The Apostle Paul said, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”  Throughout the epistles he exhorts us to do the same.  Recently, I’ve sensed the Lord highlighting some of the childish things that need to be put away.

First and foremost, a child is self-centered.  A baby has no capacity to concern itself with whether its parents are tired or busy or sick, it just knows that it’s not comfortable (e.g. hungry, wet, gassy, tired) and it demands immediate attention.  Presumably, as we get older, our awareness of other people and their struggles grows, but in times of trouble we can easily return to our infancy, becoming blind and numb to anything other than our own wants, needs, or pain.

As a baby grows into a child it becomes increasingly responsive to external stimuli, like light, color, noise, music, touch… and through this it learns to interact with the world around it.  Eventually, these external forces begin to shape the child’s concept of life and identity.  But as we grow in spiritual maturity, we’re called to become less responsive to what is seen (which is perishing), and more sensitive to what is unseen (which is eternal).

Young children tend to easily fall into covetousness when they see something they want, jealousy when someone else has what they want, and to have tantrums, when they don’t get what they want.  It is not a given that age and experience will cause us to grow past these things.  Often, we simply become more subtle in the ways we express them.

Children are also famous for their impatience and fertile imaginations, both of which can become powerful tools in the hands of the adversary.

Indeed, the scripture admonishes us to humbly esteem others above ourselves, to bless and serve those around us, and to be “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry”.   It commands us not to covet, warns us against the “acts of the flesh” (including jealousy, selfish ambition, fits of rage) and reminds us that “self-control” is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It tells us that we must cast down our imaginations, to learn to “wait on the Lord”, and to embrace patience as a reflection of Christ’s character.  Throughout the New Testament it speaks of the transformation that God desires to work in each of us, and He assures us that He is faithful to complete this good work that He’s begun in us.

It’s likely that none of us want to think of ourselves as being childish, but I sense the Lord challenging us to allow Him to reveal the “childish things” that we still need to put away.  To uncover those instances where we’ve become callous and numb to other people’s pain, or those circumstances that we’ve unwittingly become slaves to, or those things that we’re coveting and maybe even making into idols.  To show us those places within our heart where self-pity, jealousy, and bitterness dwell; and to expose the imaginings that have replaced the genuine prophetic vision He means to give us.

Like David did in the Psalms, we need to invite Him to examine our hearts.  “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”.  Amen.

The proverbial “We” or “Us” (i.e. people who share our values/worldview) have a tendency to put our hate in a different category than the hate spread by the proverbial “Them” (i.e. people who don’t share our values/worldview). We see “Them” as haters, and view their hate as toxic. While we consider our brand of hate as being justified, and maybe even virtuous. Whether it is a hatred of Donald Trump, or Nancy Pelosi, of religion, or godlessness, of Socialism, or Capitalism, of Conservatives or Liberals or any one of the million other things we choose to hate, it all mixes together to create the same poisonous atmosphere. Martin Luther King Jr. observed that, “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”. We won’t get better as a society by continuing to berate, mock, taunt, protest, boycott, slander, threaten and attack each other. As Dr. King rightly concluded, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

More sickening than the Pornographers and the Sex Traffickers are those who create the incredible demand for what they do.

I’ve seen a lot of whimsical thoughts posted about the new year, but after more than half a century on the planet it comes down to this for me.  The coming year will undoubtedly feature moments of exhilaration, and of disappointment; sunny days and storms; periods of monotony, and others filled with unscripted drama.  Each day will come with a thousand reasons to be sad or mad, while joy will only be found by those who diligently seek it. None of us has much control over the elements that swirl around our existence, but we have a great deal of say in how we respond to them.  If we don’t learn to overcome the hurts of the past, they will most certainly overcome us.  If we don’t take control of our thoughts and fears, they will undoubtedly take control of us.  If we refuse to acknowledge and learn from our mistakes, we are bound to keep repeating them.  And if we try to govern people and circumstances that are outside our control, we will only frustrate and exhaust ourselves.  As the old prayer goes, God grant me the strength to change the things I can change, the patience to live with the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference between the two.  There are blessings in this new year, but Amazon Prime won’t be delivering them to our door step.

God means to be the end we are pursuing, not the means we use to pursue some other end.

The scripture teaches that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds”, or maybe more clearly, “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds”. But I wonder to what degree we really understand what a “stronghold” is, or how to identify them in our lives.

The definition of a stronghold is a place that has been fortified so as to protect it against attack, a place where a particular cause, attitude or belief is strongly defended. In the context in which Paul was speaking it would be a cause, attitude or belief that is not from, or may even be counter to God, which we have accepted as truth.  Once established, it can become a conduit for the enemy of our souls to speak and work in our lives.

Though distorted mindsets can develop through faulty teaching (e.g. racism) or even just a bad example, strongholds are more often cultivated through first-hand experience; and generally speaking, the more traumatic the experience, the more powerful the potential for it to result in a stronghold.

While these experiences are a key element, it is actually the conclusions we draw from them that form the basis of the stronghold. For instance, a man abandons his wife and children with no warning or explanation.  The wife concludes that he must have been unhappy because she wasn’t as physically attractive as she’d been when they first married, and thus develops an obsession with losing weight, which ultimately leads to an eating disorder.  The enemy tells her that if she were just younger, or thinner, or prettier, then she’d be worthy of love.

Their daughter, who felt like she was daddy’s little princess, concludes that everyone who says they love you will eventually leave you, resulting in a jealous insecurity that poisons all of her future relationships, and compels her to be promiscuous. For her, the enemy becomes a type of translator, encouraging her to interpret every little action as the beginning of an inevitable abandonment or betrayal.

Their son, who deeply admired his father, concludes that men were never meant to be tied down to one person, and struggles to commit to anything. Whenever he starts to feel close to someone, the enemy reminds him not to fall into the trap his father did.

In truth, none of those conclusions are accurate, but through this deeply painful experience an emotional and spiritual stronghold is formed, which then becomes a channel for further damage. No doubt the Lord wants to tell the mother that she is the apple of His eye, and that physical beauty is a fleeting thing; and to assure the daughter that He will never leave her, nor forsake her; and to remind the son that a woman was created in response to what He saw missing in a man, and that there is a wholeness that can only be experienced through that union.  But if the stronghold is powerful enough, they may not have ears to hear any of those words.

Because these things are generally held in the most remote and protected regions of our being, we can be completely oblivious to their existence. Intellectually, the wife can vehemently defend that her former husband’s action was in no way her fault, but in the deepest part of her heart she doesn’t believe that’s true. Like her, we can all develop a blind spot, which allows the enemy unencumbered access to that area of our life.

While identifying the specific nature of a stronghold isn’t always easy, there are some readily identifiable patterns that seem to accompany their presence. Recognizing these patterns in our lives can become the first step toward our recovery.

One such pattern is the tendency to personalize situations and to perceive them as personal attacks, even when they are seemingly innocuous and involve total strangers. The person who cut you off on the highway didn’t just fail to see you, they did it purposely because they thought they were better than you, or because of the car you drive, or because of the bumper sticker you have, or…  Like little ones on the playground, you’ll swear that “they did that on purpose” even if there is no logical reason to believe they did.

Closely related to that pattern is the penchant for being easily “triggered”, which causes your reactions to be completely off base in relation to what is actually happened. The clearest example I can give of being “triggered” is something I witnessed while I was in the Navy.

During those years, guys routinely messed with each other and rough housed. One day, a big guy named Bo snuck up on a smaller guy named Jim, and grabbed from behind.  Jim let out a blood curdling scream, and rammed Bo into a piece of machinery, causing him to let him go.  When Bo released him, Jim turned and furiously began to pummel Bo with his fists.  Eventually, it took five guys to restrain Jim, and keep him from killing Bo.

At the time, Jim’s reaction didn’t make any sense to us, but we later learned that his step-father had molested him for years, and that what he was experiencing at that moment wasn’t his friend playing a practical joke on him, he was reliving the terror of a 5 year old being raped by his step-father. Sadly, this episode cost Jim his career.  Though it is an extreme example, it drives home the seriousness of this issue.  Our responses are often inappropriate because we’re emotionally reliving some other moment.

Not all patterns are that dramatic, it could be something as simple as the tendency to make the same mistake over and over again. Like a pothole in a street you travel on a daily basis, you promise yourself that you’re going to avoid it this time, and somehow you still manage to drive right into it.  You can rationalize that the city ought to fix the road, but you might also wonder at your own propensity for repeatedly finding that hole.

I knew a lady who married a man named Jim, who turned out to be a bit of a mean drunk and was often abusive toward her. Eventually she divorced him and married a man named Jeff, who also turned out to be a bit of a mean drunk, and who was also frequently abusive toward her.  Eventually she divorced him as well, only to marry a man named John, who also turned out to be a bit of a mean drunk, who…  Ultimately, she concluded that she just didn’t have any luck with men.  I would submit that “luck” had little to do with it, and that there was something deeply rooted within her which caused her to find this same type of man over and over again.

Another, more subtle pattern is a propensity for being “out of season”. Given that life unfolds in seasons, it is important to discern the season that you’re in, and to embrace it.  Thus, when the enemy of our souls has found a foot hold, he delights in having us show up to the pool party in a parka, or to the snow ball fight in a tank top.  We consistently find ourselves being “at the wrong place, at the wrong time”.  In fact, if you watch someone whose life is unraveling, one of the first signs of trouble is that they’re asleep when everyone else is awake, and they’re awake when everyone else is asleep.  I’ve often seen parents who want to be their kid’s “friends” when they’re young, and then try to parent them when they become adults.

As difficult as it may be to break out of these life patterns, our God offers us “divine power to demolish strongholds”. Tearing them down takes away places for our adversary to hide, and limits his ability to speak into our lives.  Like the psalmist beseeched, we need to ask the Lord to “search me”, to “know my anxious thoughts” and ultimately to “lead me in the way everlasting”.

Last week my wife mentioned a sermon she’d heard about, “Scorekeeping”, which reminded me of something I’d written many years ago.  After scrounging around my notebook, I found it, and it seemed worth sharing.

Early in my walk with the Lord, I felt like He drew my attention to our very human tendency to keep score and/or to count the cost.  I believe that this trait is so naturally occurring in us, that most of us aren’t even conscious of the fact that we do it.

While we may not remember recording every little incident in our mental/emotional database, we can often recall them with amazing clarity when we feel like we’ve somehow been slighted.  These vivid recollections of what we’ve done for others, or what hasn’t been done for us, or what has been done to us, or what others got, or what we didn’t get… are all evidence that somewhere inside of us we’ve kept a pretty detailed ledger of these transactions.

We can often use the data from this internal record book as evidence to plead our case to others, or as a weapon against those we want to hurt, or as our excuse to withhold the love, support, and forgiveness God calls us to give.  It becomes the fuel for jealousy, covetousness, discouragement, slander and self-pity.  There is a natural tendency to want to keep these accounts balanced (e.g. I have given, therefore I am entitled to receive…) and to feel as though we’ve been victimized if they don’t, but as with so many other things in our human nature, this doesn’t really line up with God’s word.

If we were to be designated the scorekeeper for a football game, we’d first have to understand the point system.  We’d need to know that a field goal is worth 3 points, that a touchdown is worth 6 points, that a kicked point after touchdown is worth 1 point, that a conversion (i.e. a pass or run into the end zone) after a touchdown is worth 2 points…  Without that understanding, we couldn’t accurately understand or convey who was winning and who was losing.  It is the same in life; if we’re going to keep score, we better understand the point system, and as believers that understanding needs to come from our Creator.

As we look to His word, we can quickly see that our natural minds will likely score the game much different than our spiritual minds will.  The natural mind says that it is worth more if our good deeds are recognized and appreciated, while scripture says that it is more valuable if they’re not, because they then become an eternal treasure instead of a temporary one.  Our natural mind seeks to receive a blessing, while the spiritual mind understands that the blessing is in the giving.  The natural mind sees the cross as foolishness, while the spiritual mind sees it as the power of God.

Another way of expressing this dynamic is the metaphor of an account ledger.  Just like with a checkbook, every deposit and every withdrawal is recorded.  Once again our natural mind tends to want to make judgments about our state of being based on our account balance and again this comes in conflict with the ways of God.  The scripture is filled with passages that challenge this way of thinking.  We’re told not to return evil for the evil that is done to us; to bless those who persecute us and to love those who refuse to love us back.  Beyond telling us not to seek equality in these transactions, the Lord urges us not to even keep a record of them.

In the parable of the workers in the vineyard, the Master chastened the workers who complained that those hired in the final hour of the day were paid the same as they were.  He reminded them that He’d paid them a full day’s wage, just as they had agreed upon, and essentially told them not to be concerned with what He paid anyone else.  Jesus voiced much the same sentiment at the end of the Gospel of John, when Peter thought that John was promised something better than what he was; the Lord scolded him saying, “What is it to you, you must follow Me”.  Proverbs tells us that a stingy man is always thinking about the cost, while the epistles tell us that not only does love cover a multitude of sins, but that it also keeps no record of wrongdoing.

If we are going to be the people God destined us to be, we need to stop looking to this imaginary account balance for our sense of justice. Instead, we must trust that the God we serve is just and that His sovereignty is sufficient to ensure that justice will ultimately be served.  We need to remember that whatever measure we choose to use with others, is the measure that will be used with us.

The enemy of our souls wants us to believe that if we could get this imaginary score high enough that we’d find peace, joy & fulfillment; but the truth is that these things can only be found in the person of Jesus.  Keeping score and/or counting the cost keeps us focused on ourselves, our situations, our wounds, our failures and other people.  When we succumb to this way of living, our prayers can be reduced to reciting our score card to God (and anyone else who will listen), and we’ll ultimately forfeit the healing and provision His death gained for us.

If we really believe that Jesus paid a price that we could never repay, than we should have no need to count the cost.  Any price that we pay is a bargain compared to what we have received.  If we can grasp that truth, our scorecards and/or balance sheets, will become our testimonies.


Bite 196. Create a JS-like dict object

Check out the docstring and tests for more info ... basically after creating an object, e.g. JsObject(a=1, b=2, c=3), we can access it by both key and attribute. So in this case both D['c'] and D.c would return 3. We also test for other dict operations / behaviors.

Disclaimer: take this as an exercise of inheritance and dict internals, but keep in mind that it violates Zen of Python's There should be one -- and preferably only one -- obvious way to do it, so probably not something you would use in your production code use!

Other than that, have fun and keep calm and code in Python!

4 out of 4 users completed this Bite.
Will you be Pythonista #5 to crack this Bite?

Login and get coding
We use Python 3.7


Why so many requests while idle?

I recently started leaving my Mark 1 online at all times and I noticed a big increase in network traffic to my pi-hole setup from the device even while idle. During the middle of the night it’s making hundreds of calls to api.mycroft.ai an hour.

Is there a reason for this level of frequent calls? I assume it’s checking for updates, etc.?

It’s primarily checking for skills setting updates etc. System updates from memory are scheduled for once per day.

We have also been tweaking the backend services over the last few weeks in preparation for the new home.mycroft.ai and I know this caused some unexpected behaviour last night in particular, so there may have been more requests than usual.

In a few weeks when we have fully deployed the new Home, I’d be very interested to hear how the network traffic compares.

When the update goes out I’ll be ready to compare :slight_smile:

I currently am seeing ~30,000 requests in a normal 24 hour period.


Reaction-diffusion wave fronts: Multigeneration biological species under climate change

A generalization of reaction-diffusion models to multigeneration biological species is presented. It is based on more complex random walks than those in previous approaches. The new model is developed analytically up to infinite order. Our predictions for the speed agree to experimental data for several butterfly species better than existing models. The predicted dependence for the speed on the number of generations per year allows us to explain the change in speed observed for a specific invasion
Tots els drets reservats


Going back to the days of the International Bible Students associated with Charles Taze Russell who were dubbed the “no hellers” because they rejected the myth of a fiery hell, up to the present, Jehovah’s Witnesses have been known more for what they do not believe or practice rather than for what they do believe.

In more recent decades Jehovah’s Witnesses have been known as the people who do not celebrate Christmas or birthdays; who do not believe that Jesus died on a cross; who do not believe that Jesus is God; who do not take blood transfusions; who do not salute the flag; who do not vote, nor fight for their country etc., etc.

Ironically, this perception of Jehovah’s Witnesses confirms that they are no part of the world, as Jesus said his true followers must not be. Can it honestly be said of the multitudes of churchgoers that they are no part of the world? Truthfully, there is virtually no distinction between the average churchgoer who confesses a belief in Jesus and those who practice non-Christian religions or no religion at all. For example, has there ever been a war in which churchgoers have not participated? Perhaps there are a few individuals who happen to belong to a particular religion who refuse to take up arms and kill their fellowman, but the mainstream religions of Christendom have always blessed and supported the wars of the nations, all the while professing to adore the Prince of peace.

For those who have more than a passing interest in these matters and who wish to know why Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate this or that, this is a brief presentation of the reasons.

Originally the International Bible Students celebrated Christmas and Easter and birthdays and all the rest and a crucifix and crown used to appear upon the cover of the Watchtower Magazine. That was the situation up until 1925, or thereabouts.

It is well known that Jesus was not born on December 25th. His birth occurred in October. Furthermore, the original Christians did not celebrate Jesus’ birth. How then did the institution originate?

It is now common knowledge that the Romans had an annual revelry during the week of the winter solstice called the Feast of Saturnalia. (For more information on the pagan origins of Christmas click here) After the 1st century Christians had passed off the scene wicked men infiltrated Christianity, even as the apostles foretold. The apostate bishops then empowered the emperor of Rome to decide doctrinal matters for Christians. This opened the door for the eventual development of the great church systems of Catholicism and Orthodox. In order to appeal to the pagan masses the churches adopted many pagan concepts and holidays. To this day the masses of people who consider themselves to be Christian have far more in common with pagans than they do with original Christians. (Why do some people not celebrate Christmas?)

(Easter has a similar origin associated with the spring equinox. The word “Easter” is even drawn from the ancient fertility goddess known as Ishtar. Click here for article)

The apostle Paul once wrote to the Corinthians expressing his concern for their spiritual welfare, saying to them: “The things which the nations sacrifice they sacrifice to demons, and not to God; and I do not want you to become sharers with the demons. You cannot be drinking the cup of Jehovah and the cup of demons; you cannot be partaking of ‘the table of Jehovah’ and the table of demons. Or ‘are we inciting Jehovah to jealousy’? We are not stronger than he is, are we?”

Although people no longer offer animal sacrifices to God, as the Jews were once required to do, nonetheless, religious people engage in activities that could be considered sacrificial. For example, Christmas time is marked by great feasts and gift giving and of course, sharing in drinking. So, in a sense, that is the “table” associated with the holiday. But since the pagans did the very same things and Christians merely adopted the rituals of those who out-rightly worshipped the demons, is it not obvious that the practices and excesses of Christmas are also sacrifices made to the demons and not to God?

The real reason Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate Christmas and Easter, and all the rest, is because they do not wish to become sharers with the demons.

Undoubtedly, the one thing Jehovah’s Witnesses are known for doing is knocking on doors. The original Christians were also known for their public witnessing. This is because Jesus commands his followers to preach and teach others about him and the kingdom of God. Jehovah’s Witnesses have preached the message of God’s kingdom to the farthest corners of the earth and have made the Bible and Bible literature available in hundreds of languages.

The activity of Jehovah’s Witnesses is truly noteworthy as it is no doubt preliminary to the fulfillment of Jesus’ words where he foretold that the good news of the kingdom would be preached in all the inhabited earth, as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.

Jehovah’s Witnesses official website


Return to the Forum homepage

Tring Park, Hertfordshire, England

Tring before the Rothschilds

The Manor of Tring is first mentioned in the Domesday Book where it is referred to as 'Treunge' and was owned by Eustace III, Count of Boulogne, a countryman of William the Conqueror. The Count's daughter Matilda of Boulogne inherited the manor from her father. She later married Stephen of Blois, a grandson of William the Conqueror who later became King Stephen of England. In 1148 King Stephen and Queen Matilda founded the Cluniac order of St Saviour at Faversham in Kent and the Manor of Tring was presented to the abbey. It was later exchanged for other properties with the Archbishop of Canterbury. When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries during the 1530s, the manor was confiscated and became Crown property and remained in Royalist hands up to the reign of Charles I. In 1650 Charles I arranged to have the manor transferred to his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, only to have it confiscated by Parliamentary Forces during the English Civil War.

When Charles II was re-established as monarch in the English Restoration in 1660, he gave the house to his Groom of the Bedchamber, Sir Henry Guy in 1680. Guy became Secretary to the Treasury and it was widely believed that he used this position to subsidise the construction of a new manor house to a design by Sir Christopher Wren. Guy was sent to the Tower of London soon after William and Mary acceded to the throne in the Glorious Revolution in 1688 on account of his misappropriation of Treasury funds.

Tring Park was sold in 1705 to Sir William Gore, Lord Mayor of London during the reign of Queen Anne. After only two years at Tring Sir William died and his son Charles inherited the estate. The property passed through two further generations of the Gore family before being sold to Sir Drummond Smith, a London banker, in 1786. He made extensive changes both to the park and the house, which until that time had remained unaltered from Wren’s original design. The contours of the parklands were smoothed and flattened to present a more naturalistic outlook in keeping with the style of Capability Brown, and the interior of the house was extensively remodelled along the entire south range of reception rooms with the exception of the library, which retained its seventeenth century ceiling. The drawing room and sitting rooms were given moulded and carved plaster ceilings in the rococo style, complete with cherubs and garlands. Sir Drummond Smith died in 1823 without an heir and the estate was sold to William Kay, a Manchester textile magnate for the sum of £90,000. William Kay’s son inherited the house in 1838 and it was from this time that Lionel Nathan de Rothschild (1808-1879) began renting it as a summer home. In 1872, Lionel bought Tring Park and its 3,643 acre estate (which also included the manors of Miswell, Hastoe, Dunsley and Willstone for £230,000). He made considerable alterations t othe mansion according to designs by George Devey, who also worked on Ascott at about the same time. The new design resulted in a red-brick house in 18th century French style, with stone dressings and slate mansard roof.

Nathaniel, 1st Lord Rothschild of Tring

Lionel gave the property to his son, Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild ('Natty') (1840-1915) as a belated wedding gift. The location was very convenient at since Natty had been Member of Parliament for Aylesbury since 1865 and the Rothschild family had also acquired a number of estates in the area. Tring became Natty's country residence. In 1872, Natty and his wife Emma Louisa (née von Rothschild) (1844-1935), and their young son (Lionel) Walter Rothschild (1868-1937), took up residence; their daughter (Charlotte) Evelina (1873-1947) and second son Charles (1877-1923) were both born at Tring. The family divided their time between their London home at 148 Piccadilly and Tring Park. Lady Rothschild preferred to remain at Tring with her children throughout much of the year and quite often her husband would be on his own at the sprawling London residence, surrounded by dust-sheeted furniture. Typically when greeting the many guests entertained at Tring, Natty would receive them in the central hall before leading them into the morning room, panelled in exotic woods, with an elaborate fireplace and four built-in cupboards which housed his impressive collection of objets d’art.

Natty became Lord Rothschild in 1885, the first Jewish peer raised to the House of Lords, just as his father, Lionel, had been the first Jewish Member of Parliament to sit in the House of Commons. During the late 1880s Lord Rothschild began making significant structural alterations to the house: in 1889 work began on the Smoking Room extension to designs by George Devey and the whole house was refaced in red brick with white ashlar dressing. The conservatory and orangery were demolished and the foundations used for the base of the new Smoking Room. In the same year the whole roof was lifted and a full-height top floor was inserted, replacing the mezzanine, with a slate Mansard roof complete with its French-style finials and a ten-foot gilded weathervane. Lord Rothschild continued to make alterations to Tring Park and these included the controversial rebuilding of the London Lodge in 1895 when two pavilions, believed to be part of Wren’s original design and which originally stood on either side of the London Road, were demolished. Despite local protests, the buildings were razed and replaced with a mock-Tudor cottage designed by Tring architect William Huckvale who rebuilt many of the estate’s properties in and around Tring. The cupola from one of the Wren pavilions was removed and mounted on the stable block designed by James Gibbs. Other alterations to the house included the remodelling of the entrance (east) front where the portico, which had originally faced onto the former Aylesbury to Berkhamsted road through the park, was demolished and a new porte-cochère was built on the north front. The east front was rebuilt with a shallow bow window rising through all three floors and the former entrance hall enclosed by large glass doors at the first set of columns to form another reception room. This room, the Morning Room, originally had a double-height ceiling but was given a massive barrel-vault in order to reduce the visible height of the room.

At Tring Lord and Lady Rothschild were generous landlords, building over 400 modern cottages in and around Tring, complete with sewage arrangements and water supply. After Natty’s death, Emma was left a life interest in the house, where she lived with her son Walter.

Walter Rothschild's Museum at Tring

Natty's son (Lionel) Walter, 2nd Lord Rothschild (1868-1937) was a noted scientist and natural historian. His interests in natural history began when he was a child, collecting butterflies. For his 21st birthday in 1889, his father built him a museum in the grounds of Tring Park to house his collection of zoological specimens. Numerous species and sub-species of animals were named after him. From Tring, he issued Novitates Zoologicae, and published scores of scientific papers. In 1892 the museum opened to the public and three new wings were added between 1906 and 1912 – the Bird Wing, the Library and the Lepidoptera Hall – in order to accommodate the huge numbers of specimens, amassed by Walter personally and the collectors he employed on his behalf.

Walter's father had always disapproved of his son's consuming interest in zoology and after a particularly serious disagreement – principally with regard to Walter’s inability to control his finances concerning the museum – he disinherited his elder son. Whilst the title would pass to Walter, the house and estate were all left to his younger brother, Charles. Although disinherited, Walter had been by no means cut off without a penny: his father had given him a capital sum of a million pounds to live off. In 1908 this was an indescribably large amount and by the time of his father's death in 1915, Walter’s finances were well in hand and he was able to mount overseas expeditions to locate new and exotic specimens as well as to purchase existing collections wholesale. The museum’s displays included two-and-a-half million butterflies, set under glass, over three hundred thousand bird skins and copious specimens of mammals and reptiles.

Tring Park housed not only Walter's his well-known zebras but also emus, rheas and kangaroos which roamed wild in the parklands. The kangaroos were a nightmare for the gardeners: at 6.30 in the morning, Lord Rothschild would often go riding before breakfast. The kangaroos, with total disregard for the ha-ha separating the park from the grounds, would jump up and spend time roaming around the lawns, digging up and eating the flowers in the formal beds around the drawing room terrace. The gardeners, who had been up since 5am, then had to quickly replant these before Lord Rothschild appeared at the stables.

Tring after Natty

Walter became the second Lord Rothschild with the death of his father in 1915. Three years later, after the end of the First World War, the family donated the house’s lily pond and immediate grounds to the townspeople of Tring and it became the Memorial Gardens. Once it became evident that Walter would not marry, Lady Rothschild sold her dower house, Champneys, near Wigginton in 1923. Walter lived alone with his mother for the rest of her life and after living at Tring for more than sixty years, Lady Rothschild died peacefully on 8 January 1935 aged 91. Under the terms of his father’s will, the house and estate now passed to his brother Charles’s branch of the family.

Walter died in his sleep on 27 August 1937 and the following year Victor (1910-1990), Charles’s son – now the 3rd Lord Rothschild – offered the museum and its collections to the British Museum. Walter’s private museum now became part of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. The final dissolution of the Tring Park estate came in October 1938 when the estate was broken up and sold piecemeal. It consisted of eleven farms, numerous smallholdings, allotments, cottages and shops in Tring, Aston Clinton, Bucklands, Drayton Beauchamp, Cholesbury, Wigginton, Marsworth and Long Marston as well as the stud farm in Akeman Street.

During the Second World War the house was used by N M Rothschild & Sons as a repository for the safe-keeping of documents and valuables outside London. The Tring Home Guard also used the park grounds for exercises and training and there was a maternity hospital on the estate. After the war, the bank had no further use for the house and Victor, 3rd Lord Rothschild had no desire to reinstate and house. The mansion was leased by the Prudential Assurance Company and in 1945 was leased and subsequently purchased by the Cone-Ripman School which, in turn, became the Arts Educational School, Tring Park. In 1975 the A41 Tring Bypass was opened, splitting the former parklands in two. The mansion and its immediate grounds are still home to the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts. 'Tring Park' now usually refers to that part of the original estate south of the A41. It is public open space, owned by Dacorum Borough Council and managed by the Woodland Trust. The house is known in Tring as 'The Mansion'.

The Natural History Museum at Tring »

Return to Estates listing


Main Site Documentation

Panda has a real watchdog?

I am researching the topic of watchdog functionality.

Does Panda have a real watchdog?

I have networking code that sometimes hangs, and I need the device to wait a minute or two and reboot in this case.

Thank you!

(to self: )

Does Panda have a real watchdog?

Not of the canine type, if that’s what you mean :o

Make sure to read the remarks:

[quote]EMX and USBizi
Note: Once the Watchdog is enabled, it cannot be disabled[/quote].

Cool thanks!


The correlation of chitons to the entire invertebrate community along the low

The correlation of chitons to the entire invertebrate community along the low, middle and high tide zones

Theresa Vo

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Vertical zonation of organisms within intertidal communities is defined as a result of biological and physical stresses consisting of dessication, predation, competition, herbivory, predation, and wave action. The analysis studied the zonation of a community based on the correlation of chiton to invertebrate abundance along the low, middle and high intertidal zones of Laguna beach of California, where a 50m baseline transect with 25ft perpendicular transect were laid down to stratify the sample zones. Density was measured by based count method and percent coverage to estimate the abundance of species such as chitons, barnacles, mussels, and algae in each plot. It was found that there’s no correlation between chitons and species among the intertidal community despite popular beliefs. This suggests that the abiotic factors administers a stronger control on distribution than biotic factors such as intertidal interaction.
The intertidal zone is segregated into the high-tide zone, middle-tide zone, and low-tide zone. The high intertidal zone consists of mostly terrestrial terrain and minimal water coverage. The mid-intertidal is commonly exposed to air and submerged by incoming tides. Positions closer to the sea are called the low intertidal zone, which is only exposed to air during low tide and constantly submerged underwater. Due to contrasting exposures of intertidal zones, the abundance and diversity of life are affected by abiotic and biotic factors.
An organism’s capacity to withstand abiotic factors such as desiccation for instance, regulates their upper limits, whereas biotic interactions such as predator or competition draws lines of lower limits (Doty, 1946). Intertidal organisms like chitons, anemones, barnacles, and green algae inhabit the high-tide zones and usually must endure stresses such as temperature fluctuations, desiccation problems due to lack of water, and changes in salinity. Therefore as adaptations, high intertidal organisms have shells not only against desiccation problems, but also to ameliorate salinity stress. Middle tide zone experiences harsher waves thus steamline shaped organisms such as sponges, barnacles, algae, mussels, and sea stars must prevent dislodgement by waves. These organisms often utilize attachments (i.e tube feet) and their hyperdynamic body plan to decrease surface area, allowing cluster development which assists them to adhere to their habitat. An abundance of complex organisms are found in the low tide zone as well as nutrients, but the rapid changing conditions make survival a challenge, especially with potential predations and space competition. Organisms in this zone, typically sea urchins and jelly fishes, have evolved adaptations such as respiratory structures to improve oxygen carrying capacity or toxin secretion to warn off incoming predators.
There has been suspected research that chitons has the capacity to influence the benthic community of intertidal zonations (Hawkins and Hartnoll, 1983), and the purpose of this study was to determine the correlation between chiton and intertidal invertebrates, and how that shapes vertical zonation of intertidal communities. Specifically, it’s hypothesized that chiton will have a strong correlation to the entire intertidal community, causing negative correlation in algae and barnacles, and positive correlation in water coverage, baseline distance and mussels.
Materials and Methods:
On May 20, 2018, I did an observational study on several organisms including chitin, red algae, barnacles, mussels, etc. at Crescent bay, Laguna Beach California. For sessile organisms such as plants and intertidal invertebrates, the sampling method involved plots and line transects.
The study started off with the setup of a 50 meter baseline transect from high to low intertidal zone. Then incrementally, a 25 feet perpendicular transect was laid down until it reached the end of the baseline transect. The zones were stratified by randomly placing perpendicular transects between 0-48m for a total of 136 plots. A random number table was used to pick where to place the 1 ft by 1 ft square plot, and the following procedures utilized area based counts methods and percent coverage to estimate the number of intertidal organisms.
I used StatCat 3.7.1 to do a D’Agostino-Pearson K2test for normality. Water was normally distributed, but red algae, mussels, barnacles and chiton weren’t normally distributed. I transformed chiton data using square root transformation to ensure normality and equal variances followed by a spearman rank correlation for red algae, mussels and barnacles. Then finding correlation for water coverage, and regression for baseline distance.
Chiton are not significantly correlated with water cover (r=0.219, p;0.05) or algae (rs= -0.301, p;0.05) or muscles (rs=0.086, p;0.05) or banarcles(rs= -0.111, p;0.05), or baseline distance (F=1.838, p;0.05, Figure 1).

Originally, fundamental grazers like Chitons were hypothesized to have strong interactions and correlations to the algae assemblages, abundances, and the whole intertidal invertebrate community since they eat algae, diatoms, barnacles, and sometimes bacteria. However by the results and graph, the chiton assemblage had no real effects on intertidal colonization and abundance of algae as the correlations to water coverage, algae, mussels, barnacles and baseline distance is not statistically significant; therefore the hypothesis is disproven. Chitons were more abundantly found in the high intertidal zone due to higher salinity levels, but their ability to withstand abiotic factors allows them to segregate along the zones. Chitons typically prefer green algae, thus the weak negative correlation found with red algae may be due to the negative effects of herbivory and competition (Duggins and Dethier, 1985). Chiton is resourceful in managing algae growth and distribution, explaining for the inverse relationship between algae and chitons (Mendonca et al, 2015). Although they both consume algae, barnacles are filter feeders whilst chitons are grazers, so the competition for living space accounts for the weak negative correlation (Duggins and Dethier, 1985). These results concludes that all of these organisms and water are all within the same area and have possible interactions but no significant interactions with one another. Comparatively, few studies illustrate that intertidal interactions and competition realistically wouldn’t be as applicable in constructing vertical zonation, but more so the repercussions of biological factors in setting distribution limits (Doty, 1946).
Literature Cited:
Doty, M. S. 1946. “Critical tide factors that are correlated with the vertical distribution of marine
algae and other organisms along the Pacific coast.” Ecology, 27: 300-314.
Duggins, D. O., and Megan N. D. 1986. “Experimental Studies of Herbivory and Algal
Competition in a Low Intertidal Habitat.” Deep Sea Research Part B. Oceanographic
Literature Review, 33, 3: 220-230.
Hawkins, S.J., and Hartnoll, R.G. 1983. Grazing of intertidal algae by marine invertebrates.
Oceanography and Marine Biology: An Annual Review, 21:195–282.
Mendonca, V., et al. 2015. “Chitons’ Apparent Camouflage Does Not Reduce Predation by
Green Crabs Carcinus Maenas.” Marine Biology Research, 12, 2: 120-130.


What is Robotic Surgery?

Robotic surgery is a type of minimally invasive surgery. “Minimally invasive” means that instead of operating on patients through large incisions, we use miniaturized surgical instruments that fit through a series of quarter-inch incisions. When performing surgery with the da Vinci Si—the world’s most advanced surgical robot—these miniaturized instruments are mounted on three separate robotic arms, allowing the surgeon maximum range of motion and precision. The da Vinci’s fourth arm contains a magnified high-definition 3-D camera that guides the surgeon during the procedure.

The surgeon controls these instruments and the camera from a console located in the operating room. Placing his fingers into the master controls, he is able to operate all four arms of the da Vinci simultaneously while looking through a stereoscopic high-definition monitor that literally places him inside the patient, giving him a better, more detailed 3-D view of the operating site than the human eye can provide. Every movement he makes with the master controls is replicated precisely by the robot. When necessary, the surgeon can even change the scale of the robot’s movements: If he selects a three-to-one scale, the tip of the robot’s arm will move just one inch for every three inches the surgeon’s hand moves.  And because of the console’s design, the surgeon’s eyes and hands are always perfectly aligned with his view of the surgical site, minimizing surgeon fatigue.

The ultimate effect is to give the surgeon unprecedented control in a minimally invasive environment. As one of our surgeons notes, “It’s as if I’ve miniaturized my body and gone inside the patient.” Utilizing this advanced technology, our surgeons are able to perform a growing number of complex urological, gynecological, cardiothoracic and general surgical procedures. Since these procedures can now be performed through very small incisions, our patients experience a number of benefits compared to open surgery, including:

Less trauma on the body
Minimal scarring, and
Faster recovery time
We invite you to explore our website to learn more about our robotic surgery team and the procedures we offer. If you’re facing surgery, you couldn’t be in better hands.


Kissing Whales Healing Dolphins

AquaCranial Therapy and the Cetacea Bleu Babies

by Rebecca Goff

Book Details

AquaCranial Therapy - Healing and Swimming with Wild Dolphins and Whales!

Rebecca Goff, Internationally acclaimed creator of AquaCranial Therapy, leads the reader on an amazing journey of healing and transformation taught by wild dolphins and whales!

Experience for yourself some of the training challenges therapists endure to claim this cutting edge modality as their own. See Rebecca's gift for coaxing people out into the oceans of the world, recognizing the courage each brings to their own healing. Utilizing her unique abilities, Rebecca Goff is able to achieve truly phenomenal results. A collection of short stories that will leave you yearning to journey with Rebecca, whales and dolphins.

Book Excerpt

I originated AquaCranial Therapy, an extension of the Sutherland method of Craniosacral therapy, with the guidance and interaction of the cetaceans. An advanced modality, it is a mix of osteopathic-based Craniosacral manipulations, dolphin therapy movements, visionary emotional release work, meridian balancing, yogic stretches and extreme hydrotherapy, developed through years of cetacean research. AquaCranial decompresses the spine, cranium, bones and tissues. Balancing the Craniosacral system eliminates physical stress from the body, acquired since birth up until the present time. If you bend a garden hose in half while it is turned on, no water will flow until you release the bend in the hose. Same principal holds true. If you hold your phone with your neck and shoulder, lift your hip to carry baby, lift your shoulder to hold your purse, sleep on the plane in a weird position, fall off your bike or skis etc., you create small bends or restrictions in the hose-like membrane surrounding the Craniosacral fluid and it cannot flow. Just like the water and the bent garden hose.

The more you tune in to the dolphins, the more fun you can have with them. If you dive down and twirl around, there is a good chance that one or more will begin twirling as well. I have seen five spotted dolphins in the Bahamas surround Ty on all sides, each one less than a foot from his body. Every dolphin slowly swirls around and around; Ty turning exactly the same, the entire group, man and dolphins, a revolving carousel, slowly drifting down to the bottom of the ocean and then back towards the surface. Sun beams cutting through aqua water so clear it seems as if they are floating in space. If a dolphin wants to touch you, it will. If it wants you to touch it, a dolphin will slide up next to you, touching skin to skin. I love it. NEVER, ever, reach out to touch the dolphins. This is considered harassment, and can be considered aggressive by the dolphins, as they have no arms and it will most likely cause them to scatter quickly.

About the Author

Rebecca Goff

Certified Marine Mammal Naturalist and Pediatric Craniosacral expert Rebecca Goff, is the creator of AquaCranial Therapy.
Goff's amazing healing modality has been featured in major publications, seen on television worldwide and offered at select 5 Star Resorts. Rebecca lives in Hawaii and Tonga.


This week we start streamlining the art. As a method with nearly equivalent accuracy as Take-offs, unit pricing adds speed. It uses the same principles of Take-offs at a slightly bigger picture. Well, from a different angle. Basically, you identify something that is repeated, group all of the related tasks and make them a unit (enter the term Unit pricing). The unit concept can vary in size, too.

Think Legos. When you build your Lego race car from a kit, you are building it with a bunch of units. Lego could have provided only flat 1×1 and flat 1×2 pieces. But can you imagine building an entire race car out of just those?! Instead, they created different units. A flat 1×10 or a standard 1×2 which is 3 flat 1×2 stacked as an equivalent. Perhaps you already thought of this concept when you were reading last week’s article on take-offs. You do the take-offs for the specific thing that you are using in your unit pricing, and then multiply that result by the number of that thing.

In the solar world, a typical unit is the standoff or post. For our example, you are installing 10 posts on a comp shingle roof. The post installation is made up of a series of steps:

  • Drill the test hole
  • Drill the pilot hole
  • Trim the shingle
  • Put the post in place
  • 1 lag bolt
  • 1 washer
  • Lag in the post
  • Cost of 10 oz sealant
  • Waterproofing test holes and post
  • 2 Flashing nails
  • Set the flashing

Unit Pricing - Estimating with PVBidThat works out to about (for purposes of this example) 4 minutes per post to put in place plus $15 in materials. Multiply that by 10 posts means my team will spend 40 minutes and $150 installing posts. The catch: It’s really easy to create a unit and then forget about things like setup time or efficiency with repetition. Following the example above, the material costs might stay the same for a larger-than-10-post project but the labor is probably going to be less than 4 minutes per post. On each project, I must determine how long it will take for the team to start installing the posts.

This one-time take-off method of creating units allows you to move faster not only on this project, but any future project. By creating assemblies of parts and labor that you keep in reserve, things you have already figured out in advance or you figure out on the fly, bids can be faster each time you use the unit again in the future.

One Step Further

We could create a unit that is an entire system, say a 24 kW ground mount array. We could then stamp it out 100 times to have a 2.4 MW ground mount system with a relatively accurate price. The only part left that we must work out is the wiring from the inverters to the load centers and the interconnection. That’s a whole lot easier for a quick turnaround than working out all 5,400 tasks of “set steel post in form”, 5,400 tasks of “pour concrete”, 60,000 feet of racking, each individual string wiring, and the wiring from each inverter to the load centers and the interconnection!


Thousands of new apartments are opening in Phoenix, exposing a divide on who does and does not have access to recycling. Wochit

Phoenix could soon require developers of new apartment complexes to make room for recycling bins on their property.

City officials are studying a proposal to mandate that addition as they grapple with solutions to improve the city's dismal recycling habits. Thousands of apartment communities across the city don't have recycling — and the city recycles far less than the national average.

Under a proposal being vetted this summer, the City Council could change that trend by amending planning standards so builders must at least provide space for recycling in new projects.

But the effort faces skepticism from the Arizona Multihousing Association, a powerful industry group that says many landlords already are working to provide recycling because residents increasingly demand it. The association thinks a one-size-fits-all approach won't work.

RELATED: Recycling in Phoenix: Some have it, others don't

Councilwoman Kate Gallego, a chief advocate of the proposal, said similar mandates have worked in other cities, including Mesa. She said residents have deluged her with complaints that their apartments don't have recycling.

“I would say the two things I hear most about right now are the president of the United States and recycling," Gallego said. "No one wants more landfills, as far as I know."

Gallego, who represents part of downtown and southeast Phoenix, said the issue is especially pressing as the city faces an apartment-construction boom. Almost a third of the city's 1.5 million residents already live in multifamily properties, and city officials say apartments rarely offer recycling.

Phoenix already has more than 17,000 multifamily-housing complexes. And dozens more apartment projects have recently opened or are in the pipeline for downtown and the Central City area.

Show Thumbnails
Show Captions

Phoenix's recycling headache

The effort comes after residents have complained for years about the city's recycling policies. Phoenix has long struggled to provide the whole city with access to recycling.

Environmental activists and some residents say the root of the problem is a city ordinance created decades ago. The ordinance generally prohibits Phoenix from picking up trash and recycling at most apartment complexes or commercial businesses.

The city offers solid-waste collection services for single-family residential homes, townhouses and condos, mobile-home parks, non-profits and government buildings.

Apartment landlords can hire private-waste haulers to provide recycling, but often they do not because it can cost more than basic trash service or their communities weren't built with space for recycling bins in mind, according to the city.

Get the newsletter delivered to your inbox
We're sorry, but something went wrong
Delivery: Mon-Fri
Thank you! You're almost signed up for

Many other cities with a strong recycling track record either provide recycling pickup services to apartments themselves or mandate that the private sector provide it at some level.

Residents and some council members have pushed for changes to Phoenix's ordinance.

Larry Wanger is among those fed up by the lack of recycling. He used to live in a central Phoenix apartment complex without it and quickly grew tired of hauling his bottles, cans and papers to a friend's house with a bin.

After several messy trips, Wanger threw most of his recyclables down the trash chute, leaving him with guilt. He was relieved when he moved to a condo with recycling last winter, but wishes the city would do more to fix the problem with existing apartments.

"I’ve had that thought, 'Gosh, there’s no reason to throw this away,' " Wanger said. "It’s going to end up in a landfill for 10,000 years."

But Phoenix Public Works Director Ginger Spencer said the city isn't exploring whether to provide recycling to apartments, which would require a change to the ordinance.

Spencer said the city doesn't have the manpower for a swell of new customers, and apartment communities with recycling often have low-participation rates and people throw the wrong materials in recycling bins.

Show Thumbnails
Show Captions

Mandate a solution?

However, Spencer said, the city might not need to provide recycling to encourage more sustainable practices.

“Our residents are just asking that the service be provided. They’re not specifying who (provides it)," she said. “We are open to all ideas."

Spencer said the proposal under study wouldn't necessarily require new apartment developments to recycle. Rather, they would just need to have the infrastructure to do so in place.

Before creating new mandates, city officials said they want to meet with apartment-industry representatives over the summer to talk about the challenges of making recycling bins fit in new and existing properties.

Jake Hinman, a lobbyist for the multihousing association, said the organization hasn't taken a position on the issue but worries such a proposal would hinder private-sector creativity.

He said many new apartment complexes are finding innovative ways to provide access to recycling. For example, some new buildings have valet trash service.

Instead of bins throughout the complex, residents leave recyclables on their front doorstep and a company picks them up twice a week.

“The collection of old may not be the collection of new," Hinman said. "It really can’t be a one-size-fits-all approach."

Hinman and city officials said they have noticed that many new apartment developments are planning for recycling because residents demand it.

The city surveyed the developers of 53 recently permitted apartment projects. Of those, 28 had planned for recycling, 12 had not and 13 hadn't responded to the inquiry.

Gallego said she's surprised so many new complexes aren't offering recycling given the demand she hears from renters. She said she's open to vetting concerns from developers, but wonders why it can't be done if many other large cities do it.

“I think the burden of proof is on the industry to prove if it’s notdoable," Gallego said.

Phoenix using rewards to encourage recycling

8 things you shouldn't recycle in Phoenix

Putting the squeeze on trash in downtown Phoenix

Many Valley cities and towns fall below the national average for recycling rates. How can you help your city recycle better? Here are some tips. Wochit

Read or Share this story:


Safflower | Dream Meanings

What does Safflower mean in dream?

Safflower | Dream Meanings

Islamic Dream Interpretation

(Dyestuff; Orange) Safflower in a dream represents a pleasant party that will be interrupted or followed by bad news. Safflower in a dream also represents one’s working tools, a war proclamation, the defeat ofthose who call for a war, and women’s role in provoking a fight.

If safflower is planted around the thorny tragacanth plant (bot. Astragalus) in a dream, it means receiving overwhelming benefits one did not anticipate.... Islamic Dream Interpretation


Sun Aug 2, 2015 05:32PM
Hagopian says a nuclear agreement with Iran is a victory for the world.
  • Embed

Investigative journalist Joachim Hagopian says a nuclear agreement with Iran is a win-win situation and Democratic Representative Seth Moulton was speaking “words of reason to his compatriots” in warning US Congress against rejecting it.

“It is a win-win for Iran and the P5+1 group of nations and obviously it is a win for the world because it increases the chance that there might be world peace,” Hagopian told Press TV on Sunday.

He maintained that the deal will be finalized by the UN and the world “will move forward and leave Netanyahu and his diehard warmongering worshippers behind.”

He made the comments one day after Moulton said that the Iran deal was “by far the best viable option before us” and it was “the best course of action to prevent a nuclear Iran.”

This is while Republican lawmakers in Congress have threatened to derail the agreement.

The text of the agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is currently being reviewed by Congress.

Republicans will need a two-third majority in Congress to prevent the JCPOA from becoming law.

Hagopian said that the anti-Iran GOP senators are not in majority and need help from Democrats which is not going to happen.

The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee has also formed a group dubbed “Citizens for a nuclear-free Iran,” which is spending millions of dollars to oppose any accord with Iran.

The group has reportedly deployed 300 lobbyists on Capitol Hill to convince lawmakers to vote against the nuclear agreement.

AIPAC, along with other pro-Israel groups, are funding a national television advertising campaign to inform the public “about the dangers of the proposed Iran deal.”

“They [opponents] are on the wrong side of the history and they are going to pay for it too,” Hagopian said.

“They are going to be held accountable” for supporting Netanyahu and his lies, he added.


These pumps were used to regulate the chemical composition of the coolant. The coolant was composed of distilled water, boric acid (to moderate the reaction), ammonia (to recombine oxygen created through radiolysis of cooling water), hydrazine (to bind oxygen) and potassimum hydroxide (to offset the acidity of the boric acid).

$Id: $

Valid XHTML 1.0


For more information of confidential assistance
Call 800-306-3180

Judge Rejects Part of Florida Medical Malpractice Law

Medical Malpractice Laws - Florida Statute Thrown Out by JudgeU.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle recently threw a major portion of Florida’s new medical malpractice statute out, claiming it conflicts with federal regulations in place to prevent improper disclosure of patients’ medical history.

Florida Governor Rick Scott signed the medical malpractice law in June. The ruling was a heavy hit to groups like the Florida Medical Association, who had been lobbying for medical malpractice laws to be put in place this spring. However, the Florida Justice Association, which represents plaintiffs’ attorneys, was against the law, arguing it violated patient privacy.

The judge disagreed with the portion of the law that would enable “ex parte communications,” in medical malpractice cases. For example, this would allow defense attorneys representing a doctor accused of malpractice access to the plaintiff’s health information. The information could come from other doctors who have treated the patient, and the patient’s attorney would not need to be present.

Arguments against medical malpractice laws

Those opposed to the law claimed it violated the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, of HIPAA, which were created to prevent the disclosure of personal medical information.

Supporters of the medical malpractice law

Those who support Florida’s medical malpractice law argue that it simply gives defense attorneys access to information plaintiffs’ attorneys are already privy to. In addition to citing it as a fairness issue, they contend the information would better enable defense attorneys to make decisions on whether to settle or proceed with cases in a timelier manner.

Timothy J. Stapleton, executive vice president of the Florida Medical Association, issued a prepared statement in July regarding the medical malpractice law.

“It is hardly surprising that the trial bar would challenge this, as they were content with the extremely uneven playing field that existed before this legislation was enacted,” Stapleton said. “We‚ll refrain from further comment until we have a chance to review all of the material the trial bar has submitted.”

Controversy surrounding medical malpractice laws

Five plaintiffs filed lawsuits challenging this portion of the medical malpractice law just hours after Governor Scott signed the bill. The plaintiffs, who were all patients trying to decide whether or not to pursue medical malpractice cases, claim it violates their privacy rights as patients. Each plaintiff argued the new law could cause improper disclosure of personal health information.

A representative of the Florida Justice Association said patients were worried about the type of information that could be disclosed when no one is present to protect them. This could include irrelevant, personal, or embarrassing details they don’t want disclosed to others. Patients were also concerned that defense attorneys would be able to do anything they want with their private, personal health information.


Rhythm and Revelry: The Arts of West Africa

9AM - 12PM (Ages 6 & up)

Explore the rich culture and ceremonies of West Africa. Through traditional dance, drumming, and mask making, campers will gain an understanding of the influences and significance of these vibrant practices.


What Happens When a Dancer is Concussed?

            My last article discussed concussions in dancers, and noted that although they are more common in other forms of physical activity like football, soccer and lacrosse, they still occur in dance. While concussions are more likely to be the result of a fall or being dropped during a lift, it is also worth noting that a dancer in a recent study reported developing concussion symptoms after “repeatedly whipping her head and neck in a choreographed movement.”
         Dancers who are concussed may report the following symptoms: headache, nausea, blurred vision, light sensitivity, noise sensitivity, feeling mentally foggy & concentration and memory problems.

         Although many people are now aware of the external symptoms of a concussion, few people are aware of what is actually happening inside the body.

         When a concussion occurs, the neuronal membranes, which are the outer layers that surround nerve cells, are damaged. As a result of this damage, potassium and an amino acid called glutamate leak out into the space between the cells. The body senses that there is a decrease in the amount of these substances in the nerve cells and sends more potassium into the cells to solve this problem. Since the potassium continues to leak out of the damaged cells, the body works harder to fix the issue and an imbalance is created.

         Because the body is doing all this extra work, it grows tired and an energy debt is created. An energy debt means that the body is working harder than normal and depleting all of its energy stores. This energy debt explains why a concussed individual craves carbohydrates; carbohydrates are the body’s preferred source for energy.

         It is for these reasons that rest is often prescribed for concussed athletes. In moderate to severe cases, concussed individuals may have to sit in dark rooms to rest the brain and limit the amount of input to which the brain must respond.

         Up until now, complete rest has been prescribed, followed by a gradual return to physical activity. Our next post will be a guest post written by a colleague of mine who has been conducting research on concussed individuals and will discuss the role that moderate aerobic exercise can play in the recovery process.


The path to wellness is highly individual...

Find out which directions are right for you.

Crystal Consultation

The concept of using crystals for their therapeutic properties has been around for thousands of years, and yet, in our modern culture it continues to be considered outlandish and even ridiculous by many people. In my experience, however, at times when I’ve been in the most energetically sensitive states I have found crystals to be extremely powerful, and many clients of mine have also found them to be very helpful tools.

During a crystal consultation, I utilize the resourcing to scan through a database that includes hundreds of crystals in order to identify those of utmost benefit to you. From there, I will resource how you should use them, which covers when and how to wear them. It only takes a few minutes, and integrating them into your protocol can yield quite potent results. Most crystals are usually inexpensive, and only small pieces are necessary to achieve therapeutic effects.

I believe the beneficial attributes of crystals are directly related to their monatomic mineral content; the matrix of a crystal seems to amplify the energetic properties of these special minerals, and different elements have different vibrations, different frequencies, and therefore different effects on our physical and etheric bodies. I don’t think it’s as “magical” as it may sound, but rather an element of quantum physics that is not yet understood or recognized by modern science.

It’s important to note that this is not a program for “crystal worship” or anything of the sort. While I’ve always been fascinated with the natural beauty of crystals (my father is a geologist, so we always had them around the house!), I don’t “worship” them any more than the broccoli on my plate. They are simply natural tools, like food, and work like “quantum supplements” that can be used to help support our bodies through transitions to better health.

Over the years I have found, without a doubt, that rather than being a trendy addition to a protocol, the right crystals truly provide an essential aspect necessary for getting optimal results from your work with me.

Generally ranging from 20-30 minutes, Crystal Consultations are billed at the current session rate, with a 20-minute minimum.


Analytic skills and their importance

Basic check

Basic Check Team

89 articles

13. analytic skills

Analytical skills are the ability to collect and analyze information for problem-solving and decision making. These skills also include the ability to analyze a problem or situation from different angles.

Having a natural tendency for analytical skills is a relief, but is not necessary because skills are taught. Analytic skills are a group of skills which include how attentive and detail oriented you are, critical thinking and the ability to analyze a problem and find a solution.

An example of the usage of these skills is business people who try and find new opportunities to expand the market and increase their sales. To achieve this, they need to be able to collect and analyze the information for the current state of the company and make a plan or strategy for developing it.

It is very important that to these skills because employers seek to employ people who have analytical skills. This is because workers need to be able to explore the problem and find a solution for a limited time.

Solving problems can be achieved through simpler and clearer methods or more creative methods depending on what the problem is. Both methods require analytical skills.

Some of the types of analytic skills are:

  • The ability to find the right information

You need to be able to collect relevant data that are required in a specific situation. Data collection is the beginning of the analytical process. Some ways to gather the right data are: Determine exactly what you are looking for, write down all available sources where you can get data, determine which of those sources are reliable, determine the method you will use during the research, think about who will need this data to work and if the data are needed

  • Numerical skills

These skills are the basis of mathematical skills that include some ability to understand and analyze numerical data and how to get the right conclusion. Numerous skills also include the ability to express ideas using mathematical data or numbers.

  • Strategic thinking

Strategic thinking is the ability to know what you want and achieve it. Some examples of this skill are a clear vision of what you want to achieve, prioritization, development of a strategic action plan, flexibility, ability to learn etc.

  • Technical skills

Nowadays, good technical skills are indispensable for all types of work or management levels.

  • Critical thinking

Critical thinking is the ability to assess a situation or problem independently. This means you do not accept arguments or conclusions if they are not based on facts. This skill is important in all areas of life because through it you are able to make prudent decisions.

Change your password

Password c1c080deb443f2949c8d26a914258320a0d5d8d215495b0a334288ca10721db0

Please change your password to keep your Basic Check account safe.

Password doesn't match


Do Hurricanes Feel The Effects Of Climate Change?

Do Hurricanes Feel The Effects Of Climate Change?

Hurricane Harvey, with its historical amount of rainfall over Texas, followed by a string of Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia in the North Atlantic basin in 2017, has triggered longstanding questions about any linkage between hurricanes and climate.

Can we really blame these recent hurricanes on climate changes? Or are they simply a coincidence of nature happening once every few decades, similar to the triple of Hurricanes Beulah, Chloe and Doria back in 1967?

Answering these questions lies at the heart of the current hurricane climate research that atmospheric scientists are trying to understand. There are signs that climate change can influence hurricanes in several different ways. However, these signals are inconclusive due to our inadequate understanding of how hurricanes interact with the environment.

Link to ocean temperature

Much as a flu virus morphs in different environments and becomes more infectious in cold winter temperatures, hurricanes depend on the ambient environment for their existence and motion. To what extent the surrounding environment affects hurricane development is indeed among the most extensively studied topics in hurricane research.

Evidence of the environment’s role on hurricane development has been noted since the early 1950s, yet a major milestone was achieved by Kerry Emanuel at MIT in his studies of hurricane dynamics in the late 1980s.

His idea was to consider hurricanes as heat engines that can extract heat from the ocean surface and exhaust it at the upper troposphere. In this way, Emanuel was able to obtain a mathematical expression showing how the maximum potential intensity a hurricane can attain in a given environment depends on sea surface temperature and temperature near the top of the atmospheric troposphere around 14 kilometers, or 8.8 miles, above the sea. A warmer sea surface temperature would result in a higher intensity, according to Emanuel’s formulation.

The ‘fuel’ for hurricanes comes from the energy in the ocean’s heat.

In essence, Emanuel’s relationship between hurricane intensity and sea surface temperature dictates how strong a hurricane can be for a given environmental condition. Numerous studies have then confirmed the importance of sea surface temperature in controlling hurricane maximum intensity, and suggest an increase of 2-3 percent in hurricane strength per 1 Celsius degree increase in sea surface temperature under favorable conditions.

From this perspective, it is thus very tempting to assert that hurricane intensity variations must be connected to the global climate due to the vital role of ocean temperatures in hurricane development. Indeed, many studies of hurricane intensity climatology consider ocean temperature as a main proxy to detect the future trend in hurricane intensity change.

The common consensus among these studies is a conclusion that future hurricanes will tend to be stronger than those in the present-day climate, assuming that sea surface temperature will continue its current warming trend into the future.

Looking at extremes for clues

While we can expect an increase in hurricane intensity as a result of rising ocean temperatures, how to interpret this result to one specific hurricane turns out to be very different.

For an intuitive illustration of how difficult this can be, consider how climate change can affect aspects of our weather, such as the daily variation of temperature.

For instance, a future air temperature warming of 0.5 degrees in the next 10 years would be mostly masked out by any daily temperature variation, which is in the range of 10 degrees between day and night. In this sense, it would be hasty to jump to a conclusion that the high intensity of Hurricane Harvey or Irma is caused by climate changes, simply because fluctuations in local weather conditions could contribute much more than climate change signals.

On top of the day-to-day intensity fluctuations due to local environmental conditions, hurricanes may also possess chaotic behaviors that cause their intensity to highly vary. A recent study showed internal variations of hurricane intensity could be as large as 10-18 miles per hour, which is larger than what would be induced by climate change.

On the other hand, one should not naively deny any claim that the extreme impacts of Hurricane Harvey or Irma are symptoms of climate changes.

08 29 hurricane harvey
Extreme events, such as the rain associated with Hurricane Harvey, provide an opportunity for researchers to study the effects of climate change because they are outside the day-to-day variability of weather.
AP Photo/David J. Philip

Some research has indicated that the change in global climate could lead to a shift of the jet stream behaviors over North America. Flooding related to Harvey was unusual in part because the storm stalled over Texas for much longer than any other hurricane. So while our current knowledge does not allow us to connect Harvey’s intensity to any specific changes in climate, the abnormality of the Harvey stalling for a long period over land could be a manifestation of the shift in global circulation in a warmer climate.

Likewise, the emergence of triple hurricanes in the Atlantic basin during September 2017 could be another potential signal of the more favorable conditions for hurricane formation from climate change.

From the climatological perspective, it is the frequency and magnitude of these abnormal extremes, such as the prolonged period over land of Hurricane Harvey or the extreme intensity of Hurricane Irma, that are often of utmost interest to researchers. This is because these extremes are signals of climate changes that can be distinguished from day-to-day variations.

Limits of our understanding

Along with direct impacts of climate on hurricane intensity, another conceivable influence of climate on hurricanes is the shift of the hurricane track pattern in the future climate.

In principle, a change in global air circulation patterns could influence the steering flows that guide hurricane movement, much like a leaf carried away by a river. As such, variations in global circulations associated with climate change could introduce another degree of variability to hurricane impacts that we have to take into account.

A recent climatological study led by James Kossin at University of Wisconsin suggested a poleward shift of the hurricane maximum intensity location in a warming climate. But unlike the connection between hurricane intensity and the ambient environment, the linkage between global circulation change and hurricane movement is much harder to quantify at present.

While research on hurricanes gives us a good sense of how hurricanes would change in a warmer climate, measuring this change and, in particular, tying a unique feature of one specific hurricane to climate change are beyond the current level of confidence.

In reality, there are several other factors that could strongly interfere with hurricane development, such as the change of atmospheric temperature with height. These factors directly affect the interaction of hurricanes with the surrounding environment. However, these are very difficult to quantify in the context of climate change due to the different time scales between hurricane development – measured on the order of days and weeks – and climate change, which occurs over decades.

The ConversationFrom a scientist’s perspective, the lack of understanding of climate impacts on hurricanes is disappointing, if not irritating. On the other hand, these uncertainties continue to motivate us to search for any possible link between hurricanes – including their intensity, frequency, time of formation and location – and climate. Better understanding of hurricane-climate relation is needed, as ultimately that knowledge can help serve society.

Chanh Kieu, Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Science, Indiana University

Related Books

Blue Ocean Event : Game Over?
by Just Have a Think
A Blue Ocean Event, or Ice-Free Arctic, is the source of almost fever pitch speculation in the climate science world.…
Climate Change - The Facts by Sir David Attenborough
by David Attenborough, BBC
Why it’s time to think about human extinction
by Kerwin Rae
After listening to this ep with Dr David Suzuki, you’ll never be the same again. The environmentalist, activist,…
Record Temperatures 20-25C Above Norm in far North
by Paul Beckwith
The Northwest Territories of Canada had March temperatures above 20C for the first time (hit 21.6C or 71F); breaking…
by Chris Hawes
Why Climate Change Will Dull Autumn Leaf Displays
Why Climate Change Will Dull Autumn Leaf Displays
by Matthew Brookhouse
Every autumn we are treated to one of nature’s finest seasonal annual transitions: leaf colour change and fall.
Climate denial isn’t stopping climate action.
by David Wallace-Wells
Climate change denial draws headlines. But is it actually an obstacle to climate action? A great majority of Americans…
Energy Storage: How to store renewable energy?
by Total
Under your bed, in the attic even on your mobile phone, it seems there's never enough storage. It turns out it's also…

Crops at risk from changing climate
Crops at risk from changing climate
by Tim Radford
Global warming could bring yet more challenges to a hungry world. New studies have identified precise ways in which a…
Seeing The Planet Break Down In Climate Crisis Is Depressing – How To Turn Your Pain Into Action
Seeing The Planet In Climate Crisis Is Depressing – Turn Your Pain Into Action
by Cameron Brick
Environmentalism can feel like a drag. People trying to reduce their environmental impact often feel stressed and…
Global Inequality Is 25% Higher Than It Would Have Been In A Climate-stable World
by Nicholas Beuret
Jason Kenney's Victory Means We'll All Pay The Price For Fossil Fuel Emissions
Jason Kenney's Victory In Alberta Means We'll All Pay The Price For Fossil Fuel Emissions
by D.T. Cochrane
Jason Kenney has led the United Conservative Party to victory in Alberta. There were manyobjectionablecomponents to the…
How Can Trees Really Cool Our Cities Down?
How Can Trees Really Cool Our Cities Down?
by Roland Ennos, University of Hull
In cities around the world, trees are often planted to help control temperatures and mitigate the effects of the “urban…
Beto O’Rourke Releases $5 Trillion Climate Change Proposal
Beto O’Rourke Releases $5 Trillion Climate Change Proposal
by Global Warming & Climate Change
But Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led activist group that has advocated for the…
Should The Sahara Desert Be Turned Into A Huge Solar Farm?
Should The Sahara Desert Be Turned Into A Huge Solar Farm?
by Amin Al-Habaibeh
How Retreating From The Sea Level Rise Will Affect Our Health?
How Retreating From The Sea Level Rise Will Affect Our Health?
by Jackson Holtz
Managed retreat in the face of sea level rise will be a mixed bag, researchers predict.


Définition control experiment | dictionnaire anglais définition synonymes Reverso

Chercher aussi sur: Web Actualités Encyclopédie Images

control experiment

      n   an experiment designed to check or correct the results of another experiment by removing the variable or variables operating in that other experiment. The comparison obtained is an indication or measurement of the effect of the variables concerned
Dictionnaire anglais Collins English definition-Thesaurus
      vb   , -trols, -trolling, -trolled   tr
1    to command, direct, or rule
to control a country
2    to check, limit, curb, or regulate; restrain
to control one's emotions, to control a fire
3    to regulate or operate (a machine)
a    to regulate (financial affairs)
b    to examine and verify (financial accounts)
6    to restrict or regulate the authorized supply of (certain substances, such as drugs)
7    power to direct or determine
under control, out of control
8    a means of regulation or restraint; curb; check
a frontier control
9    often pl   a device or mechanism for operating a car, aircraft, etc.
10    a standard of comparison used in a statistical analysis or scientific experiment
b    (as modifier)
control panel, control room
12      (Spiritualism)   an agency believed to assist the medium in a séance
13      (Also called)    control mark   a letter, or letter and number, printed on a sheet of postage stamps, indicating authenticity, date, and series of issue
     (C15: from Old French conteroller to regulate, from contrerolle duplicate register, system of checking, from contre- counter- + rolle roll)
  controllable      adj
  controllability, controllableness      n
  controllably      adv

air-traffic control
  air-traffic controller      n
automatic frequency control
      n   a system in a radio or television receiver by which the tuning of an incoming signal is accurately maintained,   (Abbrev.)    AFC
automatic gain control
      n   control of a radio receiver in which the gain varies inversely with the magnitude of the input, thus maintaining the output at an approximately constant level,   (Abbrev.)    AGC
biological control
      n   the control of destructive organisms by nonchemical means, such as introducing a natural predator of the pest
birth control
      n   limitation of child-bearing by means of contraception
   See also       family planning
budgetary control
      n   a system of managing a business by applying a financial value to each forecast activity. Actual performance is subsequently compared with the estimates
control account
      n     (Accounting)   an account to which are posted the debit and credit totals of other accounts, usually in preparation of financial statements
control chart
      n     (Statistics)   a chart on which observed values of a variable are plotted, usually against the expected value of the variable and its allowable deviation, so that excessive variations in the quality, quantity, etc., of the variable can be detected
control column
      n   a lever or pillar, usually fitted with a handwheel, used to control the movements of an aircraft,   (Also called)    control stick, joy stick
control commands
      pl n   keyed instructions conveyed to a computer by using the control key in conjunction with the standard keys
control experiment
control grid
      n     (Electronics)      another name for       grid       6   in a tetrode or pentode   in a tetrode or pentode
control group
      n   any group used as a control in a statistical experiment, esp. a group of patients who receive either a placebo or a standard drug during an investigation of the effects of another drug on other patients
control key
control rod
control stick
      n   the lever by which a pilot controls the lateral and longitudinal movements of an aircraft,   (Also called)    control column, joy stick
control surface
      n   a movable surface, such as a rudder, elevator, aileron, etc., that controls an aircraft or rocket
control tower
      n   a tower at an airport from which air traffic is controlled
cruise control
      n   a system in a road vehicle that automatically maintains a selected speed until cancelled
fire control
      n     (Military)   the procedures by which weapons are brought to engage a target
flood control
      n   the technique or practice of preventing or controlling floods with dams, artificial channels, etc.
ground control
1    the personnel, radar, computers, etc., on the ground that monitor the progress of aircraft or spacecraft
2    a system for feeding continuous radio messages to an aircraft pilot to enable him to make a blind landing
numerical control
      n     (Engineering)   a form of computer control applied to machine tools, by which an operation is directed from numerical data stored on tape or punched on cards
population control
price control
quality control
      n   control of the relative quality of a manufactured product, usually by statistical sampling techniques
radio control
      n   remote control by means of radio signals from a transmitter
  radio-controlled      adj
remote control
  remote-controlled      adj
rent control
ripple control
      n   the remote control of a switch by electrical impulses
  self-controlled      adj
  self-controlling      adj
tone control
      n   a device in a radio, etc., by which the relative intensities of high and low frequencies may be varied

Dictionnaire anglais Collins English definition-Thesaurus

5    brake, check, curb, limitation, regulation, restraint

Dictionnaire anglais Collins English synonyme-Thesaurus

Dictionnaire Collaboratif     Anglais Définition
dispatcher in EMS Control Center