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The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.


Word2Wiki test

Year-Month
Rank
% of Days
Working
Edit Count
Edits per Working Day
User Name

2012-09

1
83
185
7.7

Nick Gardner

2012-09

2
79
261
11.3

John R.Brews

2012-09

3
79
136
5.9

Anthony.Sebastian

2012-09

4
79
61
2.7

Ro Thorpe

2012-09

5
48
32
2.3

Milton Beychok

2012-09

6
41
175
14.6

Richard Nevell

2012-09

7
41
40
3.3

Peter Jackson

2012-09

8
41
28
2.3

Sandy Harris

2012-09

9
31
96
10.7

Robert A. Estremo

2012-09

10
31
39
4.3

D. Matt Innis

2012-09

11
31
17
1.9

Robert Badgett

2012-09

12
28
10
1.2

Chunbum Park

2012-09

13
24
74
10.6

Roger A. Lohmann

2012-09

14
24
19
2.7

Martin Wyatt

Plan

Page to be titled: "CZ:Proposal for cost-reducing hosting plan"

Please do not comment on this page, or otherwise edit the page. Please comment on the Talk page.


Because our hosting cost of $320 per month is much greater than our small community can consistently sustain through monthly donations, we have explored other possibilities for a lower cost hosting plan. Darren Duncan volunteered to carry out an exploration to produce to determine whether this would be possible with our current host, Steadfast Networks. Greg Mullane, John Stephenson, Matt Innis, and Dan Nessett contributed.

The following is Darren’s proposal for $100/month hosting:

Darren's proposal

To drastically lower Citizendium's hosting costs to something closer to what it can manage to pay for on a monthly basis, this is the short term plan. Some of the following bullet points can be done in a different order.

  1. Have Steadfast Networks provision a new dedicated server for us, see Steadfast dedicated servers, and see specifically the least expensive option on that page: Dual Core Atom D525 @ 1.8Ghz; 4 GB RAM; 2 × 500 GB storage; $99.95 per month. I don't know what preinstalled OS options there are, but I recommend using the latest CentOS (Linux), unless Greg has a better idea. Steadfast is whom we currently host with but we're currently using 3 boxes with a total cost of over $300/month, and they will all be replaced.
  2. Install and configure on that server the latest versions of the Mediawiki software and PostgreSQL database software (9.2.4+). Setup in DNS/etc a temporary domain name for this server, such as new.citizendium.org. Also setup any necessary mail servers so that Mediawiki can send emails such as for supporting part of the new user authentication process.
  3. Perform a full backup of the current PostgreSQL database used by the current en.citizendium.org production Citizendium MediaWiki software, that has all the articles and user data and so on for the encyclopedia itself. Load a copy of that backup onto the new server and make sure that the new server works correctly, with appropriate testing and tweaking as necessary. It should be possible to do editing or create articles, creating users, and so on. The new server should act just like the current one aside from any consequences of newer versions of the software.
  4. Shut down the current production Citizendium MediaWiki so that the Pg database can no longer be altered, and do likewise on the new server. On current production, make a new complete backup. On the new box, wipe the database used for testing. On the new box, load that latest production backup, so the old and new servers have matching databases. Then change the DNS settings so that the new box has the domain en.citizendium.org and the old box has old.citizendium.org. Then enable Mediawiki on the new box only so that the encyclopedia is live again. Put up some static web page on the old server, or automatic redirect, so people with slow DNS servers going to the old box can find the new one.
  5. Setup some place on the Citizendium wiki to hold future discussion threads, where this would be used instead of the current forum.citizendium.org Simple Machines forum.
  6. Shut down the Simple Machines forum and make a full backup of its MySQL database. Add a static page pointing to the wiki.
  7. Have appropriate compressed archive tarballs of the entire en.citizendium.org wiki database and the entire forum.citizendium.org database taken and backed up to multiple / at least 3 physical machines, probably my personal computer, and Greg's, and several other people's. So if something happens to any of the Steadfast servers, now or later, we at least have these archives to recover from. This is likely several gigabytes of data.
  8. Due to time constraints and related complexity, the old forums.citizendium.org discussions won't appear in the wiki right away, but they will be saved in archives so they can be put up later when some tech (probably me) has the time. But you will have the ability meanwhile to have new discussions. Cost cutting can't wait for this migration.
  9. Shut down all the email lists and email boxes hosted on our servers. Where any are needed, create replacements on Google mail or groups. If necessary we can setup our DNS so that Google actually hosts those under our domain, though I don't know if that costs extra. Hosting our own mail and dealing with all the spam consumes a huge amount of our current server resources and that really isn't something we should keep spending money on.
  10. Also like #7, have tarballs of all the archived email discussions that our mail server had kept and back them up to the 3+ physical machines as well, so these can be imported/migrated later as useful.
  11. Once we're confident we have a complete archive of everything important from Citizendium on several of our own machines, and that the wiki is running on the new server without trouble, decommission the 3 old servers so Steadfast can reuse or decommission them as they see fit, and we're no longer paying for those.
  12. Soon as we get the chance, sometime later, import the old Simple Machines or email or whatever archives into some place where people can see them. Exclude anything that is supposed to remain private or privileged.
  13. I want to make clear that the backups of everything to multiple physical machines needs to be exhaustive, including any privileged information such as user accounts and such, and so trustworthy people need to be in charge of said machines, what will keep anything confidential that needs to be. Now is not the time to be trying to work out what is or isn't important, aside from that we can probably just delete all the reams of logs related to email spam and such, which are taking up most of our server disk space.
  14. Assuming that we pay for servers aligned on month boundaries, we should have the new server provisioned by the end of July, and have the old ones shut off by the end of August, after which we shouldn't have more than the $100/month on our bill. This requires Greg signing off on or suitably altering the plan, and any other stakeholders signing off as well.

Darren's amendments to proposal and explanations

I overlooked the blog. The core point here is that everything we host ourselves on the 3 Steadfast servers will be disappearing except for the wiki. If we were hosting a blog too or whatever, then that's going too.

More generally, all content we have in any forum on the servers is meant to be thoroughly backed up and archived to several non-Steadfast machines, and then only the wiki would be reinstated on the new hardware.

I know we have the wiki, the Simple Machines forum, and email; I don't know what if anything else we were hosting. Greg or others know better.

Just keep all the wikis, that should be easy. They're all driven by the same software, and are probably in the same database cluster for that matter; the most trivial complete PostgreSQL backup method would include them all anyway. So backing up the wiki in the simplest way backs them all up.

Strictly speaking, with appropriate software config, we could run the existing forums too. We would have to install more software and configure everything to share the 4GB of RAM. The worst that would likely happen is performance might suffer a bit, but as long as our usage is low it is fine. If usage picks up that this becomes a problem, then donations might pick up then too.

That all being said, we will want some kind of automatic backup solution to some other hardware.

But really, lets try and make this work with the $100/month and not preemptively try to spend more for problems that may not exist.

Greg knows better, but I suggest say limiting MySQL to just 100MB of RAM or so, it just needs to run the forums, and give PostgreSQL most of the RAM, say 2-3GB for the wikis, and the rest for the OS and web server, or something.

Greg, was there or was there not some technical limitation such that the forums had to run on a different machine than the wiki, something about network domain exclusivity, or does (hopefully) this problem not exist?

Comments of initial collaborators

John Stephenson wrote: All sounds good to me. I certainly think it's possible to set up a very basic forum on the main wiki. The only thing we would lose is the non-Citizen comments board. I suppose they could comment on the blog or on our social networking pages, or via a general discussion mailing list.

I know that there is a 'secret' Constabulary wiki somewhere, the Editorial Council wiki (ec.), and the test wiki (test.). Not sure if there are any others...

Matt Innis confirm what John wrote about our wikis.

Greg: That is correct. And as far as I know, there are no other wikis other than those mentioned here, secret or otherwise. The plan looks fine to me. We need to think about backups since we will only have a single box, but that's not a pressing concern.

Dan Nessett: "Since you asked, here is what I recommend. Get rid of all Citizendium applications other than the wiki and look into using one Citizendium server that can handle its load. Greg should be able to figure out what you need. I recommended this last year, but it was not popular. However, Citizendium is no longer the project it once was and I think a wiki could handle all its current needs. Forum traffic is really a trickle and you could set up a talk page on the wiki to take its place. You could move any email accounts you wish to retain to gmail. Greg could set up the DNS server to forward legacy email addresses to the new gmail accounts. The mailman lists, bugzilla, the software repository really are no longer needed."

Notes re ME decision on importing

step one


http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:How_to_convert_Wikipedia_articles_to_Citizendium_articles CZ:How to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles


material that complies with our inclusion criteria may be imported into Citizendium, provided it is imported from a source either in the public domain or otherwise compatible with Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 licence; encourages citizens who import such material to:

convert it to Citizendium standards and style, and work to improve it without undue delay; and

affirms that where such imported material has not been worked on within 30 days of import, it may be removed, moved to userspace, moved to Cold Storage, or otherwise archived, at the request of any citizen."


1. Make sure that you provide information about the source of the article and the license or terms under which we may use it.

2. Add a link to the article, and, at the first asterisk, explain briefly why you think it makes sense to import it. Sign it with Anthony.Sebastian 03:43, 31 July 2013 (UTC).

3. Wait a week for feedback from other contributors. In many cases, it will be preferable to actively solicit opinions (with email, on User talk: pages, etc.) than to wait passively for feedback. While you are waiting, it is always a good idea to do your own research. Does the article seem to be consistent with scholarly research on the subject? Are there recent developments the article ignores? And so on.



If an editor decides that a particular article is not up to Citizendium standards or if any contributor finds that the original work has been released under a license that is incompatible with the Creative Commons license that Citizendium uses, a comment should be made on this page and then the listing should be moved to the archive page after a short delay (so that everyone may have time to notice the comment about incompatibility). If an article is incorporated into Citizendium, the listing on this page should likewise be moved to the archive.



+++++





Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

nomen

“Within philosophy and the sciences the term ‘emergence’ is used in such a variety of bewildering and heterogeneous ways that it seems the word itself is the only thing shared across across these various usages.”.[1]

  1. Silberstein MD. (2009) Emergence. In: The Oxford Companion to Consciousness . Edited by Tim Bayne, Axel Cleeremans, Patrick Wilken. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198569510

Sense of purpose

Sense of Purpose

According to Nobel Laureate, Robert William Fogel, we must have a sense of purpose in order to enjoy a life feeling fulfilled (see Citizendium article, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism).

Fogel ranks sense of purpose first among a long list of non-material resources required for leading a rich life in terms of quality. To have a sense of purpose means that you have “something that one sets before himself as an object to be attained : an end or aim to be kept in view in any plan, measure, exertion, or operation”, and that you know that you have it (see ‘sense’ and ‘purpose’ in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com).

Because many of Citizendium’s volunteer authors write regularly and with enthusiasm, voluntarily and without byline-type credit*, I can only surmise that their doing so fulfills some inner need they have. It seems to me, after over five years with Citizendium, that their need falls into the broad category of pedagogy, sharing their knowledge with others, giving enrichment to the lives of others, a type of charity.

What they seem to get for themselves: the enrichment that comes with having a sense of purpose.

If all that seems a bit idealist, but not certainly so, try your own hand at sharing your knowledge through writing in Citizendium. You could also try doing it in some other free online wiki encyclopedia, like Wikipedia. Or try two or three and see which environment accords best with your sense of purpose.

  • Citizendium does not include bylines with article titles, but every entry+save you make will appear on the ‘History’ page of the article with your registered name, like this:


Clicking on the author’s name brings up his/her biography page.

K Consumption

Potassium Intake
What We Eat in America
2005-2006, 2007-2008, 2009-2010
Years
Gender
Potassium
mmol/day
%
Of
Recom-
mended
2005-2006
Men
81
68
2005-2006
Women
61
50
 
 
 
 
2007-2008
Men
78
65
2007-2008
Women
58
50
 
 
 
 
2009-2010
Men
81
68
2009-2010
Women
61
50
Recommended “Adequate Intake”, 120 mmol/day, identical for men and women, and therefore not adjusted for differences in body size or lean body mass between men and women.

Because the Food and Nutrition Board indicated that eating ordinary foods imposed no danger of consuming excess potassium except in certain potassium non-tolerant conditions, most Americans could likely achieve “adequate intakes” or more, by doubling their potassium intake.

Show/Hide table


Partial-1



MyTest-1

History of Medicine
Individuals
Alcmaeon of Croton, b. ~515 BCE, fl. 500s BCE First anatomist, first dissections of humans BCE Brain thinks
Aristotle First biologist BCEabcdefghjuyt Species


Target audiences


This article targets a general readership of secondary school or higher educational status. It provides guidelines for further pursuit of the topic: (a) in the reference list at the end of the Main Article; (b) in the annotated references on the Bibliography subpage; and, (c) in the material in the article's other subpages.


This article targets a general readership of secondary school or higher educational status. It provides guidelines for further pursuit of the topic: (a) in the reference list at the end of the Main Article; (b) in the annotated references on the Bibliography subpage; and, (c) in the material in the article's other subpages.


This article targets a readership with at least a basic familiarity with [insert topic]. It provides guidelines for further pursuit of the topic: (a) in the reference list at the end of the Main Article; (b) in the annotated references on the Bibliography subpage; and, (c) in the material in the article's other subpages.


xxx

  • The Characters of the Story
    • “This is your System 1 talking. Slow down and let your System 2 take control.”
  • Attention and Effort
    • “What came quickly to my mind was an intuition from System 1. I'll have to start over and search my memory deliberately.”
  • The Lazy Controller
    • “His ego was depleted after a long day of meetings. So he just turned to standard operating procedures instead of thinking through the problem.”
  • The Associative Machine
    • “The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works.”
  • Cognitive Ease
    • “I'm in a very good mood today, and my System 2 is weaker than usual. I should be extra careful.”
  • Norms, Surprises, and Causes
    • “She can't accept that she was just unlucky; she needs a causal story. She will end up thinking that someone intentionally sabotaged her work."
  • A Machine for Jumping to Conclusions
    • “They didn't want more information that might spoil their story. WYSIATI.”
  • How Judgments Happen
    • “This was a clear instance of a mental shotgun. He was asked whether he thought the company was financially sound, but he couldn't forget that he likes their product.”
  • Answering an Easier Question
    • “He likes the project, so he thinks its costs are low and its benefits are high. Nice example of the affect heuristic.”

sample blockquote

What about popular culture:

History records that popular forms of entertainment have always existed. In his Historia, Herodotus (circa 485-425 BCE) wrote about amusing performances and songs that he encountered as he traveled the ancient world that seemed rather odd to him but that were highly popular. Fortunately, he thought, such phenomena were the exception, not the rule. Today's popular entertainment culture, or "pop culture" as it is commonly called, is instead the rule, not the exception. It is everywhere—on television, in movie theaters, in sport stadiums, in shopping malls, and so on. Is pop culture on the verge of taking over the hearts and minds of everyone living today?[1]

InsertQuote[2]

refs

  1. Danesi M. (2008) Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives. Roman & Littlefield. ISBN 074255547X.
    • Marcel Danesi, Professor, Department of Italian, University of Toronto.
  2. InsertRef


FanAnim

Evolutionary processes and, in general, scientific explanations of the world are often in contrast with the immediate and simple explanations that our brain gives of reality (e.g. the sun seems to turn around the earth, the earth seems to be flat), and are influenced by what Francis Bacon called "idola"[[1]] (false notions or tendencies which distort the truth [[2]]).[3]

"Evolutionary processes and, in general, scientific explanations of the world are often in contrast with the immediate and simple explanations that our brain gives of reality (e.g. the sun seems to turn around the earth, the earth seems to be flat), and are influenced by what Francis Bacon called "idola" (false notions or tendencies which distort the truth [3])"

refs

  1. Hall MP. The Four Idols of Francis Bacon: The New Instrument of Knowledge.
    • "In the Novum Organum (the new instrumentality for the acquisition of knowledge) Francis Bacon classified the intellectual fallacies of his time under four headings which he called idols. He distinguished them as idols of the Tribe, idols of the Cave, idols of the Marketplace and idols of the Theater…An idol is an image, in this case held in the mind, which receives veneration but is without substance in itself. Bacon did not regard idols as symbols, but rather as fixations."
  2. Fantini F. (2005) Didattica dell'evoluzione. In Evoluzione tra ricerca e didattica, XIV – Special number Edited by: Associazione Nazionale Insegnanti di Scienze Naturali. Agnano Pisano: Stamperia Editoriale Pisana; 2005:203-209.
  3. Guidetti R, Baraldi L, Calzolai C, Pini L, Veronesi P, Pederzoli A. (2007) Fantastic animals as an experimental model to teach animal adaptation. BMC Evolutionary Biology 7(Suppl 2):S13 doi: 10.1186/1471-2148-7-S2-S13.

MATBL

Conditions Causing Metabolic Acidosis in Adult Humans
Categorized by Mechanism and Serum Anion Gap
Mechanism
Anion Gap
Abnormally High
Anion Gap
in Normal Range
Reference
Overproduction of
Non-Carbonic Acid
Ketoacidosis:
  • Diabetes mellitus
  • Starvation
  • Alcohol-associated
Ingestions:
  • Methanol
  • Ethylene glycol
  • Aspirin
  • Diethylene glycol
  • Propylene glycol


mdr

Bohr quote


Introduction

Consider this outline as an approach to defining ‘electric charge’:

  • At one level of explanation of matter, matter consists of atoms.
  • Electric charge is a property of matter manifesting in certain of the particle constituents of the atoms of matter.
  • Studying atoms at the first level of their substructure, viz., the nucleus and surrounding electrons, can provide a fruitful starting point for explaining electric charge.
  • As a starting point, note that:
    • Electrons can maintain their location surrounding and revolving about the nucleus only because a radial force of attraction on them exists directed toward the nucleus. Otherwise the electrons would fly off.
  • Experiments reveal that:
    • The force of attraction between the nucleus and electrons greatly exceeds the gravitational force generated by the masses of the two groups of particles;
    • Therefore a force differing from the force of gravitation is operating, requiring a new designation;
      • For historical reasons discussed later, we designate the force an ‘electric force’.

...the electric force is approximately 42 orders of magnitude larger than the gravitational force. To see the enormity of this ratio, suppose that we represent the gravitational force by an arrow as long as a bacterium. How long would the length of the electric arrow be? Much larger than the height of a man; much taller than the Empire State Building; much larger than the Earth itself; much larger than the solar system; and much larger than the Milky Way. In fact, the electric arrow would be over 10 billion times larger than the "size" of the visible universe! That is why, when electrical forces are present, gravitational forces can be completely ignored.[1] [2]

  • Experiments reveal also that:
    • The force of attraction occurs between the protons in the nucleus and the surrounding electrons, the two groups normally equal in number;
    • The magnitude of the electric force varies inversely with the square of the distance of separation over which the force operates.
  • Experiments reveal also that:
    • The electric force between two spatially separate protons is one of repulsion rather than of attraction;
    • The electric force between two spatially separate electrons likewise is one of repulsion rather than of attraction;
    • When separated by the same distance, the magnitude of the electric force is the same between a proton and an electron, a proton and a proton, and an electron and an electron.
  • Those experiments permit the conclusions that:
    • The electric force can be one either of attraction or repulsion;
    • Given that protons and electrons differ in mass by several orders of magnitude, the electric force does not depend on the masses of the interacting particles;
    • Therefore some quantitative property other than mass must generate and respond to the electric force between interacting particles;
      • call that property ‘electric charge’, and symbolize its unit of magnitude, q.
    • The ‘quality’ of the proton’s electric charge must differ from the ‘quality’ of the electron’s electric charge, otherwise protons and electrons could not generate and respond to either an attractive or repellent electric force depending on which interacts with which;
      • call the quality of the proton’s electric charge ‘positive’ and that of the electron’s ‘negative’, in keeping with historical designations arbitrarily assigned during the history of studies of electric phenomena on the macroscopic scale.

The convention was derived from Benjamin Franklin’s experiments. He rubbed a glass rod with silk and called the charges on the glass rod positive. He rubbed sealing wax with fur and called the charge on the sealing wax negative. Like charges repel and opposite charges attract each other.[3]

  • From the above discussion, we can formulate a provisional working definition of electric charge as follows:

Electric charge is a property of matter manifesting with an attribute of one or the other of two opposite extremes, arbitrarily referred to as positive and negative, a property of matter characteristic of certain of matter's constituent subatomic particles—specifically, protons (positive) and electrons (negative)—the property having the fundamental characteristic of producing and responding to a force of attraction between positive and negative particles, or of repulsion between positive and positive and between negative and negative particles, the force acting on spatially separated particles, that force, called the 'electric force', having a strength many orders of magnitude greater than that of the force of gravity, but like the gravitational, its strength falling in proportion to the square of the distance between the particles.

  • Atoms of the chemical elements heavier than hydrogen...

Continue in this vein....

Tentative lede to student level treatment

(PD) Diagram: Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
Add image caption here.

Electric charge refers to a fundamental property of matter, a property upon which rests the numerous phenomena of electricity and electromagnetism, phenomena the particular provenance of science and engineering.

Electric charge manifests itself, in one guise, as a property of the two earliest discovered constituents of the historically conceived homogeneous and indivisible atom, namely, the subatomic particles, electrons and protons. The property of electric charge endows an electron and a proton, though spatially separate, with the ability to attract each other with a force of attraction, an electric force. The electric force of attraction between the proton and electron of a hydrogen atom gives the combination of the two charged particles its status as an atom, an atom of the chemical element, hydrogen, the lightest atom among those of all other chemical elements, whose atoms consist of more than one proton and electron.

The electric force of attraction between the two particles of the hydrogen atom differs from their gravitational force of attraction in that the magnitude of the electric force, for a given distance of separation of the two particles, exceeds by orders of magnitude the force of gravitational attraction between them associated with their masses, exceeding it ~1042 fold. For that reason, the force of attraction between an electron and a proton does not depend on the masses of the two particles, whose gravitational force can be ignored as a contributor to the magnitude of the attractive force.

...the electric force is approximately 42 orders of magnitude larger than the gravitational force. To see the enormity of this ratio, suppose that we represent the gravitational force by an arrow as long as a bacterium. How long would the length of the electric arrow be? Much larger than the height of a man; much taller than the Empire State Building; much larger than the Earth itself; much larger than the solar system; and much larger than the Milky Way. In fact, the electric arrow would be over 10 billion times larger than the "size" of the visible universe! That is why, when electrical forces are present, gravitational forces can be completely ignored.[1] [2]

For historical reasons, discussed subsequently, protons are said to be positively charged—i.e., to carry a positive electric charge—electrons, to be negatively charged—i.e., to carry a negative electric charge.

The convention was derived from Benjamin Franklin’s experiments. He rubbed a glass rod with silk and called the charges on the glass rod positive. He rubbed sealing wax with fur and called the charge on the sealing wax negative. Like charges repel and opposite charges attract each other.[3]

(PD) Diagram: Anthony.Sebastian
Add image caption here.

A non-gravitationally-mediated force also exists between two spatially separate electrons, and between two spatially separate protons, but unlike the force of attraction between an electron and a proton, the force between two electrons is one of repulsion, as is the force between two protons. Thus the electric force can mediate electric attraction or repulsion, depending on the how the types of the charges compare, hence the common expression, “like charges repel, unlike charges attract”.

Experiments performed early in the 20th century established that the magnitude of the charge carried by the electron ("cathode ray corpuscle") equals that of the proton ("the positively charged hydrogen atom"), and that the former has a mass nearly 2000 times less than that of the latter.[4] The magnitude of the electron charge, designated e, was formerly referred to as the 'elementary charge', the same for electrons and protons, despite their large mass difference. Since sensible matter consists collections of atoms, the magnitude of the net charge of a tangible substance must always be an integer multiple of e, the magnitude of the electron charge. For example, the net charge on the surface of a glass rod rubbed with a silk cloth will be positive, and the magnitude of that net charge will be an integer multiple of e, depending on the number of electrons stripped off the glass surface by the rubbing, which become attached to the surface of the silk cloth.

The terms 'positive' and 'negative' arbitrarily serve as labels to distinguish the two 'polarities', or opposing extremes, observed in the electric charge of matter. 'Positivity' and 'negativity' do not themselves imply anything about the fundamental nature of electric charge. Other labels connoting bi-polarity, such as yin/yang, black/white, or bitter/sweet, could have served for labeling, and but for historical chance, protons could carry a negative electric charge, electrons, a positive charge.

Scientists had established much of the above by the early 20th century, as evidenced from the discussion in first few chapters of the 1907 still instructively readable classic, The Corpuscular Theory of Matter, by the discoverer of the electron, Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940)[4]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Hassani S. (2010) [1]. In: From Atoms to Galaxies: A Conceptual Physics Approach to Scientific Awareness. Chapter 12. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press,ISBN 9781439808498; ISBN 9781439808504 eBook-PDF.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Hassani S. (2010) From Atoms to Galaxies: A Conceptual Physics Approach to Scientific Awareness. CRC Press. Page 176. ISBN 978-1-4398-0850-4 (Ebook-PDF).
  3. 3.0 3.1 Law. MIT OpenCourseWare.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Thomson JJ. (1907) The Corpuscular Theory of Matter. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. | Free Google eBook. | J.J. Thomson - Biography. Nobelprize.org.


Older version to be revised

Once you have established those basic ideas about electricity, "like charges repel and unlike charges attract", then you have the foundation for electricity and can build from there.
—Electric Charge, Hyperphysics Online

In reference to the physics and chemistry of electricity, charge, or more specifically, electric charge, is a fundamental property of matter that causes matter having that property to generate and react to a force of attraction or repulsion to spatially separate matter that likewise manifests the property of electric charge.[1] [2] [3]

Whatever constitutes electric charge constitutes it as two separate qualities, or polarities, assigned the names 'positive' and 'negative', or 'plus' and 'minus'. The attractive force between electrically charged entities arises between oppositely-charged entities—positive-negative—whereas the repulsive force arises between like-charged entities—positive-positive, or negative-negative.

Familiar examples of positively charged matter are protons, constituents of the nuclei of atoms, and familiar examples of negatively charged matter are electrons, constituents of atoms that surround their nuclei.

Given that the terms 'positive' and 'negative' serve only as labels to distinguish the two polarities observed in the electric charge of matter, 'positivity' and 'negativity' do not themselves imply anything about the fundamental nature of electric charge. Other labels connoting bi-polarity, such as yin/yang, black/white, or bitter/sweet, could serve for labeling.

The atoms that comprise the chemical elements of the periodic table, while consisting in part of the electrically charged particles, protons and electrons, do not themselves manifest an electric charge, because protons in the nuclei and the surrounding electrons are equal in number and quantity of charge, that balance ensuring that the atoms as a whole manifest no net electric charge—a state referred to as electrical neutrality.

Discovery and naming of electric charge

The ancient Greeks as far back as the beginning of the 6th century BCE, beginning with Thales of Miletus, had observed some of the simple phenomenology related to electric charge, Thales demonstrating it using the fossilized tree resin, amber, rubbed with cloth:[4] [5]

That little piece of amber rubbed by Thales, some 2,500 years ago, appeared then to be very insignificant. Had the world but known, it was fraught with vast possibilities; for, in point of fact, Thales had unconsciously rediscovered Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp. As he rubbed, the Genie of electricity appeared, and demanded, "What wouldst thou have? I am ready to obey thee as the slave of the lamp, I and the other slaves of the lamp." But the question remained unanswered. Neither Thales nor the witnesses of his experiment made any request nor asked its genii to aid them. They had ears, but they heard not, and so the genie disappeared, with all that he was both willing and able to do left undone.
—E.J. Houston, 1905[4]

In 600 B.C. Thales, erudite philosopher and astronomer in the thriving Ionian port of Miletus, observed the special qualities of the rare yellow orange amber, jewel-like in its hardness and transparency. If rubbed briskly with a cloth, Thales showed, amber seemed to come alive, causing light objects—like feathers, straw, or leaves—to fly toward it, cling, and then gently detach and float away. Amber was similar to a magnet in its qualities, yet it was not a lodestone. As a youth, Thales of Miletus had studied in the sacred Egyptian cities of Memphis and Thebes. Perhaps it was there, under the burning sun, that this earliest of Greek philosophers first learned from the priests about the prized amber, with its seeming possession of a soul.[5]

Thales, it appears, believed amber an animate thing, something with soul.[6]

The Greek word for amber, elektron, ultimately through Latin, electrum, gave rise to the English words, electrical and electric — words used to refer to the amber phenomenon before the publication of William Gilbert's landmark work, De magnete, in 1600, describing the results of the first systematic experimental studies of magnetic and electrical phenomena in Western science.[7] [8]

The word, charge, used in its electrical sense, was first used by Benjamin Franklin, in 1747, as a verb, and subsequently by him as adjective and noun:

Our spheres are fixed on iron axes, which is passed through them. At one and of the axis there is a small handle, with which you turn the sphere like a common grindstone. This we find very commodious, as the machine takes up little room, is portable, and may be enclosed in a tight box, when not in use. 'Tis true, the sphere does not turn so swift as when the great wheel is used, but swiftness we think of little importance, since a few turns will charge the phial, etc., sufficiently. [italics added] [9]

Presumably, Franklin, who, in his many writings, frequently used the word, charge, and its variant forms (charging, charged, etc.), in its non-electrical sense, had in mind the word's sense of 'loading' or 'filling' something:

charge - ORIGIN: Middle English (in the general senses ‘to load’ and ‘a load’): from Old French charger (verb), charge (noun), from late Latin carricare, carcare ‘to load,’ from Latin carrus ‘wheeled vehicle.’...Examples: load or fill (a container, gun, etc.) to the full or proper extent: will you see to it that your glasses are charged? | fill or pervade (something) with a quality or emotion: the air was charged with menace.[10]

References

  1. Gibilisco S. (2005) Electricity Demystified. New York: McGraw-Hill. | Stan Gibilisco is an electronics engineer and mathematician, author of numerous technical books on electronics and mathematics.
  2. Elert G. (1998-2010) Electric Charge: Summary. The Physics Hypertextbook.
  3. Elert G. (1998-2010) Electric Charge. The Physics Hypertextbook.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Houston EJ. (1905) Electricity in every-day life. New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1905. | Title link: Google Book Full-Text Volume 1 of 3.
    • That little piece of amber rubbed by Thales, some 2,500 years ago, appeared then to be very insignificant. Had the world but known, it was fraught with vast possibilities; for, in point of fact, Thales had unconsciously rediscovered Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp. As he rubbed, the Genie of electricity appeared, and demanded, "What wouldst thou have? I am ready to obey thee as the slave of the lamp, I and the other slaves of the lamp." But the question remained unanswered. Neither Thales nor the witnesses of his experiment made any request nor asked its genii to aid them. They had ears, but they heard not, and so the genie disappeared, with all that he was both willing and able to do left undone.
  5. 5.0 5.1 Jonnes J. (2004) Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World. Random House Digital, Inc. ISBN 0375758844. | Title link: a Google Books extract.
  6. Barnes J. (1982) The Presocratic Philosophers'. Psychology Press. ISBN 978041505079. | Title link: Google Book extract.
  7. Electric. Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002.
  8. Gilbert W. (1600, 1958) De magnete. Republication of the first English translation, from Gilbert's original in Latin, by P. Fleury Mottelay, in 1893. Courier Dover Publications. ISBN 9780486267616. | Google Books extract.
  9. Franklin B. (1769) Experiments And Observations On Electricity, Made At Philadelphia in America: To which are added, Letters and Papers On Philosophical Subjects. David Henry, publisher. | Google Books Full-Text.
    • See pages 311 for Franklin's 1747 letter to Peter Collinson, with Franklin's first use of 'charge'.
  10. charge v.. New Oxford American Dictionary. Edited by Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Lindberg. Oxford University Press, 2010. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed. 3 July 2011.



Opgen

Pioneer optogeneticist, Karl Deisseroth, defines optogenetics:

Optogenetics[1] is the combination of genetic and optical methods to achieve gain or loss of function of well-defined events in specific cells of living tissue.[2][Note 1]

Notes

  1. Deisseroth cites a well-illustrated review article in Scientific American magazine.

References

  1. Deisseroth K. (2010) Controlling the brain with light. Scientific American 303(5):48-55. PMID 21033283. | Extended/expanded version of article.
  2. Deisseroth K. (2011) Optogenetics. Nature Methods 8(1):26-29. PMID 21191368 | Special Feature: Method of the Year. Commentary.


stuff

Related links

Related links:

Optogenetics Resource Center

http://www.stanford.edu/group/dlab/optogenetics/index.html

Minimally Invasive Brain Stimulation

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7310_supp/box/466S15a_BX2.html

Optogenetics News

Ideas & Opinions | The Light Fantastic | by Robert Langreth |07.01.10, 10:20 AM EDT | Forbes Magazine dated July 19, 2010 This doctor reverse-engineers the mind with blue lasers and green algae.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/dlab/news.html

http://www.hfsp.org/PDF_Files/Press%20release%20-%20Nakasone%20Award%202010%20to%20Karl%20Deisseroth_final.pdf

Lectures on Microbial Opsin Optogenetics

http://www.stanford.edu/group/dlab/karlsfntalk.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8bPbHuOZXg

Test

77 years

text[1] [Note 1]

Notes

  1. Historian John F. Fulton quotes Vesalius as exclaiming:

    I acknowledge no authority save the witness of mine own eyes—I must have the liberty to compare the dicta of Galen with the observed facts of bodily structure.

refs

  1. Fulton JF. (1950) Vesalius Four Centuries Later. Logan Clendening Lectures on the History and Philosophy of Medicine, First Series: i Vesalius Four Centuries Later; ii Medicine in the Eighteenth Century. University of Kansas Press. | PDF.

Test-2

28.
UPDATE
What We Eat in America, NHANES 2007-2008
Mean Potassium Intakes. mg and mmoles per day


All Individuals, 2 and over

15% reporting potassium supplement

Sample Size, 8421

Food K, 2510 mg (SE 46.1) [64 mmoles]

Supplement K, 14 mg (SE 1.5) [<1 mmole]

Food + Supplement K, 2524 (SE 47.1) [65 mmoles]

Food + Supplement K, % of IOM recommendation, 50%


Males, 20 and over

21% reporting potassium supplement

Sample Size, 2662

Food K, 3026 mg (SE 50.4) [77 mmoles]

Supplement K, 22 (SE 1.8) [~1 mmole]

Food + Supplement K, 3048 (SE 51.2) [78 mmoles]

Food + Supplement K, % of IOM recommendation, 65%


Females, 20 and over

17% reporting potassium supplement

Sample Size, 2670

Food K, 2282 mg (SE 50.6) [58 mmoles]

Supplement K, 16 (SE 2.4) [<1 mmole]

—NHANES 2007-2008[1]


refs


Test3

Potassium Intake
What We Eat in America
2005-2006 and 2007-2008
Years
Gender
Potassium
mmol/day
%
Of
Recom-
mended
2005-2006
Men
81
68
2005-2006
Women
61
50
 
 
 
 
2007-2008
Men
78
65
2007-2008
Women
58
50
Recommended “Adequate Intake”, 120 mmol/day, identical for men and women, and therefore not adjusted for differences in body size or lean body mass between men and women.
Because the Food and Nutrition Board indicated that eating ordinary foods imposed no danger of consuming excess potassium except in certain potassium non-tolerant conditions, most Americans could likely achieve “adequate intakes” or more by doubling their potassium intake.

Holding References Various

[1]

Citations

  1. Cunningham A. (1997) The Anatomical Renaissance: The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients. London: Scolar Press. ISBN 1859283381.

synbio

Somewhat more broadly, the American Chemical Society’s journal, ACS Synthetic Biology, states:

The journal is particularly interested in studies on the design and synthesis of new genetic circuits and gene products; computational methods in the design of systems; and integrative applied approaches to understanding disease and metabolism.

It lists the following topics as appropriate for a journal on synthetic biology:

Design and optimization of genetic systems
Genetic circuit design and their principles for their organization into programs
Computational methods to aid the design of genetic systems
Experimental methods to quantify genetic parts, circuits, and metabolic fluxes
Genetic parts libraries: their creation, analysis, and ontological representation
Protein engineering including computational design
Metabolic engineering and cellular manufacturing, including biomass conversion
Natural product access, engineering, and production
Creative and innovative applications of cellular programming
Medical applications, tissue engineering, and the programming of therapeutic cells
Minimal cell design and construction
Genomics and genome replacement strategies
Viral engineering
Automated and robotic assembly platforms for synthetic biology
DNA synthesis methodologies
Metagenomics and synthetic metagenomic analysis
Bioinformatics applied to gene discovery, chemoinformatics, and pathway construction
Gene optimization
Methods for genome-scale measurements of transcription and metabolomics
Systems biology and methods to integrate multiple data sources
in vitro and cell-free synthetic biology and molecular programming
Nucleic acid engineering

XLH

abc[1] def[2] ghi[3]

References

  1. Carpenter TO, Imel EA, Holm IA, Jan de Beur SM, Insogna KL. (2011) A clinician's guide to X-linked hypophosphatemia. J Bone Miner Res 26:1381-8.
    ↑ We briefly review the clinical and pathophysiologic features of the disorder and offer this guide in response to the conference recommendation, “Advances in Rare Bone Diseases Scientific Conference” NIH in October 2008, based on our collective accumulated experience in the management of this complex disorder.
  2. Carpenter TO, Insogna KL, Zhang JH et al. (2010) Circulating levels of soluble klotho and FGF23 in X-linked hypophosphatemia: circadian variance, effects of treatment, and relationship to parathyroid status. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 95:E352-E357.
    ↑ Serum klotho declines with age and demonstrates circadian variation but is normal in XLH. Serum FGF23 is similar in children and adults, is elevated in XLH, further increases with therapy, and demonstrates no diurnal variation. The direct relationship between FGF23 and PTH in subjects with XLH suggests that FGF23 regulation of PTH secretion is aberrant in this disorder.
  3. Imel EA, DiMeglio LA, Hui SL, Carpenter TO, Econs MJ. (2010) Treatment of X-linked hypophosphatemia with calcitriol and phosphate increases circulating fibroblast growth factor 23 concentrations. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 95:1846-50.
    ↑ Treating XLH with phosphate and calcitriol was associated with concurrent increases in circulating FGF23 concentrations, which may diminish therapeutic effect or contribute to complications of therapy. Because it is unknown whether the degree of FGF23 elevation correlates with disease severity in XLH, further study is needed to determine whether adjusting therapy to minimize effects on FGF23 concentration is warranted.


Timeline drawing test

(CC) Diagram: Anthony Sebastian
Add image caption here.

For lede Evolutionary linguistics

Some of the core questions in evolutionary linguistics are stated on the website of the linguistics department of the University of California, Santa Barbara:

Since spoken language does not leave any fossil record, the study of the origin and evolution of language is necessarily inferential on the basis of cross-disciplinary understanding of linguistics, neuroscience, paleoanthropology, molecular genetics, and animal cognition/communication. Of particular significance are those hominid behaviors that cannot take place without linguistic communication. A surprising issue that rises from this cross-disciplinary research is the nature of language.

  • In the continuum of the evolutionary development of human cognition and behavior adduced from the paleoanthropological records, when did hominid communication qualify as “language”?

0*Would the emergence of symbolic signals mark the beginning of language?

  • Was the appearance of the first symbolic signal among hominids the watershed event that led instantly to a cascade of new symbolic communicative signals within a few generations, or was the increase of symbolic signals a gradual process on an evolutionary time scale in accordance with the evolution of cognition?
  • Is there a “critical mass” of symbolic communicative signals that is necessary to trigger the development of grammar?
  • Did grammar emerge gradually on an evolutionary scale of time, contrary to the fast-paced emergence of grammar in pidginization and creolization?

[1]

There are many others, as will become apparent in this article.


refs

CS

Philosophers of mind, and all those scholars of myriad disciplines who have given serious inquiry into the nature of mind, have not agreed upon a definition of conscious experience, or ‘consciousness’, the term commonly used to refer to conscious experience. To quote a leading philosopher of mind, David Chalmers:

There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. [1]

Nicholas Humphrey, another leading philosopher of mind, elaborates:

The hard problem is to explain how an entity made entirely of physical matter—such as a human being—can experience conscious feelings. The problem is hard because such feelings appear to us, who are the subjects of them, to have properties that could not possibly be conjured out of matter alone.[2]

Philosopher of mind, David Rosenthal, gives the following definition(s):

The term 'consciousnes' is used in several ways: to describe a person or other creature as being awake and sentient, to describe a person or other creature as being 'aware of' something, and to refer to a property of mental states, such as perceiving, feeling, and thinking, that distinguishes those states from unconscious mental states.[3]

Philosopher of mind, Bernard Baars, asks us to consider this:

Our standard behavioral index for consciousness is the ability people have to report their experiences, often in ways that can be checked for accuracy.…... Under well-defined condition, such reports are exquisitely sensitive.… Conscious processes can be operationally defined as events that: (1) can be reported and acted upon, (2) with verifiable accuracy, (3) under optimal reporting conditions, (4) and which are reported as conscious.[4]


Holding in-line citations

Rosenthal 2010[3]

References cited

  1. Chalmers DJ. (1995) Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 2(3):200-219. | Download full-text PDF.
  2. Humphrey N. (2011) Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness. Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition. | Google Books preview.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Rosenthal DM. (2010) Concepts and Definitions of Consciousness. In: Encyclopedia of Consciousness. Editor: William P. Banks. Focal Press. ISBN 9780123738738. | Google Books preview (Encyclopedia). | Google Books preview (Rosenthal chapter). | Download full-text (Rosenthal, second proof).
  4. Barnard J. Baars. Introduction: Treating Consciousness as a Variable: The Fading Taboo. Chapter 1. In: Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness. Editors: Bernard J. Baars, William P. Banks, James B. Newman. MIT Press. ISBN 978026252308. | Google Books preview.


gd

Notes


refs