Every generation has to reinvent the practice of computer programming. In the 1950s the key innovations were programming languages such as Fortran and Lisp. The 1960s and '70s saw a crusade to root out "spaghetti code" and replace it with "structured programming." Since the 1980s software development has been dominated by a methodology known as object-oriented programming, or OOP. Now there are signs that OOP may be running out of oomph, and discontented programmers are once again casting about for the next big idea. It's time to look at what might await us in the post-OOP era (apart from an unfortunate acronym).
The Tar Pit
The architects of the earliest computer systems gave little thought to software. (The very word was still a decade in the future.) Building the machine itself was the serious intellectual challenge; converting mathematical formulas into program statements looked like a routine clerical task. The awful truth came out soon enough. Maurice V. Wilkes, who wrote what may have been the first working computer program, had his personal epiphany in 1949, when "the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs." Half a century later, we're still debugging.
The very first programs were written in pure binary notation: Both data and instructions had to be encoded in long, featureless strings of 1s and 0s. Moreover, it was up to the programmer to keep track of where everything was stored in the machine's memory. Before you could call a subroutine, you had to calculate its address.
The technology that lifted these burdens from the programmer was assembly language, in which raw binary codes were replaced by symbols such as load, store, add, sub. The symbols were translated into binary by a program called an assembler, which also calculated addresses. This was the first of many instances in which the computer was recruited to help with its own programming.
Assembly language was a crucial early advance, but still the programmer had to keep in mind all the minutiae in the instruction set of a specific computer. Evaluating a short mathematical expression such as x2+y2 might require dozens of assembly-language instructions. Higher-level languages freed the programmer to think in terms of variables and equations rather than registers and addresses. In Fortran, for example, x2+y2 would be written simply as X**2+Y**2. Expressions of this kind are translated into binary form by a program called a compiler.
With Fortran and the languages that followed, programmers finally had the tools they needed to get into really serious trouble. By the 1960s large software projects were notorious for being late, overbudget and buggy; soon came the appalling news that the cost of software was overtaking that of hardware. Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., who managed the OS/360 software program at IBM, called large-system programming a "tar pit" and remarked, "Everyone seems to have been surprised by the stickiness of the problem."
One response to this crisis was structured programming, a reform movement whose manifesto was Edsger W. Dijkstra's brief letter to the editor titled "Go to statement considered harmful." Structured programs were to be built out of subunits that have a single entrance point and a single exit (eschewing the goto command, which allows jumps into or out of the middle of a routine). Three such constructs were recommended: sequencing (do A, then B, then C), alternation (either do A or do B) and iteration (repeat A until some condition is satisfied). Corrado Böhm and Giuseppe Jacopini proved that these three idioms are sufficient to express essentially all programs.
Structured programming came packaged with a number of related principles and imperatives. Top-down design and stepwise refinement urged the programmer to set forth the broad outlines of a procedure first and only later fill in the details. Modularity called for self-contained units with simple interfaces between them. Encapsulation, or data hiding, required that the internal workings of a module be kept private, so that later changes to the module would not affect other areas of the program. All of these ideas have proved their worth and remain a part of software practice today. But they did not rescue programmers from the tar pit.
Nouns and Verbs
The true history of software development is not a straight line but a meandering river with dozens of branches. Some of the tributaries—functional programming, declarative programming, methods based on formal proofs of correctness—are no less interesting than the mainstream, but here I have room to explore only one channel: object-
Consider a program for manipulating simple geometric figures. In a non-OOP environment, you might begin by writing a series of procedures with names such as rotate, scale, reflect, calculate-area, calculate-perimeter. Each of these verblike procedures could be applied to triangles, squares, circles and many other shapes; the figures themselves are nounlike entities embodied in data structures separate from the procedures. For example, a triangle might by represented by an array of three vertices, where each vertex is a pair of x and y coordinates. Applying the rotate procedure to this data structure would alter the coordinates and thereby turn the triangle.
What's the matter with this scheme? One likely source of trouble is that the procedures and the data structures are separate but interdependent. If you change your mind about the implementation of triangles—perhaps using a linked list of points instead of an array—you must remember to change all the procedures that might ever be applied to a triangle. Also, choosing different representations for some of the figures becomes awkward. If you describe a circle in terms of a center and a radius rather than a set of vertices, all the procedures have to treat circles as a special case. Yet another pitfall is that the data structures are public property, and the procedures that share them may not always play nicely together. A figure altered by one procedure might no longer be valid input for another.
Object-oriented programming addresses these issues by packing both data and procedures—both nouns and verbs—into a single object. An object named triangle would have inside it some data structure representing a three-sided shape, but it would also include the procedures (called methods in this context) for acting on the data. To rotate a triangle, you send a message to the triangle object, telling it to rotate itself. Sending and receiving messages is the only way objects communicate with one another; outsiders are not allowed direct access to the data. Because only the object's own methods know about the internal data structures, it's easier to keep them in sync.
This scheme would not have much appeal if every time you wanted to create a triangle, you had to write out all the necessary data structures and methods—but that's not how it works. You define the class triangle just once; individual triangles are created as instances of the class. A mechanism called inheritance takes this idea a step further. You might define a more-general class polygon, which would have triangle as a subclass, along with other subclasses such as quadrilateral, pentagon and hexagon. Some methods would be common to all polygons; one example is the calculation of perimeter, which can be done by adding the lengths of the sides, no matter how many sides there are. If you define the method calculate-perimeter in the class polygon, all the subclasses inherit this code.
Object-oriented programming traces its heritage back to simula, a programming language devised in the 1960s by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. Some object-oriented ideas were also anticipated by David L. Parnas. And the Sketchpad system of Ivan Sutherland was yet another source of inspiration. The various threads came together when Alan Kay and his colleagues created the Smalltalk language at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s. Within a decade several more object-oriented languages were in use, most notably Bjarne Stroustrup's C++, and later Java. Object-oriented features have also been retrofitted onto older languages, such as Lisp.
As OOP has transformed the way programs are written, there has also been a major shift in the nature of the programs themselves. In the software-engineering literature of the 1960s and '70s, example programs tend to have a sausage-grinder structure: Inputs enter at one end, and outputs emerge at the other. An example is a compiler, which transforms source code into machine code. Programs written in this style have not disappeared, but they are no longer the center of attention. The emphasis now is on interactive software with a graphical user interface. Programming manuals for object-oriented languages are all about windows and menus and mouse clicks. In other words, OOP is not just a different solution; it also solves a different problem.
Aspects and Objects
Most of the post-OOP initiatives do not aim to supplant object-oriented programming; they seek to refine or improve or reinvigorate it. A case in point is aspect-oriented programming, or AOP.
The classic challenge in writing object-oriented programs is finding the right decomposition into classes and objects. Returning to the example of a program for playing with geometric figures, a typical instance of the class pentagon might look like this: . But this object is also a pentagon: . And so is this: . To accommodate the differences between these figures, you could introduce subclasses of pentagon—perhaps named convex-pentagon, non-convex-pentagon and five-pointed-star. But then you would have to do the same thing for hexagons, heptagons and so forth, which soon becomes tedious. Moreover, this classification would give you no way to write methods that apply, say, to all convex polygons but to no others. An alternative decomposition would divide the polygon class into convex-polygon and non-convex-polygon, then subdivide the latter class into simple-polygon and self-intersecting-polygon. With this choice, however, you lose the ability to address all five-sided figures as a group.
One solution to this quandary is multiple inheritance—allowing a class to have more than one parent. Thus a five-pointed star could be a subclass both of pentagon and of self-intersecting-polygon and could inherit methods from both. The wisdom of this arrangement is a matter of eternal controversy in the OOP community.
Aspect-oriented programming takes another approach to dealing with "crosscutting" issues that cannot easily be arranged in a treelike hierarchy. An example in the geometry program might be the need to update a display window every time a figure is moved or modified. The straightforward OOP solution is to have each method that changes the appearance of a figure (such as rotate or scale) send a message to a display-manager object, telling the display what needs to be redrawn. But hundreds of methods could send such messages. Even apart from the boredom of writing the same code over and over, there is the worry that the interface to the display manager might change someday, requiring many methods to be revised. The AOP answer is to isolate the display-update "aspect" of the program in a module of its own. The programmer writes one instance of the code that calls for a display update, along with a specification of all the occasions on which that code is to be invoked—for example, whenever a rotate method is executed. Then even though the text of the rotate method does not mention display updating, the appropriate message is sent at the appropriate time.
An AOP system called AspectJ, developed by Gregor Kiczales and a group of colleagues at Xerox PARC, works as an extension of the Java language. AOP is particularly attractive for implementing ubiquitous tasks such as error-handling, the logging of events, and synchronizing multiple threads of execution, which might otherwise be scattered throughout a program. But there are dissenting views. Jörg Kienzle and Rachid Guerraoui report on an attempt to build a transaction-
processing system with AspectJ, where the key requirement is that transactions be executed completely or not at all (so that the system cannot debit one account without crediting another). They found it difficult to cleanly isolate this property as an aspect.
Surely the most obvious place to look for help with programming a computer is the computer itself. If Fortran can be compiled into machine code, then why not transform some higher-level description or specification directly into a ready-to-run program? This is an old dream. It lives on under names such as generative programming, metaprogramming and intentional programming.
In general, fully automatic programming remains beyond our reach, but there is one area where the idea has solid theoretical underpinnings as well as a record of practical success: in the building of compilers. Instead of hand-crafting a compiler for a specific programming language, the common practice is to write a grammar for the language and then generate the compiler with a program called a compiler compiler. (The best-known of these programs is Yacc, which stands for "yet another compiler compiler.")
Generative programming would adapt this model to other domains. For example, a program generator for the kind of software that controls printers and other peripheral devices would accept a grammar-like description of the device and produce an appropriately specialized program. Another kind of generator might assemble "protocol stacks" for computer networking.
Krzysztof Czarnecki and Ulrich W. Eisenecker compare a generative-programming system to a factory for manufacturing automobiles. Building the factory is more work than building a single car by hand, but the factory can produce thousands of cars. Moreover, if the factory is designed well, it can turn out many different models just by changing the specifications. Likewise generative programming would create families of programs tailored to diverse circumstances but all assembled from similar components.
The Quality Without a Name
Another new programming methodology draws its inspiration from an unexpected quarter. Although the term "computer architecture" goes back to the dawn of the industry, it was nonetheless a surprise when a band of software designers became disciples of a bricks-and-steel architect, Christopher Alexander. Even Alexander was surprised.
Alexander is known for the enigmatic thesis that well-designed buildings and towns must have "the quality without a name." He explains: "The fact that this quality cannot be named does not mean that it is vague or imprecise. It is impossible to name because it is unerringly precise." Does that answer your question?
Even if the quality had a name, it's not clear how one would turn it into a prescription for building good houses—or good software. Fortunately, Alexander is more explicit elsewhere in his writings. He urges architects to exploit recurrent patterns observed in both problems and solutions. For the pattern of events labeled "watching the world go by," a good solution is probably going to look something like a front porch. Taken over into the world of software, this approach leads to a catalogue of design patterns for solving specific, recurring problems in object-oriented programming. For example, a pattern named Bridge deals with the problem of setting up communications between two objects that may not know of each other's existence at the time a program is written. A pattern named Composite handles the situation where a single object and a collection of multiple objects have to be given the same status, as is often the case with files and directories of files.
Over the past 10 years a sizable community has grown up around the pattern idea. There are dozens of books, web sites and an annual conference called Pattern Languages of Programming, or PLoP. Compared with earlier reform movements in computing, the pattern community sounds a little unfocused and New Age. Whereas structured programming was founded on a proof that three specific structures suffice to express all algorithms, there is nothing resembling such a proof to justify the selection of ideas included in catalogues of design patterns. As a matter of fact, the whole idea of proofs seems to be out of favor in the pattern community.
Software Jeremiahs usually preach that programming should be an engineering profession, guided by standards analogous to building codes, or else it should be a branch of applied mathematics, with programs constructed like mathematical proofs. The pattern movement rejects both of these ideals and suggests instead that programmers are like carpenters or stonemasons—stewards of a body of knowledge gained by experience and passed along by tradition and apprenticeship. This is a movement of practitioners, not academics. Pattern advocates express particular contempt for the notion that programming might someday be taken over entirely by the computer. Automating a craft, they argue, is not only infeasible but also undesirable.
The rhetoric of the pattern movement may sound like the ranting of a fringe group, but pattern methods have been adopted in several large organizations producing large—and successful—software systems. (When you make a phone call, you may well be relying on the work of programmers seeking out the quality without a name.) Moreover, beyond the rhetoric, the writings of the software-patterns community can be quite down-to-earth and pragmatic.
If the pattern community is on the radical fringe, how far out is extreme programming (or, as it is sometimes spelled, eXtreme programming)? For the leaders of this movement, the issue is not so much the nature of the software itself but the way programming projects are organized and managed. They want to peel away layers of bureaucracy and jettison most of the stages of analysis, planning, testing, review and documentation that slow down software development. Just let programmers program! The recommended protocol is to work in pairs, two programmers huddling over a single keyboard, checking their own work as they go along. Is it a fad? A cult? Although the name may evoke a culture of body piercing and bungee jumping, extreme programming seems to have gained a foothold among the pinstriped suits. The first major project completed under the method was a payroll system for a transnational automobile manufacturer.
Ask Me About My OOP Diet
Frederick Brooks, who wrote of the tar pit in the 1960s, followed up in 1987 with an essay on the futility of seeking a "silver bullet," a single magical remedy for all of software's ills. Techniques such as object-oriented programming might alleviate "accidental difficulties" of software development, he said, but the essential complexity cannot be wished away. This pronouncement that the disease is incurable made everyone feel better. But it deterred no one from proposing remedies.
After several weeks' immersion in the how-to-program literature, I am reminded of the shelves upon shelves of diet books in the self-help department of my local bookstore. In saying this I mean no disrespect to either genre. Most diet books, somewhere deep inside, offer sound advice: Eat less, exercise more. Most programming manuals also give wise counsel: Modularize, encapsulate. But surveying the hundreds of titles in both categories leaves me with a nagging doubt: The very multiplicity of answers undermines them all. Isn't it likely that we'd all be thinner, and we'd all have better software, if there were just one true diet, and one true programming methodology?
Maybe that day will come. In the meantime, I'm going on a spaghetti-code diet.
© Brian Hayes


Overspending can be very stressful when it comes time to pay your credit card bill. However, it's the added interest that makes overspending just that much more expensive.
Spending your future income
One survey of 21- to 35-year-old college graduates found that this group owes an average of $30,000 in student loans. The several hundred dollars these graduates pay each month to pay off the loan is money that can't be saved or invested for the future. It can't be spent on other necessities, such as emergency car repairs or household expenses either. It's money that's tied up until the debt is repaid.
While debt for education is considered "good" debt because it's an investment in your future, all debt obligates your future income because of the payments that must be made. So make sure you use debt wisely-eliminate "bad" debt (debt for depreciating assets, such as car loans and credit card debt) and limit the "good" debt to reasonable amounts.
Paying the price of debt
Interest payments on debt work against you. New college graduates carry an average credit card balance of $3,000. Let's say you're lucky—or better yet, careful—and you accumulate only $2,200 in credit card debt. Your interest rate is 18% and you pay the minimum amount each month on your card ($40) without any further purchases on your card. How long will it take to pay off your balance? Did you guess five years? Try 10. It will take almost 10 years to pay off the debt. Your total cost will be $4,680 (original balance of $2,200 plus $2,480 in interest).
Getting into debt is easy
It's easy to run up a credit card. How many times have you gone to dinner, put the whole bill on your credit card, collected money from friends for their portion of the bill, and then found that money gone by the time the bill arrives in the mail? How easy is it to buy another sweater on sale, not so much because you need it but because it was a good bargain? Pretty soon you've built up a large balance on your credit card. You could easily charge $2,200 on your credit card in two months, but it will take 10 years to pay it off if you only pay the minimum balance each month. Two months versus 10 years. Now that's downright scary!


What is skin testing for allergies?
The most common way to test for allergies is on the skin, usually the forearm or the back. In a typical skin test, a doctor or nurse will place a tiny bit of an allergen (such as pollen or food) on the skin, then make a small scratch or prick on the skin.
The allergist may repeat this, testing for several allergens in one visit. This can be a little uncomfortable, but not painful.
If your child reacts to one of the allergens, the skin will swell a little in that area. The doctor will be able to see if a reaction occurs within about 15 minutes. The swelling usually goes down within about 30 minutes to a few hours. Other types of skin testing include injecting allergens into the skin or taping allergens to the skin for 48 hours.
With a skin test, an allergist can check for these kinds of allergies:
- environmental, such as mold, pet dander, or tree pollen
- food, such as peanuts or eggs
- medications, such as penicillin
Some medications (such as antihistamines) can interfere with skin testing, so check with the doctor to see if your child's medications need to be stopped before the test is done. While skin testing is useful and helpful, sometimes additional tests (like blood tests or food challenges) also must be done to see if a child is truly allergic to something.
While skin tests are usually well tolerated, in rare instances they can cause a more serious allergic reaction. This is why skin testing must always be done in an allergist's office, where the doctor is prepared to handle a reaction.
Reviewed by: Larissa Hirsch, MD
Date reviewed: May 2012


Some of our most interesting prints were once given away in a magazine. Today they comprise an important social history resource for the nineteenth century, illustrating spectacles and other visual devices in use by some of the most significant people of the day.
Vanity Fair was a Victorian magazine, founded in 1868 and aimed at the middle and upper sections of society. From the very beginning its illustrations included a distinctive satirical portraiture of a type which was new to English journalism. These portraits were designed to be collectible and many households or clubs enjoyed gathering their own gallery of the most distinguished politicians, clergymen and lawyers of the day. The artists became well-known by their pseudonyms such as 'Spy' and indeed their works are often known by the shorthand label 'Spy cartoons'. The caricatures were reproduced by the relatively new colour printing process of chromolithography.
Many of the Vanity Fair portraits include spectacles, monocles or pince-nez, often with a neck cord attached. In some cases the depiction is indistinct; the artist, usually working in watercolour, was interested only in providing an impression of the device. In other portraits however, the optical device is very clearly shown or else exaggerated such that it becomes a defining motif for the person concerned. An example would be the huge monocle filling the socket of Mr Maguire, the campaigner for Irish Home Rule.
The portraits are a useful source for studying the spectacle fashions of the second half of the nineteenth century and the Edwardian period. The manner in which a frame is worn, held or suspended is often clearly shown. This may be from a cord, or a coat button. The spectacles may be flourished in the hand or parked out of the way on the forehead. In one instance, the son of the novelist Charles Dickens is illustrated actually cleaning his spectacle lenses with a cloth.
Educated Victorian readers held contemporary scientists in a level of esteem that would be unfamiliar today. In consequence, certain distinguished names in the fields of optics and ophthalmology are to be found amongst the Vanity Fair portraits. This includes Mr Frank Crisp, the well-known collector of microscopes, Sir George Airy, reputedly the first to use a cylindrical lens for his own correction, Sir William Crookes the Chemist (a former Superintendent of the Radcliffe Observatory) and R Brudenell Carter who found fame through his operations on corneal staphyloma.
There are so many relevant Vanity Fair portraits (the BOA Museum has 68 for example) that a comprehensive listing would seem superfluous. Below is attached a list of some of the best that an enthusiast might consider including in his collection. It should be noted that many of these prints are available quite cheaply as modern reproductions.
Wearing Pince-Nez or Nose spectacles
Wearing a monocle
Other optical devices
The MusEYEum Guide to the pseudonyms of Vanity Fair cartoonists:
|Ao||= L’Estrange. Floruit 1903-7.|
|APE||= Carlo Pellegrini (1839-1889). Born Capua. Came to England 1864. Adopted name ‘APE’ from 1869.|
|F.C.G.||= Sir Francis Carruthers Gould (1844-1925).|
|F.T.D.||= F.T. Dalton. Floruit 1890.|
|GUTH||= Jean Baptiste Guth. Floruit 1883-1921.|
|Hay||= Floruit 1888-1893.|
|Lib||= Liberio Prosperi. Floruit 1886-1903.|
|PAL||= Jean de Paleogu. Born 1855.|
|SPY||= Sir Leslie Ward (1851-1922). Adopted name ‘SPY’ from 1873, working 36 years for Vanity Fair. Knighted 1918.|
|STUFF||= Possibly H.C. Sepping Wright (i.e. his name becomes the ‘wright stuff’). Floruit 1894-1900.|
|T||= Theobald Chartran (1849-1907).|
|w.a.g.||= A.G. Witherby. Floruit 1894-1901.|


At the University of Dubuque, students learn Environmental Science by getting wet, getting muddy, and getting their hands on fish, birds, soil, prairie plants, and rocks. We believe that field-oriented, hands-on courses prepare students for jobs following graduation, while providing real life experiences that lead to internships and undergraduate research projects. Students are exposed to the latest technologies, such as water quality analysis, toxicological assays, and radio telemetry.
Our fleet of field boats provides an excellent opportunity to explore the Mississippi River ecosystem, and yearly field trips to the Audubon Center of the North Woods, Boundary Waters -- and other fun spots, as well as study trips to interantional locations, provide an opportunity to learn about other habitats. Through integrated classroom work and hands-on research, students are prepared to be leaders in the environmental science field after graduation.
We also love field trips. See some of our photos at http://www.geocities.com/daleeasley/FieldTrips/Page.html


Image: Walter Tape
Colourful light pillars often appear in winter when snow or ice crystals reflect light from a strong source like the sun or moon. Aided by extreme cold, light pillars appear when light bounces off the surface of flat ice crystals floating relatively close to the ground. The pillars look like feathers of light that extend vertically either above or below the light source, or both.
Diagrams showing the formation of light pillars from street lamps (left) and the reflection of light rays from plate ice crystal surfaces (right):
Images: Keith C. Heidorn
Light pillars also form from strong artificial light sources like street lamps, car headlights or the strong light sources of an ice-skating rink as in the picture above of Fairbanks, Alaska. Though they are local phenomena, light pillars can look distant like an aurora. The closer an observer is to the source of the light pillar, the larger it seems.
National Geographic has more pictures of recent light pillars in Idaho, California, Belgium, Latvia and Canada. You can also view another Environmental Graffiti article on more incredible light phenomena here.


The involvement of family members in a student’s educational journey plays a crucial part in that student’s success. This page will lead you to a number of resources that can help you shepherd your student through this important step in his or her life. Our FAQ section may answer many of the questions you may have, but also try our A-Z index (on the tab above) for quick access to many topics.
Valuable tips in how you can assist your student, as well as contact information can be found in the links provided. We hope you and your student have a wonderful FSU experience.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), also known as the “Buckley Amendment,” is designed to protect the confidentiality of educational records and give students access to their own information. This access to information does not include parents, unless the student expressly gives you permission each year.
More information about FERPA can be found here.
How FERPA affects grading policies is addressed online and in the Parents Handbook.


Types of Explosions
Any explosion that is the direct result of using a weapon; such as a sword laden with explosive magics, or a gun that's been given explosive bullets. The most obvious example is a grenade or a block of TNT. Most guns can be put into this category, given the common firearm mechanism of propelling a bullet out of the gun's barrel through an explosion in the chamber.
A larger scale example would be the atomic bomb that a player can detonate on the town of Megaton in Fallout 3.
Think Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior for magic-based explosions in games. Spells such as "Flare" in Final Fantasy and "Explodet" in Dragon Warrior are good examples.
In other games, a character may motion with their hand to create a fireball or a beam of powerful light, which will explode upon impact. In Oblivion, the magic-wielding player motions forward with his/her arm and points to create a fireball, which then hurdles through the air, exploding upon any solid surface.
Magical "summonings" also create magical explosions, such as Bahamut's attack in most Final Fantasy games.
These explosions emanate from the world around the player. They can activate on their own, or be triggered by the player's actions. Classics, such as the exploding barrel and fuel tank are often large and loud explosions - and in some environments, they can connect with other exploding objects to create a chain-reaction.
This also contains objects such as vehicles, booby traps, and mines. This type of explosion can be very important to some games, as explosive environmental objects are often part of objectives or checkpoints in a game.
These explosions are the result of any living thing that is able to explode. A simple example of this would be any kamikaze enemy in a game that's willing to run up to a player and detonate themselves.


Grape mealybug—Pseudococcus maritimus
Grape mealybugs are soft, oval, flattened insects. Their
bodies are distinctly segmented; divisions among the head,
thorax, and abdomen are not distinct. The adult female is
about 5 mm long and appears smoothly dusted with a white,
mealy, wax secretion. Long caudal filaments along the lateral
margin of the body become progressively shorter toward the
A new vine mealybug has
recently invaded California vineyards. This species has
shorter filaments than the grape mealybug.
Mealybugs excrete large quantities of sticky honeydew, which drips onto fruit clusters and later turns
black from sooty mold. Some berries may crack. Mealybugs do not injure vines.
Remove loose bark in winter; young mealybugs and eggs are concealed in such places until spring. High
temperatures in June kill much of the most damaging brood. Control
of ants (which interfere with natural
enemies) is important. Oils applied during dormancy can reduce numbers somewhat.


The next day we learned that frogs come from eggs. Frog eggs look a little different from the eggs of other animals and it took a little convincing to persuade them that they were actually eggs. We talked about the life cycle of frogs. After that we made frogs, complete with long, curly tongues and wrote about them. Here is how they turned out...
|I just love these little guys!|
After frogs & turtles, we talked about snakes!
I am not a fan of snakes, but my students ALWAYS love to learn about them! This year my class is heavy on boys (12 out of 17) and this unit keeps them so engaged! I LOVE teaching through themes. I know that the theme keeps them so engaged that I can slip in writing, reading & math skills without them even realizing it! :) I do not have pictures of our snakes because I couldn't get them to turn out. We colored 2 sides of a paper plate and then cut them in a swirl so that they looked like curly snakes. Then, I hung them from the ceiling. They would twirl when the air kicked in and the kids loved it!
All in all, this was a great unit. My kids stayed engaged and excited the entire week. I was able to teach them valuable math, reading, writing, & science skills...what more could I have asked for? :)


March 30, 2012
CDC Releases New Report on Autism Prevalence in U.S.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health contributed to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that estimates the prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) as affecting 1 in 88 U.S. children overall, and 1 in 54 boys.
This is the third such report by the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (ADDM), which has used the same surveillance methods for more than a decade. Previous ADDM reports estimated the rate of ASDs at 1 in 110 children in the 2009 report that looked at data from 2006, and 1 in 150 children in the 2007 report, which covered data from 2002. The current prevalence estimate, which analyzed data from 2008, represents a 78 percent increase since 2002, and a 23 percent increase since 2006.
ASDs include diagnoses of autistic disorder, Asperger disorder, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). ASDs encompass a wide spectrum of conditions, all of which affect communication, social and behavioral skills. The causes of these developmental disorders are not completely understood, although studies show that both environment and genetics play an important and complex role. There is no known cure for ASDs, but studies have shown that behavioral interventions, particularly those begun early in a child’s life, can greatly improve learning and skills.
The latest CDC report, “Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders – Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 14 Sites, United States, 2008,” provides autism prevalence estimates from different areas of the United States, including Maryland. The purpose of the report is to provide high-quality data on the extent and distribution of ASDs in the U.S. population, to promote better planning for health and educational services, and to inform the further development of research on the causes, progression, and treatments.
“We continue observing increases in prevalence since the inception of the project in 2000,” said Li-Ching Lee, PhD, a psychiatric epidemiologist with the Bloomberg School"s Departments of Epidemiology and Mental Health and the principal investigator for the prevalence project’s Maryland site. “In Maryland, we found 27 percent of children with ASDs were never diagnosed by professionals. So, we know there are more children out there and we may see the increase continue in coming years.”
The new report, which focuses on 8-year-olds because that is an age where most children with ASD have been identified, shows that the number of those affected varies widely among the 14 participating states, with Utah having the the highest overall rate (1 in 47) and Alabama the lowest (1 in 210). Across all sites, nearly five times as many boys as girls are affected. Additionally, growing numbers of minority children are being diagnosed, with a 91 percent increase among black non-Hispanic children and a 110 percent increase for Hispanic children. Researchers say better screening and diagnosis may contribute to those increases among minority children.
The overall rate in Maryland is 1 in 80 children; 1 in 49 boys and 1 in 256 girls. In Maryland, the prevalence has increased 85 percent from 2002 to 2008. The increase was 41 percent between 2004 and 2008, and 35 percent between 2006 and 2008.
The data were gathered through collaboration with the Maryland State Department of Education and participating schools in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Cecil, Harford and Howard counties, as well as clinical sources such as Kennedy Krieger Institute, Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital, and University of Maryland Medical System.
While the report focuses on the numbers, its authors acknowledge that the reasons for the increase are not completely understood and that more research is needed. They note that the increase is likely due in part to a broadened definition of ASDs, greater awareness among the public and professionals, and the way children receive services in their local communities. “It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to tease these factors apart to quantify how much each of these factors contributed to the increase,” Dr. Lee said.
But whatever the cause, “This report paints a picture of the magnitude of the condition across our country and helps us understand how communities identify children with autism. One thing the data tell us with certainty – there are more children and families that need help,” said CDC Director Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH.
Researchers also identified the median age of ASD diagnosis, documented in records. In Maryland, that age was 5 years and 6 months, compared with 4 years, 6 months nationally. Across all sites, children who have autistic disorder tend to be identified earlier, while those with Asperger Disorder tend to be diagnosed later. Given the importance of early intervention, ADDM researchers carefully track at what age children receive an ASD diagnosis.
“Unfortunately, most children still are not diagnosed until after they reach age 4. We’ve heard from too many parents that they were concerned long before their child was diagnosed. We are working hard to change that,” said Coleen Boyle, PhD, MSHyg, director of CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.
To see the full report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6103a1.htm?s_cid=ss6103a1_w
To the Community Report with state statistics: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/documents/ADDM-2012-Community-Report.pdf
Media contact for Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Natalie Wood-Wright at 410-614-6029 or email@example.com


|Origin:||, past participle of consolidare, from com- ( COM-) + solidus 'solid'|
con‧sol‧i‧date [intransitive and transitive]
to strengthen the position of power or success that you have, so that it becomes more effective or continues for longer:
The company has consolidated its position as the country's leading gas supplier.
The team consolidated their lead with a third goal.
to combine things in order to make them more effective or easier to deal with:
We consolidate information from a wide range of sources.
They took out a loan to consolidate their debts.
The company is planning to consolidate its business activities at a new site in Arizona.
—consolidation noun [uncountable and countable]
the consolidation of political power


- Nietzsche on Tragedy by M.S. Silk and J.P. Stern
Cambridge, 441 pp, £27.50, March 1981, ISBN 0 521 23262 7
- Nietzsche: A Critical Life by Ronald Hayman
Weidenfeld, 424 pp, £18.50, March 1980, ISBN 0 297 77636 3
- Nietzsche. Vol. 1: The Will to Power as Art by Martin Heidegger, translated by David Farrell Krell
Routledge, 263 pp, £11.50, March 1981, ISBN 0 7100 0744 2
Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy, was published in 1872, when he was 27, and while he was a Professor of Classics at Basel. It had the unusual effect, for him, of attracting some attention at the time of its appearance: after that, Nietzsche’s writings virtually ceased to be noticed until the 1890s, by which time he was, for the last 11 years of his life, insane, virtually without speech, and out of touch with the world.
Nietzsche said to his sister that this book was a ‘centaur’, a description which emphasises its oddness, underestimates its beauty, and misleads about the number of its components, since it is a blend not only of scholarship and literary prose, but of philosophy and assertive aesthetic judgment. It makes some historical claims in answer to an old question, the origin of tragedy among the Greeks; more importantly, it tries to characterise the nature of the Greek view of the world, how that is expressed in Greek tragedy, and what significance both that view and those plays can now have.
According to Nietzsche, two contrasting spirits stand over Greek, and over all genuine, art – Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo represents order, civilisation and the determinate image; Dionysus represents nature, fertility, rapture, and the dissolution of individuation into collective expression. Greek tragedy was a highly stylised and formal art which arose nevertheless from the cult of Dionysus, and at its highest, in Nietzsche’s view, it represents a peculiar moment at which the forces of Apollo and Dionysus were balanced – a balance which expresses a heroic understanding and acceptance of the destructive horror of things, a ‘pessimism of strength’.
These elements, the Dionysiac and the Apollonian (a term surely preferable to Silk and Stern’s ‘Apolline’), by no means merely represent, as they are often taken to do, a dichotomy of passion and reason, or of emotion and form. The basic element of the Dionysiac is indeed Rausch – ‘rapture’ in Krell’s translation of Heidegger, ‘ecstasy’ in Silk and Stern – but the corresponding idea of the Apollonian is dream, and the order which Classical art can set upon things itself has roots in a realm of illusion. The balance between these forces, and the consciousness which the tragic outlook involves, of the unity of destructive and creative forces, was embodied only in the earlier period of the Greek Classical Age – above all, in the tragedians Aeschylus and Sophocles. Of these, Nietzsche tends to emphasise Aeschylus, who was indeed the earlier, but (as Silk and Stern point out) it is certainly Sophocles who most clearly and unpityingly embodies what Nietzsche had in mind.
The third great tragedian, Euripides, destroyed tragedy, according to Nietzsche, or rather helped it to destroy itself, in association with the spirit of Socrates, that spirit of ‘Alexandrian optimism’ which trusted in reason to make the most basic questions of living into matters of discursive knowledge. That same rationalistic optimism led inevitably to a depreciation of art, including Plato’s celebrated rejection of it. The Platonic consciousness, and the later forms of moralism which in various ways Nietzsche assimilated to it, could not stand the power of tragedy, nor the metaphysical conclusion which, in The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche saw as implicit in tragedy: that ‘only as an aesthetic phenomenon can existence and the world be eternally justified.’


Adam Health Illustrated Encyclopedia Multimedia - TestSearch Health Information
Creatine phosphokinase test
Creatine phosphokinase (CPK) is an enzyme found mainly in the heart, brain, and skeletal muscle. This article discusses the test to measure the amount of CPK in the blood.
CPK test; Creatine kinase; CK test
How the test is performed
A blood sample is needed. This may be taken from a vein. The procedure is called a venipuncture.
This test may be repeated over 2 or 3 days for if you are a patient in the hospital.
How to prepare for the test
Usually, no special preparation is necessary.
Tell your doctor about any medications you are taking. Drugs that can increase CPK measurements include amphotericin B, certain anesthetics, statins, fibrates, dexamethasone, alcohol, and cocaine.
How the test will feel
When the needle is inserted to draw blood, you may feel moderate pain, or only a prick or stinging sensation. Afterward, there may be some throbbing.
Why the test is performed
When the total CPK level is very high, it usually means there has been injury or stress to muscle tissue, the heart, or the brain.
Muscle tissue injury is most likely. When a muscle is damaged, CPK leaks into the bloodstream. Determining which specific form of CPK is high helps doctors determine which tissue has been damaged.
This test may be used to:
- Diagnose heart attack
- Evaluate cause of chest pain
- Determine if or how badly a muscle is damaged
- Detect dermatomyositis, polymyositis, and other muscle diseases
- Tell the difference between malignant hyperthermia and postoperative infection
The pattern and timing of a rise or fall in CPK levels can be diagnostically significant, particularly if a heart attack is suspected.
Except in unusual cases, other tests are used to diagnose a heart attack.
Total CPK normal values:
- 10 - 120 micrograms per liter (mcg/L)
Normal value ranges may vary slightly among different laboratories. Some labs use different measurements or test different samples. Talk to your doctor about the meaning of your specific test results.
What abnormal results mean
High CPK levels may be seen in patients who have:
- Brain injury or stroke
- Delirium tremens
- Dermatomyositis or polymyositis
- Electric shock
- Heart attack
- Inflammation of the heart muscle (myocarditis)
- Lung tissue death (pulmonary infarction)
- Muscular dystrophies
Additional conditions may give positive test results:
What the risks are
There is very little risk involved with having your blood taken. Veins and arteries vary in size from one patient to another and from one side of the body to the other. Taking blood from some people may be more difficult than from others.
Other risks associated with having blood drawn are slight but may include:
- Excessive bleeding
- Fainting or feeling light-headed
- Hematoma (blood accumulating under the skin)
- Infection (a slight risk any time the skin is broken)
Other tests should be done to determine the exact location of muscle damage.
Factors that may affect test results include cardiac catheterization, intramuscular injections, trauma to muscles, recent surgery, and heavy exercise.
Anderson JL. ST segment elevation acute myocardial infarction and complications of myocardial infarction. In: Goldman L, Schafer AI, eds. Cecil Medicine. 24th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2011:chap 73.
Chinnery PF. Muscle diseases. In: Goldman L, Schafer AI, eds. Cecil Medicine. 24th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2011:chap 429.
Reviewed By: David C. Dugdale, III, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. Also reviewed by A.D.A.M. Health Solutions, Ebix, Inc., Editorial Team: David Zieve, MD, MHA, David R. Eltz, Stephanie Slon, and Nissi Wang.


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Doorway from Abbey of Notre-Dame at Nevers
Seated Virgin and Child
Browse current and upcoming exhibitions and events.
This artwork is currently on display in Gallery 001
According to tradition, the monastery of Moutiers-Saint-Jean was founded by the first Christian kings of France, Clovis I and his son Clothar I. They are almost certainly depicted in the standing figures presenting their charters, now installed in the embrasures on either side of the portal. The small seated figures in the flanking niches represent biblical personages believed to prefigure or foretell Christ's Crucifixion. The tympanum above the doorway depicts Christ crowning the Virgin as the Queen of Heaven. This portal, probably from the north aisle of the cloister, would have led from the monastic precinct into the abbey church. The portal suffered severe damage during the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion; the heads of the two kings may have been repaired in the seventeenth century.
From the abbey of Moutiers-Saint-Jean, near Dijon, FranceMlle. Cambillarc , Moutiers-St.-Jean, France ; Jean Peslier , Vézelay, France ; [ Brummer Gallery , Paris and New York (sold 1932)]
© 2000–2013 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.


Since the 1960s, Washington has clamped a strict trade embargo on Cuba in the expectation that economic distress would oust Castro or at least moderate his behavior. Since 1996 the U.S. embargo has been embodied in law (heretofore it was an executive order). Here’s what Uncle Sam says the embargo, enacted on February 3, 1962, by President Kennedy, is about:
The fundamental goal of U.S. policy toward Cuba is to promote a peaceful transition to a stable, democratic form of government and respect for human rights. Our policy has two fundamental components: maintaining pressure on the Cuban Government for change through the embargo and the Libertad Act while providing humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people, and working to aid the development of civil society in the country.
Critics call it a violation of international law that injures and threatens the welfare of Cuban people. The United Nations General Assembly routinely votes to condemn it (the 2009 vote was 187-3, with only Palau and Israel—which trades with Cuba—joining the United States in voting against the resolution).
Uncle Sam even fines foreign companies doing business with Cuba. Talk about shooting oneself in the foot! For example, when Hilton and Sheraton hotels worldwide were banned from accepting Cuban trade delegations, European unions and parliamentarians initiated a boycott of the hotel chains, while the Mexican government even fined Sheraton US$100,000 for expelling Cuban guests in violation of international law. Meanwhile, the ultimate irony and hypocrisy is that although no Cuban goods can be sold to the United States, the U.S. does permit sales of “agricultural” and certain other goods to Cuba under a waiver that runs from daiquiri mix to rolls of newsprint (even the Communist rag, Granma, is printed on paper from Alabama), to the tune of US$718 million in 2008!
The effects of the embargo (which Castro calls el bloqueo, or blockade) are much debated. In 1999, Cuba filed a claim for US$181 billion in reparations. However, in 2000, the International Trade Commission (ITC) determined that the embargo has had a minimal impact on the Cuban economy, citing domestic policies as the main cause of Cuba’s economic woes (for three decades, the effects of the embargo were almost entirely offset by massive subsidies from the Soviet Union). As President Carter noted during his visit to Havana  in May 2002: “These restraints are not the source of Cuba’s economic problems. Cuba can trade with more than 100 countries, and buy medicines, for example, more cheaply in Mexico than in the United States.”
The paradox is that the policy achieves the opposite effect to its stated goals: It provides a wonderful excuse for the Communist system’s economic failings, and a rationale to suppress dissidents and civil liberties under the aegis of national security for an island under siege. It also permits Fidel Castro to perform the role of Cuba’s anti-imperialistic savior that he has cast for himself.
Although State Department officials privately admit that the embargo is the fundamental source of Fidel’s hold on power, U.S. presidents are wed to what Ann Louise Bardach calls a “transparently disastrous policy, trading off sensible and enduring solutions for short-term electoral gains [in Florida]” in response to fanatically anti-Castroite Cuban-American interests.
U.S. citizens who oppose the embargo and restrictions on U.S. citizens’ constitutional right to travel can make their views known to representatives in Washington.
Contact Your Senator or Representative in Congress (U.S. Congress, Washington, DC 20510, tel. 202/224-3121 or 800/839-5276, www.house.gov  and www.senate.gov ). Write a simple, moderate, straightforward letter to your representative that makes the argument for ending the travel ban and embargo and requests he/she cosponsor a bill to that effect.
Write or Call the President (The President, The White House, Washington, DC 20500, tel. 202/456-1414, president [at] whitehouse [dot] gov). Also call or fax the White House Comment Line (202/456-1111, fax 202/456-2461, www.whitehouse.gov ) and the Secretary of State (202/647-4000, www.state.gov/secretary ).
Publicize Your Concern. Write a simple, moderate, straightforward letter to the editor of your local newspaper as well as any national newspapers or magazines and make the argument for ending the embargo.
Support the Freedom to Travel Campaign. Contact the Latin America Working Group (424 C St. NE, Washington, DC 20002, tel. 202/546-7010, www.lawg.org ), which campaigns to lift the travel restrictions and U.S. embargo, monitors legislators, and can advise on how representatives have voted on Cuba-related issues; and sign the Orbitz Open Cuba (www.opencuba.org ) petition.


Spider silk can be scary enough to insects to act as a pest repellant, researchers say.
These findings could lead to a new way to naturally help protect crops, scientists added.
Spiders are among the most common predators on land. Although not all spiders weave webs, they all spin silk that may serve other purposes. For instance, many tiny spiders use silk balloons to travel by air.
Science news from NBCNews.com
Researchers suspected that insects and other regular prey of spiders might associate silk with the risk of getting eaten. As such, they reasoned silk might scare insects off.
The scientists experimented with Japanese beetles (Popillia japonica) and Mexican bean beetles (Epilachna varivestis). These plant-munching pests have spread across eastern North America within the past half-century. [ Ewww! Nature's Biggest Pests ]
The beetles were analyzed near green bean plants (Phaseolus vulgaris) in both the lab and a tilled field outdoors. The investigators applied two kinds of silk on the plants — one from silkworms (Bombyx mori) and another from a long-jawed spider (Tetragnatha elongata), a species common in riverbank forests but not in the region the researchers studied.
Both spider and silkworm silk reduced insect plant-chewing significantly. In the lab, both eliminated insect damage entirely, while in the field, spider silk had a greater effect — plants enclosed with beetles and spider silk experienced about 50 percent less damage than leaves without spider silk, while silkworm silk only led to about a 10 to 20 percent reduction. Experiments with other fibers revealed that only silk had this protective effect.
"This work suggests that silk alone is a signal to potential prey that danger is near," researcher Ann Rypstra, an evolutionary ecologist at Miami University in Ohio, told LiveScience.
Rypstra was most surprised that the effect occurred even though the species involved do not share any evolutionary history together as predator and prey. This suggests "herbivores are using the silk as some sort of general signal that a spider — any ol' spider — is around and responding by reducing their activity or leaving the area," she said.
While more work will need to be done before this research might find applied use, the fact that the presence of silk alone reduced damage caused by two economically important pest insects "suggests that there could be applications in agricultural pest management and biological control," Rypstra said.
Rypstra is also interested in the chain reaction of events that silk might trigger in an ecosystem.
"For example, if an herbivore encounters a strand of silk and alters its behavior in a particular manner, does that make it more susceptible to predation by a non-spider?" Rypstra asked. "Do spiders that leave lots of silk behind have a larger impact in the food web, and how does it vary from habitat to habitat? These are just a couple of questions that we might be exploring in the near future."
Rypstra and her colleagues detailed their findings online Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters.
- Gallery: Spooky Spiders
- What Really Scares People: Top 10 Phobias
- Gallery: Dazzling Photos of Dew-Covered Insects
© 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.


NetWellness is a global, community service providing quality, unbiased health information from our partner university faculty. NetWellness is commercial-free and does not accept advertising.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Crackles in Inhaling
what is the cause of crackles? What can be done ?
"Crackles" refers to a non-specific, subjective description of an abnormal sound which is heard when someone listens to the lung. The list of problems which can cause crackles is quite long and varies. If indeed crackles are present, then some investigation to understand what might be causing this abnormal sound is important. This will likely be some picture of the lung. In general, abnormal findings should be investigated until a satisfactory explanation is obtained for the abnormal finding. Once a cause is identified, one can then define an appropriate course of action.
Robert Schilz, DO, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine
School of Medicine
Case Western Reserve University


Liquid armor has been shown to stop bullets more effectively than plain Kevlar, according to British firm BAE Systems. The material could be used to make thinner, lighter armor for military personnel and police officers, the BBC reports.
Materials scientists combined a shear-thickening liquid with traditional Kevlar to make a bulletproof material that absorbs the force of a bullet strike by becoming thicker and stickier.
Its molecules lock together more tightly when it is struck, the scientists explained -- they described it as "bulletproof custard," the BBC reports.Shear-thickening liquids are composed of hard nanoparticles suspended in a liquid, which turns rigid after being struck with a bullet or shrapnel. BAE says their tests provide the first clear evidence that it can actually protect people.
In the tests, BAE scientists used a gas gun to fire ball-bearing bullets at nearly 1,000 feet per second at two test materials -- 31 layers of regular Kevlar and 10 layers of Kevlar combined with the shear-thickening liquid.
The shear-thickening liquid stopped the bullets more quickly and prevented them from penetrating as deeply, the BBC says. British media got a preview of the materials at a BAE facility in Bristol, England.
The U.S. Army Research Laboratory has studied using liquid armor to replace traditional Kevlar armor, which is heavy and bulky.
Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.


If you look back on your own days as a student, you can recall with ease teachers who made learning fun. You wanted to be in their classes. Best of all, you were certain that those teachers liked you and missed you on those days when you had to be absent. If you succeed at nothing else in your career, you should aim to create that same effect on your students. What makes certain teachers gifted? Charisma. According to a standard definition, charisma is "a unique personal power belonging to those individuals who secure the allegiance of large numbers of people." Fortunately, classroom charisma is a learned trait. It is something that you should begin working on the first day you teach to your last.
How do you rate your classroom charisma? How do you create an environment in your classroom in which your students are made to feel that they are accepted and necessary to the proper functioning of the class? How do you create a nurturing, and positive climate in your classroom? Be specific. For example, I smile and greet students as they come into the classroom. I use questioning techniques that engage all students. My lessons are packed with a variety of interesting activities. I dress professionally. I use techniques that appeal to all of my students' learning styles. I establish procedures and routines and stick to them.


Egypt's Mubarak -- from presidency to prison
REUTERS - Here is a look at Hosni Mubarak from the start of his presidency to when he was sentenced to life imprisonment on Saturday for his role in killing protesters involved in a uprising that toppled him from power last year:
October 6, 1981 - Vice-President Mubarak is thrust into office when Islamist radicals gun down President Anwar Sadat at a military parade. He is approved as president in a referendum in November.
June 26, 1995 - Gunmen attack Mubarak's car as he arrives at an African summit in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. He escapes unhurt and returns to Egypt.
November 17, 1997 - Islamist militant group al-Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group) kills 58 tourists and four Egyptians at an ancient temple near Luxor. It is the most dramatic act in a 1990s rebellion by Islamists seeking to establish an Islamic state. The revolt is eventually crushed by state security.
March 2005 - Street protests by the Kefaya (Enough) Movement draw hundreds across Egypt to oppose a fifth six-year term for Mubarak or any attempt to install his son Gamal in his place.
May 11, 2005 - Parliament votes to change the constitution to allow contested presidential elections, dismissing opposition complaints that strict rules would prevent genuine competition.
September 27, 2005 - Mubarak is sworn in for a fifth consecutive term after winning the first multi-candidate presidential vote on September 7. Rights groups say the vote was marred by abuses. His closest rival, Ayman Nour, comes a distant second and is later jailed on charges he says are politically motivated.
December 8, 2005 - The Muslim Brotherhood wins 20 percent of the seats in parliament, its best showing. Rights groups say the vote was vitiated by irregularities to ensure Mubarak's ruling party retains a big majority.
April 2008 - Riots erupt in a number of cities over wages, rising prices and shortages of subsidised bread.
March 27, 2010 - Mubarak reassumes presidential powers after three weeks recovering from gallbladder surgery in Germany.
November 29, 2010 - A parliamentary election virtually eliminates opposition to Mubarak's ruling party in the assembly before a 2011 presidential vote. The Brotherhood and several other opposition groups boycott the parliamentary election.
January 25, 2011 - Anti-government protests begin across Egypt, driven by discontent over poverty, repression and corruption.
January 28 - Mubarak orders troops and tanks into cities overnight to quell the demonstrations.
January 31 - Egypt swears in a new government. New Vice-President Omar Suleiman says Mubarak has asked him to start dialogue with all political forces.
February 10 - Mubarak says national dialogue under way, transfers powers to vice-president but refuses to leave office immediately. Protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square are enraged.
February 11 - Mubarak steps down and a military council takes control.
April 12 - Mubarak is hospitalised after being questioned by prosecutors. The next day, Egypt orders Mubarak detained for questioning on accusations he abused his power, embezzled funds and had protesters killed.
August 3 - Mubarak, wheeled into a courtroom cage on a bed to face trial, denies the charges against him. His two sons, Gamal and Alaa, also deny the charges. In subsequent sessions, Mubarak always appears on a hospital stretcher.
June 2, 2012 - Mubarak is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the killing of protesters and is flown from the Cairo court to Tora prison on the outskirts of the capital, where he is admitted to a hospital facility.
(Reporting by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit)
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A group of researchers at DTU Space is developing an observatory to be mounted on the International Space Station. Called ASIM, the observatory will among other things photograph giant lightning discharges above the clouds. The objective is to determine whether giant lightning discharges affect the Earth’s climate.
The question is whether giant lightning discharges, which shoot up from the clouds towards space, are simply a spectacular natural phenomenon, or whether they alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere, affecting the Earth’s climate and the ozone layer.
In recent years, scientists at DTU Space have studied giant lightning using high-altitude mountain cameras. From time to time, the cameras have succeeded in capturing low-altitude lightning flashes which have shot up from a thundercloud. The International Space Station provides a clear view of these giant lightning discharges, and the opportunity to study them will be significantly improved with the introduction of the observatory.
The researchers will also use ASIM to study how natural and man-made events on the ground – such as hurricanes, dust storms, forest fires and volcanic eruptions – influence the atmosphere and climate.