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Friday's Top 25 College Men's Basketball Capsules

Friday's Top 25 College Men's Basketball Capsules

December 3rd, 2011 in News

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) - Fourth-ranked Syracuse remained unbeaten with a 72-68 win over No. 10 Florida on Friday night, as coach Jim Boeheim maintained a stoic facade amid an intense federal investigation into his program.

It's the second game since the firing of longtime associate head coach Bernie Fine, who has been accused by three men - including two former Syracuse ballboys - of molesting them as minors. Fine, who was fired Sunday, has denied the allegations.

Brandon Triche had 20 points and Scoop Jardine finished with 16 and seven assists for the Orange (8-0). Kenny Boynton led Florida (5-2) with 22 points and Erving Walker had 17.

Neither team led by more than six points in a first half that was tied six times. Syracuse took a 31-27 lead into the break.

Jardine hit a runner in the lane as the shot clock neared zero, Kris Joseph fed C.J. Fair for a baseline jumper, and Jardine hit a 3 from the left wing in a span of 2:19. That gave Syracuse a 61-53 lead with 3:52 left and the Gators couldn't rally back.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Peyton Siva drove through the middle of Vanderbilt's defense for a layup with 1.4 seconds left in overtime to lift Louisville.

The Cardinals (7-0) rallied from two big deficits - nine in the second half and five in overtime. Kyle Kuric's 16-footer gave Louisville a 60-58 lead with 34 seconds left.

John Jenkins, who finished with 27 points, hit two free throws for the Commodores (5-3) to tie it with 12.2 seconds left, but Siva broke the defense on a high pick-and-roll and got to the hoop for the game-winning basket to finish with 15 points.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) - Marcus Denmon scored a career-high 31 points and Missouri used runs of 18-0 and 24-8 to take control of the game.

Michael Dixon also set a career high with 19 points and Ricardo Ratliffe matched his personal best with 22. The Tigers (7-0) are off to their best start since winning their first nine games during the 2006-07 season.

James Hulbin led the Demons (4-4) with 14 points. Demetrice Jacobs and Louis Ellis added 10 apiece, while William Mosley had eight points, 14 rebounds and three blocks.


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Girls: Israel’s racy new PR strategy

Jim Malucci has two tattoos, one on each bulging bicep. On the left one, the photographer for Maxim magazine has etched an image of a seductively dressed pinup; on the right, he has stenciled the words GO WITH GOD in Portuguese. He leans on his left arm and points his camera at a model in a bikini on the Tel Aviv beachfront. "That's hot, that's wicked," says Malucci, as the model shifts her hips and parts her lips. "I wanna see the curves. That's it, honey. On your knees, legs apart. Nice arch in your back—boom!" The flash flickers as the sun drops toward the Mediterranean. A Hassidic man in a black hat accidentally steps into the frame. "Love the guy with the hat!" Malucci says, chortling.

Taking in the scene, David Saranga can't help but grin. The Israeli consular official based in New York approached Maxim six months ago. His proposal: the government and other pro-Israeli groups would fly a camera crew across the Atlantic in an effort to remake the Jewish state's public image. Israel's reputation had suffered after last summer's war with Lebanon; in a recent BBC poll taken in 27 countries, 56 percent of respondents considered Israel a "negative influence" in the world, higher than both Iran and the United States. But Israel's real PR problem, according to Saranga, is that Americans—particularly men aged 18 to 35—either associate the country with war or holy relics, or don't think of it at all. "We have to find the right hook," he says. "And what's relevant to men under 35? Good-looking women."

Saranga's effort is the latest volley in a long-running battle over how to sell Israel to the world. Tourism is a nearly $2 billion-a-year industry in Israel, and the art of public relations is something of a national obsession. In Hebrew it's called hasbarah, which means "explaining." For a country that's always craved international acceptance, hasbarah was "the first growth industry of Israel," the American author Richard Ben Cramer wrote. "We almost have a psychological disorder when it comes to public image," adds Eytan Schwartz, the first winner of Israel's top-rated reality TV show, "The Ambassador." Schwartz's prize is proof of that: the winner of "The Ambassador" gets to become a public-relations flack.

Still, by definition, hasbarah is open to interpretation. One of the central dilemmas is which aspects of Israel's wildly diverse society to emphasize. Israelis disagree about which is more likely to appeal to Americans—Tel Aviv's freewheeling, secular charms, or Jerusalem's holy sites. Settler leader Benny Elon, a former tourism minister, says he considers ads touting Israel's beaches a waste of money. For Elon, it isn't only a cultural issue; it's also bad business. Tourists in search of sunshine will always favor the French Riviera or the Caribbean. Israel's "unique selling proposition" is its religious heritage, says Elon. "It's the only state where you can take the Bible as your tourism guide." A recent study by the consulting firm Ernst & Young recommends that the Jewish state target American evangelical Christian tourists—one of Elon's pet projects.

Yet trying too hard to lure Christian tourists could end up alienating secular liberals. "Benny Elon is just dead wrong," says Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, author of "The Case for Israel." "It puts Israel in the camp of arch-conservative people." Already, a recent study by the New York marketing firm Wunderman has concluded that Israel's "brand" is perceived similarly to those of Philip Morris and the NRA. Ultimately evangelicals' support for Israeli tourism will evaporate, says Dershowitz; Christians will eventually become "disappointed" with the Jewish state as their interests diverge. But even Dershowitz thinks the idea of paying to fly a magazine crew across the Atlantic is a little over the top: "Completely not the way to go. I can see models anywhere."

Saranga insists his campaign is just smart niche marketing. "You have to match the message to the audience," the diplomat says. And his supporters argue that the Jewish state's diversity is one of its strongest selling points. Ultimately, says Dershowitz, "Israel is both countries ... a country where models pose at great holy sites." The tattoos on shooter Jim Malucci's biceps make the balance look easy to find. But marketing budgets are finite, and cultural rifts aren't so easily bridged. The reality of Israel is often having to choose: go with the girl, or go with God.

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With White House Drilling Announcement, Cap-and-Trade Officially Dies

After a long and bumpy past, it’s now clear that cap-and-trade has gone from the gurney to the morgue. The stark admission came this morning during a CNBC interview with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "I think the term 'cap-and-trade' is not in the lexicon anymore," he said, suggesting that more agreeable goals, like slowing pollution and reducing oil imports, were more in the scope of the administration. Instead, the White House signaled it would be moving in a slightly different direction by opening parts of the Virginia coast and northern Alaska to offshore drilling.

There has been plenty of outrage from environmental groups all morning. Environment America director Anna Aurilio said that the announcement “makes no sense,” especially when clean technologies on the horizon will usher in energy security. Ocean advocacy group Oceana was "appalled that the president is unleashing a wholesale assault on the oceans," according to programs director Jackie Savitz. Neither group was particularly relieved that the drilling would be localized, or that pristine areas like Alaska’s Bristol Bay will still be protected from oil rigs.

But despite anger from the environmental left, the move may still prove strategic for Obama. The president is desperate for another win, and especially on something as big as energy. Appeasing conservatives moves the White House closer to the 60-vote threshold in the Senate—the magic number to overcome an imminent filibuster. Senators like Lisa Murkowski and Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu have been hesitant to support anything that disadvantages their pro-drilling states. Other Republicans have staunchly opposed anything that mandates a cut in carbon emissions. If Obama's drilling announcement tempts anyone new to the table, he'll add several more hash marks to his tally.

Is President Obama keeping his campaign promises on issues like cap-and-trade? Explore them here. And take a look at the world's worst man-made environmental disasters in photos, here.

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Vote for Ontario's Worst Roads

CAA SCO reinforces calls for dedicated funding from provincial gas tax

KITCHENER, ON, March 28, 2014 /CNW/ - This winter will likely be remembered as the worst winter in the last 20 years. The fluctuating freeze-thaw cycle over the past four months has littered Ontario roads with crater-sized potholes resulting in teeth-rattling rides for road users.

With so many roads across the province in need of dire repairs, CAA South Central Ontario (CAA SCO) is urging the Ontario government to permanently dedicate a portion of the revenue collected from gas taxes to fixing our roads, bridges and highways.

The call came today during the launch of CAA's annual Worst Roads campaign.

A CAA commissioned report by The Conference Board of Canada concluded motorists in Ontario cover between 70 and 90 per cent of the costs of the road network through fees and gas taxes. In the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), road users more than cover the full costs of construction, maintenance and policing.

"The province of Ontario has been collecting a gas tax for decades and CAA has long called for a permanent dedicated fund to help pay for much needed repairs on our deteriorating roads and crumbling bridges," said Faye Lyons, Government Relations, CAA SCO.

The provincial excise tax currently stands at 14.7 cents on every litre of gas and diesel sold in Ontario which generated approximately $3.1 billion in 2012-2013.

Meanwhile, the Worst Roads campaign is not just about potholes – CAA also wants your feedback on traffic congestion, poor timing of traffic signals, confusing road signs, as well as, pedestrian and cycling safety. Have your say by voting at before April 25.

Following the four week long campaign, CAA will present the Top 10 Worst Roads in Ontario and our recommendations to local and provincial politicians in an effort to get those roads fixed.

Last year, Westmount Road West received the most votes in Kitchener, but did not make the Top 10 list.

As a leader and advocate for road safety and mobility, CAA South Central Ontario is a not-for-profit auto club which represents the interests of more than 1.9 million members. For over a century, CAA has collaborated with communities, police services and governments to help keep drivers and their families safe while travelling on our roads.

SOURCE: CAA South Central Ontario

For further information: Media contact: Silvana Aceto, Media and PR Consultant, CAA SCO,, Office: (905) 771-3194, Cell: (416) 209-4930 or Jeff LeMoine, Communications Consultant, CAA SCO, Office: (905) 771-4709, Cell: (416) 254-0641.

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Panera Bread’s New ‘Hidden Menu’ Concept May Not Take Off

Article ID: 598229

Released: 18-Jan-2013 12:20 PM EST

Source Newsroom: Washington University in St. Louis

  • Joseph K. Goodman

Newswise — Panera Bread Co. has rolled out a new “hidden menu” featuring protein-rich power foods. While this kind of marketing may make big fans of the chain feel special, it also increases the likelihood that the hidden items fail to take off, says a marketing expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Some of my research shows that having too many choices makes a decision more difficult, and can lead to less satisfaction,” says Joseph K. Goodman, PhD, assistant professor of marketing at Olin Business School.”

“By keeping some of the items off the menu, Panera keeps them from adding to an already complex menu for novice consumers, who are more likely to exhibit this ‘choice overload’ effect,” he says.

People who go to the chain often will appreciate knowing something that others might not be tuned in to, which increases a connection with the brand and creates buzz and free word-of-mouth marketing, Goodman says.

And while the strategy may be low-risk, it may not be successful.

“If the ‘hidden menu’ items don’t take off or are unprofitable, they can easily be discontinued without the added costs of printing new menus,” Goodman says.

“The problem is that this strategy also makes these items more likely to fail,” he says. “Since these items are not on the advertised menu, people may be more likely to forget about them and be less likely to order them than if they were posted on the menu.”

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Nurse Researchers Page, Glass to Join STTI Hall of Fame

Article ID: 615765

Released: 28-Mar-2014 10:00 AM EDT

Source Newsroom: Johns Hopkins School of Nursing

  • Credit: Will Kirk/Homewood Photography

    Gayle Page, RN, DNSc

  • Nancy Glass, PhD, MPH, RN (in the Democratic Republic of Congo)

Newswise — Gayle Page, RN, DNSc, and Nancy Glass, PhD, MPH, RN, of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing have been chosen for induction to the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame for their contributions to nursing science.

Page is Independence Foundation Chair in Nursing Education, director of the Center for Nursing Research & Sponsored Projects, director of the PhD Program and a professor at Hopkins. She is known for her scientific inquiries into the biological effects of unrelieved pain and stress on cancer resistance and immune function.

Glass, also a professor, is associate director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. She is an expert on public health and health disparities, and an international leader on preventing violence against women.

Glass and Page will be among 25 nurse leaders from Australia, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States to be inducted. They are the 10th and 11th faculty members from the SON to be inducted.

“This international recognition by peers is very highly prestigious and well deserved,” Patricia M. Davidson, PhD, MEd, RN, herself a member of the STTI Hall of Fame, wrote in a congratulatory note. Other SON inductees are Jerilyn Allen, ScD, RN; Jacquelyn Campbell, PhD, RN; Fannie Gaston-Johansson, PhD, RN; Deborah Gross, DNSc, RN; Martha N. Hill, PhD, RN; Pamela Jeffries, PhD, RN, ANEF; Marie Nolan, PhD, MPH, RN; and Phyllis Sharps, PhD, RN, CNE.

The nurse researchers will be officially inducted during STTI’s 25th International Nursing Research Congress in Hong Kong, July 24-28.

Glass, Campbell named Safe magazine heroes
Learn about doctoral programs at the Hopkins School of Nursing

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Nainital Bank Clerk Result 2016 Announced @

| Saturday, April 2, 2016 - 12:10
First Published |
Nainital Bank Clerk Result 2016 Announced @

Nainital Bank Clerk Result 2016 Announced

Nanital: The Nainital Bank has declared the written exam results of clerk posts on their website. The notification for the posts was released earlier and applications were invited to apply for the posts. The examination was conducted on March 20, 2016. The candidates who are eagerly waiting for their results can check their result from the official wrbsite.

The Nainital Bank Limited (NTB) (known as Nainital Bank) is a scheduled commercial bank founded by Mr Govind ballabh pant and Shah community in the year 1922. Nainital bank is associated with Bank of Baroda, HDFC Bank, LIC, National Insurance Company Limited etc. Currently, NBL has over 100 branches in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, and Rajasthan. It also provides online facilities, apart from Personal Banking, Business Banking, Rural and Agricultural Banking. The Nainital Bank Limited is registered as scheduled commercial bank with Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the central bank of India.
It conducts various examinations for the recruitment of eligible candidates in different departments. This year it has released notification for the clerk posts and the candidates who had appeared for the exam can check the results from the official website.

Nainital Bank Clerk Results 2016 Declared

Steps to download Nainital Bank Clerk Results:

  • Visit the official website Nanital Bank
  • Click on the link ‘Notice for the Recruitment of Clerks’
  • Click on the link ‘To View Your Results
  • Enter the details like roll number, date of birth, code and Click on Submit
  • The results will be displayed on the screen
  • Check it and Save it for further reference

Important Notice: If the Call Letter is not received by any qualified candidate, in any case due to any technical snag, the candidates may request for issuance of duplicate call letter, between April 08, 2016 to 12th April 2016 on Bank’s e-mail ID:

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Cancer Cure Hope From Mollusk Blood

Cancer Cure Hope From Mollusk Blood

Cancer Vaccine is a good news for humankind & Stellar Biotechnologies a California based company leading the way to achieve that goal in near future. Researchers use the blood of keyhole limpet’s (Megathura crenulata) to extract Keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) which is the main ingredient of the new cancer vaccine.

This particular keyhole limpets are a type of mollusks that lives off the coast of California from Monterey Bay to Isla Asuncion. Keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) is a large metalloprotein same size as a virus which carries oxygen in keyhole limpet’s blood. By administering KLH in to human blood stream it’s produce a high immune response from the immune system. KLH is non toxic as other synthetic alternatives & it can simulate the immune system to fight against target cancer cells if it’s attached with relevant markers. KLH is the key to break tolerance between human body and cancer cells.

Stellar Biotechnologies, currently harvesting their keyhole limpets supply from a aquaculture farm near Port Hueneme, California. If this KLH based cancer vaccine is approved by FDA (Food and Drug Administration), it’ll open a door for new industry of farming keyhole limpets in industrial scale.

Information Source:  Stellar Biotechnologies , Wikipedia
Image Credits:  Joe McKenna

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A factory worker in the 1940s in Fort Worth, Texas.

A factory (previously manufactory) or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where workers use machines to manufacture goods or process one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production.

Factories are a hallmark of industrialized society. They have changed the way many people live and work. On the one hand, they have been producing an increasingly wide variety of goods at relatively high efficiency and low cost, raising the living standards of large numbers of people in industrialized nations. On the other hand, they have also been places where workers have toiled under exploitative conditions, particularly during what has been called the Industrial Revolution. Although reform movements began to address these problems during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the ugly side of industrialization continued until the mid-twentieth century.[1]

History of the factory

Many have believed that ancient China was the first to create factories.[2] In ancient China, imperial and private workshops, mills, and small manufactories had been employed since the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (771-221 B.C.E.), as noted in the historical text of the Zhou Li.[3]

During the medieval Song Dynasty (960-1279 C.E.), independent and government-sponsored industries were developed to meet the needs of a growing population that had reached over 100 million. For example, for the printing of paper money alone, the Song court established several government-run factories in the cities of Huizhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Anqi.[4] The size of the workforce employed in these paper money factories was quite large, as it was recorded in 1175 C.E. that the factory at Hangzhou alone employed more than a thousand workers a day.[4] The Chinese iron industry was also expanded during the Song Dynasty, with a six-fold increase in per capita cast iron output between the years 806 and 1078 C.E., meaning an overall weight of 127,000,000 kg (125,000 t) of cast iron product from state-run facilities was forged in the latter year alone.

Western world

Although large mills and manufactories were established in ancient Rome, the Venice Arsenal provides one of the first examples of a factory in the modern sense of the word. Founded in 1104 in Venice, Italy, several hundred years before the Industrial Revolution, it mass-produced ships on assembly lines using manufactured parts. The Venice Arsenal apparently produced nearly one ship every day and, at its height, employed 16,000 people.

Many historians regard Matthew Boulton's Soho Manufactory (established in 1761, in Birmingham) as the first modern factory. Other claims have been made for John Lombe's silk mill in Derby, in 1721, or Richard Arkwright's Cromford Mill, in 1771—purpose built to fit the equipment it held and taking the material through the various manufacturing processes. One historian, Jack Weatherford, contends that the first factory was in Potosí, for processing silver ingot slugs into coins, because there was so much silver being mined close by.[5]

In the late eighteenth century, British colonies built factories simply as buildings where a large number of workers gathered to perform hand labor, usually in textile production. This proved more efficient—for administration and for the distribution of raw materials to individual workers—than earlier methods of manufacturing such as cottage industries or the putting-out system.

Cotton mills used inventions such as the steam engine and the power loom to pioneer the industrial factory of the nineteenth century, where precision machine tools and replaceable parts allowed greater efficiency and less waste.

Between 1820 and 1850, the non-mechanized factories supplanted the traditional artisanal shops as the predominant form of manufacturing institution. Although the theory regarding why and how the non-mechanized factories gradually replaced the small artisan shops is still ambiguous, what is apparent is that the larger-scale factories enjoyed technological gains and advance in efficiency over the small artisan shops. In fact, the larger scale forms of factory establishments were more favorable and advantageous over the small artisan shops in terms of competition for survival.

Henry Ford further revolutionized the factory concept in the early twentieth century, with the innovation of mass production. Highly specialized workers positioned alongside a series of rolling ramps would build up a product, such as (in Ford's case) an automobile. This concept dramatically decreased production costs for virtually all manufactured goods and brought about the age of consumerism.

In the mid to late twentieth century, industrialized countries introduced next-generation factories with two improvements:

  1. Advanced statistical methods of quality control. These methods were pioneered by the American mathematician William Edwards Deming, who was initially ignored by his home country. Quality control turned Japanese factories into world leaders in cost-effectiveness and production quality.
  2. Industrial robots on the factory floor, introduced in the late 1970s. These computer-controlled welding arms and grippers could perform simple tasks, such as attaching a car door quickly and flawlessly 24 hours a day. This, too, cut costs and improved speed.

Some speculation regarding the future of the factory includes scenarios with rapid prototyping, nanotechnology, and orbital zero-gravity facilities.

Siting the factory

Before the advent of mass transportation, factories' needs for ever-greater concentrations of workers meant that they typically grew up in an urban setting or fostered their own urbanization. Industrial slums developed, and reinforced their own development through the interactions between factories, as when one factory's output or waste-product became the raw materials of another factory (preferably nearby). Canals and railways grew as factories spread, each clustering around sources of cheap energy, available materials, and/or mass markets. The exception proved the rule: Even Greenfield's factory sites such as Bournville, founded in a rural setting, developed its own housing and profited from convenient communications networks.

Regulation curbed some of the worst excesses of industrialization's factory-based society, a series of Factory Acts leading the way in Britain. Trams, automobiles, and town planning encouraged the separate development ("apartheid") of industrial suburbs and residential suburbs, with workers commuting between them.

Though factories dominated the Industrial Era, the growth in the service sector eventually began to dethrone them: the locus of work in general shifted to central-city office towers or to semi-rural campus-style establishments, and many factories stood deserted in local rust belts.

The next blow to the traditional factories came from globalization. Manufacturing processes (or their logical successors, assembly plants) in the late twentieth century re-focussed in many instances on Special Economic Zones in developing countries or on maquiladoras just across the national boundaries of industrialized states. Further re-location to the least industrialized nations appears possible as the benefits of out-sourcing and the lessons of flexible location apply in the future.

Governing the factory

Much of management theory developed in response to the need to control factory processes. Assumptions on the hierarchies of unskilled, semi-skilled, and skilled workers and their supervisors and managers still linger on. However, an example of a more contemporary approach to work design applicable to manufacturing facilities can be found in Socio-Technical Systems (STS).

  1. City and Factory Life. Retrieved June 26, 2008.
  2. Anne S. Tsui, Claudia Bird Schoonhoven, Marshall W. Meyer, Chung-Ming Lau, and George T. Milkovich. March/April 2004. "Organization and Management in the Midst of Societal Transformation: The People's Republic of China," Organization Science, 15 (2): 133-144.
  3. Needham, pp. 16-17.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Needham, p. 48.
  5. Jack Weatherford. 1988. Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World. Random House Publishing Group. ISBN 0449904962.

  • Groover, Mikell P. 2007. Fundamentals of Modern Manufacturing: Materials, Processes, and Systems, 3rd edition. Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0471744856.
  • Hopp, Wallace. 2008. Factory Physics, 3rd edition. New York: Mcgraw-Hill Publishing. ISBN 978-0071232463.
  • Needham, Joseph. 1986. Science and Civilization in China: Volume 5, Part 1. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd. ISBN 0521086906.
  • Rubrich, Larry, and Madelyn Watson. 2004. Implementing World Class Manufacturing: Includes Lean Enterprise: Business Manual. Fort Wayne, IN: WCM Associates. ISBN 0966290615.

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

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Waitakere Piha n.jpg

A difficult term to define, life can be considered the characteristic state of living organisms and individual cells, or that quality or property that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate objects.

Although universal consensus on a definition is lacking, biological properties common to the known organisms found on Earth (plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria) are that they are carbon-and-water-based, are cellular with complex organization, use energy and undergo metabolism, possess a capacity to grow, maintain homeostasis, respond to stimuli, reproduce, and have various adaptations to the environment.

Not every definition of life considers all of these properties to be essential. For example, the capacity for descent with modification is often taken as the essential property of life. This definition notably includes viruses, which do not qualify under narrower definitions as they are acellular and do not metabolize. Broader definitions of life may also include theoretical non-carbon-based life.

Beyond the biological manifestations of matter, some philosophical perspectives, notably the Aristotelian theory of the soul and modern vitalism, add that living organisms possess an inner aspect or character that confers the quality of life (below). They do not agree with a modern biological orientation that explains the phenomena of life only in terms of external principles of chemistry and physics.

Although it cannot be pinpointed exactly, evidence suggests that life on Earth has existed for about 3.7 billion years.[1]

Biological characteristics of life

Fynbos plants.jpg

Living organisms share many universal characteristics, including that they are composed of cells; pass on their heredity using a nearly universal genetic code; need energy from the environment to exist, grow, and reproduce; and maintain their internal environment; among others. These are the common set of characteristics identified by biologists that distinguish living organisms from nonliving things. Non-living entities may exhibit some of these characteristics, but not all of them.

  1. Cells. With the exception of viruses, all organisms consist of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life, being the smallest unit that can carry on all the processes of life, including maintenance, growth, and even self-repair. Some simple life forms, such as the paramecium, consist of a single cell throughout their life cycle and are called unicellular organisms. Multicellular organisms, such as a whale or tree, may have trillions of cells, and have differentiated cells that perform specialized functions.
  2. Carbon-based biochemistry. Living organisms are characterized by a common carbon-based biochemistry. All organisms pass on their heredity via the genetic material that is based upon nucleic acids, such as DNA, using a nearly universal genetic code. Every cell, no matter how simple or complex, utilizes nucleic acids for transmitting and storing the information needed for manufacturing proteins.
  3. Complex organization. Living organisms are complex and organized, both at the molecular and cellular levels. The energy and materials from the environment are organized, such as the internal structure of a cell, or the organization of multicellular organisms into tissues, organs, and systems. Nonliving things may be complex, but the organization in living things is much more complex. In essence, living organisms, utilizing energy from without, reverse entropy. Whereas the general tendency is for non-living entities to lose energy and tend toward disorder, or to exist in order only due to such external forces as gravitation or electro-magnetic forces, living organisms process energy and use it to exist in states of complex order.
  4. Energy and metabolism. Every living being needs energy from the environment in order to exist, grow, and reproduce. Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life, such as movement and work. The sun is the main source of energy and is captured through a process of photosynthesis, a process by which plants, algae, and some bacteria harness the energy of sunlight to produce food. Ultimately, nearly all living things depend on energy produced from photosynthesis for their nourishment, making it vital to life on Earth. There are also some bacteria that utilize the oxidation of inorganic compounds such as hydrogen sulfide or ferrous iron as an energy source. An organism that produces organic compounds from carbon dioxide as a carbon source, using either light or reactions of inorganic chemical compounds as a source of energy, is called an autotroph. Other organisms do not make their own food but depend directly or indirectly on autotrophs for their food. These are called heterotrophs. Metabolism is the biochemical modification of chemical compounds, including converting nonliving material into complex organic molecules (synthesis) and decomposing organic matter (catalysis), yielding energy-carrying molecules and essential building-block molecules.
  5. Development and growth. Living things grow and develop as they age. This involves maintenance of a higher rate of synthesis than catalysis, with growth of the organism taking place through cell enlargement and cell division. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. In most metazoan organisms, the basic steps of the early embryo development share similar morphological stages and include similar genes.
  6. Homeostasis: All living organisms, whether unicellular or multicellular, exhibit homeostasis. Homeostasis is the property of an open system to regulate its internal environment so as to maintain a stable condition. Homeostasis can manifest itself at the cellular level through the maintenance of a stable internal acidity (pH); at the organismal level, warm-blooded animals maintain a constant internal body temperature; and at the level of the ecosystem, for example when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, plants are theoretically able to grow healthier and thus remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Tissues and organs can also maintain homeostasis.
  7. Response to stimuli. All living organisms respond to the environment. A response to stimuli can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism when touched to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun or an animal chasing its prey. A cockroach may respond to light by running for a dark place. When there is a complex set of response, it is called a behavior. For example, the migration of salmon is a behavioral response.
  8. Adaptation. Living organisms have characteristics that give them a survival/reproductive advantage in an environment; that is, they have adaptations to the environment. Living organisms show variability in these adaptations, allowing the species to continue in a fluctuating or changing environment.
  9. Reproduction. Reproduction is the ability to produce new organisms. Reproduction can be the division of one cell to form two new cells. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from at least two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth. Sexual reproduction is a trait that is almost universal, if not universal, among living beings. Asexual reproduction is not uncommon. In fact, it is widespread among fungi and bacteria, many insects reproduce in this manner, and some reptiles and amphibians. Nonetheless, sexual reproduction is also seen in these same organisms, including in bacteria which will exchange genetic material between donors (+ mating type) and recipients (- mating type). Evolutionary biologist and geneticist John Maynard Smith maintained that the perceived advantage for an individual organism to pass only its own entire genome to its offspring is so great that there must an advantage by at least a factor of two to explain why nearly all animal species maintain a male sex.

It is important to note that reproduction as a characteristic applies primarily at the level of species, so even though many individuals of any given species do not reproduce, possibly because they belong to specialized sterile castes (such as ant workers) or are sterile for other reasons, including age or disease, these are still considered forms of life. Likewise one could say that the property of life is inherited; hence, sterile hybrid species such as the mule are considered life although not themselves capable of reproduction. For similar reasons, viruses and aberrant prion proteins are often considered replicators rather than forms of life, a distinction warranted because they cannot reproduce without very specialized substrates such as host cells or proteins, respectively. However, most forms of life rely on foods produced by other species, or at least the specific chemistry of Earth's environment.

Philosophical characteristic of life

Rhesus Macques

In addition to the above, generally recognized biological characteristics, some philosophers recognize another quality that comprises living organisms.

10. Life-factor. This additional characteristic is an immaterial, inner aspect that distinguishes living organisms, such as plants and animals, from inanimate objects, such as atoms, molecules, and minerals. This quality or characteristic of "life" is an invisible, non-material force that underlies the physical, and Aristotle calls it the "soul" (psyche). According to Aristotle, every existing thing is composite of "form" (its essence or whatness) and "matter" (the material stuff it is made of), and form and matter are inseparable from each other (hylomorphism). The "form" of a living thing, whether it is a plant or an animal, is the soul, while its "matter" is the body. Life is none other than the soul of a living thing, which is the ability to engage, through the body, in the activities that are characteristic of living things in the world—activities such as self-nourishment, growth, reproduction, locomotion, perception, and intellect. While the plant soul can only engage in self-nourishment, growth, and reproduction, the animal soul can engage in locomotion and perception as well as in the activities of the plant soul. The human soul can engage not only in all these activities but also in intellect.

Aristotle, perhaps the very first biologist in the West, understands the soul (life) to be always inseparable from the body, and this notion of the soul is very different from our modern understanding of it as something immortal beyond physical life. If this Aristotelian view is applied, the DNA and proteins of a cell may only be the external or physical aspect of life—the base of life or the part that carries life, and there is an immaterial "life field" that guides the DNA. By analogy, the chemistry and structures of a cell is like a radio while life is like the radio waves that give meaning to its sound; or the structures of a cell forms the computer while the life-force is like the software that runs on the computer to do meaningful tasks. The life-factor has the quality of mind; it carries the qualities of consciousness.

In process philosophy, the internal aspect of living organisms is regarded as a subset of the two qualities that living organisms share with all existent beings, the quality of dual characteristics or polarity. Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) calls it the "dipolarity" of reality, which means that every actual entity in the universe has two distinguishable yet inseparable poles: mental and physical. Both Aristotle and Whitehead find the dual characteristics of form and matter (Aristotle) or of mental and physical poles (Whitehead) in nonliving beings as well. For them, however, living beings have a higher degree of the development of the internal than nonliving beings, thus having activities of life.

Another school relevant to this discussion is vitalism, according to which living organisms possess a non-physical inner force such as the "entelechy" of Hans Driesch (1867–1941) and the "élan vital" of Henri Bergson (1874-1948), to which the biological activities of living organisms can be ascribed. Vitalism is opposed to biological mechanism which maintains that phenomena of life can be explained exclusively in terms of chemistry and physics that deal with matter.

Origin of life

Main article: Origin of life
The Grand Prismatic Spring of Yellowstone National Park

There is no truly "standard" model for the origin of life, but most currently accepted scientific models build in one way or another on the following discoveries, which are listed roughly in order of postulated emergence:

  1. Plausible pre-biotic conditions result in the creation of the basic small molecules of life.
  2. Phospholipids spontaneously form lipid bilayers, the basic structure of a cell membrane.
  3. Procedures for producing random RNA molecules can produce ribozymes, which are able to produce more of themselves under very specific conditions.

There are many different hypotheses regarding the path that might have been taken from simple organic molecules to protocells and metabolism. Many models fall into the "genes-first" category or the "metabolism-first" category, but a recent trend is the emergence of hybrid models that do not fit into either of these categories.

From a philosophical or religious perspective, the external manifestation of the development of life was guided at every stage of the process by the internal life-force, and ultimately by the Supreme Being or Creator.

The possibility of extraterrestrial life

Main articles: Extraterrestrial life

Earth is the only planet in the universe known to harbor life. The Drake equation has been used to estimate the probability of life elsewhere, but scientists disagree on many of the values of variables in this equation. Depending on those values, the equation may either suggest that life arises frequently or infrequently.

  1. University of California Museum of Paleontology, "History of life through time.", Regents of the University of California, 2008. Retrieved February 14, 2008.

See also

  • Durrant, Michael, ed. 1993. Aristotle's De Anima in Focus. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415053404
  • Margulis, L., and D. Sagan. 1995. What Is Life? Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0684810875
  • Schrodinger, E. 2000. What is Life? Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521427088
  • Towle, A. 1989. Modern Biology. Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 0030139198

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

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Paul Klee

Paul Klee
Born December 18 1879(1879-12-18)
Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland
Flag of Switzerland.svg
Died June 29 1940 (aged 60)
Muralto, Switzerland
Nationality German/Swiss
Field painting
Training Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
Movement expressionism cubism surrealism
Famous works many well-known works, including Fish Magic, Golden Fish, Zitronen, and Viaducts Break Ranks

Paul Klee (December 18, 1879 - June 29, 1940) was a Swiss painter of German nationality. He was influenced by many different art styles in his work, including expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He and his friend, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, were famous for teaching at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture, but are probably best known for their association with Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Der Blaue Reiter attempted to infuse their art with spiritual concerns.

Life and work

Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee (near Bern), Switzerland, into a musical family; his father, Hans Klee, was a German music teacher at the Hofwil Teacher Seminar near Bern. Klee started young at both art and music. At age seven, he started playing the violin, and at age eight, he was given a box of chalk from his grandmother and was encouraged to draw frequently with it. Paul could have done either as an adult; in his early years, he had wanted to be a musician, but he later decided on the visual arts. He studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, with Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck. After traveling to Italy and then back to Bern, he settled in Munich, where he met Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and other avant-garde figures and became associated with Der Blaue Reiter. Here he met Bavarian pianist Lily Stumpf, whom he married; they had one son, named Felix Paul.

Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter was a German movement lasting from 1911 to 1914, fundamental to Expressionism, along with Die Brücke, which was founded the previous decade in 1905. Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Lyonel Feininger, Albert Bloch, and others founded the group in response to the rejection of Kandinsky's painting, Last Judgment, from an exhibition. Der Blaue Reiter lacked a central artistic manifesto, but was centered around Kandinsky and Marc. Klee was one of the affiliated artists.

The name of the movement comes from a painting by Kandinsky created in 1903. It is also claimed that the name could have derived from Marc's enthusiasm for horses and Kandinsky's love of the color blue. For Kandinsky, blue is the color of spirituality: The darker the blue, the more it awakens human desire for the eternal (see his 1911 book On the Spiritual in Art).

Within the group, artistic approaches and aims varied from artist to artist; however, the artists shared a common desire to express spiritual truths through their art. They believed in the promotion of modern art; the connection between visual art and music; the spiritual and symbolic associations of colour; and a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting. Members were interested in European medieval art and primitivism, as well as the contemporary, non-figurative art scene in France. As a result of their encounters with cubist, fauvist and Rayonist ideas, they moved towards abstraction.

Der Blaue Reiter organized exhibitions in 1911 and 1912, which toured Germany. They also published an almanac featuring contemporary, primitive, and folk art, along with children's paintings. In 1913, they exhibited in the first German Herbstsalon.

The group was disrupted by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Franz Marc and August Macke were killed in combat. Wassily Kandinsky, Marianne von Werefkin, and Alexej von Jawlensky were forced to move back to Russia because of their Russian citizenship. There were also differences of opinion within the group. As a result, Der Blaue Reiter was short-lived, lasting for only three years, from 1911 to 1914.

After Der Blaue Reiter

In 1914, Klee visited Tunisia, with August Macke and Louis Moilliet, and was impressed by the quality of the light there, writing, "Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever… Color and I are one. I am a painter." Klee also visited Italy (1901), and Egypt (1928), both of which greatly influenced his art. Klee was one of Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four), with Kandinsky, Feininger, and Von Jawlensky; formed in 1923, they lectured and exhibited together in the U.S. in 1924.

He died in Muralto, Switzerland, in 1940, without having obtained Swiss citizenship. The Swiss authorities eventually accepted his request, six days after his death.

Pamela Kort observed, "Klee's 1933 drawings present their beholder with an unparalleled opportunity to glimpse a central aspect of his aesthetics that has remained the possibilities of parody and wit. Herein lies their real significance, particularly for an audience unaware that Klee's art has political dimensions."[1]

Klee and color

Throughout his career, Paul Klee used color in a variety of unique and diverse means, in a relationship that progressed and evolved in a variety of ways. For an artist that loved so much of the natural world, it seems rather odd that Klee originally despised color, believing that it was in itself, little more than a decoration to a work.

Eventually, Klee would learn to manipulate color with great skill, coming to teach lessons on color mixing and color theory to students at the Bauhaus. This progression in itself is of great interest, because his views on color would ultimately allow him to write about it from a unique viewpoint among his contemporaries.

Klee influenced the work of other noted artists of the early twentieth century, including Belgian printmaker Rene Carcan.

Klee worked with many different types of media—oil paint, watercolor, ink, and more. He often combined them into one work. He has been variously associated with expressionism, cubism, and surrealism, but his pictures are difficult to classify. They often have a fragile, child-like quality to them and are usually on a small scale. They frequently allude to poetry, music, and dreams and sometimes include words or musical notation. The later works are distinguished by spidery hieroglyph-like symbols which he famously described as "taking a line for a walk." His better-known works include Southern (Tunisian) Gardens (1919), Ad Parnassum (1932), and Embrace (1939).

Following World War I, in which he painted camouflage on airplanes for the imperial German army, Klee taught at the Bauhaus, and from 1931 at the Düsseldorf Academy, before being denounced by the Nazi Party for producing "degenerate art," in 1933. The degenerate art exhibit catalogs had even called Klee's work "the work of a sick mind."

Composer Gunther Schuller also immortalized seven works of Klee's in his Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee. The studies are based on a range of works, including Alter Klang [Antique Harmonies], Abstraktes Terzett [Abstract Trio], Little Blue Devil, Twittering Machine, Arab Village, Ein unheimlicher Moment [An Eerie Moment], and Pastorale.

Another of Klee's paintings, Angelus Novus, was the object of an interpretive text by German philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin: In it, Benjamin suggests that the angel depicted in the painting might be seen as representing progress in history. In 1933, Paul Klee returned to Switzerland; in 1935, he began experiencing the symptoms of what was diagnosed as scleroderma after his death. The progression of his fatal case of the disease can be followed through the art he created in his last years.

When Paul Klee died at age sixty, he left at least 8926 works of art. The words on his tombstone say, "I belong not only to this life. I live as well with the dead, as with those not born. Nearer to the heart of creation than others, but still too far." Today, a painting by Paul Klee can sell for as much as $7.5 million.

Paul Klee Zentrum in Bern, Switzerland

A museum dedicated to Paul Klee was built in Bern, Switzerland, by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. It opened in June 2005, and houses a collection of about 4000 works by Paul Klee. Another substantial collection of Klee's works is owned by chemist and playwright Carl Djerassi and is displayed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Paul Klee's father was a German citizen; his mother was Swiss. Swiss law determined citizenship along paternal lines, and thus Paul inherited his father's German citizenship. He even served in the German army during World War I. However, Klee grew up in Berne, Switzerland, and returned there often, even before his final emigration from Germany in 1933. He died before his application for Swiss citizenship was processed.[2]

  1. Pamela Kort, Paul Klee 1933. Retrieved October 29, 2007.
  2. Swiss Info, Paul Klee: A man made in Switzerland. Retrieved October 29, 2007.

  • Kort, Pamela. Comic Grotesque: Wit and Mockery in German Art, 1870-1940. PRESTEL, 2004. ISBN 9783791331959
  • Paul Klee: 1933 Munich: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus.

External links

All links retrieved June 21, 2014.

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.


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On Saturday, September 21st, the Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor was shot dead at Nairobi’s Westgate mall by terrorists. He was one of dozens of innocent victims of the massacre, for which the Somali group Shabaab claimed responsibility. I was about a mile away during the attack, giving a reading at the National Museum. During the reading, as word of the attack filtered in, people answered their phones and checked their messages, but, onstage and oblivious, I continued taking questions from the audience, including one about “the precariousness of life in Africa.”

The massacre did not end neatly. It became a siege. In my hotel room, about half a mile from the mall, I was woken in the mornings that followed by the sounds of gunfire, heavy artillery, attack helicopters, and military planes. In counterpoint to these frightening sounds were others: incessant birdsong outside my window, the laughter of children from the daycare next door. I read Awoonor’s poems, and watched a column of black smoke rise from the mall in the distance. The poems’ uncanny prophetic force became inescapable. A section of “Hymn to My Dumb Earth” reads:

What has not happened before?
An animal has caught me,
it has me in its claws
Someone, someone, save
Save me, someone,
for I die.

Just three days earlier, on Thursday, I’d sent an e-mail from Nairobi to a friend in New York. “Kofi Awoonor, Mongane Wally Serote, and Kwame Dawes are here at the Storymoja Hay Festival. These are senior African boys!” He wrote back: “That’s wonderful. It’s important they be a full fledged part of all conversations, youth movements and Internet notwithstanding.” I sat next to Awoonor at the press conference that opened the festival that day, excited to meet the man behind the books. Awoonor was a jovial man, dark-skinned and fine-featured, wearing a batakari, a striped tunic, which gave him a regal air. Coming in late, he had joked, “I apologize. When you said 4 P.M., I thought you meant 4 P.M. African time, which is 5 P.M.

Awoonor, widely considered Ghana’s greatest contemporary poet, was a member of the literary generation that came of age in the fifties and sixties. Many of these writers were published in the Heinemann African Writers Series, the tan and orange spines of which could be seen on the bookshelves of homes across the continent. The series, under the editorship of Chinua Achebe, was the first flowering of African literature in English. Awoonor shared with many of his illustrious contemporaries an intense engagement with both African tradition and African modernity. The influence of T. S. Eliot was strong, and Awoonor’s poems are often dense and mysterious. But, like Achebe, he also gave voice to a culture under rapid and destructive change from colonial influences, and he expressed a disillusionment with the violence that marred the post-colonial project. From “This Earth, My Brother”:

The crackling report of brens
and the falling down;
a shout greeted them
tossing them into the darkness.

Like his late friend Christopher Okigbo, he was invested in the ritual and chthonic possibilities of African vernacular language, in his case Ewe. From that Ewe tradition came the feeling for elegy, which he applied with seriousness and dark irony to the serial crises of post-independence Ghana. The Ewe language also gave his poetry strong musical cadences, so that even when the meaning was opaque, the lines were fluent.

On Monday, on the third day of what would prove to be a four-day siege, about a hundred and fifty people made their way across uncharacteristically empty roads to Nairobi’s National Museum. An impromptu memorial had been organized for Awoonor. Kwame Dawes, the Ghanaian-Jamaican poet, spoke warmly about the man he considered an uncle. On Friday, Dawes had shown me the first volume in a new series on African poetry. That book (which Dawes edited, and which will be published by the University of Nebraska Press early next year) was an orange-colored, handsomely designed hardcover of Awoonor’s “The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems.”

“It’s got to be good,” Dawes had said of the design. “It’s got to be good because it’s intended to last.” His pride in the finished project was justified. Now, at the memorial, I asked Dawes if Awoonor had seen the volume he showed me.

“I showed it to him for the first time here in Nairobi. I told him, ‘This is it.’”

“And what did he say?”

Dawes smiled. “He said, ‘This is good.’ That’s what he said. ‘This is good.’”

Awoonor’s son Afetsi had accompanied his father to Nairobi, and we’d all been at the same hotel. Afetsi was injured in the attack—shot in the shoulder—but he came to the memorial, with a white bandage slung across his right arm. He had the same serene and easy smile as his father, and we embraced warmly. The Ghanaian High Commissioner was there as well, as were three other members of Awoonor’s family who had flown in after the tragedy. (Awoonor had served as Ghana’s Permanent Representative to the U.N. in the nineteen-nineties, and he’d come to the Storymoja Hay Festival at the behest of the Ghanaian government.) One of the authors at the festival, the young Ghanaian poet Nii Ayikwei Parkes, during his eulogy, referred to Awoonor in the present tense. As he corrected himself, replacing “is” with “was,” grief took sudden hold, and his voice cracked.

After Parkes’s eulogy, I read out Awoonor’s short poem “The Journey Beyond”:

The howling cry through door posts
carrying boiling pots
ready for the feasters.
Kutsiami the benevolent boatman;
when I come to the river shore
please ferry me across
I do not have tied in my cloth the
price of your stewardship.

The most resonant moment of the evening was the least anticipated: someone had made an audio recording from the master class that Awoonor had given at the Festival on Friday. And so, in the silence of the auditorium, we listened to about a minute of his final lecture. And there he was, speaking to us in his own voice (how startling its clarity), as though nothing had changed: “And I have written about death also, particularly at this old age now. At seventy-nine, you must know—unless you’re an idiot—that very soon, you should be moving on.” Then he added, with both levity and seriousness, “An ancient poet from my tradition said, ‘I have something to say. I will say it before death comes. And if I don’t say it, let no one say it for me. I will be the one who will say it.’”

Teju Cole is a photographer and writer. His novel “Open City” won the Internationaler Literaturpreis in June. He contributes frequently to Page-Turner.

Above: Kofi Awoonor, in his last public appearance, a poetry master class, in Nairobi, on September 20, 2013. Photograph: Storymoja Hay Festival/Msingi Sasis.


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recommended reading

NASA Found the New ‘Earth-like’ Planet Using Old Data

With much fanfare, NASA announced this week that its Kepler Space Telescope had discovered the first Earth-size planet that orbits a parent star in the so-called habitable zone, where temperatures could allow liquid water to collect on the surface.

The planet has been named Kepler-186f, and the discovery itself is a first. Of the 1,700 confirmed planets Kepler has detected, the telescope found many that were either similar in size to Earth or that orbited in a star’s habitable zone, but Kepler-186f is the first to achieve both.

Certainly, it’s an exciting time for NASA, but in a particularly interesting twist, the space agency and its team of scientists at Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., didn’t find this planet in new data from Kepler; it actually came from an archived trove Kepler generated before the telescope malfunctioned in May 2013.

Even without Kepler hunting for planets in the same way since, scientists have continued to pour over old data collected by the $600 million telescope since it was launched in 2009, using new techniques to find planetary diamonds in the rough.

In fact, NASA announced the confirmation of 715 new planets in February, all unveiled through a new method called the “verification by multiplicity technique,” which examined possible multi-planet systems Kepler detected in its first two years.

Much like those newly-confirmed planets, evidence for Kepler-186f already existed -- not light-years away in space, but stored away in a NASA facility. Scientists believe there may be hundreds or more planets waiting to be found in existing data.

Even more reason for optimism for planetary scientists: Two full years of Kepler data remain to be explored.

NASA officials have even suggested the agency might use its D-Wave 2, a quantum computer it operates in partnership with Google and the Universities Space Research Association, to pour over existing Kepler data.

All in all, it’s a very exciting time for NASA.

"The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth," said Paul Hertz, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Future NASA missions, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope, will discover the nearest rocky exoplanets and determine their composition and atmospheric conditions, continuing humankind's quest to find truly Earth-like worlds."

Meanwhile, NASA is in the latter stages of determining whether to approve a new mission called “K2” for Kepler. Since the second of its fourth gyroscope-like reactionary wheels failed in May – it requires three to navigate precisely enough to gaze at stars – NASA has been exploring alternative ways for Kepler to effectively carry out science. If approved, K2 would attempt to make use of the sun’s solar wind to stabilize the telescope in conjunction with its two operational reactionary wheels over intervals of several months.

Whether Kepler is repurposed or not, scientists have more than enough data to keep searching for Earth-like planets through information that is already at their fingertips.

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May 6, 2016 1:35 PM

1 of 14 newly born Right Whale calves found dead, pushed ashore in Cape Cod

CAPE COD, Mass. — One of the 14 North Atlantic right whale calves just born this winter off the coast of Georgia, was sadly found dead on Thursday between Cape Cod's Chatham and Monomoy Island.

According to the Cape Cod Times, a harbormaster was notified of the whale drifting in the channel off Morris Island on Thursday morning, where Deputy Harbormaster Jason Holm and Wharfinger Mike Ryder then pushed it ashore.

They told the paper that the whale appeared to have been hit by a vessel and there was no sign of entanglement in line or gear. This comes after The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association issued an advisory on Monday after an aerial research team spotted nine whales 20 miles southeast of Portsmouth.

READ: Seacoast boaters are being warned to be on the lookout for North Atlantic Right Whales

The whale is between 27 and 28 feet long and had been identified earlier this year by the New England Aquarium, and was last spotted in Cape Cod Bay on April 28 with its mother. The calf was also first seen Jan. 12 off Georgia with its mother who gave brith to eight calves, National Marine Fisheries Service spokeswoman Jennifer Goebel told the paper.

Two, including the one found Thursday, have died thus far.

The whale will be anchored where it is at the end of Harding Beach near the Stage Harbor channel overnight and the necropsy will be done Friday and will then be buried on the beach.

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Sep 18, 2014 4:37 PM

Sierra Leone to shut down for 3 days to slow Ebola

The Associated Press

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) Shoppers in Sierra Leone rushed to stock up on food Thursday ahead of a three-day nationwide shutdown, during which the country's 6 million people will be confined to their homes while volunteers search house-to-house for Ebola victims in hiding and hand out soap in a desperate bid to slow the accelerating outbreak.

The disease sweeping West Africa has also touched Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal and is believed to have sickened more than 5,300 people, the World Health Organization reported. In a sign the crisis is picking up steam, more than 700 of those cases were recorded in the last week for which data is available.

Ebola is estimated to have killed more than 2,600 people, with most of the deaths in Liberia. But WHO has said that the official toll is probably a gross underestimate and that most patients are at home, infecting others, when they should be in treatment centers.

At an emergency meeting Thursday, the U.N. Security Council called the outbreak "a threat to international peace and security" and unanimously urged all countries to provide health experts, field hospitals and medical supplies.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a 20-fold increase in aid totaling almost $1 billion.

It was only the second time the council addressed a public health emergency, the first being the AIDS crisis.

During the lockdown in Sierra Leone, set to begin at midnight Thursday and run through Sunday, volunteers will try to identify sick people reluctant or unable to seek treatment. They will also hand out 1.5 million bars of soap and dispense information on how to prevent Ebola.

More than six months into the world's largest Ebola outbreak, there are still affected areas without access to soap and water, WHO said.

Authorities have said they expect to discover hundreds of new cases during the shutdown. Many of those infected have not sought treatment out of fear that hospitals are merely places people go to die. Others have been turned away by centers overwhelmed with patients.

Sierra Leone's government said it has prepared screening and treatment centers to accept the expected influx of patients after the shutdown.

As shoppers rushed to buy last-minute items, some merchants worried about how they would feed their own families after losing three days' income. Much of Sierra Leone's population lives on $2 a day or less, and making ends meet is a day-to-day struggle.

"If we do not sell here we cannot eat," said Isatu Sesay, a vegetable seller in the capital. "We do not know how we will survive during the three-day shutdown."

Several countries have promised aid. France announced Thursday it will set up a military hospital in Guinea in the coming days, while Britain said it will provide 500 more badly needed beds in Sierra Leone. The U.S. plans to send 3,000 military personnel to the region and build more than a dozen treatment centers in Liberia. An American general has arrived in the Liberian capital of Monrovia to set up a command center.

Ebola, which is spread through bodily fluids, puts health workers at a particularly high risk. Nearly 320 have become infected, and about half have died. A French nurse for Doctors Without Borders who became infected in Liberia was being flown to Paris on Thursday.

With no proven treatment for Ebola, public health experts have kept the focus on isolating the sick, tracking down those they have come into contact with, and stopping the chain of transmission through travel restrictions, the cordoning off of entire communities and now Sierra Leone's lockdown.

Confusion and fear about the disease and anger over some of these measures have occasionally sparked unrest. In Guinea this week, a team that was doing disinfection and education on prevention methods was attacked by a group of young people and has been missing ever since.

Some patients have been given the blood of Ebola survivors in an experimental approach that some scientists think can help people fight off the virus.

British nurse William Pooley, who was infected while working in Sierra Leone and has since recovered, has flown to the U.S. to donate blood to an American patient, according to the Foreign Office. The American was not identified.

Associated Press writers Maria Cheng in London; Lolita C. Baldor in Washington; Sarah DiLorenzo in Dakar, Senegal; Nicolas Garriga and Sylvie Corbet in Paris; and Boubacar Diallo in Conakry, Guinea, contributed to this report.

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848 Views 2 Replies Last post: Aug 18, 2013 8:22 PM by John RSS
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Aug 8, 2013 3:41 PM

Vertebrae found in garden

My garden's home to a bunch of foxes who keep dragging all sorts of things in, but this is a new one. Can anyone help identify the animal? Thanks

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Earlier today, Anton Vowl linked to this advert for trainee reporters at the Daily Mail. I’m not looking for a job at the moment, but something about the phrase “200 words on why you think you could be a Mail journalist” got my attention. And so, this:

Waking up this morning, I discovered I’d slept 16% less than the previous night. Extensive research of my prejudices revealed that this was due to a new European directive on sleeping, and I immediately called several self-appointed experts who slammed this decision to wake up early. I skipped breakfast, having discovered scientific studies that proved corn flakes, milk and being in a kitchen before 10am all cause cancer. Turning on the radio, I listened for thirty seconds before turning off in disgust. Didn’t they realise that on this day at some point in the past, some British people had died somewhere? A letter to the BBC followed, complaining how their political correctness gone mad meant these important anniversaries weren’t being noted. I then went out and noticed that so-called scientists hadn’t predicted the rain that was falling, which clearly shows how global warming is a myth. I kept my distance from the wheelie bins that littered the street, knowing each one contained a spy camera operated by a feral hoodie, reporting all my movements to his masters in Brussels, ready to give my house away to a gay asylum seeker. My life is hell, but at least I’m not a celebrity.

Do I get the job, Mr Dacre?


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counter for blogspot

Get rid of books for MONEY!

by Nicole on March 10, 2009

My friend Brandie over at Free Sample Freak told me about this great company,Sell Back Books , where you can send your old college textbooks back and earn money for doing so! They even pay the shipping costs.

According to Brandie, the site is easy and within minutes you could be earning money for those old textbooks you no longer need! Take a look in the basement or attic today and see what old texts you can find…

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Check out HOT Amazon deals on your favorite items!

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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Steph March 10, 2009 at 12:10 pm

Thanks for the tip. I wonder how old they can be?

2 Anonymous March 10, 2009 at 1:59 pm

hi Nicole. this is Linda, your court reporter! what a wonderful blogspot. there is definitely an abundance of info here. I’ve only just begun checking it out. I have given the site to a bunch of people already.

3 Nicole @ Nicole's Nickels March 10, 2009 at 4:20 pm

I think it depends on whether or not new editions have come out since. Even if the book is old, it may still be current and worth some money!

4 Nicole @ Nicole's Nickels March 10, 2009 at 4:22 pm

Hi Miss Linda – Glad you like the site. Keep reading and sharing with others and let me know if you have any questions!

5 Coco March 10, 2009 at 6:10 pm

“Ring Around the Blogs”

Thank you for visiting my blog. This is a great tip. I have several college books sitting at home. I am definitely trying this site.

BTW, do you have any recipes for sardine?

6 busy mom March 12, 2009 at 4:58 pm

I just found your blog through hip to save-
I will have to look into this site. I have books from my classes and I will have more to come. I wonder how they pay. I know it is a shame that some of these books cost me $150 or so and not even use it that much.
Thanks for the tip.

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