of services that can help displace more expensive, often dirtier infrastructure solutions.  These include avoiding transmission and distribution costs, avoiding the need for generation (usually coal or natural gas) to meet peak load, and improving grid flexibility.  Given this potential, policymakers considering utility investment plans in the distribution system need tools to evaluate a wider range of solutions.

Tools for policymakers

Policymakers around the country facing utility proposals to increase distribution spending and “modernize” the grid should take a few key steps to develop tools that help ensure consumers get the most out of money spent on infrastructure, or alternatively, cheaper DERs that provide the same services.

First, a robust and transparent integrated distribution planning (IDP) process is critical. As detailed in a recent GridLab paper, IDP is a holistic planning process that opens up what has been a traditionally utility-driven planning approach.  IDP also ensures that NWS are considered for major distribution upgrades, and includes hosting capacity analysis to help plan for and interconnect DER – even more important as transportation and buildings electrify and add flexible load to the grid.

Second, policymakers can map out their strategic goals for the distribution grid, and then map proposed smart grid investments into those goals. GridLab’s recent paper on grid modernization in Virginia helps stakeholders evaluate Dominion’s proposed grid modernization investments in the context of strategic goals.  To maximize return on investment for customers and the environment, planning processes must be designed to first identify the most critical capabilities of a modern grid.  Regulators can then use these capabilities to define performance outcomes for utilities and structure investment around the most cost-effective ways to maximize available benefits for customers, from conservation to DERs to smart grid technologies and poles and wires.

We must ensure that the distribution grid investments we make today are thoughtful and carefully planned, or we could end up with “dumb” distribution spending that crowds out the opportunity for a clean, smart distribution system.

Ric O’Connell is Executive Director of GridLab, an organization that provides comprehensive technical expertise to policy makers, advocates and other energy decision makers on the design, operation and attributes of a flexible and dynamic grid.


16 results

  • Subject is exactly "poverty"
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Addams discusses the problems that charity workers face when they bring middle-class assumptions about the poor to their efforts to practically help them.

Women argue against setting a weekly salary of $2,50 because it was not sufficient to health and well-being.
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Addams prepared some cases of poverty that she did not use on the Devil Baby at Hull-House article.
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Addams tells the story of two immigrant women's difficulties making enough to earn a living, their experiences with unions, and poverty.
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Addams' speech to the National Federation of Settlements on the impact of poverty, reprinted in shortened form in the conference proceedings.

Addams speaks to the Catholic Women's League about the ways the poor are harmed by unthinking charitable efforts.

Addams describes how a man can support his family on $12 per week.

Talbot explains the hard times that have befallen his friend Ellen Roche and her son, Percy, and asks that they be given help.
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Addams describes the poverty of the Hull-House neighborhood in the early days of her work there. She discusses the lack of security and loneliness of the elderly, as well as child labor.

Palmer asks Addams to help her discover the true circumstances of an impoverished family member living in Chicago.

Sigsbee compliments Addams on her article in American Magazine and comments on the relationship between poverty and crime.

Rayborn asks Addams and Robins for assistance in finding a job and getting him and his family out of poverty.

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Sonja is an empathetic and thoughtful leader. Sonja excels at motivating people to discover and leverage their personal strengths to overcome challenges and benefit both their work and personal lives. She offers a unique perspective in management, coaching and leadership and I’m happy to have had the privilege to work under her guidance.

― Chris Martuza, Portland, OR


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Shah Faisal

Program: B. Ed.

Contents and Methods

Different educationalists use different set of words to define the
word curriculum. It is considered the heart of any learning
institution. In a broader perspective we may say that curriculum is
the total learning experience of individuals not only in any
institution, but in society as well. 1 It is the path on which a learner
walks to achieve the desired destination. One more comprehensive
definition of curriculum states that it is the totality of learning
experiences provided to students so that they can attain general
skills and knowledge at a variety of learning sites. 2
Curriculum refers to the means and materials with which students
will interact for the purpose of achieving identified educational

Schools or universities cannot exist without a curriculum. With its
importance in formal education, curriculum has become a dynamic
process due to the changes that occur in our society. School
education transfers the values of one generation to another
generation. Curriculum plays the main role in providing the
sequenced learning experiences to the learners of different ages.
When we talk about the college and university education it includes
the necessary knowledge and skills required to survive in the
society. Any learning institution sets the main aim of education and
develops the curriculum to achieve the required objectives.
Curriculum is not limited to the content presented in textbooks,
workbooks, activity sheets; it also includes the setting of aims and
objectives for different learning stages. To achieve the educational
objectives curriculum guides the path and ways to the learner.
There are different audiences for the curriculum in the schools,
colleges and universities. They include but not limited to students,
teachers, parents, taxpayers, accreditation agencies, government
1 Bilbao et al., 2008.
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bureaus, other political bodies, and even society as a whole. 4

Keeping in view the interests of different stakeholders the
development of right and appropriate curriculum for any nation
becomes a highly critical and crucial task. As formal learning
represents only a portion of ones life, the curriculum is not the
entire life but the designed life for the learner in any learning
institution. It is a document of some kind, and its purpose is to
focus teaching within some sort of common boundary and connect
the work of classroom teachers across boundaries because learning
occurs across many years5.

According to some educationalists, in a broader prospective, there
are at least three different types of curriculum in schools 6.
1. Formal curriculum: Formal curriculum is the one that usually
appears in curriculum guides, state regulations, or officially
sanctioned scope and sequence charts. This is the one that is
debated in public.
2. Informal curriculum: Informal curriculum represents the
unrecognized and unofficial aspects of designing or delivering
the curriculum. For example, in design, the informal curriculum
would represent the values at work in selecting curriculum
content that is only tangentially public. Such a value base is
always at work when it comes to selecting the content to be
included in schools. The informal curriculum may be the one in
delivery that is epitomized in various tracking plans that group
children by ability and then differentiate among them by
delivering a very different curriculum. The informal curriculum
also involves the subtle but important personality variables of

4 Rutter, Maughlan, Mortimore, Ouston, & Smith, 1979

5 English, 1987
6 Deciding What to Teach and Test: Developing, Aligning, and Auditing the Curriculum
by Fenwick W. English
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the teacher and the way these interact with students positively
or negatively to encourage improved pupil learning. 7
3. Hidden curriculum: Hidden curriculum refers to the unwritten,
unofficial, and often unintended lessons, values, and
perspectives that students learn in school. 8 It is taught without
formal recognition. It is based on the students learning other
than formal and informal curriculum in school environment.
Children derive this learning from the very nature and
organizational design of the school, as well as from the behaviors
and attitudes of teachers and administrators. 9 Usually such
learning is not examined formally.

Textbooks provide one feature in the context of text production
identified by Bowe et al. (1992) as one of the three contexts where
policy is created. The context of text production reflects the
interpretation of policy within different texts and has a dynamic and
symbiotic relationship with other contexts, namely the context of
influence, the site where public policy is normally initiated, and the
context of practice where policy is implemented.
Textbooks play a pivotal role in achieving the objectives set in
curriculum framework. New textbooks are most commonly part of a
curriculum revision process and normally support the introduction
of new and updated content (learning) and methodology.

7 Deciding What to Teach and Test: Developing, Aligning, and Auditing the Curriculum
by Fenwick W. English
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In some countries ministries of education have their own textbook

publishing units. These are responsible for the production of all
textbooks with little or no reference to local or private publishers.
Policy trends in textbook development reflect a shift towards
private, market-driven systems of private textbook publishing. In
some countries the role of developing, producing and distributing
textbooks already belongs to private industry which bases its books
on subject syllabuses. In these circumstances the role of the
government may be to:
prepare clear and detailed subject syllabuses and textbook
make them available for the development of textbooks;
establish an objective process of evaluation and authorization of
decide the processes to be used in funding and distributing
textbooks to the schools;
set minimum standards of production;
perform the same functions with respect to other learning
protect intellectual property rights through appropriate
In these contexts, ministries of education need to ensure that the
quality of textbooks and other materials is of a high standard and
that processes of publication, approval and distribution are
conducted in cost-efficient and timely manner. 10
School curriculum is supposed to be independent of textbook
adoption so that in theory, the textbook does not come to replace
curriculum but is instead a means of implementing it. Textbooks
are big business in education. In fact, it is estimated that thirty
percent of all books sold are purchased by the educational system,
and the elementary school and high school market accounts for
approximately 16% of total annual sales. 11 To be effective in
schools, and especially in a relationship with high stakes

11 Keith, 1991, p. 45
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accountability tests, a curriculum must have at least three essential

characteristics. As a work plan, a curriculum must provide for
consistency (or coordination). It must provide for continuity (or
articulation). A curriculum must also provide for flexibility in
adaptation as teachers interact with students. Flexibility means
that the curriculum must be open to some interpretations in terms
of how and under what classroom circumstances the content is
most optimally taught. This means that the curriculum must be
capable of being changed by altering the sequencing and pacing of
its delivery without fundamentally altering its design fidelity.

Textbooks are those books that are designated as the primary
source of instruction for students in a course, or unit of instruction
within a course. The textbook definition also includes those
materials pertaining to textbooks that are an integral part of the
textbook. They include, but are not limited to, textbooks, trade
books, slides, compact discs, computer software, CD-ROMS, and
digital content.
Supplemental materials: Supplemental materials are those
items used to extend and support instruction and address the
needs of all learners. They include, but are not limited to, books,
flashcards, periodicals, pamphlets, visual aids, video recordings,
sound recordings, compact discs, computer software, and other
digital content and peripherals.
Objectives of textbooks/instructional material: The primary
objective of instructional materials is to support, enrich, and help
implement the educational program of any school through the
interaction of professional teaching staff and other members.
Other objectives are:
1. To enrich and support the curriculum, taking into consideration
the varied interests, abilities, learning styles, and maturity levels
of the students
2. To stimulate growth in factual knowledge, literary appreciation,
aesthetic values, and societal standards
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3. To develop the practice of critical analysis and enable learners to

make informed judgments in their daily lives under the rulings of
Islamic Shariah
4. To describe practicing Muslims as responsible and successful
citizens of society
5. To develop the mindset of acting upon the Shari rulings
6. To develop the love for learning Islamic sciences
7. To provide materials representative of the different ethnic and
cultural groups and that contribute to the national heritage and
the world community
It is the textbooks that provide the detailed knowledge implicit in
the national curriculum programmes of study which, by their very
nature, are succinct and broad descriptions of the content that
needs to be taught. High quality textbooks support both teachers
and pupils they free teachers up to concentrate on refining
pedagogy and developing engaging, effective learning.
The End

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