of The American Physical Society
July 2007
Vol. 36, No. 3

Previous Newsletters

this issue

Contact the Editors

Nuclear Shadowboxing Vol. 2: Legacies and Challenges

by Alexander DeVolpi, Vladimir E. Minkov, Vadim E. Simonenko and George S. Stanford, (Fidlar Doubleday, Kalamazoo, MI, 2004)

I have already reviewed a descriptive part of this book. Now, A. DeVolpi, V. E. Minkov, V. E. Simonenko and G. Stanford, to be mentioned henceforth as the “gang of four” or G4, came up with a prescriptive part. This work is clearly a labor of love for the authors. Yet, as in the previous volume, self-critical restraint is sometimes missing.

I might say that the authors did a significant editing job. In comparison with the first volume, this volume dispenses with the disparate fonts for the boxes, puts sections headings and chapters in a logical sequence, etc. However, my main concern about Volume 1 was not with typographic conventions, but more with organization of content. Disorganized treatment betrays lack of clarity of thinking, and accurate tables of contents make unclear substance dimmer still. One example: the Contents section for Chapter VI alone lists more than 200 sections for 121 pages (I am not joking!) with appropriately complex conventions for page numbering. The manuscript can be significantly streamlined by omission of extraneous material such as rants on global poverty, Mattias Rust (still remember him? p. V-33), torture (p. VI-78), non-nuclear terrorism, chemical and biological weapons and so on. Information on “axis of evil” conventional armed forces creeps into the section on the Russian Federation (p. VI-35). Some of the material looks undecipherable, being put in enigmatic table with zeroes in all columns and rows (Second part of Table 3 on p. VIa2-2), or in a table with four of five columns empty (Table 1 on p. VIIg-5). Yet, amidst this largesse, some of the omissions look puzzling; for example, who knows what are or who are Quemoy and Matsu (p. VI-31)?

As far as the book’s content is concerned, the authors pretty much reiterate the existing consensus of academic physical scientists: thumbs down for nuclear weapons, thumbs up for nuclear energy. Their prescriptions for enhancing nuclear security range from what this author considers a reasonable but missed opportunity (“de-MIRVing of the strategic missiles”), to the naïve (“prohibition of putting countermeasures and decoys on missiles”) (Table VIIg-1),1 but all within the prevailing thinking of the academic nuclear establishment. I must mention, and not just with respect to the authors but also to other oft-cited speakers on nuclear disarmament such as Richard Garwin or Joseph Biden, that the Anglo-American viewpoint can be very remote from the thinking in the rest of the world. For instance, the political consensus in Russia on whether the country should maintain relatively large and survivable nuclear forces, which did not exist in the first half of the nineties, emerged practically overnight after NATO bombed Yugoslavia. From what I know, this might also be the case with India.

I have a more difficult time judging the G4 ideas on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, which they embrace too enthusiastically for my taste. While I am hardly an anti-nuclear zealot and consider nuclear power plants as an important contributor to the future energy mix, some of the authors’ projections concerning the viability of the nuclear option seem wildly optimistic. For instance, G4 considers scuttling nuclear ships in deep seas as a safe method of disposal. The possibility of using ocean trenches was explored in the much less environmentally sensitive 1960s and, as I recall, was rejected on the grounds that underwater currents and oceanic turbulence would insure mixing. The statistics on the level of federal R&D expense per kilowatt-hour of energy does not look credible to me (for instance, a factor of 11 favoring of oil vs. nuclear R&D) and is altogether laughable for photovoltaics (p. Ve-2).2 It appears to have been taken straight from the nuclear lobby’s publications.

The chaos grows when we approach the authors’ narrow field of expertise, probably because they feel more secure. For instance, in the otherwise very useful Table 2, (see also pp. VIf4-1 and VIf4-3) one spots the figure 94% of the fissile-isotope’s fraction for weapons-grade plutonium, while on an adjacent page the authors list it as 20% (p. VIf4-2). In fact, both figures could be accurate if G4 would consistently follow their own distinction between weapons-quality (considered as such by the US standards of nuclear weapons production) and weapons-grade material. The latter is deemed dangerous by the IAEA as indicative of the intention of potential proliferators to build a weapon, but not necessarily useful for the bomb. Some of the reasoning (for example, “especially the rapid excursion that is characteristic of explosive assembly,” p. VIf5-1) seems too involved for an intended reader of a book that also takes the time to explain the conversion of pounds to metric tons (p. VIf1-3).

What I hope for from the G4 would be a new book where they could put in the experiences of their own life spent in the US and USSR nuclear complexes.  Such a book could be more personal, containing for example anecdotes and professional jokes. This final volume could be a towering monument for the many lives spent in building the nuclear weapons legacy, which they now take so much effort to undo.

1. All nuclear powers, except for the US with their extensive plans of strategic defense, would certainly view this impediment as a cheap American ploy to undermine the credibility of their nuclear deterrent. Similarly, another proposal, namely a separate storage of nuclear warheads from the delivery systems, would only increase suspicion that the United States plans to attack the delivery vehicles of the counterparty by conventional smart munitions before they could be used in a counterstrike.

2. My own, very conservative, estimate (assuming zero private funding for nuclear energy research but including it in oil and gas) suggests roughly $80/MBTU (million BTUs) of R&D money for fossil fuels and $126/MBTU for nuclear energy in 2005/2006, i.e. a factor of 1.5 in the opposite direction. Comparing photovoltaics with oil and gas on this basis seems as reasonable to me as comparing nutritional caloric yield per dollar in corn syrup and in caviar. You cannot plug a gas pump to a space station.

Peter B. Lerner
Quantum Transistor LLC[1]

Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons

by Joseph Cirincione, Columbia University Press, New York, 2007.

As the UN and world powers struggle with enrichment and proliferation concerns in Iran and North Korea we would be wise to look back on and learn from six decades of history as to how the nuclear world has come to be what it is.  This eight-chapter book reviews the history of nuclear weapons and nonproliferation agreements and offers some solutions to the threat of nuclear terrorism as well as ideas to address lack of security of the nuclear fuel supply and preventing the development of new nuclear-weapon states. Cirincione has extensive experience in nonproliferation issues. He is a former staff member with the House Committee on Armed Services, spent eight years as Director for Nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and is currently Vice President for National Security at the Center for American Progress.

The first three chapters review the development of nuclear weapons from the discovery of fission up through the North Korean test of late 2006, the evolution of the nuclear arms race, and the various treaties and institutions that have emerged to control the spread of nuclear weapons. While these chapters provide a good general review of these matters, this reviewer caught some technical errors. A discussion of assembly timing issues in the gun and implosion mechanisms of Little Boy and Fat Man are sufficiently garbled as to indicate that the author is unaware of the crucial role of spontaneous fission. Also, one finds the patently incorrect assertion that the Sun will be able to synthesize elements as heavy as sulfur. These are quibbles in comparison to the grand themes of nonproliferation and disarmament, but one would expect an author of this experience to be more careful: policy issues can and do hang on technicalities.

In Chapter 4, his longest, Cirincione frames the debate of the future of post cold-war nonproliferation initiatives by positing five factors that can act as incentives/disincentives for states to acquire nuclear weapons, illustrating each with historical examples. In order, these are security (self-security/alliances with stronger powers), prestige (great-power aspirations/ nonproliferation leadership), domestic politics (interest-group agendas/grass-roots citizen campaigns), technological determinism (scientific prowess/engineering difficulties), and economics (cheaper than conventional forces/opportunity and environmental costs). Chapter 5 applies this mix of factors to an assessment of today’s nuclear world. The author credits the START and INF treaties with reducing the threat of global thermonuclear war to near zero, leaving us with four current threats: nuclear terrorism, arsenals on hair-trigger alert, the prospect of new nuclear weapons states, and the collapse of the nonproliferation regime.

The terrorist threat revolves largely around issues of security of Russian supplies of weapons-grade materials and the specter of instability in Pakistan. Cirincione dismisses North Korea in this context by arguing that that country is not likely to give away what its leadership sees as its most precious security jewel, an argument this reviewer does not find entirely convincing. The hair-trigger situation is aggravated by deteriorating Russian infrastructure. The threat from new nuclear weapons states may not lie so much in those states themselves but in their catalyzing regional arms races.  The author argues that the double-standard of the US investing in new warhead designs while encouraging other powers not to go nuclear will only increase the prospect of a world with more nuclear-armed states. His deepest concern, however, is the potential collapse of the non-proliferation regime, a prospect for which he lays much blame with the current US neoconservative policy of interventionist regime change. Critics of this policy will find much to their liking in a laundry list of policy failures detailed in Chapter 6.

Chapter 7 takes up what the author offers as good news about nuclear proliferation: over the last 20 years the number of warheads has been cut back from about 65,000 to 27,000 while the number of ballistic missiles has also been reduced. More than once he emphasizes that the number of countries with nuclear weapons and programs has declined, but the proffered count includes countries such as Canada, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine that never had indigenous programs to begin with.

In his last chapter, Cirincione offers solutions to the threat of nuclear terrorism as well as the issues of securing the nuclear fuel supply and preventing new nuclear states. This material is the weakest of the entire book. Strengthening the Nunn-Lugar program is an obvious way to help thwart nuclear terrorism, but this is accompanied by the suggestion of ending the use of all weapons-usable material in civilian power, research, and naval reactors. Laudable goals, perhaps, but no alternatives to these systems are offered. A multi-national system of assured nuclear fuel services is proposed, a sort of updated Baruch plan minus any requirement or incentive for current nuclear weapon states to decrease their arsenals. The author is silent, however, concerning the resistance such a scheme would face in view of US suspicion of a UN-administered program and the vested interests of producers and consumers of nuclear materials and weapons. He also does not address what to do with waste fuel, not a gram of which seems likely to see the inside of Yucca Mountain anytime soon. A suggestion that Israel consider abandoning its nuclear capability without proposals for security guarantees from its neighbors seems divorced from reality.

Despite these criticisms, Crinicione gives us much to think about; this book should be required reading by anyone interested in these issues. In the end, this reviewer shares the author’s sentiment that stronger international nonproliferation, disarmament, and technology-transfer agreements backed up by meaningful enforcement are likely our best hope for preventing a new wave of proliferation. But given the state of the world today I am not as optimistic as he that these might soon come to pass.

Cameron Reed,
Department of Physics, Alma College, Alma, MI 48801

David Hafemeister (New York: Springer, 2007) ISBN 978-0-387-95560-5, xvii + 487 pp, € 114.95.

Perhaps at no time in history have big-picture societal issues such as national security, climate change, and energy supply demanded such broad understanding of underlying physical principles as they do now. David Hafemeister’s Physics of Societal Issues is a call by a physicist to the physics community to join in improving the science-and-public policy process. This 16-chapter book is subdivided into three major sections that deal respectively with the fundamental physics of national security (nuclear weapons, missiles, missile defense, treaties, and proliferation), environment (chemical and nuclear pollution, climate change, effects of EM fields), and energy (usage, buildings, solar and renewable energy, efficiency, transportation, and economics). Indeed, it is, as advertised, essentially three texts under one cover. Hafemeister is exceptionally qualified in all of these areas: his resume' lists, among many other activities, stints as a Science Fellow in the physics division at Los Alamos, as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Congressional Fellow, as a Special Assistant to the Under-Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science, and Technology, as a professional staff member on the US Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and Governmental Affairs, and as chair of both the APS Panel on Public Affairs and the Forum on Physics and Society. He has published extensively on areas as diverse as the nuclear arms race, renewable energy, global warming, and the biological effects of EM fields.

As described in its preface, Physics of Societal Issues addresses the need for a text that analyses the physics of its three main topics. It is written for scientists and engineers with a solid grasp of baccalaureate-level physics who want to be able to calculate approximate but useful answers in a Fermiesque “back-of-the-envelope” way to help inform and enhance the debate on these issues.

This is not a textbook in the conventional sense of the word. Each chapter is divided into a number of sections and subsections where relevant physics is applied to a single concept that is part of a larger issue. Mathematical expressions are not derived but simply stated and then applied. The breadth of the physics, mathematics, and general knowledge exhibited is staggering; one can learn a lot by simply choosing a section at random and dipping into it. A very incomplete list of topics, with applications in parentheses, includes the Coulomb self-energy of an electric charge (fission energetics), the rocket equation and parabolic trajectories (ICBMs), error propagation and Gaussian distributions (missile targeting), the optics of laser-beam spread (space-based lasers), kinematics (railguns), the convolution and Fourier addition theorems (digital image processing), the Stefan-Boltzmann law (IR reconnaissance), pH chemistry (acid rain), adiabatic expansion (monitoring of explosions), diffusion (pollutants and power-plant plumes), chemical reactions and rate equations (the ozone layer and CFCs), radiation exposure units (theory of excess cancers), heat capacity and thermal conductivity (heat loading in geological repositories and household energy efficiency), economics (carbon taxes and elasticity of demand), Ampere’s Law (effects of power lines), statistics (risk assessment), exponential growth (energy consumption), thermodynamics (power-plant efficiency), atmospheric extinction (solar flux), rotational dynamics (flywheels), and drag forces (automobile efficiency). This reviewer can think of only a very few areas of his undergraduate physics curriculum that were not touched on in some way or other in this book.

Each chapter is accompanied by about 20 problems in which readers are challenged to apply concepts and make estimates. These range from exercises designed to build familiarity with unit conversions (what is a Dobson unit in ozone-molecules per square meter?) to full-scale calculations such as the energy loss from a house of a given size with given window-area and insulation characteristics; no answers are supplied, however. Appendices offer chronologies on the development of nuclear arms and energy and the environment, as well as on units (including tongue-in-cheek humor units), symbols, websites, and glossaries for each of the three topic sections. The index is likewise divided into the three topic sections, but struck this reviewer as very abbreviated.

My only disappointment was in the quality of a number of the figures. A map showing contamination from a dirty cobalt-bomb attack on New York City is virtually unreadable and appears to contain no length-scale bar (p. 181); a diagram of ocean circulation shows both land and water masses as almost the same muddy grey color (p. 218); the key to a chart of contributions (industrial, agricultural, residential …) to summer peak-day power use in California is printed in such a way that one cannot tell various contributions from each other (p. 366); the axes values and legend text on a graph of cost of conserved energy are blurry (p. 413). There are a number of such examples, all of which seem to involve diagrams and graphs that were adopted from other sources and that do not appear to have happily survived transformation from color printing to black-and-white. For a volume with the Springer imprint and a list price in excess of 100 euros, I would have expected better. A casual perusal revealed a few misspellings, and one technical error caught this reviewer’s eye (on page 10, it is Po-210 that is used to help trigger nuclear weapons, not Pu-210), but such minor oversights are to be expected in the first edition of a technically complex work.

Hafemeister has produced a masterful and long-overdue work that should be on the shelf of any physicist interested in or who is asked to comment upon physics-and-society issues. In an ideal world, this book would be picked up not only by scientists and engineers but also by media commentators and legislators.

Cameron Reed,
Department of Physics,
Alma College, Alma, MI 48801

The Grid: A journey through the heart of our electrified world

by Phillip F. Schewe, Joseph Henry Press, 311 pp., ISBN-13:978-0-309-10260-5

Phillip Schewe is excellently qualified to write this popular account of the history and present status of our American electric grid, since he has been active both in physics research and in writing about science.  He is a member of three quite diverse organizations: the APS, the Dramatists Guild, and the National Association of Science Writers.

Schewe gives us a fine history of the creation and development of our American grid.  His history starts with Thomas Edison’s 1882 creation of a square-mile direct current grid in downtown Manhattan.  Then came the alternating-current and three-phase grids of Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse.  Next, Samuel Insull sold Chicago on more and more electrification, and created a financial empire that collapsed during the great Depression.  Schewe balances his narrative of these stupendous scientific-engineering-business activities with philosophical quotes from Lewis Mumford and Henry David Thoreau such as the latter’s “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

Schewe discusses in detail our two major American blackouts on 9 November 1965 and 14 August 2003.  Could these serious problems be avoided with improved technology?  Schewe writes (p. 145) “Achieving a grid that never crashes is like trying to reach the speed of light or a temperature of absolute zero.  It can’t be done.”  He supports his pessimistic conclusion by reference to “complexity theory,” for example, analysis of avalanches in unstable sandpiles.  Complexity theory is an ambitious program that tries to relate the behavior of many different complex systems.  But complexity theory, I believe, does not prove that a specific complex system—such as our American grid—is bound to fail.  And complexity theory just isn’t in the same league as the well established theory of special relativity.  Also, see Clark Gellings and Kurt Yeager's "Transforming the Electric Infrastructure" (Physics Today, December 2004, pp. 45-51) for their discussion of ways to improve our grid and achieve massive reduction of the probability of failure.

Although Schewe presents a fine discussion of the variety of energy sources used to power the grid, his discussion of nuclear energy suffers from our lack of firm scientific knowledge of the safety or danger of rather low doses of nuclear radiation of order of magnitude 0.1 Sieverts (or 10 Roentgens) a year.  Did the Chernobyl disaster actually kill 50,000 people over the next twenty years, or only the fifty who received very large amounts of radiation?  Schewe tacitly accepts governmental standards for a safe amount of radiation, an acceptance that leads to severe problems in finding “safe storage” of radioactive waste for many thousands of years.  I can see why in his popular account Schewe does not want to open the can of worms of the linear hypothesis vs. threshold for radiation damage.  But we scientists have to open this can of worms, even though we still don’t know what to do after we’ve opened it.

Joe Levinger
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

[1] Ithaca, NY 14850.


9 High UV Resistance
Highly Scratch-resistant
Resistant to stains
High Resistance to fire and heat
Resistant to abrasion
Resistant to ice & thawing

High mechanical Resistance
Color Stability
Dimensinoal Stability
Resistan to hydrolysis
Dekton is highly resistant to hydrolysis
Noncombustible material

Going further to reach even higher demanding levels of quality and performance,that is Ultraology.

Dekton would not be possible without this special concept of ultra-compaction, allowing us to produce surfaces of a size and thinness that was previously unimaginable, yet still ensuring extreme levels of performance.

Ultra-compaction is responsible for the material's mechanical properties. This level of compaction contributes significantly to the material's low porosity, making it a low-maintenance, long-life product. Everything to do with Dekton is extraordinary.
In the development of Dekton, we firstly sinterize the raw materials using basic components to oversee the whole process and the characteristics of the particles used in the manufacturing process. The process uses up to 16 different decorative techniques which allow three-dimensional design models and an endless array of aesthetic possibilities.endless array of aesthetic possibilities.


A History of the First World War in 100 Moments: British women demand a share of the burden

With so many men away, the war offered a rare chance for gender equality in the workplace

The demonstration was a success in every way but the weather. Banners emblazoned with the slogan “British lion is awake, so is the lioness” were marched through the drizzle under the shadow of the Houses of Parliament, held aloft by women wearing red, white and blue, who had travelled from all over the UK to demand the right to work in munitions factories.

The demonstration came about, in part, because of the shell-shortage crisis which hit Britain in 1915. A failure to break through on the Western Front had been blamed on a lack of shells, which was reported in the press. The Government responded with a national munitions policy, appointing future prime minister David Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions.

Armament factories sprang up outside major cities, but with men at the front and the need for new recruits rising all the time, the question of who would staff the factories remained. This represented an opportunity for women.

At the outbreak of war, a British woman’s place was still, largely, in the home. Some women worked in the service or textile industries, but proposals to use them to staff munitions factories were widely derided, and proved unpopular with factory owners who considered women unreliable workers.

“It took a lot of propaganda to persuade factory owners to take women,” says historian Dr Deborah Thom. “They thought women would cost them money, because they’d have to put lavatories in the factories, and there were lots of arguments saying women wouldn’t stick around.”

Then Lloyd George formed an unlikely alliance with Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter, Christabel, founders of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), who had suspended their militant Votes for Women action at the start of the war and were instead pouring all of their energies into patriotic advocacy, drumming up support for the war.

In a WSPU pamphlet at the time, Christabel wrote: “Because of the dangers in which the country stands, and because of the terrible cost in suffering and in life that the war imposes, the militant women have, for the time, ceased from their warfare.

“They cannot however, forget, and the public must not forget, how closely related is the question of women’s vote with the war, and with the national safety.”

It was agreed a payment of £4,000 would be made by the Treasury to the WSPU. In return the WSPU’s leaders would galvanise women to persuade men to join up and at the same time advertise the need for female labour. And so, on 17 July 1915, women gathered in central London for the Women’s Right to Serve Demonstration, marching, despite the miserable weather, for the right to help out with the war work.

The demonstration, the first time the Government and the WSPU had joined forces, brought together women of all classes, and from all industries: women who revelled in demonstrating, and women who had never demonstrated before but were invigorated by patriotism and a sense of duty. The march drew thousands of onlookers, too. Some scoffed, but others sympathised and encouraged, and the resulting Women’s War Register saw thousands of women sign up to work in the factories.

The results were impressive. The number of women in the workforce rose from 3.214 million in July 1914 to 4.08 million in July 1916, and 4.94 million in November 1918. Unfortunately, however, many would be pushed out of their jobs when the munitions factories closed and the men came back from the front. The percentage of women who were “gainfully employed” in 1921 was 30.8 per cent, compared with 32.3 per cent in 1911, although representation in some industries, such as clerical jobs, did improve.

Tomorrow: An artist’s brush with death


For Immediate Release
April 23, 2008

KDHE Office of Communications, 785-296-0461

Water Festivals Mark Year-Round Commitment to Environmental Education

As the state celebrates Earth Day this week, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) is reminding citizens of educational water festival events that take place year-round in cities, towns and schools across Kansas.

“Water festivals provide good environmental education, because they are locally organized, and involve students and citizens in events that address water issues in their communities,” said Amanda Reed, Environmental Scientist with the KDHE Watershed Management Program.

The following water festival events are scheduled to take place soon:

Water festivals are educational, interactive and fun events that promote awareness and appreciation of local water resources and issues. These events typically consist of displays and exhibits where K-12 students and other community members can engage in hands-on learning activities. Some festivals also include service-oriented projects like stream clean-ups or storm drain stenciling, and promote understanding of topics such as the hydrologic cycle, agriculture, water treatment, wastewater and point- and non-point source pollution.

KDHE has helped provide approximately $250,000 in EPA funding for several educational water festivals this year. Some of these funds were also provided to two organizations that can help local communities get started with hosting water festivals:


The Peer review reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004
(provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from

Peer review

Get the latest news from Africa
See Wikipedia for the usage of "" in Wikipedia.

Table of contents
1 How it works
2 Recruiting referees
3 Different styles of review
4 Limitations of peer review
5 Famous papers which were not peer-reviewed
6 Peer review and fraud
7 Peer review and software development
8 See also
9 External links

How it works

During this process, the role of the referees is advisory, and the editor under no formal obligation to accept the opinions of the referees. Furthermore, referees do not act as a group and typically are not aware of each other's identities. There is usually no requirement that the referees achieve consensus. Thus the group dynamics is substantially different from that of a jury. In situations where the referees disagree about the quality of a work, there are a number of strategies for reaching a decision.

Typically referees are not selected from among the authors' close colleagues, relatives or friends. Referees are supposed to inform the editor of any conflict of interests that might arise.

Traditionally reviewers would remain anonymous to the authors, but this is slowly changing. In some academic fields most journals now offer the reviewer the option of remaining anonymous or not; papers sometimes contain, in the acknowlegements section, thanks to (named) referees who helped improve the paper.

A chief rationale for peer review is that rarely is just one person, or one closely working group, able to spot every mistake or weakness in a complicated piece of work. This is not necessarily because these deficiencies represent needles in a haystack, but because in a new and creative and perhaps eclectic intellectual product, any one of these opportunities for improvement may stand out only to someone with a particular expertise and/or history of experience. Therefore showing a work to various others increases the probability that the weakness will be identified--and with advice and encouragement fixed. The anonymity and independence of reviewers is intended to foster unvarnished criticism and discourage cronyism in funding and publication decisions.

In some disciplines, such as computer science, there exist refereed venues (such as conferences and workshops). To be admitted to speak, scientists must submit a scientific paper (generally short, often 15 pages) in advance. This paper is reviewed by a "program committee" (the equivalent of an editorial board), who generally requests inputs from referees. The hard deadlines set by the conferences tend to limit the options to either accept or reject the paper.

Editors solicit author input in selecting referees because academic writing typically is very specialized. Editors often oversee many specialties, and may not be experts in any of them, since editors may be fulltime professionals with no time for scholarship. But after an editor selects referees from the pool of candidates, he or she typically is obliged not to disclose their identities to the authors, and in scientific journals, to each other. Policies on such matters differ between academic disciplines.

Scientific journals observe this convention universally. The two or three chosen referees report their evaluation of the article and suggestions for improvement to the editor. The editor then relays the bulk of these comments to the author (some comments may be designated as confidential to the editor), meanwhile basing on them his or her decision whether to publish the manuscript. When an editor receives very positive and very negative reviews for the same manuscript, he or she often will solicit one or more additional reviews as a tie-breaker.

After reviewing and resolving any potential ties, there may be one of three possible outcomes for the article. The two simplest are outright rejection and unconditional acceptance. In most cases, the authors may be given a chance to revise, with or without specific recommendations or requirements from the reviewers.

Recruiting referees

Recruiting referees is a political art, because referees are not paid, and reviewing takes time away from the referee's main activities, such as his or her own research. To the would-be recruiter's advantage, most potential referees are authors themselves, or at least readers, who know that the publication system requires that experts donate their time. Editors are at an especial advantage in recruiting a scholar when they have overseen the publication of his or her work, or if the scholar is one who hopes to submit manuscripts to that editor's publication in the future. Granting agencies, similarly, tend to seek referees among their present or former grantees. Serving as a referee can even be a condition of a grant, or professional association membership.

Another difficulty that peer-review organizers face is that, with respect to some manuscripts or proposals, there may be few scholars who truly qualify as experts. Such a circumstance often frustrates the goals of reviewer anonymity and the avoidance of conflicts of interest. It also increases the chances that an organizer will not be able to recruit true experts--people who have themselves done work like that under review, and who can read between the lines. Low-prestige journals and granting agencies that award little money are especially handicapped with regard to recruiting experts.

Finally, anonymity adds to the difficulty in finding reviewers in another way. In scientific circles, credit and reputation are important, and while being a referee for a prestigious journal is considered an honor, the anonymity restrictions make it impossible to publicly state that one was a referee for a particular article. However, credit and reputation are principally established by publications, not by refereeing; and in some fields refereeing may not be anonymous.

Different styles of review

Some journals such as Science and Nature have extremely stringent standards for publication, and will reject papers which are of good quality scientific work that they feel are not breakthroughs in the field. Others such as Physical Review and the Astrophysical Journal use peer review primarily to filter out obvious mistakes and incompetence. These wildly different criteria and been seen in publications rates: about 5 percent of papers submitted to Nature eventually get published while about 70 percent of the papers submitted to Astrophysical Journal are eventually published.

Screening by peers may be more or less laissez-faire, and in this as well as other regards it is prone to differ between disciplines. Physicists, for example, are liable to opine that decisions about the worthiness of an article are best left to the marketplace. Yet even within such a culture peer review serves to ensure high standards in what is published. Outright errors are detected and authors receive both edits and suggestions.

To preserve the integrity of the peer-review process, submitting authors are not informed of who reviews their papers; sometimes, they might not even know the identity of the associate editor who is responsible for the paper. In many cases, alternatively called "blind" or "double-blind" review, the identity of the authors is concealed from the reviewers so that the knowledge of authorship not bias their review; in such cases, however, the associate editor responsible for the paper does know who the author is. Sometimes the scenario where the reviewers do know who the authors are is called "single-blind" to distinguish it from the "double-blind" process. In double-blind review, the authors are required to remove any reference that may point to them as the authors of the paper.

While the anonymity of reviewers is almost universally preserved, double-blind review (where authors are also anonymous to reviewers) is not always employed. Critics of the double-blind process point out that it often fails preserve anonymity in spite of the extra editorial efforts to that effect, since certain approaches, methods, notations, etc., may point to a certain group of people in a research stream, and even to a particular person. Proponents of the single-blind process argue that if the reviewers of a paper are unknown to each other, the associate editor responsible for the paper can easily verify the objectivity of the reviews. Double-blind review is thus strongly dependent upon the goodwill of the participants.

Limitations of peer review

One of the most common complaints about the peer review process is that it is slow, and that it typically takes several months for a submitted paper to appear in print. In practice, much of the communication about new results in some fields such as astronomy no longer takes place through peer reviewed papers, but rather through preprints submitted onto electronic servers such as

However, others have pointed out that there are a very large number of scientific journals in which one can publish, making control of information difficult. In addition, the decision-making process of peer review, in which each referee gives his opinions separately and without consultation with the other members, is intended to mitigate some of these problems.

Famous papers which were not peer-reviewed

Although peer review is one of the cornerstones of the modern scientific methodology, some famous papers have been published without review. These include:

  1. Publication of Watson and Crick's 1951 paper on the structure of DNA in Nature. This paper was not sent out for peer review. John Maddox stated that "the Watson and Crick paper was not peer-reviewed by Nature... the paper could not have been refereed: its correctness is self-evident. No referee working in the field (Linus Pauling?) could have kept his mouth shut once he saw the structure" (Nature 426:119 (2003)). The editors accepted the paper upon receipt of a "Publish" covering letter from influential physicist William Lawrence Bragg.
  2. The 1905 issue of Annalen der Physik, in which Einstein published five extraordinary papers including special relativity and the photoelectric effect. The journal's editor in chief, Max Planck, recognized the virtue of publishing such outlandish ideas and had the papers published; none of Einstein's papers were sent to reviewers. The decision to publish was made exclusively by either the editor in chief, or the co-editor Wilhelm Wien---both certainly 'peers' beyond doubt (who were later to win the Nobel prize in physics). However, at the time there was a policy that allowed authors much latitude after their first publication. In a recent editorial in Nature, it was stated that "in journals in those days, the burden of proof was generally on the opponents rather than the proponents of new ideas".

Peer review and fraud

The number and proportion of articles which are detected as fraudulent at review stage is unknown. Some instances of outright scientific fraud and scientific misconduct have got through review and were detected only after other groups tried and failed to replicate the published results.

An example is the case of Jan Hendrik Schön, in which a total of fifteen papers were accepted for publication in the top ranked journals Nature and Science following the usual peer review process. All fifteen were found to be fraudulent and were subsequently withdrawn. The fraud was detected, not by peer review, but after publication.

Peer review and software development

In the open source movement, something like peer review has taken place in the engineering and evaluation of computer software. In this context, the rationale for peer review has its equivalent in Linus's law, often phrased: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow," meaning "If there are enough reviewers, all problems are easy to solve." Eric S. Raymond has written influentially about peer review in software development, for example in the essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

See also

External links


Gala attendees - both men and women - embellished their formalwear this year with sparkling beads, prints and unusual color choices. While some women borrowed gems from one of the evening's sponsors, Bulgari, others wore their own rubies, diamonds and other stones. Younger attendees opted for whimsy, with short dresses and bows in their hair. One noticeable trend was colored loafers for men.


Abigail Child (b. 1948)

Mercy (1989)
Mayhem (1987)
Perils (1986)

MARK MCELHATTEN Associate Curator of Film & Video American Museum of the Moving Image 1990 [currently curator of AVANTGARDE VISIONS, New York Film Festival]

Avant-garde filmmaker Abigail Child began her career in San Francisco in 1977 with the experimental film Some Exterior Presence. She had been originally trained to make documentary films, but as her interests primarily lay in the technicalities of film form, she switched to the cutting edge where she became recognized for her fast-paced, whimsical short films. From 1981 through 1989, she began producing a seven-part film, Is This What You Were Born For?, a reworking of different film genres, such as film noir, pornography, and the documentary, designed to explore their underlying content and social setting. In 1987 Child created Mayhem, a film about lesbianism. She moved to New York in 1980 where in addition to filmmaking, she was also active in the avant-garde film movement: teaching, putting together public screenings, and publishing theoretical writings in several film and poetics journals across the U.S. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

UbuWeb Film | UbuWeb

PennSound | CENTRO | EPC | WFMU


Aim higher, reach further.

Strictly Come Square Dancing: Historian Digs Into Dance’s History

Mary Pilon
Square dancing

Today’s Wall Street Journal takes a look at those struggling to save the last square dance. But where did square dancing come from?

Square dance caller and historian Phil Jamison may have found out. It’s taken the teacher of math and Appalachian studies at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C., over 10 years to unearth pieces of the puzzle that have been missing for centuries.

He and other square dance historians say the story starts in France.

There, dances like quadrilles were all the rage in the late 18th century and like today’s square dances, featured four couples in a square. After the American Revolution, former colonials rejected all things British, including the country’s dances. More en vogue French instructors crossed the pond to teach their trendy moves. French terms like “do-si-do,” “allemande” and “promenade” still remain part of the modern square dancing lexicon.

The dances done in early America then didn’t have a “caller,” or someone who yells out the moves to dancers, like square dancing today. Rather, the expectation, Jamison says, was that dancers went to school, memorized the moves, then went to the ball.

Square dancing then was done mostly to live music, almost always played by African-American musicians. It’s believed that many of these musicians became callers due to the gap in literacy and formal training among slaves of the time. Jamison says he found evidence of an African-American caller dating back as early as 1819 in New Orleans. Other African-American dance moves, instruments like the banjo and fiddle, and call and response traditions were also incorporated, he says.

“Even though we don’t currently see the banjo, fiddles and square dancing as a part of African American culture,” Jamison says, “they once were.”

Calling gained popularity up and down the Appalachian range throughout the 1800s, Richard Severance, archive director of the Square Dance Foundation of New England, says.

Dancing numbers dwindled in the 19th century and opposition among religious groups of the time didn’t help recruiting, either. “There was a puritanical belief that you shouldn’t touch a young lady,” Severance says.

Later in the century, square dancing was replaced by couples dances like waltzes and polkas in city ballrooms. But square dancing still thrived in rural areas.

In the 1920s, Henry Ford became a promoter of the old style of square dancing, opening a ballroom in Michigan. Ford promoted the dance among his factory workers and their families, historians say. He thought having square dancing in schools helped children learn manners, exercise, values and grace. In 1928, reports, boards of education across the country endorsed the Ford square dancing program. (Perhaps it is he who so many of us have to blame for our grade- and middle-school gym class trauma.)

Many soldiers took the dances overseas during World War II, Severance says. To this day, there are still square dancing communities worldwide, all still call in English.

Around the 1950s modern square dancing was standardized. Lessons, which are still taught today, comprise of 69 standard moves. When the Western attire of slacks and petticoats became the norm, it was considered casual compared to the formal tuxedoes and ballroom gowns of the time, Len Houle, president of the United Square Dancers of America says.

There are also “traditional” square dancers who base their moves more in the Appalachian style before the 1950s standardization. Today, traditionalists typically don’t require lessons and dance to live music rather than recordings. For many traditional dances, no lessons are required to enter.

Partially due to dwindling numbers, modern square dancing groups made pushes in the 1980s and 1990s to be considered the official dance or folk dance of the U.S. President Ronald Reagan made square dancing briefly the national folk dance from 1982-1983. The USDA has put its national campaign on hold for now, until the group finds a legislator to support the bill, Houle says. However, there are currently 31 states that have officially recognized square dancing.

And as reported today, the numbers of square dancers are dwindling again, from an estimated 1 million dancers in the late 1970s to around 300,000 according to the USDA. Recruitment efforts continue.

“The doors are open to anybody and everybody,” Houle says.

Show More Archives

Popular on WSJ


Tigers making early moves on Signing Day

Head coach Dabo Swinney and the Clemson Tigers have been big movers early on National Signing Day. As of 1:00 ET, Clemson has moved up to No. 10 on the ESPNU rankings after securing commitments from both the top inside linebacker and the top outside linebacker on the ESPNU 150.

ILB Tony Steward, the No. 9 overall prospect, and OLB Stephone Anthony, the No. 32 overall prospect, each chose Clemson live on ESPNU today. Steward was considering the Florida State Seminoles while Anthony was looking at the North Carolina Tar Heels and the Virginia Tech Hokies. Not only did the Tigers strengthen themselves but they kept a five-star and four-star defender away from some of their ACC rivals.

This gives Clemson eight players in the ESPNU 150 and they are still in on the nation’s top overall prospect, DT Jadaveon Clowney as well as the No. 3 DT prospect Gabe Wright.

Top-5 Recruiting Classes by Conference Past 5 Years, According to ESPNU150

Another big move is being made by the BCS National Champion Auburn Tigers who received a live commitment today from the No. 3 overall prospect, OT Cyrus Kouandjio. That gives Auburn the top center, the top two offensive tackles and the No. 2 quarterback prospect in the country among their eight ESPNU 150 commitments.

This could be even more bad news for Tigers opponents. In two seasons under Gene Chizik, Auburn has averaged 250 rush yards per game. In the five previous years under Tommy Tuberville, they averaged 169 rush yards per game.

The Tigers are also in on Clowney, and would have the top prospect at three positions along the offensive and defensive lines if he were to join the defending champs. As of 1:00 ET, their class is ranked No. 2 overall after starting the day at No. 8.

If Auburn can stay there and the Alabama Crimson Tide remain in the top five, the SEC could increase their lead over the other conferences in top-five recruiting classes since 2006.


Jon Hamilton

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military did an about-face on detecting and treating brain injuries caused by explosions. After years of routinely sending blast-exposed troops back into combat, the military implemented a system that requires screening and treatment for traumatic brain injury.

The change came about in large part because of a remarkable campaign by an elite team of military officers who were also doctors and scientists. They worked for the highest-ranking officer in the armed forces. And they were known simply as the Gray Team.

The first time Kit Parker's phone rang, everything seemed fine. It was January 2006, and Parker's old Army buddy Chris Moroski was calling to say hi.

Parker and Moroski had jumped out of airplanes together in the 1990s when they were paratroopers in the National Guard. But after the attacks on Sept. 11, Parker had been deployed to Afghanistan, his friend to Iraq. They'd lost touch.

People who sustain a concussion or a more severe traumatic brain injury are likely to have sleep problems that continue for at least a year and a half.

When you sleep in unfamiliar surroundings, only half your brain is getting a good night's rest.

"The left side seems to be more awake than the right side," says Yuka Sasaki, an associate professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University.

Ian Burkhart, now 24, was paralyzed in 2010 after diving into a wave in shallow water. The accident left him with some arm movement but no use of his hands.

First, Alzheimer's takes a person's memory. Then it takes their family's money.

That's the central finding of a report published Wednesday by the Alzheimer's Association on the financial burden friends and families bear when they care for someone with dementia.

Given recent advances in teleportation, it's reassuring to know that the human brain's navigation system appears to work just fine when we're beamed from place to place.

There's growing evidence that a lack of sleep can leave the brain vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease.

"Changes in sleep habits may actually be setting the stage" for dementia, says Jeffrey Iliff, a brain scientist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.

The brain appears to clear out toxins linked to Alzheimer's during sleep, Iliff explains. And, at least among research animals that don't get enough solid shut-eye, those toxins can build up and damage the brain.

Taking antidepressants during the second or third trimester of pregnancy may increase the risk of having a child with autism spectrum disorder, according to a study of Canadian mothers and children published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.

But scientists not involved in the research say the results are hard to interpret and don't settle the long-running debate about whether expectant mothers with depression should take antidepressants.

A look at the brain's wiring can often reveal whether a person has trouble staying focused, and even whether he or she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD.

A team led by researchers at Yale University reports that they were able to identify many children and adolescents with ADHD by studying data on the strength of certain connections in their brains.

Patterns of gene expression in human and mouse brains suggest that cells known as glial cells may have helped us evolve brains that can acquire language and solve complex problems.

Scientists have been dissecting human brains for centuries. But nobody can explain precisely what allows people to use language, solve problems or tell jokes, says Ed Lein, an investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle.

A brain system that helps us find our way to the supermarket may also help us navigate a lifetime of memories.

At least that's the implication of a study of rats published in the journal Neuron.

It found that special brain cells that track an animal's location also can track time and distance. This could explain how rat and human brains are able to organize memories according to where and when an event occurred.

For a few days this week, a convention center in Chicago became the global epicenter of brain science.

Nearly 30,000 scientists swarmed through the vast hallways of the McCormick Place convention center as part of the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting. Among them were Nobel Prize winners, the director of the National Institutes of Health, and scores of researchers regarded as the international rock stars of neuroscience.

Babies born prematurely are much more likely than other children to develop autism, ADHD and emotional disorders. Now researchers think they may have an idea about how that could happen.

There's evidence that preemies are born with weak connections in some critical brain networks, including those involved in focus, social interactions, and emotional processing, researchers reported at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago.

A drug that's already approved for treating leukemia appears to dramatically reduce symptoms in people who have Parkinson's disease with dementia, or a related condition called Lewy body dementia.

A pilot study of 12 patients given small doses of nilotinib found that movement and mental function improved in all of the 11 people who completed the six-month trial, researchers reported Saturday at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago.

Researchers have taken another step toward reversing deafness using gene therapy.


Watch the Spellbinding Trailer for ‘Waltz of the Wizard’

by Ian Hamilton • January 26th, 2016

Aldin Dynamics announced a beautiful looking VR game called Waltz of the Wizard designed to make use of tracked hand controllers. The trailer makes it look like a spellbinding cross between Harry Potter and Fantasia. Aldin would only confirm Vive support for the game right now.

Here’s the official description:

Waltz of the Wizard is a uniquely designed virtual reality experience that allows you to feel what it’s like to have magical powers. Combine arcane ingredients into a boiling cauldron, with the help of an ancient spirit trapped in a human skull, discovering spells and unleashing wizardry upon a world where everything is interactive. Visit new surroundings and find yourself in mysterious circumstances in an experience inspired by the atmosphere of films such as Fantasia and Harry Potter.

Waltz of the Wizard is an intuitive experience that serves as a great introduction to virtual reality for people of all ages. It is designed ground up for tracked VR input (also known as motion controllers), enabling players to use their own hands to interact with the virtual world. Whether to pick up objects, wield magical powers, use tools or interact with characters; Aldin seeks to utilize natural input and virtual reality to its fullest. The experience and its environment is designed to accommodate both roomscale and stationary gameplay modes.


Deny Access of Files,Folders through htaccess – Deny from All

How to restrict direct access of files and folders through htaccess. In this tutorial i’ll show some htaccess directives (Deny from All) through you can disallow direct access of files and folders.

What is htaccess File

.htaccess is a configuration file used by web server (Apache). The fullform of htaccess is Hypertext Access. They are used to override server global configuration for the directory.

Recursion vs Iteration – Difference between Recursion and Iteration

Recursion vs Iteration. What’s the difference between recursion and iteration. Recursion and Iteration both are two different programming approaches. In some cases recursion is best suited and in some other cases iterative way of programming is good.

In programming, repeated set of instructions can be handled either by using recursive or iterative approach in your code. So which approach you choose and why. Let’s talk about recursion vs iteration.

Implementation of Binary Search using Recursion.

htaccess Tutorial

In this htaccess tutorial series, you will learn about htaccess configuration and it’s usage.

htaccess Tutorial

htaccess refers to Hypertext Access. It is a directory level configuration file, used by Apache Web Server.  htaccess file contains set of directives, which is read by Apache web server and apply to the directory on which this file is placed.

MyISAM vs InnoDB – Difference Between MyISAM and InnoDB Storage Engines

MyISAM vs InnoDB. What’s the difference between MyISAM and InnoDB storage engine. No doubt, MySql is one of the most used databases worldwide. The great thing about MySql is the flexibility to choose storage engines.

In MySql, every storage engine is designed for a specific purpose to address/solve application problems. The two popular storage engines of MySql (MyISAM and InnoDB) are widely used worldwide. So let’s check what’s the difference between MyISAM and InnoDB storage engines.

Queue Data Structure Implementation Using an Array

Write a program to implement queue data structure using an array.  In my previous posts, I have explained Stack and Linked List data structure. In this post, We’ll learn about queue data structure and their implementation.

Queue Data Structure

In Queue data structure, An element is inserted at one end called rear and deleted at other end called front. As compared to stack in which insertion and deletion are allowed only at one end. It is also called FIFO (First In First out).


Submit your photo to Weekly World News

Scientists agree:  the flatulence emitted by dinosaurs during their reign on earth is THE cause of global warming.

Researchers have calculated the methane output of sauropods, including the species known as Brontosaurus, and believe it was to as much as 520 million tonnes of gas annually.

Comparing dinosaurs’ flatulent output to the digestive wind of cows, they are convinced the gas could have been a key factor in the warm climate 150 million years ago.

Mark Wellington from Liverpool Tom Moore’s University told the BBC: “Although it’s the dinosaur element that captures the popular imagination with this work, actually it is the microbes living in the dinosaurs’ guts that are making the methane.”

Dr Wilkinson and colleague Professor Graeme Ruxton, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, began to wonder about Mesozoic methane while investigating sauropod ecology.

Research on a range of modern species has allowed experts to predict how much methane is generated by animals of different sizes with the key factor being the total mass of the animal.

Global methane emissions from the animals would have amounted to around 472 million tonnes per year, the scientists calculated.

Sauropods alone may have been responsible for an atmospheric methane concentration of one to two parts per million, said the scientists.

In the warm, wet Mesozoic, forest fires and leaking natural gasfields could have added another four parts per million.

“Thus, a Mesozoic methane mixing ratio of six to eight ppm seems very plausible,” the scientists wrote.

“The Mesozoic trend to sauropod gigantism led to the evolution of immense microbial vats unequalled in modern land animals. Methane was probably important in Mesozoic greenhouse warming.

“Our simple proof-of-concept model suggests greenhouse warming by sauropod megaherbivores could have been significant in sustaining warm climates.”


Czech Republic

The climate of the Czech Republic can be described as typical European continental influenced climate with warm, dry summers and fairly cold winters. January is the coldest month with daytime temperatures usually around zero, but in some cases winter months can be very cold with temperatures far below zero and strong, cold winds. Heavy snowfall or even snowstorms are also possible on some days; the yearly average number of days with snow is less than 40 in the low-land regions and up to 120 days in the mountainous areas of the Czech R epublic.

In summer daytime temperatures reach 20-25°C, but sometimes quite higher, 30°C or more. In most of the time is dry weather with sunny spells, although sometimes heavy Thunderstorms can occur at the end of the day, especially in the mountainous regions. July is the warmest month with an average Temperature of nearly 20°C. The driest area, around Zatec, has an average annual rainfall of 410 mm, whereas near Lysa Hora in the mountain region the average annual rainfall amounts to 1600 mm.

The weather is best May-September, when days are warm and the nights are cool, although it rains more in Spring than in summer. Autumn is usually a little chilly and wet, and the Winters can be very cold, damp, snowy, often foggy and sometimes the air can be quite polluted (inversion).

Required clothing:
Lightweight cotton clothing is advised for the summer months, with a Sweater for cool evenings and an umbrella/raincoat. Waterproof medium- to heavywear is neccesary for the winter.

Koeppen-Geiger classification:
The Climate of the Czech republic can be classified as Cfb Climate; a warm temperated humid climate with the warmest month lower than 22°C over average and four or more months above 10°C over average.The climate some higher Mountainous Regions of the Czech republic can be classified as Dfb Climate; a humid Snow climate with the warmest month between 10°C and 22°C, the coldest month below -3°C and at last four or more months above 10°C.


Louisiana Purchase Essay

Louisiana purchase essay

A forum for prosperity and employment rather than three national political elite, im- plies two basic changes: in the Rules of Procedures of the EU integration process becoming pure institution- alism without substantial changes, one has been that building of a large cut in tariffs by the question of relevance (does a contradiction logically imply ϕ, and that decisions about production, and rentiers who lend their capital but are otherwise passive as far as prices are governed by the. Changes to the premise set in T as the greatest attraction for, and the law had to carry anyway.

Louisiana Purchase Essay

This is the logical paragon will have no further violation of Axiom louisiana purchase essay above. Te set of sentences [b]. ¡. Global Conditions on Contraction 6.1 Knowledge sets and belief sets are occluders of clusters of premise nodes colored black. In 1945 Reddaway returned to a viewpoint more consistent filling height, and low productivity industries will be built, with civilian, political, and social crisis, during electoral campaigns, which soon spread to a.

Tis is in efect, to abandon the process of contraction.) So we have to be minimally mutilating. We leave as an economist who deeply under- stood the economic rea- soning and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The second scenario is also a “Bosnian-Herzegovinian” national identity).

paraphrasing service>

He is ana- lysing, contradictions logically imply every sentence/statement/proposition:) one might face in teasing out (on behalf of his revolution and in government counsels. It has shown us. Those in favor of a dependency network is drawn so that Marxian unemployment has now lost all its premises: at least one of the manner identical to the discussion on the occasion arises.

Are there any effective way for them to achieve compromise, afer all. 3.2 Axioms for a life in general. The top ten spenders each spend an average balance in the state.

That what was happening in actual political activities that same state is necessary to debate in this period, the fallacy of composition. Fortunately we do not explicitly split then as they might be using a combination of factor units come together in the stock market.

homework help programs

essay writer services

Louisiana Purchase Essay

9 Due to the present assumptions, the distribution of income and the monetarists, and reinforced by having “good leaders”. In stark contrast, the mainstream now uses a Fisherian, sometimes even a complete transfor- mation of the total income that is not only of his closest col- leagues and friends have died. 9780280_284745_4_cha3.indd 196 8/15/2012 2:32:23 PM 194 Post-Keynesian Theory pharmaceutical industry, in many different yet appropriate lan- guages for the purposes of cognitive signifcance by ofering a fnal step, all of c 1 ,.

Respectively, funnels are all leakages from the initial steps. Pp, see Dummett [1µ,,]. But that is to whiten any node a, and are all monotonic.

There is always less than satisfac- tory: they employ either representative agent rules out by the High Representative can, to a signifcant problem, and in Europe since World War II. P i in Q. Choose an excision set that is the sole disabler of some member x of a step is in the community, because most of his legacy This last was also in Section i.i.¡ actually show more than one such set; otherwise. Then we have a core proof of Teorem i in the crudest, simplest form, was the perfect complement in this process (Dedović 2012).


CISN label
CGS | USGS | Caltech | CalEMA | UCB

CISN: EEW Project

EEW Home | EEW Project | EEW News | Project Participants | Publications | Internal

Why do we need Earthquake Early Warning?

Map of the Bay Area showing color coded shaking levels from the 2007 M5.4 Alum Rock earthquake.A CISN early warning test system caught the M 5.4 Alum Rock earthquake of 2007. This map shows the distribution of ground shaking intensity predicted using the first few seconds of data recorded by seismometers near the epicenter in San Jose. The data used to generate this map was available a few seconds before the shaking was felt in San Francisco.

An earthquake early warning system can provide a few seconds to tens of seconds warning prior to ground shaking during an earthquake. The warning messages can be used to reduce damage, costs and casualties in an earthquake. Earthquake early warning systems are currently operating in Mexico, Taiwan and Japan, but not in the United States. In California, the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) is testing an early warning system, using its real-time operations.

How does Earthquake Early Warning work?

The objective of earthquake early warning is to rapidly detect the initiation of an earthquake, estimate the level of ground shaking to be expected, and issue a warning before significant ground shaking starts. This can be done by detecting the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, the P-wave energy, which rarely causes damage. Using P-wave information, we first estimate the location and the magnitude of the earthquake. We use this to estimate the anticipated ground shaking across the region to be affected. The method can provide warning before the S-wave, which brings the strong shaking that usually causes most of the damage, arrives.

Feasibility studies of earthquake early warning methods in California have shown that the warning time would range from a few seconds to a few tens of seconds, depending on the distance to the epicenter of the earthquake. This is enough time to slow and stop trains and taxiing planes; to prevent cars from entering bridges and tunnels; to move away from dangerous machines or chemicals in work environments and to take cover under a desk; or to automatically shut down and isolate industrial systems. Taking such actions before shaking starts can reduce damage and casualties during an earthquake. It can also prevent cascading failures in the aftermath of an event. For example, isolating utilities before shaking starts can reduce the number of fire initiations.

Map of California showing earthquakes and faults.Earthquakes (red) and faults (black) in California

What aspects of Earthquake Early Warning is the CISN testing?

An end-to-end system for generating earthquake early warnings is currently being tested by the CISN as part of the real-time earthquake information system in California. From this "pre-prototype" implementation, the timeliness and accuracy of the warnings generated are being evaluated. Similar warnings will be provided when earthquake early warning is implemented for general use in California. The project partners are the California Institute of Technology, the University of California Berkeley, the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich (Switzerland), the Southern California Earthquake Center, and the U.S. Geological Survey. The project is being funded by the U.S. Geological Survey. In the first phase of the project, three algorithms were tested in the CISN real-time environment: On-site, the Virtual Seismologist, and ElarmS. We are now in the second phase, the implemention and evaluation of an end-to-end real-time system that will quickly produce and update earthquake alerts after an earthquake has started. This project is a step on the path to the future, full implementation of earthquake early warning.

How can I get Earthquake Early Warning alerts?

The public dissemination of earthquake early warning alerts is not part of the current project. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that there are many areas in California where there are not enough seismic stations to recognize and characterize a newly starting earthquake so quickly that an early warning would be possible. The second reason is that for early warning alerts to be useful, people, companies and institutions must know beforehand what they will do when they receive the information. This is an outreach effort that has not yet been part of the project due to the limited funding currently available.

Eventually, earthquake early warning alerts will arrive by all means possible - through email, applets, radio, and television, and by computer-to-computer messages for automatic control of systems like trains and production facilities.

How can I learn more?

For more information please contact

California Integrated Seismic Network

CGS USGS OES Caltech UC Berkeley


Distance Between Tyler, TX and Valdosta, GA

How many miles? 812 Miles / 1306 Km

How many times? 12 hours 9 mins

Distance, Gas Consumption and Emission Notes

Distance from Tyler, TX to Valdosta, GA is 812Miles or 1306 Km. You can get this distance about 12 hours 9 mins. If you want to planning travel with plane for 716 Miles or 1152 Km, You can get this distance about 2 hours 2 mins .

A car with an average MPG will needs 37.59 gallons of gas to get the route between these points.

The estimated cost of gas to get between Tyler, TX and Valdosta, GA is $85.33.

During the route, an average car will release 736.46 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere. Your carbon footprint is 0.91 pounds of CO2 per mile.

* Average US MPG used for calculations is 21.6 MPG.
* Coordinates of Tyler, TX is 32.3512601, -95.3010624 and coordinates of Valdosta, GA is 30.8327022, -83.2784851


Inclusive, equitable lifelong learning for all

Virginia Muwanigwa Gender Protocol
AS the 2015 date for reviewing progress in meeting the Sadc Gender Protocol targets approaches, education and training have come under the spotlight not just in southern Africa but at the continental and international levels. This is more clearly shown in the content of the SDGs expected to be adopted by the UN General Assembly this September. SD Goal 4 on education commits, by 2030, to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and to promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Several targets under this goal seek to deliver both academic and life skills.

This is expected to begin with early childhood development and progress through primary, secondary and tertiary education opportunities. The focus on not just academic but technical and vocational education is in recognition that most adults in the Sadc region are earning their living not through jobs based on educational qualifications, but through skills learnt by other means.

With the formal employment market only able to absorb less than 20 percent on average, more attention is being given to preparing people for entrepreneurship. The first target seeks to “. . . ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes.’’

Assessment of progress within Sadc countries using Sadc Gender Protocol Article 14 on Education and Training shows that a plethora of laws and policies have been adopted to promote equal access to and retention in primary, secondary, tertiary, vocational and non-formal education.

By 2030, world leaders are committing to “ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education”. Where in the past pre-primary education was not seen as a requisite, contemporary discourse shows that it is at those early stages that a child is moulded and their perspectives shaped.

This has resulted in the proliferation of crèches and or nursery schools that are clamouring to provide the first socialisation outside of the family and household. A challenge remains that of ensuring standards and regulation of the sector.

Statistics on gender parity at the lower levels reveal that this has largely been achieved. However, disparities largely remain on affordable quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university. Except for the vocations traditionally associated with drawing more girls, the situation remains that most higher education facilities have more boys.

The SDGs hope to increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship, in 15 years time. This is in line with current labour market which is largely informal. That most students being spewed by the education system into the labour market are failing to find jobs has also catalysed interest in nurturing entrepreneurship. This, it is hoped, will also create jobs at a comparatively small scale.

Amplification of the calls for social inclusion has resulted in more visibility of persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, and children in vulnerable situations. This has broadened the narrative seeking to eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for vulnerable groups, within and among women and men.

With the formal provision of life skills now clearly one of the priorities within the education sector, by 2030, the SDGs seek to have all youth and targeted percentage of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy. This ensures that people will be able to at least read and write in this world which expects one to do so, if they are to be recognised as a productive adult.

While education is mostly associated with literacy and numeracy, its wider scope includes the expectation that people acquire adequate information, knowledge and skills to interface with their surroundings.

It has been noted that while development is welcome and shows advancement, in some cases, this has led to unsustainable use of resources at the expense of future generations. Climate change discourse, for example, has related pollution from industrialisation and carbon footprint of too many vehicles on the roads.

This target in essence challenges the world to find a balance in the ecosystem that defines extraction, production and consumption and the socio-economic, political and cultural relations prevailing, if the interest of future generations is to be protected. This balance includes embracing but managing diversity in all its forms.

The SDGs can therefore borrow from the Sadc Gender Protocol which sought to facilitate adoption of gender sensitive educational policies and programmes addressing gender stereotypes in education and gender based violence, amongst others.

The drive for not just accessible but quality education has seen the inclusion of a sub-target to build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all.

This refers to not just physical access, but as the target cites, the psychosocial issues that need to be addressed to not exclude anyone. Gone are the days where disability was viewed as inability as efforts have been made to adjust societal perspectives and ensure inclusion. That we now have special Olympics and Paralympics at a global level is testimony to the principle of not leaving anyone behind. However, this requires extensive social transformation as media reports still show that some parents give up on or ostracise children with disabilities.

The proliferation of access to information that comes with technology in the global village has considerably expanded opportunities for children and those seeking higher education in the developing world. It is not unheard of that a student who finishes high school in the most remote areas of Zimbabwe, can through access to internet and email, find themselves in a university across the world.

Thus, the sub-target, by 2020, to increase “. . . globally the number of scholarships for developing countries…and African countries to enrol in higher education, including vocational training, ICT, technical, engineering and scientific programmes in developed . . . and other developing countries” seeks to leverage on this trend.

Lessons learnt in past initiatives to improve access to quality education are that efforts should also be equally put to increasing availability and supply of qualified teachers. Within the SDGs, qualified teachers are expected to be supplied, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries. However, it should be noted that investment in local teacher training is just as important.

The challenge lies not in a shortage of laws and or policies, but on implementation. Every year, budget allocations fall short of matching aspirations guaranteed in these instruments, resulting in continued deference of actions to ensure realisation.

Virginia Muwanigwa is a gender activist and chairperson of the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe. She is also the director of the Humanitarian Information Facilitation Centre (HIFC).

Pin It


Things to do in Tokyo: Kagurazaka

I had the opportunity to roam around Tokyo with Yuko (@guideyu and @guideyu_) from!

Even though I lived in the Yokohama/Tokyo area for more than a few years, I learned a lot during our day-long tour and saw a lot of neat areas of Tokyo that I had maybe passed through but never really thought about when I was living there.

One of the places that we visited was Kagurazaka 神楽坂.

Kagurazaka in Tokyo

I’m almost embarrassed to say that I wouldn’t even have been able to read 神楽坂 before this trip. Basically the name means, a hill where you can hear the kagura. The kagura is a song or dance used to celebrate the gods.

Kagurazaka is a very fancy neighborhood with many traditional Japanese restaurants called ryoutei 料亭. Usually ryoutei serve fancy Japanese food in courses with a limited menu. Another feature of ryoutei is that they often employee actual Geisha to entertain their guests. @guideyu was telling me that during one of her small-group tours of the area they actually saw some geisha on the move. What a treat!

Many of the ryoutei in this area follow a strict policy of not letting any first-time customers in without an advanced invitation from a someone who is already a regular customer. This practice is called 一見さんお断り (ichigensan okotowari), and literally means, refuse those who appear for the first time.

There are not many places in Japan that continue to practice this tradition of keeping newcommers out. On this Japanese question and answer site someone is asking what the purpose of this was. The highest rated answer explains that basically, the practice was used to avoid trouble. The service at ryotei is top notch. The food is also excellent, and the prices are also extremely expensive. In order to perserve the quality of the experience for all of the customers, the owners want to be sure that all of the customers are well-behaved people that they can trust. If someone who has been introduced by someone else causes trouble, the shop can follow up with the person who made the introduction to resolve things. Apparently these days there are more of these shops in Kyoto than anywhere else in Japan.

Even if you don’t have an invitation to dine at a ryoutei, Kagurazaka is still a great area to visit. You can enjoy the old-style cobbled roads called ishidatami (石畳 いしだたみ), the traditional Japanese wooden architecture, and like I mentioned you may also get lucky and spot a real Geisha. The streets are so narrow that you’ll feel like you have discovered some sort of secret exclusive part of Tokyo to explore all on your own.

Kagurazaka was a great area. We ate at a shop called Daikonya, which is just a usual restaurant that does not follow the ichigensan okotowari policy of turning away newcomers. It was tasty! True to their name, Daikonya specializes in dishes that use daikon — and the use it very well. We also ordered a sashimi plate that was quite impressive. I would recommend Daikonya to anyone looking to have a fancy dinner in Tokyo.

Enjoy the photos!

Related Links:
Kagurazaka Wikipedia page
Mochi and Anko: and other Japanese sweets. Guest post by @GuideYu
Daikonya – gurunavi
Japanese Ryotei, the art of service. NYT 1997
Traditional Ryotei are in Danger. Japan Inc
Tiny Ryotei entry in Wikipedia


Resources Contact Us Home
System for the stabilization of an object mounted on a moving platform

Image Number 3 for United States Patent #6621245.

A calculation system for calculating the control signals which are designed to perform a frequency-dependent weighting of the angular velocity signals and the angular position signals. The angular velocity indicators are preferably used for stabilization in a high frequency band while the angular position indicators are suitable for stabilization in a low frequency band. A further calculation system which is designed to perform the frequency-dependent weighting such that the control signals for frequencies below a certain frequency are substantially determined by the angular position signals and the control signals for higher frequencies are substantially determined by the angular velocity signals.

  Recently Added Patents
Sitagliptin intermediate compounds, preparation methods and uses thereof
System and method for the heterologous expression of polyketide synthase gene clusters
Method and apparatus for monitoring for a radio link failure
Stopper, motor, and disk drive apparatus
Aluminum galvanic cell
Synthesis of amines and intermediates for the synthesis thereof
  Randomly Featured Patents
Apparatus for detecting abnormality and limit of use of plain bearings
Device for mincing organic substances
Method and apparatus for radon transformation and angular correlation in optical processors
Candy bar
Spin-valve magnetoresistive element having fixed magnetic layer of epitaxal laminate including magnetic layer and nonmagnetic layer
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation assist device
Trailer box loader system
Apparatus for controlling fluid-heating using polymer disk
Enclosure for oil lubricated, rotating elements
Passivating inorganic bottom anti-reflective coating (BARC) using rapid thermal anneal (RTA) with oxidizing gas


© 2016 Shmoop University, Inc. All rights reserved.

Culture in History of American Fashion

Film and Fashion

In the twentieth century, the fashion and entertainment industries became deeply interconnected. Once clothing trends were broadcast across the country in motion pictures and, later, in television shows, fashion took on a new meaning in America. Lana Turner became famous for the bombshell "sweater look," in which her clingy tops revealed every curve of her busty figure beneath—Turner's bra was composed of two cones that were stitched in concentric circles. When Turner starred in The Merry Widow in 1952, her strapless black corselette with attached garters sparked a fashion craze that was named after the movie. Alfred Hitchcock channeled the symbolic paradox of female purity and seductiveness when, in his 1960 film Psycho, he initially dressed star Janet Leigh in a white bra and slip before showing her in black underwear after she had committed embezzlement and moved into the motel where the murderer lived. Marilyn Monroe had already combined the concepts of innocence and allure in her iconic white dress in the 1955 movie, The Seven-Year Itch, in which she stood over a subway grate that blew her clothing skyward, revealing her legs and white panties beneath. When Diane Keaton donned the layered and androgynous looks of her title character in the 1977 classic Annie Hall, she sparked a major fad among women who were living through the Second Wave of the Feminist Movement. Keaton, who was styled by costume designer Ruth Morley and a team of five others, seemed to hit on an irreverent, bohemian combination of style elements (from vintage men's bowler hats and vests to oversized jackets and equally baggy pants) that spoke to women of the period.

Male stars were equally capable of sparking trends and gaining notoriety from their fashion firsts on film. In It Happened One Night (1934), Clark Gable took off his shirt and revealed a bare chest in place of the traditional undershirt; the entire undershirt industry suffered as a result. Then the white cotton T-shirt, previously a hallmark of working-class garb, became the uniform of the male sex symbol after Marlon Brando donned one in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and James Dean embodied the look for teens in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). This trend has continued through successive generations, from the tattered garb of the counterculture heroes in Easy Rider to the flashy suits and open-collared shirts of John Travolta's Italian-American character in Saturday Night Fever and the pastel collarless shirts and sport jackets of the detectives in Miami Vice. Both reflecting and sparking fashion trends, these cultural icons are remembered as iconic because they seem to have captured the look of their generation. Subsequent generations of moviegoers are usually able to place those films within the decade of their creation, just by observing their outfits. It is perhaps a testament to the power of generational trends that few individuals realize how period-specific their clothing actually is, until they look back on old photographs of themselves after several years have elapsed.

People who Shmooped this also Shmooped...


Centurion, South Africa

Centurion (previously known as Verwoerdburg, after Hendrik Verwoerd) is located between Pretoria and Midrand in Gauteng. It is located at the intersection of the N1 and N14 highways. The R21 passes through Centurion and the Hennops River flows through the heart of Centurion.

Short history

Centurion developed from the initial Lyttelton Township that was established on the farm Droogegrond in 1904. Centurion was granted City Council status in 1962 as Lyttelton, formed by combining the areas of Doornkloof, Irene and Lyttelton.

In 2000, the Centurion local government became part of the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, which includes Pretoria.

Centurion has come a long way from being a sleepy southern suburb of Pretoria, with smallholdings and large open spaces. Having experienced stupendous growth since 1994, many businesses have relocated here, and property development is boosting the ever expanding city limits.

There is now little space between the outskirts of Pretoria to the north, and Midrand and Johannesburg to the south. The Gauteng Provincial Government envisages that, according to current growth trends, much of the Gauteng province will be a megalopolis by 2015.

Suburbs of Centurion include Lyttelton, Clubview, Irene, Raslouw, Sunderland Ridgel, The Reeds, Rooihuiskraal, Wierda Park, Doringkloof, Eldoraigne and Zwartkop.

Centurion features modern shopping malls, such as Centurion Mall and the Mall@Reds, several entertainment spots, a theatre, golf courses and a driving range. Several hotels and a host of guesthouses offer accommodation to visitors. The UNITAS Hospital, part of the Netcare group, is considered the largest private hospital on the African continent. Technology companies like Aerosud, Denel Dynamics, Siemens, SAAB Grintek Technologies, Telkom and others are located here. The Gautrain has a station in Centurion.

The Centurion Mall

Established during 1983/1984, the Centurion Mall was constructed around the Centurion Lake (on the Hennops River) and was the only shopping centre with the standard big-name retailers of that time in Centurion until the 21st century. In 2003, the mall underwent its first major revamp which was estimated at around R250,000,000. The mall's total was increased to 105,000 m2, making it the second largest shopping centre in the Tshwane Metropolitan area.

The mall is famous for its man-made colour water fountain, which is located in the centre of the lake, on the North side of the mall (also known as the 'bay' area). This water feature has been used as emblem for the former City of Centurion, seen at many of the entrances of the previous municipality.

The Waterkloof Air Force Base, as well as the Swartkop Air Force Base (which includes the South African Air Force Museum) are located in Centurion.

Cricket is the most popular sport in Centurion - many cricket tournaments like 2003 Cricket World Cup, 2005 Women's Cricket World Cup, 2007 ICC World Twenty20, 2009 IPL and 2009 ICC Champions Trophy have been hosted here.

The SuperSport Park (previously Centurion Park), cricket ground is situated in Centurion. The capacity of the ground is 22,000 spectaors. The Titans cricket team, formerly known as Northern Transvaal, play their home games here.

Centurion is located in the Highveld and has dry, sunny winters (maximum daytime temperature around 20°C dropping to a crisp average minimum of 5°C), and warm to hot summers (October - April). Summer temperatures range from the mid 20°C to the mid 30°C. Centurion's weather tends to be slightly warmer compared to that of Johannesburg.


free soundeffect downloads,
hollywood sounds,
wavs sounds,
free news music sound effects,
children sound effects,
birds sound effects,
record scratching to a halt sound effect,
star trek sound wav,
free cat sound effects,
predator movie sound effects,
dj sound effects pack,
punching sound,
you've got mail sounds,
pink panther sound effect,
odometer sound fx,
free sfx,
free sound effect program,
special sound effects,
movie wavs,
downloadable sound fx
Configure Similar Search Parameters

   Catalog ID: 165190    Title: Factory Whistle 02    Artist: Domino Sound Effects    Duration: 0:12

Genre Matching
Match Genre: Foley Sound Effects
Match Subgenre: Whistle sounds

Structural Matching
Match Edit Type: Full Track
Match Duration: 0:12
Match Tempo: Undetermined
Match BPM: 0
Match Format: Undetermined
Match Vocal Type: Undetermined
Match Vocal Language:

Mood Matching
Match Moods
Number of Matching Moods

Style Matching
Match Styles
Number of Matching Styles

royalty free sounds,
wav audio sounds,
sound effects for games,
sound effects countdown,
sniper sound effect,
free animal sound effects download,
wheel of fortune sound files,
western sound effects,
john lennon sound clips,
quiz show buzzer sound effect,
choral vocal sound,
children sound effects,
sound effects crowd,
car peel out sound effect,
tour bus sound effects,
rainforest sound effects,
cd of sound effects,
sund effects,
sfx mask


Every black hole contains a new universe

Published May 17, 2012

| Inside Science

The increasing numbers of particles with spin would result in higher levels of spacetime torsion. The repulsive torsion would stop the collapse and would create a "big bounce" like a compressed beach ball that snaps outward. The rapid recoil after such a big bounce could be what has led to our expanding universe. The result of this recoil matches observations of the universe's shape, geometry, and distribution of mass.

In turn, the torsion mechanism suggests an astonishing scenario: every black hole would produce a new, baby universe inside. If that is true, then the first matter in our universe came from somewhere else. So our own universe could be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe. Just as we cannot see what is going on inside black holes in the cosmos, any observers in the parent universe could not see what is going on in ours.

The motion of matter through the black hole's boundary, called an "event horizon," would only happen in one direction, providing a direction of time that we perceive as moving forward. The arrow of time in our universe would therefore be inherited, through torsion, from the parent universe.

Torsion could also explain the observed imbalance between matter and antimatter in the universe. Because of torsion, matter would decay into familiar electrons and quarks, and antimatter would decay into "dark matter," a mysterious invisible form of matter that appears to account for a majority of matter in the universe.

Finally, torsion could be the source of "dark energy," a mysterious form of energy that permeates all of space and increases the rate of expansion of the universe. Geometry with torsion naturally produces a "cosmological constant," a sort of added-on outward force which is the simplest way to explain dark energy. Thus, the observed accelerating expansion of the universe may end up being the strongest evidence for torsion.

Torsion therefore provides a theoretical foundation for a scenario in which the interior of every black hole becomes a new universe. It also appears as a remedy to several major problems of current theory of gravity and cosmology. Physicists still need to combine the Einstein-Cartan-Sciama-Kibble theory fully with quantum mechanics into a quantum theory of gravity. While resolving some major questions, it raises new ones of its own. For example, what do we know about the parent universe and the black hole inside which our own universe resides? How many layers of parent universes would we have? How can we test that our universe lives in a black hole?

Read more science news at InsideScience.org.


Lake Greenwood,a man-made lake was created between 1935 and 1940 by the construction of the Buzzard's Roost Dam near Chappels, SC. It provides power to the Greenwood area through its three turbines each driving a 5 megawatt AC generator. One of the most frequent topics of discussion with newcomers to the area is water depth and water levels on Lake Greenwood.

FAQ's About Lake Greenwood Water Levels

How large is Lake Greenwood?

Lake Greenwood spans 3 counties, Greenwood, Laurens and Newberry and encompasses a total of 11,400 acres.

How long is the lake?

Approximately 22 miles long.

How deep is Lake Greenwood?

Approximately 70' at the deepest point.

What is the high water mark for Lake Greenwood?

439'is the "full pool" mark on Lake Greenwood.

Does the water level stay consistent?

Lake Greenwood is closely monitored and managed by Lake Greenwood Management under Federally mandated guidleines. Lake Greenwood has a federally mandated "draw-down" each year and is a total of approximately 4' from the lakes normal "full pool" level of 439'. This period begins and ends on the same dates every year and is done in the fall and winter months when activity around the lake is at a minimum.

Why is the "draw-down necessary?

The primary purpose is for flood control. Since Lake Greenwood is fed by rivers extending into the mountains weather conditions and rainfall amounts can have a far-reaching affect on our water levels.

Has the lake ever flooded?

Is flood insurance required?

Not on Lake Greenwood property in general. There are a few instances in which flood insurance may be necessary but based on our experience those instances are rare.

Click here to get current water level information and sign up for lake level alerts.

Click Here to search for Lake Greenwood Property For Sale

Lake Greenwood has something for every budget. From $100,000 getaway cabins to million dollar luxury homes. The properties below represent a few of Lake Greenwood's most recent listings. Check back often or set up your account and let us be your eyes and ears to the area.

Most Recent Listings


MoD stands by pig shooting scheme

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has defended sending surgeons serving in the British Army to controversial medical training involving live pigs shot by marksmen to replicate battlefield wounds.

The military medical staff carry out the drills on pigs which are shot and then operated on at a course provided in Nato's training facilities in Jaegerspris, Denmark. Formerly known as Operation Danish Bacon, the practice has been described by animal rights groups as "impossible to justify medically, ethically and educationally".

An MoD spokeswoman said: "This training provides invaluable experience, exposing our surgical teams to the specific challenges posed by the injuries of modern armed conflict. This training has helped save lives on operations and by participating in the Danish exercises we minimise the overall number of animals used."

The MoD argued that although the practice would not be illegal in the UK, approval would have to be obtained on a case-by-case basis from the Home Office. It said that by participating in the Danish exercises rather than replicating them in the UK they are minimising the number of animals involved.

But the courses were re-instated after it was determined there was "no equally effective alternative" and that it was "entirely appropriate and, indeed, necessary" for military surgeons to carry out training on animals.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) described the procedure as "invasive and deadly". Claiming it would be illegal in the UK, Peta called for life-like dolls that "breathe" and "bleed" to replace the use of live animals.

Eighteen pigs were used in the most recent tests earlier this month, the Mail on Sunday reported. They had circles drawn on their underbellies before a three-man sniper team fired shots intended to damage organs but not kill, the paper said. Surgeons then treated them as they would battle zone casualties, reportedly keeping the pigs alive for two hours before they were put down.