text:
User:Garrett/The Great War

This is a collection of notes and tables based loosely on those spoken and handed out during Massey University's paper The Great War and its Legacy.

Feel free to edit and correct and improve as you see fit, these are only stored in "my" space until the course material for The Great War and Versailles can accomodate them.

Note that not all of this information will necessarily feature in Wikiversity's take on the subject.

Why didn't the United States enter the war before 1917?

 * 1) "Isolationalism"
 * 2) * far-removed from Europe, many citizens immigrants rejecting aspects of Europe, looking westward (and south), large navy, Monroe Doctrine, enormous economic strength and potential, moral superiority
 * 3) Tradition of hostility to Britain
 * 4) * revolution, friction over Monroe Doctrine, friction during civil war, economic competitors in Latin America, Ireland
 * 5) "Hyphenated Americans"
 * 6) * millions of recent immigrants from Germany, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Catholic Ireland
 * 7) Woodrow Wilson
 * 8) * considered neutrality moral stance
 * 9) * re-elected at end of 1916 - "He kept us out of war" (but close election, with Republicans favouring intervention)
 * 10) Objections to British blockade
 * 11) * exceeds normal rules, impact on some commodities e.g. cotton

Why did the United States enter the war on April 6, 1917?

 * 1) Sympathy for Britain amongst East Coast elite (including Wilson, Robert Lansing)
 * 2) * connections, common language, massive British propaganda campaign, control of most news, purchase of UK and French bonds
 * 3) Sympathy for France
 * 4) * assistance during Revolution, fellow republicans, democratic
 * 5) * Lafayette Escadrille
 * 6) Sympathy for Belgium
 * 7) * shock at violation of neutrality, "scrap of paper"
 * 8) * atrocities (magnified by British propaganda)
 * 9) * Belgian Food Relief (Hoover)
 * 10) Growth of imperial and militarist sentiment
 * 11) * 1898 Spanish-American War
 * 12) * interventions in Caribbean, especially Mexico
 * 13) * "preparedness" movement
 * 14) * 1916 law to double size of army
 * 15) German influence in Mexico
 * 16) * defeat of Pershing Expedition
 * 17) Lusitania (May 7, 1915) and submarine warfare
 * 18) * Lansing: "our friendship with Germany is a thing of the past"
 * 19) German sabotage
 * 20) * factories, depots, bridges. New Jersey Black Tom plant
 * 21) * expulsion of some German and Austrian diplomats
 * 22) Failure of Wilson's peace attempts during 1917
 * 23) * prepared to intervene on Entente side if accepted and Germans didn't; German considered evasive
 * 24) reintroduction of unrestricted submarine warfare (February 1917)
 * 25) Zimmermann Telegram (January 19)
 * 26) * Wilson releases to Newspapers in March
 * 27) * sensitive issue in West and South
 * 28) Economic links
 * 29) * Massive commitment by American financiers (especially J.P. Morgan and Co.) to support Britain and France
 * 30) * only significant trade with Entente
 * 31) * 1915-17, 24% of Entente munitions
 * 32) * Washington supports British loan January 1917
 * 33) * exports to Entente underwrite economic boom
 * 34) * enormous increase in trade

Impact of the entry of the United States to the war

 * 1) War at sea
 * 2) * big increase merchant marine (including interned German vessels)
 * 3) * big increase shipbuilding capacity
 * 4) * big increase anti-submarine forces
 * 5) Effect on battlefield
 * 6) * very limited 1917, but significant latter part of defence against German offensives in 1918, counterattacks
 * 7) * two million fresh troops in France by end war
 * 8) * impact on German morale
 * 9) Financial support
 * 10) * loans to Entente powers from US Government April to mid-July came to 1917 $430 million
 * 11) Supplies
 * 12) * some increase, but big expansion earlier
 * 13) Fourteen Points
 * 14) * much appeal to nationalities in Austro-Hungarian Empire
 * 15) * basis for German agreement to armistice
 * 16) American influence over war and peace
 * 17) * control over finance and resources
 * 18) * creation of League of Nations

Factors contributing to likelihood of conflict

 * 1) Nationalism
 * 2) * in Balkans, within Austria-Hungary and in major nation-states
 * 3) * fueled drive both to change and to mantain status quo—drive to become world power, fear that would lose great power status
 * 4) * resistance to actions or policies that might harm national prestige
 * 5) Imperialism
 * 6) * no evidence that capitalist interests pushed for war in accordance with Leninist argument
 * 7) * imperialism outside Europe often exaggerated as factor—settlement of imperial disputes in wider world more a feature of 1900-14 period (and previously more conflict between Britain and France, Russia)
 * 8) * resentment in Germany that denied "place in the sun"
 * 9) * French-German confrontation over Morocco in 1905 and 1911 helped cement Entente Cordiale (French for "friendly understanding")
 * 10) * Italian attack on Turkey to seize territory (1911-12) weakened Turkish power further
 * 11) * Austro-Hungarian designs on Serbia a form of imperialism, supported by Germany
 * 12) Alliance System
 * 13) * ostensibly means by which Russia, Germany and France drawn into a conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia
 * 14) * importance can be exaggerated—some moral influence (and possible resulting domestic political considerations), but alliances generally embody real interests and become operative because those interests are threatened or can be advanced
 * 15) * no formal alliance between Russia and Sebia, or Britain and France
 * 16) Arms Races
 * 17) * naval competition soured relations between Britain and Germany
 * 18) * heightened tension as Russia and France built up their armies in response to Germany—temptation of latter to strike first (especially as many in government perceived that could not compete in medium term)
 * 19) Military Planning/Technological Improvements in Mobilization
 * 20) * importance of railway timetables, quick decisions
 * 21) * French-British military talks implied some commitment
 * 22) Changes in Existing Power Balance
 * 23) * unification of Germany and its rapid industrial development and population growth
 * 24) * rapid economic development of Russia
 * 25) * decline of Turkey
 * 26) * rise of Serbia
 * 27) Internal Pressures
 * 28) * definite fear in Austria-Hungary
 * 29) * problem for German Imperial Government—rise of Social Democrats, rise of nationalistic anti-Socialist parties
 * 30) * fear of nationalist backlash in Russia and possibly France if backed down from confrontation
 * 31) * internal problems in Britain tended to exert pressure against involvement in war
 * 32) Misjudgement of Nature of Coming War
 * 33) * widespread belief that it would have to end quickly, presumably with a conference, after decisive war of movement
 * 34) Ideological and Moral Influences
 * 35) * glorification of war and self-sacrifice made for widespread acceptance amongst populations
 * 36) * concepts of "honor"
 * 37) * some perception of ideological conflict—Russian autocracy, German militarism, French republicanism; religious divisions
 * 38) * some affected by ideologies of power and necessary conflict; concepts of Social Darwinism, ideas of Nietzsche *but fear stronger than "will to power" amongst most decisionmakers)

Austria-Hungary Attacks Serbia July 28

 * assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbs almost certainly supported by elements in Serbian military; refusal by Serbia to accept all demands unconditionally
 * more fundamental reason: desire to crush perceived growing Serbian threat by absorbing Serbia
 * Austro-Hungarian nationality problem, acute in Balkans area
 * close relations between Serbia and Russia, the main power threat to Austria-Hungary
 * Serbia aggressively nationalistic since 1903, looking to unite with Serbs and Croats in Turky and Austria-Hungary
 * 1905-09 failure of "pig war"
 * 1908 Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzgovina increases Serb hostility
 * 1912-13 Serbia greatly increases its territory and proves militarily effective in the Balkan Wars
 * support of Germany—July 5 "blank cheque"

Russia Mobilizes (partially July 29, generally July 30)

 * belief that they should not abandon Serbia
 * fellow Slavs, fellow Eastern Orthodox
 * would lose a strategic advantage against Austria-Hungary
 * would suffer immense loss of prestige internationally and domestically
 * had suffered defeat in war 1904-05, 1908 had not intervened when Bosnia annexed, 1913 had allowed Serbia to be deprived of an Adriatic coastline following Balkan Wars
 * believed had chance of winning war following rapid recovery since 1905
 * a successful war could lead to Russian control over the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean (specifically, the Bosporus and the Dardanelles)—important for trade, especially grain exports
 * 1913 German military mission to Turky (Liman von Sanders)—belief that German influence there increasing
 * Tsar persuaded by military and French ambassador to carry out general mobilization on grounds that war with Germany inevitable

Germany Declares War on Russia (August 1)

 * Austria-Hungary Germany's only reliable ally (1879 Dual Alliance)—believed could not afford to see it defeated or dismembered
 * Russia allied with France, Germany's major opponent in western Europe
 * planning for war assumed Austro-Hungarian attack on Russia
 * belief that faced growing danger from Russia (building railways, industrialization, greater military effectiveness)—military in particular argue that best to strike early, before Russian reorganization and expansion of military complete (1917)
 * defeat of Russia could open up economic opportunities in eastern Europe
 * likely that war against "autocratic", brutal Russian threat would be popular domestically

Germany Declares War on France and Invades Belgium (August 3)

 * superficially due to France's refusal to pledge neutrality and surrender its eastern forts
 * Germany considers France an irreconcilable opponent because of German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871
 * France allied with Russia in 1892 and had been deploying much of its capital surplus to build infrastructure (especially railways) and industry in Russia
 * France moving to expand its military forces in response to German expansion, but not ready until 1915-16
 * German military plans (von Schlieffen Plan) call for a rapid attack on France before Russia can fully mobilize and attack Germany (Kaiser told cannot mobilize solely against Russia—railway timetables)
 * need to secure rapid passage through neutral Belgium on a narrow front (partly because had decided in 1911 not to violate neutrality of Netherlands)
 * had come to accept likelihood of British intervention (formation of Entente Cordiale 1904, Triple Entente 1907, attitude in two Moroccan crises), but considered not significant militarily and now better prepared with completion improvement Kiel Canal

Britain Declares War on Germany (August 4)

 * since 1880s had come to regard Germany as its likely enemy in a future European war (Kruger telegram 1896, attitude during South African War 1899-1902, Tangier Crisis 1905-06, Agadir Crisis 1911, above all because of large-scale German naval construction since 1898—naval supremacy seen as basis of British power and security)
 * widespread belief that defeat of France would upset balance of power in Europe and lead to possibility of German naval bases in northern France and Low Countries—intolerable threat
 * British military had been cooperating with French military in planning for several years—implied commitment
 * Sir Edward Grey (Foreign Secretary) convinced that Britain had to get involved
 * German attack on neutral Belgium gave additional justification and moral basis (particularly strong in influencing public opinion)

War Enthusiasm
Aim to give overview of social, economic, political and military issues of war
 * It was an industrialised war, at the end of a long period of industrialisation for Britain and, more recently, Germany so these had an effect
 * Way war remembered in 20th c., architecture, monuments, etc.
 * During 90s it got "vogue"ish

Middle classes

 * "pals battallions" were method of recruiting in Britain
 * esp. linked to notion of "the city"
 * represented by "Tommy Atkins"

War Enthusiasm

 * 1914 - historians often speak of the "rush to the colours" in this year
 * also general atmosphere of war enthusiasm
 * is this true to all classes?
 * should we question some commonly-held assumptions about war enthusiasm?
 * on eve of war in 1914 Britain had experienced several decades of economic growth
 * when war broke out British army fairly small
 * their navy was bigger than their army!
 * most of the army was in India defending the "Jewel of the crown" as Disraeli called it
 * the army wasn’t something you’d see as a career move!
 * it was often home to the dregs of society in 19th c.
 * English *wanted* the army posted abroad for fear of what would happen if it stayed in Britain
 * there were military camps like Aldersharp/shark (sp?) but most was still kept overseas
 * officers from middle of 19th c. came from upper classes; had gone thru public school education
 * the army was short of 11,000 men when war broke out
 * this triggered Kitchener’s desire for new army
 * he produced a well-known poster where his eyes followed you around the room
 * "Your country needs YOU!" poster art took off in WW1
 * US later adapted this for Uncle Sam because it was so effective
 * the army went thru big changes in WW1; the existing army, the old Contemptibles (BEF) as well as the Territorials
 * but now there were 2 new armies coming thru
 * those volunteers Kitchener managed to raise
 * and in 1916, another army made up of those forced to fight!
 * Britain brought in laws to force you to fight at the Front; conscription was introduced
 * highly contentious b/c liberal gov that was in power was supposed to be about freedom of choice!

title: User:Garrett/The Great War


text:
File:HSE Venn 2.png

a and b disjoint

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: File:HSE Venn 2.png


text:
Cookbook:Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

| Rhubarb Recipes | Strawberry Recipes

Ingredients

 * 1 flaky pie crust
 * 2½ cups (about 1¼ pound) rhubarb stalk chunks
 * 2½ cups sliced strawberries
 * 1¼ cups white granulated sugar
 * ¼ cup cornstarch or tapioca pearls
 * ¼ tsp salt

Crust

 * 1) Prepare the flaky pie crust and refrigerate while preparing the filling.

Filling

 * 1) Clean the strawberries and remove the leaves.
 * 2) Cut the strawberries in halves (or quarters for larger berries).
 * 3) Clean and trim the rhubarb stalks.
 * 4) Cut the stalks into ½–1 inch sections.
 * 5) Add sugar, cornstarch or tapioca, and salt.
 * 6) Stir until rhubarb is evenly coated with dry ingredients.

Forming the pie

 * 1) Follow the instructions in the flaky pie crust recipe.

title: Cookbook:Strawberry Rhubarb Pie


text:
Category:Strawberry recipes

Recipes involving strawberries.

title: Category:Strawberry recipes


text:
User talk:68.89.85.184

Thanks for contributing to Web Design! Send me a message if you want to discuss ideas!

title: User talk:68.89.85.184


text:
Biblical Studies/Christianity/Christian Theology/Apocrypha

The word apocrypha in Bibliology refers to texts that are not considered canonical, part of the Bible, but are of roughly similar style and age as the accepted Scriptures. Protestants use the word apocryph, in a narrower sense, of those books that they exclude from their canon of Scripture, but that other Churches view as canonical and venerate as divinely inspired, written under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

Disagreement between Christian Churches is almost non-existent about the canon of the New Testament, but the inclusion of some books in the Old Testament canon is disputed. Since these books were of late composition, Protestant scholars sometimes call them intertestamenta, i.e. intermediate between the Old and New Testaments, and hold that God imposed a period of silence, with no prophecy or Scripture, to prepare for the coming of Jesus.

The books that come under the description apocryph in the broad sense but not in this narrow sense are called apocrypha by Catholics and Jews, but Protestants usually call them Pseudepigrapha. Many of them have apocalyptic themes.


text:
User:Lynx7725/Vandalism

This page is created to assist in the organization of the Vandalism page. It contains information previously posted on the Specials page that is collated to give a better overview of multi-session vandalism.

= Vandalism =

The ideal behind Wikibooks (and in general Wikiprojects) is really the sharing and consolidation of human knowledge. If you look back in history, you would realise how much knowledge we take for granted.

Take for example the PC you are using. Each PC is a cummulation of human knowledge in:
 * material sciences (to know that it is possible to construct a PC from base material)
 * geology (locating the oil and silicon, plus other material such as gold)
 * mining/ drilling (to extract said material)
 * chemistry and metallurgy (to refine the material)
 * construction, electronics and robotics (to create the production facilities needed to produce the PC)
 * power generation (to power the PC)
 * mathematics, logic and computer sciences (to create OS and applications to run the PC)

I can just go on and on, but the point is, it is impossible for any ONE person on this planet to create a PC from, say, a pool of crude oil and a lump of ore. The knowledge needed to turn black gold and raw ore into the PC you are using now has way too many specialist areas that requires dedication to master.

Thus, a critical loss of knowledge in even ONE area will mean the total loss of ability by humanity to create more PCs; without the computational muscles computing brings us, humanity cannot progress beyond where we are now.

Wikibooks, in its own way, tries to preserve some parts of the knowledge. The motivation, effort and dedication of true contributors here are all diverse, but we need not question them; that they bothered to set aside time to key in such information is already something I personally am thankful for.

So, I view vandalism with a very dim light. In many ways, vandals are not showing respect for the efforts of others -- they deserve no respect from me then. They are threatening what we as a collective whole tries to build, all for the cheap thrill of destroying the works of others. That is something unforgivable, at least in my opinion.

Wikibooks is getting more and more popular as time goes by. Now, in about half a day, we have about 500 edits; approximately 1% is vandalism, plus another 1% in newcomer mistakes. Unfortunately, it is not possible to quickly narrow down the vandals as they often hide behind the anonymity that is at the core of the Wiki ideal. It makes it necessary for other contributors to dedicate time to check the entries to make sure that no vandalism undo the works of others.

Not only that, these contributors need to maintain an objectivity to leave coherent subjective books alone, while rooting out the true vandals; some Wikibooks are truly offensive or subjective, yet in the sum of human knowledge, these books are a necessary evil. It is however not the place of these contributors -- let's call them Patrollers to pass judgement on the appropriateness of a well-developed Wikibook.

Wikibooks badly need more Patrollers. As more users come to utilize Wikibooks more than Wikipedia (which, by definition, is more restrictive), the percentage of vandalism is likely to increase (but thankfully, self-patrols will also go up). As it is, we are hard pressed to catch vandals and react swiftly enough to minimize the damage they cause. We need to breed a group of contributors who are sufficiently civic-conscious to do what is needed, without the benefits of material rewards or acknowledgement.

Ass Pus Attacks
The Ass Pus Attacks are a series of attacks that has the same MO:

 * 1) A named user attacks Image:WikiThanks.png by changing the image (a sunflower) into that of the words "Ass Pus" (hence the name of this section). As this image is used by several official pages, it is a quick way to vandalize mulitple files.
 * 2) The user uploads various crude images and link them to editable official pages like this page.
 * 3) The user can also start moving official pages to pages that has the name "Ass Pus" in them.

To date, the following users are known to use this attack. These users have been blocked.

 * Duke of Puke (First known instance.)
 * Greeno (Partial; blocked by Waerth before full damage is done but uploaded signature "Ass Pus" image. Reconstructed from audit trail.)
 * Henry the 88th (Observed in full by me (Lynx7725).)
 * Ting Tong (Not observed by me (Lynx7725) but has signature style.)

The following is a record of the various information posted by various admins/ contributors at the time of the attack. These are copied from the Vandalism page.

Duke of Puke
He's vandalizing pages and templates. He needs to be banned. Homepage is a redirect. Snargle 06:09, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I had to move it back. He moved User:TUF-KAT to his own page, and also moving key policy pages around (including this page) and giving them offensive names.  User's userpage is currently a redirect to User:TUF-KAT as a result. KelvSYC 06:11, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * He's been blocked. Gentgeen 06:58, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Henry the 88th
Vandal. U/led inappropriate image here, vandalized 4 pages including 1 Template page. The other template he inserted a standard wiki img so I'm going to leave it alone. Suspected alias of Duke of Puke et. al., please block ASAP.

 * Okay, I'm officially very confused by all the edits I had to get this guy off our backs. Can someone please go through his "Contributions" to make sure I got them all? Lynx7725 07:45, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Yeah, I was going to help you fix it, but it's beyond my mere mortal powers. Could an admin please roll back all changes by everyone involved, if that's possible. Congratulations on detecting Henry the 88th first Lynx7725, I was distracted by looking at only the anonymous edits. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 07:59, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * No probs. Hopefully he doesn't resurface or an admin blocks him for good. This guy (assuming all are aliases of one guy) sure has (a) a grudge against wikibooks and (b) a fascination on anal biological processes... Lynx7725 08:06, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Just ignore him, and he will go away. He thrives on attention. We can easily fix up his mess after he has gone. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 08:12, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As a precaution, can I request that Image:WikiThanks.png be protected? The attacks from Henry the 88th, Ting Tong, Duke of Puke (and suspect Gumba Gumba) all had similar styles, and of late (since Ting Tong) they have kept attacking this image as it is a commonly used image in Wikibooks. I'll willing to bet money the next wave from this person/ persons will also target this image. Lynx7725 08:37, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Update: Seems like I missed the last Duke of Puke sockpuppet attack, this time under the name Greeno. Same MO (i.e. attacked the WikiThanks.png with the same image as previous attacks. Waerth blocked him before too much damage is done.

 * Can we protect this image to stop these attacks? Granted, he can still u/l the image under another name, but at least he would not be able to affect so many pages with one edit. Lynx7725 10:29, 28 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ting Tong
He moved this page to Wikibooks:Ass pus in progress. And vadalized a few other pages with the same text. -- Bobdoe (Silence) 18:25, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * I've just undone their page move, please block them ASAP. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 02:51, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

title: User:Lynx7725/Vandalism


text:
Cookbook:Cuisine of Trinidad and Tobago

| Caribbean cuisines

The Cuisine of Trinidad and Tobago is indicative of the blends of Amerindian, European, African, Indian, Chinese, Creole, and Lebanese gastronomic influences, and is also more similar to the cuisine of Guyana than most other countries in the Caribbean.

Perhaps due to the diversity of its people and thus the food, Trinidad and Tobago has no official national dish. Crab and callaloo is popular and often prepared for Sunday lunch. Pelau, a rice-based dish, is also a standard dish in Trinidad and Tobago. Another popular dish is roti - this is of East Indian origin and consists of curried potatoes, channa (chickpeas) and meat wrapped in dhalphurie. Other local dishes include coo coo, sancoche, macaroni pie and oil down.

Appetizers

 * Accra (Shrimp Fritters) Best eaten with a hot dip called sauce
 * Aloo Pies
 * Saheena
 * Kachorie
 * Beef Pies
 * Phulourie
 * Crab-Back
 * Shrimp Cocktails
 * Cheese Pies
 * Fish Pies

Soups

 * Fish Broth

Seafood

 * Curried Cascadura
 * Fish Broth
 * Bake and Shark
 * Cou cou and fosh
 * Fried fish
 * Steamed fish
 * Fry-dry (dish made from deep fried bait fish)

Salted Fish Dishes

 * Buljol
 * Green Fig (banana) and Saltfish
 * Saltfish and Tomatoes
 * Saltfish Cakes

Pasta

 * Macaroni Pie

Trinidadian Dishes

 * Cassava Dumpling
 * Accra (Shrimp Fritters) - best eaten with a hot dip
 * Callaloo
 * Buljol

Street Food

 * Doubles (Curried ChickPeas and Bara)

Christmas Food

 * Ponche de Crème (Punch a Crème) - traditional Christmas beverage (alcoholic)

Desserts

 * Chinese Chews
 * Kurma
 * Sweet Rice

title: Cookbook:Cuisine of Trinidad and Tobago


text:
User:Ganryu

Hallo,

I would like to translate entries about Italian writers, so that I could perfect my translation skills (if any...) and make available to English users articles which are usually inaccessible for those who don't know Italian language.

title: User:Ganryu


text:
User:Benjamin~enwikibooks

Welcome to my user page
I am new in wikibooks. Mostly active in wikipedia:en.

 Wiki user pages: English Wikipedia — German Wikipedia — French Wikipedia — Bulgarian Wikipedia — Russian Wikipedia — Japanese Wikipedia — Wiktionary — Wikimedia Commons — Wikinews — Meta — Wikibooks

title: User:Benjamin~enwikibooks


text:
Cookbook:Cuisine of the Philippines

| Southeast Asian cuisines

Filipino cuisine is a mixture of the culinary arts of various Philippine ethnolinguistic groups which evolved over the centuries from a primarily indigenous Austronesian ideas with diverse influences from Chinese, Spanish and American gastronomy that had enriched the cultures of the archipelago and adapted using home-grown ingredients to meet local preferences.

=Recipes=

Breakfast

 * Silog — Fried rice with fried egg

Main dish
Main dish is always eaten with rice
 * Adobo – Meat commonly stewed in condiments, such as vinegar and soy sauce (mostly), garlic, onions and black pepper.
 * Bicol Express – Pork belly sauteed in garlic and spices and added with coconut milk and chili peppers.
 * Binagoongan – Pork sauteed in fermented shrimp paste and spices.
 * Dinuguan – Pork blood stew.
 * Kare-Kare – Oxtail and vegetables in peanut sauce
 * Lechon Kawali — Crispy Fried Pork Belly
 * Lechon Paksiw – Roast pork in tart liver sauce.
 * Nilagang Baka – Philippine Beef Stew. Beef boiled for a long duration, added with vegetables.
 * Paksiw na Bangus - Milkfish Stewed in Vinegar.
 * Pinakbet – Ilocos-style sautéed vegetables
 * Sinigang – A soup dish with pleasant savory-sour and a hint of sweet taste.
 * Sisig – A dish made of minced skin or meat (especially pork), chopped spices, and acid fruit. Served mostly on a sizzling plate, with fresh egg placed on the center.

Mirienda
Mirienda is a very light meal eaten in the afternoon.
 * Champorado — Chocolate Rice Porridge
 * Chicken Sopas – Chicken macaroni soup with milk.
 * Empanada — Meat stuffed pastry

Beverages

 * Calamansi Juice Drink — Filipino version of lemonade

Party food
Filipinos love celebrating birthdays. These foods are always present during one's special moments.
 * Filipino style Spaghetti — a sweet spaghetti with hotdogs and ground pork and banana ketchup.
 * Lumpia — Filipino fried spring rolls
 * Lumpiang Shanghai – Filipino version of fried rolls, despite having a name from Chinese.
 * Maja Blanca — Coconut milk pudding

Desserts

 * Halo-halo - Traditional Filipino ice dessert.

Street food

 * Kwek-Kwek — Deep-fried quail eggs
 * Turon — Crispy banana springrolls

title: Cookbook:Cuisine of the Philippines


text:
Wikijunior talk:Big Cats/In danger of extinction

Tigers are my favourite animal and I am highly against tiger poaching. It is a cruel and discusting thing to do to a living creature. How would you like it? G-d made humans to rule over the animals and to look after them. So why are we missusing our responsibility? Tigers are camouflaged, fast and excellent predators. The reason for the decline in the number of tigers is the greatest predator in the world: Man. If we keep killing tigers for our own selfish purposes then not one species of tiger will strive.Tigers like so many other animals in this world are so close to extinction. It was the human race that has brought them to where they are today, and it is only human beings who can help them.

Circuses and zoos..yet another attempt to master the great beast. To then lock him up and stare at him as a live trophy. To make him perform silly stunts and be humiliated so that people can laugh and be entertained. To watch him pace back and forth on a floor of concrete, and stare through iron bars. All so we can be amazed that such a creature is truly captured. How strong we must be to do this! How glorious of a species we must be to have taken away his freedom and to have humiliated the very defnition of grace and power. Therefore we see ourselves as beautiful and powerful, when all we really are is cowards and theives.

Soon, because we hold all the power, we begin to destroy even ourselves because there is nothing left and it is in the heart of every creature to gain the control. The glorious thing about nature is that it does not allow one to remain in that position forever, it allows one species to recede so that another can prosper and then the circle completes when the one who receded can now prosper again. And so it goes, the cycles that must be so. Humans have damaged it, ruined it, abused it and misunderstood it. So as you can see, I am highly against tiger poaching and the displaying of tigers in zoos and circuses. However, I am more concerned about the displaying of tigers in circuses than that in zoos, as zoos are there to save the few tigers that are left in the world. But if there were no poachers, there would be no need for zoos of any kind, and t[[Image:Example.jpg]herefore, I end my point: Tigers should be free to roam the world just as we are.

A Little Balance, Please
I am human, yet I have a deep and marvelous relationship of love, trust and mutual respect with the big cats I rescue. There is no such thing as collective guilt. I was born in a body that is superbly equipped to carry my life force where it wants to go, and has touch and sight and hearing good enough to love whom I will love, lion, tiger or human. It happens to be a human body, and for that I am unapologetic. That I do not have four legs or wings is neither a judgment against me nor a source of shame. Man's self exile from Nature comes from two sources: those who feel nature is a backdrop for man's grand exploits, and those who feel unworthy to touch the living wild. I choose not to exile myself from nature, and for this reason I am a much more effective champion of conservation than a hundred self-flagellants who bemoan their opposable thumbs. Forgive yourself and mankind, and go forth in love to stop the war against nature and heal the broken remnants of living Earth. Peace be with you.... John Burkitt 18:55, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


text:
Catalan/Verbs regulars

Catalan verbs can be tricky to conjugate. Many verbs are irregular, though similarities between three basic groups of verbs do exist and a few ground rules can be made. Verb use in Catalan is similar to French and Spanish but has a few notable exceptions:
 * Like Spanish, Catalan regularly uses two past tenses.
 * If the action was completed today, or the result of the action is still valid, Catalan uses the pretèrit indefinit
 * Aquest matí hem cantat—We sang this morning. Enguany he visitat les illes balears—This year I visited the Balearic Islands
 * If the action was completed before today, or the action clearly occurred only once, Catalan uses the pretèrit perfet
 * Ahir al matí vam cantar—We sang yesterday morning. L'any passat vaig visitar les illes balears—Last year I visited the Balearic Islands
 * A third past tense exists, similar to the passé simple in French, the pretèrit perfet simple. Like its French counterpart, it is only used in the more eloquent literary form of Catalan, and it is almost never used in spoken language.
 * El compositor nasqué/naixé l'any 1923—The composer was born in 1923.

TO BE CONTINUED

Books

 * Els verbs catalans conjugats by J.B. Xuriguera (Edicions Claret), a small and comprehensive book outlining the Catalan verb conjugation

Websites

 * Verbix, an online verb conjugator for many languages. Tense, mood, ... names indicated in Catalan
 * catalandictionary.org also offer free conjugations of more than 1,000 of the verbs contained in their dictionary, with tenses, mood, ... names indicated in English
 * Diccionari normatiu valencià, the AVL's official online dictionary for Valencian with Valencian conjugations for all verbs

title: Catalan/Verbs regulars


text:
Software Engineers Handbook/Language Dictionary/C

C
looking for the story of C here

Type
C is a full, procedural language.

Execution Entry Point
An executable starts with the main method.

General Syntax
The typical statement is completed by a semi-colon. For the assignment of b to a use:

Comments
Block comments are specified by a starting /* and ending */ They can span multiple lines.

Variable Declarations
Declarations need to appear at the top of the scope.

Declare i as an integer:

Declare i as an integer and give it an initial value of 0:

Method Declaration/Implementation
Methods are declared by specifying the interface for the method.

Method implementation repeats much of the same information

Scope
Scope is defined by curly braces.

Conditional Statements
If and only if A is equal to B assign C to D, otherwise, assign E to F.

or

Alternatively, a switch statement can be used for multiple choice operations. This sample converts a number input to text.

Looping Statements
This code counts from 0 to 9, adding up the contents of the array.

This code repeats until the number 4 is found. If this runs off of the end of the array, there could be a problem.

This code increments the counter before the check is made, so that it starts with element 1.

Containers
struct

Algorithms
Implement your own, or find a library.

Garbage collection
Garbage collection is manual.

Physical Structure
Generally, the interfaces are defined before the implementation in header files (often *.h) or above the implementation. The implementation files are often named *.c. Useful collections of classes can be compiled into libraries, often *.dll, *.a, or *.so, which can be compiled into executables (statically linked) or used on the fly (dynamically linked).

Tips
Don't confuse these two: = // assignment == // comparison, is equal to Often using the one you don't want will compile, and will produce results you did not expect.

A good practice is to write; if(CONSTANT == variable) rather than if(variable == CONSTANT) since the compiler will catch; if(CONSTANT = variable) but not if(variable = CONSTANT).

Use a compiler that generates lots of helpful warnings, even if the code is valid. You could also / instead use a program such as 'lint'. This will help you avoid simple bugs such as the above-mentioned bug "if ( x = 1 )" instead of "if ( x == 1 )".

Arrays start with index 0.

Web References
''List additional references on the web. Please include for what level reader the references are appropriate. (beginner/intermediate/advanced)''

Books and Articles
need references

The C programming language: (sample link: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cbook/ )


text:
Consciousness Studies/Neuroscience 2

Contributors: please include full data in the references section for all references in the text.

Home

Perceptual "filling in"
Perceptual "filling in" occurs when visual properties such as textures, colours, brightness or motion are extended in the visual field to areas where they do not have corresponding events in the world.

The filling in of the blind spot by the properties of the field in the contralateral eye has already been discussed. The part of the visual field represented by the blind spot is also "filled in" in the case of monocular vision.

Shut the right eye and focus on the pink cross with the left eye, if the head is moved towards the pink cross there is a point at which the yellow disk disappears but the white lines are still present. In this "filling in" the visual field does not appear to be distorted.

Fiorani et al. (1992) developed a technique for probing the cortical blind spot using vertical and horizontal bar stimuli. Matsumoto & komatsu (2005) used this technique on macaque monkeys. In the monocular case they found that as a bar was moved across the visual field so that it crossed the blind spot there was a sudden change in neural activity in the deep layers of the neurons in the blind spot area of V1. When the bar was moved across the same part of the visual field of the contralateral eye the neural activity in the blind spot area increased steadily as the bar was moved. The authors found that there were neurons in the deep layers of blind spot cortex that had elongated receptive fields that could respond to stimuli outside the blind spot and transfer this activation into the blind spot cortex.

Filling in of a slightly different type occurs in "scotoma". In scotoma an area of the retina is damaged and unresonsive to visual stimuli, immediately after the damage patients report an area of visual field that is unresponsive to stimuli. After several months patients report that the area of field represented by the scotoma contains visual properties related to the physical world surrounding the area that would have formed an image on the scotoma. This results in a distortion of the visual field. (see for instance Gilbert(1993)). Direct measurements of activity in cortical area V1 show that the neurons that represented the area of the scotoma become sensitive to activity in the surrounding visual field. At the cortical level the scotoma is literally "filled in".

There are many stimuli that cause "filling in". These stimuli are known as "illusions" because they produce phenomenal experience that has no correlate in the world outside the body. In the "neon colour spreading illusion" a lightly coloured circle appears where there should be a white background. Sasaki and Watanabe (2004) used fMRI to show that the part of the topographic map in cortical area V1 corresponding to the light coloured circle was activated.

Fiorani, M., Rosa, M.G.P., Gattas, R. & Rocha-Miranda, C.E. (1992). Dynamic surrounds of receptive fields in primate striate cortex: a physiological basis for perceptual completion? Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 89, 8547-8551. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/89/18/8547

Gilbert, C.D. (1993). Circuitry, architecture and functional dynamics of visual cortex.

Matsumoto, M & Komatsu, H. (2005). Neural responses in the macaque V1 to bar stimuli with various lengths presented on the blind spot. J neurophysiol. 93. 2374-2387. http://jn.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/93/5/2374

Sasaki, Y & Watanabe, T. The primary visual cortex fills in colour. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 18251-18256. (2004).

Binocular Rivalry, Pattern Rivalry and Binocular Fusion
Sir Charles Wheatstone (1838) was the first scientist to systematically investigate binocular rivalry. Binocular rivalry occurs when different images are presented to the left and right eyes. The subject sees successively one image, a combined image and then the other image. The swapping of images can take a second or more. Binocular rivalry is of interest in consciousness research because the parts of the brain that contain the dominant image should also be those parts that are contributing to conscious experience. Binocular rivalry involves at least two components; the first switches from one image to a merged image and then to the other image and the second permits the view to be part of conscious experience.

The switching of one image for another may involve selecting one of the images as the percept or selecting one of the eyes. Blake et al. (1979) performed an experiment in which subjects could change the image at a given eye by pressing a button. When a particular image became dominant they pressed a button to change the image at the eye receiving the dominant image for the non-dominant image. They found that the subjects immediately experienced the second image as the dominant image. This suggests that binocular rivalry is selecting between eyes rather than images. Lehky in 1988 proposed that the switching may be occurring as a result of feedback between visual cortical area V1 and the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (a thalamic relay - see Carandini et al. 2002) and Blake in 1989 also proposed that the switching occurred at the level of area V1. (Visual cortical area V1 receives visual input direct from the LGN.)

Tong (2001) has argued that, in humans, the switching of images in binocular rivalry may occur at the earliest levels in the visual cortex. In particular, Tong and Engel (2001) used an elegant technique measuring the activity in the visual cortex that represents the blind spot of the eye to show that almost complete switching to the dominant image occurs at the level of visual cortical area V1. In support of this idea of switching at the level of V1 or even before the cortex, Kreimann et al. (2001, 2002) used direct electrode recordings in human cortex and found that the activity of most neurons changed with the percept. Other experiments have not shown a single locus in the brain where the suppressed sensory information gets switched out (Blake & Logothetis 2002, Leopold & Logothetis 1996, Gail et al., 2004).

Functional MRI has also shown cortical activity outside of sensory visual cortex related to both images in binocular rivalry. Lumer et al. (1998) found that only the fronto-parietal areas of cortex switched with the percept, Fang & He (2005) found that activity relating to both suppressed and unsuppressed images were present in the dorsal stream of the visual system. Wunderlich et al. (2005) and Haynes et al. (2005) have both found suppression at the level of the lateral geniculate nucleus using fMRI in humans.

Pasley et al. (2004) have shown that, even during suppression, fearful faces can produce activity in the amygdala (see Pessoa (2005) for a review).

Rivalry alternations seem to be the result of widespread activity changes that cover large parts of the brain, including but not necessarily originating at the earliest sensory stages of visual processing. Most investigators have found that, once switching has occurred, there are areas of the brain that contain activity that is solely related to the percept but this varies from most of the cortex to largely more frontal regions depending upon the study. The most likely explanation for binocular rivalry is that the switching occurs at the level of the LGN as a result of feedback from the cortex.

Pattern Rivalry is also of interest in consciousness research for the same reasons as binocular rivalry. In pattern rivalry a figure may have two or more forms that replace each other. Typical examples of such figures are the Necker cube and Rubin's face-vase. The similarity of the time course of the switching between percepts in binocular rivalry and pattern rivalry has led many authors to suggest that these involve the same mechanism. Logothetis et al. (1996) used novel dichoptic stimuli (different images to each eyes) to produce a form of rivalry that seems to involve switching at levels in the cerebral cortex that are more distal to the sensory stimulus than V1. Leopold and Logothetis (1999), on the basis of their work with monkeys, state that "..many neurons throughout the visual system, both monocular and binocular, continue to respond to a stimulus even when it is perceptually suppressed.". Kleinschmidt et al. (1998) investigated pattern rivalry with MRI and found activity in higher order visual areas during change of dominant pattern. Pettigrew (2001) also describes effects on rivalry due to thought and mood that may require involvement of large areas of cortex in the switching operation and stresses the way that V1 represents different visual fields in different hemispheres of the brain so that inter-hemispheric switching must also be considered.

It seems likely that the change of dominant pattern or percept is associated with higher level cortical activity but once the dominant percept is established many of the visually responsive neurons in the cortex are switched over to the new percept. This might account for the similarities in timing of binocular and pattern rivalry and the disparate results found by the various groups of authors. In the words of Kleinschmidt et al. (1998):

"The transient activity fluctuations we found suggest that perceptual metastability elicited by ambiguous stimuli is associated with rapid redistributions of neural activity between separate specialized cortical and subcortical structures."

Which permits both the idea of selecting particular eyes or percepts, perhaps by feedback that switches a thalamic relay on the basis of cortical processing of patterns. Once the cortex has switched the thalamic relay most of the neurons in V1 would become exposed to the dominant percept but there would still be a few neurons in the cortical visual system receiving data from the non dominant image.

The investigations of binocular and pattern rivalry provide evidence that conscious visual experience is probably distal to V1 (i.e.: cortex or thalamus).

Perceptual rivalry may be part of complex decision making rather than being simply a switch to blank out unwelcome input. It is clear from the Rubin face-vase that pattern rivalry is linked to recognition and would involve a complex delineation of forms within cortical processing. This would suggest that many areas of cortex should be involved before a particular percept is made dominant. Pettigrew (2001) argues that rivalry is the result of a complex phenomenon rather than being simply a switching event. Pettigrew's discovery that laughter abolishes rivalry also points to a complex cortical system for switching percepts. Pettigrew proposes that complex cortical processes control rivalry and that the actual switching of percepts is performed sub-cortically in the Ventral Tegmental Area. He concludes his review of the problem by noting that "Rivalry may thus reflect fundamental aspects of perceptual decision making.." Pettigrew (2001).

Another effect, known as "binocular fusion", provides further compelling evidence for the non-conscious nature of the cerebral cortex. In binocular fusion images from both eyes are fused together to create a single image in experience. Moutoussis and Zeki (2002) used a form of binocular fusion in which images of faces were flashed at 100ms intervals to both eyes simultaneously. When both eyes received images of the same colour the subject could see the faces but when one eye received a green image on a red background and the other a red image on a green background the subjects reported seeing a uniform yellow field that contained no faces.

fMRI scans of the subject's brains showed that when both eyes were exposed to images of the same colour the part of the brain that deals with faces was active and when each eye received images of different colours the same areas of brain showed activity. In other words the cortex contained strong activity related to faces whether or not faces were experienced. Moutoussis and Zeki found a similar effect when they used images of houses instead of images of faces. The authors concluded that: "The present study further suggests that there are no separate processing and perceptual areas but rather that the same cortical regions are involved in both the processing and, when certain levels of activation are reached and probably in combination with the activation of other areas as well, the generation of a conscious visual percept".

This conclusion does not seem to be supported by the data. There is no evidence that any area of cortex contains the percept itself. The experiment shows that the cortex contains data relating to both red and green faces which suggests that the cortex is not the site of the conscious percept. The percept is most likely distal to the cortex perhaps in the thalamus or some other area that receives cortical sensory output.

It is interesting that Fries et al. (1997) found that neurons that were activated by the dominant image in binocular rivalry fired synchronously whereas those that were activated by the non-dominant image did not. Thalamocorticothalamic oscillations are the most likely source for synchronising neurons over whole areas of cortex, suggesting that the conscious percept is located in the thalamus rather than the cortex.

Synchronisation of Neural Processes
Our experience seems to contain entities with their attributes attached to them at the correct places in space and time. When a dog barks we see its jaws open at the same time as the bark and both jaws and bark are at the same location. We take this for granted but the brain must be engaging in some complex processing to achieve this synchronised and appropriately positioned set of objects and events. The illustration below shows the two basic processes that might be used to synchronise events between the different specialised processors in the cerebral cortex and brain in general.

In the first option a complete model of sensation, dream etc. may be created and then allowed to become part of conscious experience. In the second model events are released into experience as fast as possible but are synchronous when recalled, having been synchronised in a storage buffer. There is a third option in which there is no synchronisation of events so that the output from different processors would occur at different times.

The 'experience buffer' would be a volume of brain in which a succession of events could be recorded. The buffer might either be updated in steps, the previous content being discarded, or continuously updated with the oldest content being lost continuously.

In the first option events from different processes would always appear to be simultaneous unless the experience buffer were updated as a series of steps in which case any changes at around the moment of updating might appear in successive buffers. For instance, if change of position were processed before change in colour a circle on a screen that changed from green to red at the start of a motion might seem to be briefly green during the motion and then turn red.

In the second model events from different processors might appear asynchronous at the moment of experience but synchronous when recalled.

Colour vision and motion vision are processed in different parts of the visual cortex and in distinct parts of visual cortical areas V1 and V2. They are different processes and hence ideal for studying the synchronisation of cortical activity. Moutoussis and Zeki (1997) presented subjects with moving coloured squares on a computer screen that changed from red to green or vice versa as they changed direction of movement. It was found that subjects seemed to perceive changes in colour some 70-80 msecs before they perceived a change in the direction of motion of the squares. Further work by Arnold et al. (2001) and Arnold and Clifford (2001) have confirmed that colour changes seem to be perceived before motion. Arnold and Clifford (2001) also found a quantitative relationship between the colour/motion asynchrony and the direction of change of motion, complete reversals of direction giving rise to the greatest asynchrony between the detection of colour and motion changes.

Moutoussis and Zeki (1997) conclude by stating that the asynchrony of neural processes shows that "..the perception of each attribute is solely the result of the activity in the specialised system involved in its processing..". It seems more likely that the experiments simply show that slow neural processes are not synchronised before they become percepts (the third option above). The experiments are excellent evidence for the concept of the cortex as a set of specialised processors that deliver their output asynchronously to some other place where the output becomes a percept.

These experiments on colour and motion suggest that there is no synchronisation between the processes that deal with these two aspects of vision. Another set of experiments by Clifford et al. (2003) supports this idea of processing being asynchronous. They asked subjects to perform a variety of judgements of when visual events occurred and found that the degree of synchrony of one visual event with another depends on the type of judgement. Different judgements probably use processors in different areas of cortex and the output from these arrives asynchronously at the part of the brain that supports the percept.

When the percept is formed there must be feedback to the cortical processes that create its content. Otherwise it would not be possible to report about the percept and the cortex would be unable to direct processing to the percept in preference to other, non-conscious cortical data.

Although slow processes (20 milliseconds to 1 second) do not seem to be synchronised there is some evidence for very rapid synchronisation. Andrews et al. (1996) revisited a problem raised by the famous physiologist Charles Sherrington. Sherrington considered the phenomenon of 'flicker fusion' in which a flickering light appears to be a continuous steady light if it flashes on and off at frequencies of about 45 Hz or higher. He reasoned that if the images from both eyes are brought together to form a single image then the frequency at which a flickering light appears to be steady should depend on whether one or two eyes are used. Flicker fusion should occur if each eye receives alternate flashes at only half the normal flicker fusion frequency. The flicker should disappear if the left eye receives flashes at 23 pulses per second and the right eye receives alternate flashes at 23 pulses per second. When Sherrington performed the experiment he found that this was not the case, using approximate figures, each eye required 46 pulses per second for fusion to occur. Sherrington proposed that the flicker fusion in alternate binocular presentation was occurring "psychically", outside of normal physiological processes.

Andrews et al. duplicated Sherrington's result but investigated it further. They found that when lights were flashed in each eye alternately at low frequences (2 Hz) the experience was the same as a light being flashed in both eyes at this rate. At frequencies of four Hz and higher the subjects began to report that the lights being flashed alternately in both eyes seemed to flicker at the same rate as lights being flashed in both eyes at half the frequency. It seemed as if a flash in one eye followed by a flash in the other eye was being perceived as a single flash or "conflated" as the authors put it. The authors explained this effect by suggesting that the brain activity corresponding to the flashes was sampled for a short period and any number of flashes occurring during this period became perceived as a single flash. The maximum rate of sampling would be about 45 Hz. This idea is similar to option (1) above, where the buffer is filled and emptied 40 - 50 times a second.

An experience buffer that is refreshed at 40-50 times a second might also explain the results obtained with colour and motion asynchrony because synchronisation between processes may well happen too quickly to affect processes that occur at very slow rates. Singer and Gray (1995), Singer (2001) have proposed that synchronisation between neurones at about 45 Hz is the discriminator between those neurones with activity that contributes to conscious experience and activity in other neurones. A rapid refresh rate in a synchronising buffer agrees with the results found by Fries et al. (1997) in which visual cortical neurones that represent a percept underwent synchronous oscillations in the gamma frequency range (39–63 Hz). Tononi et al. (1998) have also found synchronisation of neural activity in neurones that represent the percept.

The gamma frequency oscillations are intrinsic to the cortex but are triggered by the thalamus and are part of the 'arousal system'. Readers should be wary of the term 'arousal system' because it evokes the idea of something waking up a conscious cortex. The cortex can be fully active during sleep and even during pathological unconsciousness such as persistent vegetative state so it is possible that the arousal centres themselves or nearby structures actually host phenomenal consciousness.

EEG and synchronisation
If electrodes are placed on the scalp varying electrical potentials of a few tens of microvolts can be recorded between the electrodes. Recordings of potentials from electrodes on the scalp are known as electroencephalograms (EEGs).

The potentials recorded in the EEG are due to postsynaptic potentials in nerve cells. The EEG is insensitive to the activity of single cells and occurs as a result of relatively slow, synchronised, changes in large areas of cells. The differences in potential between two scalp electrodes are largely due to depolarisation and hyperpolarisation of the dendritic trees of cortical pyramidal cells. The folding of the cortex (gyri) is problematical for recording and interpreting EEGs because opposing layers of cortex can cancel any net potentials.

The EEG shows rhythmic activity. This is conventionally divided into the following frequency bands:

Delta waves 0–4 Hz

Theta waves 4–8 Hz

Alpha waves 8–12 Hz

Beta waves >10 Hz

Gamma waves (also called fast beta) 25–100 Hz

EEGs also contain short bursts of activity called spindles and very fast oscillations (VFOs). Spindles last for 1–2 seconds and contain rhythmic activity at 7–14 Hz. They are associated with the onset of sleep. The VFOs consist of short bursts at frequencies of over 80 Hz.

When the eyes are closed the amplitude of activity from most pairs of electrodes is increased compared with when the eyes are open. When subjects are awake the EEG consists mainly of alpha and beta activity with considerable low amplitude gamma when the eyes are open. In stage 1 sleep the EEG consists of theta waves, in stage 2 sleep of varied activity and spindles, in stage 4 sleep of delta and during REM sleep of beta and theta activity. In epileptic seizures there tends to be high amplitude activity with pronounced synchronisation between many pairs of electrodes.

The rhythmic electrical activity is due to cortical feedback loops, cortico-cortical synchronisation, thalamic pacemakers and thalamo-cortical synchronisation. VFOs have been attributed to the activity of electrical connections between cells (dendro-dendritic gap junctions) (Traub (2003)).

The gamma activity, centred on a frequency of 40 Hz appears to be related to activity in cortical interneurons that form electrical connections between their dendrites (Tamas et al. 2000). These oscillations can be triggered by high frequency stimulation of the posterior intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus (Barth and MacDonald 1996, Sukov and Barth 2001)  and as a result of activation of the reticular system (Munk et al. 1996). This suggests that stimulation of cortex by thalamic sensory relays triggers gamma band activity in the cortex. A shift from gamma to beta waves can occur in human event related potentials after about 0.2 secs (Pantev 1995, Traub et al. 1999).

The alpha activity is related to thalamic pacemakers, perhaps as a result of intrinsic oscillatory activity in thalamic sensory relays (see Roy & Prichep 2005 for a brief review). Theta activity, which occurs during some cognitive tasks and mental arithmetic involves a loop from the cortex to the non-specific thalamic nuclei. Delta activity seems to be endogenous to cortex when input is suppressed during sleep. Beta activity is due to cortico-cortical interactions, often after a brief period of gamma activation. It should be noted that gamma and beta activity can be expressed as impulses in cortico-thalamic pathways and that when cortical and thalamic activity is correlated there is a conscious state. In other words gamma or beta waves in the cortex are not correlates of consciousness on their own - see for instance Laureys et al. (2002).

Event related potentials
After a sudden event there are a characteristic set of changes in EEG activity known as event related potentials or ERPs. The time course of the ERP is shown in the diagram below.

ERPs occur in response to novel stimuli and are also produced by brief transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)(Iramina et al. 2002). The slow component is known as the P3 or P300 phase of the ERP. It is due to activation of areas of the brain that are relatively remote from the primary sensory areas of brain.

Nieuwenhuis et al. (2005) have reviewed the origin of the P300 ERP: "To summarize, convergent evidence suggests that P3-like activity can be recorded in several, widely separated brain areas. These include some medial temporal and subcortical structures (e.g., the hippocampal formation, amygdala, and thalamus), but these structures are unlikely to contribute directly to the scalp-recorded P3.". According to Nieuwenhuis et al. (2005) the recorded P300 may be due to temporo-parietal and prefrontal cortical activity. Linden (2005) has also concluded that widespread, but specific, cortical activation is correlated with the recorded P300 ERP.

The generator of the P300 is still obscure. Nieuwenhuis et al. (2005) consider that the Locus coeruleus, a nucleus in the pons that regulates task related attention and part of the sleep-wake cycle, may be responsible. In line with this, Mashour et al. (2005) have discovered that TMS induced P300 activity is reduced in unconscious states.

Whether the P300 is related to Libet's 0.5 second delay is still obscure but the discovery that the P300 occurs in association with subliminal stimuli (stimuli that do not enter awareness)(Bernat et al. 2001) suggests that it is associated with non-conscious cortical processing. Williams et al. (2004), in an investigation of subliminal and supraliminal fear perception, found that "conscious fear perception was distinguished by a more prominent N4, peaking around 400 msec"; the N4 component follows the P300 component in the succession of phases of the ERP. Williams et al. considered that the earlier phases in the ERP are probably related to non-conscious processing. In contrast Vogel et al. (1998) found that suppression of the P300 was associated with suppression of awareness.

The integration delay
Psychological experiments often involve binary decisions where subjects give one of two outputs in response to stimuli. It is found that if the stimuli are made increasingly noisy or complex the response time tends to increase. Psychophyicists have developed various mathematical models to explain the increased response times due to noise such as the Integrator and Accumulator models (cf: Luce(1986)). These models have been fairly successful when explaining experiments such as judging the net direction of movement of sets of dots on a screen when the dots are given semi-random paths and different brightness etc. In these circumstances it can take up to 2 seconds for an accurate decision.

There are many tasks however where the accuracy of decision making does not improve after about 300 milliseconds. The accuracy of the performance of rats when choosing between two alternatives when reacting to odours peaks at about 300 ms (Uchida and Mainen(2003), Abraham et al. (2004)). The accuracy of humans when performing vernier acuity tasks, line detection, contrast sensitivity, motion velocity discrimination and stereoscopic depth discrimination seems to peak at 300ms (Uchida et al. 2006).

Uchida, Kepecs and Mainen (2006) suggest that "rapid and short integration time is a sensible strategy for rapid processing of low-level sensory information in order to form more complex sensory images, both in vision and olfaction." Whether these authors regard these derived sensory images as the content of consciousness is not mentioned. The authors propose that the 300ms optimal integration time may be partly due to the mechanics of sniffing (a sniff takes about 125-200ms) and the nature of optical fixation (inter-saccade intervals are typically 200-400 ms ). The authors note that the animal or human could, in principle, choose to integrate over longer intervals but if it is moving this may not lead to information that is current for changed circumstances.

An optimal processing time of about 300 ms would be consistent with the delays observed before conscious awareness occurs in response to a stimulus - an interval required to form "more complex sensory images".

Global Workspace Theory
Global Workspace Theory is the idea that somewhere in the brain there is a facility that integrates the processes that occur in the various separate areas of the brain. The theory was first proposed by Descartes as the sensus communis, the common sense, but the modern form of the theory dispenses with the idea of a point soul looking at the brain. In modern Global Workspace theory it is proposed that an area of brain receives input from most of the cerebral cortex and broadcasts its outputs to all of the unconscious modular information processors in the brain.

Modern Global Workspace Theory has been championed by Baars (1983, 1988).

There is increasing evidence for a Global Workspace or Global Workspaces in the brain. Much of this evidence comes from fMRI, single unit and magnetoencephalography studies in which it is shown that non-conscious or subliminal processing mainly occupies primary, sensory cortex whereas conscious processing occupies large areas of cerebral cortex.

In binocular rivalry the stimulus that is consciously perceived is responsible for relatively intense activation of large areas of brain whereas the non-conscious stimulus is often suppressed (see above and Sheinberg & Logothetis (1997), Tononi et al. (1998)). The suppression is likely to occur in the Lateral Geniculate Nuclei which suggests a role for the Thalamic Reticular Nuclei, which modulate LGN activity, in the control of the percept.

Masking and visual awareness
Word masking has also been used to investigate the idea of a Global Workspace. When a word is presented on its own for a few tens of milliseconds it remains readable but if it is immediately succeeded by, or accompanied by, another word it becomes indistinct or invisible. This effect is known as "word masking". Vogel et al. (1998) have investigated a version of word masking known as the "attentional blink". They found that when stimuli became invisible the P3 component of the Event Related Potential, which peaks at around 300-500 millisecs after a stimulus, was completely suppressed. The P3 component of the ERP has been related to the lodging of data in working memory and also to gamma band activity in the EEG. This strongly suggests the involvement of a cortico-thalamic loop in the "attentional blink". The delay of 0.3 to 0.5 secs is typical of the time required for conscious awareness (see above).

Word masking in conjunction with fMRI and Event Related Potential (ERP) recordings has been used by Dehaene et al. (2001) to expose control by a central mechanism. It was found that masked words activate mainly the visual cortex and ventral stream (inferior temporal lobe) whereas visible words also activated distant parietal, prefrontal and cingulate sites.

Dehaene et al. (2003) and found that the dynamics of the loss of visibility of words in an attentional blink experiment could be modelled by a simulated cortico-thalamic loop. In their simulation a distributed cortical process determined which events would receive attention and the system used the thalamic gating systems to exclude those that did not receive attention.

Tse et al. (2005) have used purely visual stimuli in masking experiments and concluded that, in the case of purely visual stimuli, the neural correlates of awareness were limited to the occipital cortex:

"We suggest that there are both lower and upper bounds within the visual hierarchy for the processing of visual masking and the maintenance of visual awareness of simple unattended targets; the lower bound is at least as high as the border between V2 and V3, and the upper bound is within the occipital lobe, possibly somewhere downstream of V4."

This discovery would mean that activation of large areas of cortex are unnecessary for awareness.

Melloni et al. (2007) compared compared the electrophysiological responses related to the processing of visible and invisible words in a delayed matching to sample task. Both perceived and nonperceived words caused a similar increase of local (gamma) oscillations in the EEG, but only perceived words induced a transient long-distance synchronization of gamma oscillations across widely separated regions of the brain. After this transient period of temporal coordination, the electrographic signatures of conscious and unconscious processes continue to diverge. Only words reported as perceivedinduced (1) enhanced theta oscillations over frontal regions during the maintenance interval, (2) an increase of the P300 component of the event-related potential, and (3) an increase in power and phase synchrony of gamma oscillationsbefore the anticipated presentation of the test word. We propose that the critical process mediating the access to conscious perception is the earlytransient global increase of phase synchrony of oscillatory activity in the gammafrequency.

Melloni L, Molina C, Pena M, Torres D, Singer W, Rodriguez E. (2007). Synchronization of neural activity across cortical areas correlates withconscious perception.J Neurosci. 2007 Mar 14;27(11):2858-65.

Attention and the global workspace
Baars (2002) in his review of evidence for the Global Workspace Theory quotes many other experiments that show activation of larger areas of cortex in response to conscious stimuli compared with unconscious or subliminal stimuli.The effect is also seen in change blindness, learning and attention. Newman and Baars (1993) consider that the "workspace" is fairly global in the brain:

"This Neural Global Workspace (NGW) model views conscious processes in terms of a globally integrative brain system. The neural circuitry contributing to this system is not only widely distributed across the neocortex, but includes key corticothalamic and midbrain circuits as well. These cortico-subcortical circuits are hypothesized to be critical to understanding the mechanisms of attentional control that provide an essential basis for the conscious processing of information".

However they focus particularly on the role of the thalamic Reticular Nucleus and cortico-thalamic connectivity in the control of attention.

Other ideas for the location of the Global Workspace are the idea of Singer et al. that gamma synchrony controls access to the content of consciousness and Llinas et al. (1998) that the thalamus is the hub through which communication occurs between areas of cortex.

One of the problems with Global Workspace theory is that it suggests that attention, working memory, cognitive control and consciousness may all be in the same area of the brain. It is likely that the mechanisms of attention, working memory, and cognitive control may involve several, interlinked systems perhaps co-opting the basal ganglia in the process. In view of this Maia and Cleeremans (2005) propose that ".. attention, working memory, cognitive control and consciousness are not distinct functions implemented by separate brain systems. Attempting to find separate neural correlates for each may therefore be the wrong approach. Instead, we suggest that they should be understood in terms of the dynamics of global competition, with biasing from PFC (prefrontal cortex).". The inclusion by Maia and Cleeremans of consciousness with distributed attention, working memory and cognitive control is reminiscent of Zeki & Bartel's idea of microconsciousness.

It should be noted that, in common with Libet's data, the percept seems to be available to phenomenal consciousness some 0.3 to 0.5 secs after a stimulus; this suggests that whatever determines the content of phenomenal consciousness operates before events become part of phenomenal consciousness. This relegates phenomenal consciousness from being a controller of attention to being the recipient of content that is the subject of attention. This finding is consistent with the philosophical problem of the apparently epiphenomenal nature of phenomenal consciousness.

Given the data on the timing of conscious awareness it seems that there may be two "workspaces", an active workspace that models the world, discarding and suppressing data during rivalry, and a passive workspace that receives the final, edited product. The active workspace would correlate with the cortical systems stressed by Dehaene et al. and Maia and Cleermans although, given the results of Tse et al., the workspace would be limited to small zones of cortex. The loading of the passive workspace with the output of the active workspace would correlate with thalamo-cortical activity during component P3 of the ERP in which data is transferred from the cortex to the thalamus. This workspace might constitute the source for reports of the content of phenomenal consciousness.

Llinas et al. (1998) have proposed two parallel cortico-thalamic attentional systems, one of which is related to the thalamic specific nuclei and the other to the thalamic non-specific nuclei, especially the ILN. The non-specific system would be related to consciousness itself.

The "cognitive map" and the neural basis of perceptual space
Our bodies appear to be mobile within a constant space. We walk around a room; the room does not rotate around us. The constancy of the location of things gives us the feeling that we are directly viewing a constant world. But how does the brain provide a constant world rather than a world that rotates with the movement of the sense organs? Why is our view of the world when we move our eyes so different from the disturbing flow of images that occur when a video camera is waved around? Do our brains contain a constant "cognitive map" (O'Keefe and Nadel 1978) of our surroundings?

Mittelstaedt & Mittelstaedt (1980, 1982) discovered that female gerbils were able to recover their pups in darkened surroundings by searching in a semi random fashion on the outbound journey and then proceeding directly back to the nest on the inbound journey. The direct journey back to the nest seemed to be due to an integration of the various directions taken on the outward journey (path integration). If the equipment being explored by the mother gerbil was rotated very slowly the mother would make an error equivalent to the amount of rotation. More rapid rotations that activated the vestibular system of the rat (acceleration measurement) did not cause errors in navigation. This demonstration that rodents could navigate accurately on the basis of idiothetic cues (cues that are due to internal senses) led to research on the neural basis of the navigation.

As early as 1971 O'Keefe and Dostrovsky had discovered that there are particular cells in the hippocampus that fire according to the position of an animal in the environment. This has been complimented by research that showed that changes in visual cues within the environment caused changes in the firing rate of place cells in hippocampal area CA3 (.

F. P. Battaglia and A. Treves. 1998 Attractor neural networks storing multiple space representations: A model for hippocampal place fields. PHYSICAL REVIEW E DECEMBER 1998 VOLUME 58, NUMBER 6 http://www.sissa.it/~ale/Bat+98b.pdf

Leutgeb, S., Leutgeb, J.K., Moser, M-B, and Moser, E.I. 2005. Place cells, spatial maps and the population code for memory. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 2005, 15:738–746. http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/bionb720nejc/reprints/LeutgebEtAl2005.pdf

Mittelstaedt, H. & Mittelstaedt, M-L. 1982. Avian Navigation. (ed. Papi, F. & Wallraff, H.) 290-297. Springer, Berlin.

Mittelstaedt, M-L & Glasauer, S. 1991. Idiothetic Navigation in Gerbils and Humans. Zool. Jb. Physiol. 95 (1991), 427-435  http://web.archive.org/web/20110125132449/http://www.nefo.med.uni-muenchen.de/~sglasauer/MittelstaedtGlasauer1991.pdf

O'Keefe, J. & Dostrovsky, J. (1971). The hippocampus as a spatial map: preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely moving rat. Brain Res. 34, 171-175.

O'Keefe, J. & Nadel, L. (1978). The Hippocampus as a cognitive map. (Oxford)

title: Consciousness Studies/Neuroscience 2


text:
Consciousness Studies/Table Of Theories

Theories of Consciousness
Some recent scientific theories of consciousness are tabulated below. The extent to which they account for the phenomenon of consciousness is shown.

It is remarkable that many of the theories are consistent with one another. As in the tale of the 'blind men and the elephant' some of the theories seem to describe the trunk, some the tail etc. but they all seem to be part of the same elephant! The convergence of the theories is shown in the illustration below:

Table of theories

title: Consciousness Studies/Table Of Theories


text:
Build Your Own Solar Power Generator

Introduction
In remote areas it may be necessary to power conventional electronics longer then a battery will hold. A solar power generator can help provide power for quite some time.

Conversion

A solar cell converts light directly into electricity using the “Photovoltaic Effect”. There is no fuel, steam or thermodynamics involved. When light hits a solar cell, it instantly produces electricity. Solar cells today do not store electricity. In other words, when the light is taken away from the cell, it stops producing electricity. It is very common to store the electricity from a solar cell in a battery.

You can store electricity generated from a solar panel in a battery such as a typical car battery or you could use a Deep Cycle battery for more storage capacity. Typical car batteries are not recommended for use in solar power systems. They have a very small range of operating voltage and if discharged too deeply, the battery will be irreparably damaged. Deep cycle batteries have a wider operating voltage range and are more suitable for use in solar power systems. If you are using a large solar panel to charge your battery, it would be wise to purchase a charge controller to regulate the current flow.

Once the battery is charged you can connect an inverter to the terminals. Connect the negative terminal first. An inverter will convert the battery's DC current to usable AC current which you can use to power AC appliances.

Ac vs Dc
AC and DC voltage waveforms. Alternating Current (AC) is the type of electricity found in the outlet in your home. DC Direct Current is what you would find in the outlet of your car. DC electricity is also the type of electricity stored in batteries. Generators at big power plants use rotating alternators to produce AC electricity while the dynamo found in your bicycle (still a rotating machine) produces DC. Commercially available solar cells only produce DC electricity and their excess power output is most readily stored in deep cycle batteries. In order to run most appliances in your home, you will need to use a power inverter which changes the DC voltage to AC. Inverters range in size from the very small 50 watts all the way up to 5Kw. You should consider what appliances and equipment you intend to run off your power inverter. Cheaper power inverters will typically use a square wave output signal to create the AC voltage. More sensitive equipment such as computers will require pure sine wave outputs. Pure sine wave power inverters are typically more expensive.

Some solar panels contain built in inverters, making their use more straightforward.

Putting it together
Tailor these steps to the instructions included with your specific equipment. Consult an expert before going forward for safety.

Hook up the Solar panel to a battery charger circuit, and that circuit to the battery. Charge. Then use an inverter if AC power is needed, and use until charge is depleted. Repeat.

Maintain
Your solar panel needs to be pointed at the sun for it to work well. This means that it may require adjustment throughout the day if it can't automatically track sunlight.

Your solar panel needs to be clean and free of obstructions. Less light directly results in less power.

Batteries will eventually degrade and require replacement.

title: Build Your Own Solar Power Generator


text:
Robotics/Sensors/Thermal Sensors

Robotics: Sensors: Thermal Sensors

Temperature can be an interesting parameter to measure. The temperature of the surroundings might not be very useful for a mobile robot, the temperature of a motor or battery back is.

What is temperature?
"Temperature: A measure proportional to the average translational kinetic energy associated with the disordered microscopic motion of atoms and molecules. The flow of heat is from a high temperature region toward a lower temperature region.

Units and their conversions
The most used units for temperature are Degrees Celsius, Kelvin, and Degrees Fahrenheit.

Degrees Celsius
This temperature scale is defined around water. It defines 0 °C as the temperature on which water freezes at standard atmospheric pressure. 100 °C is defined as the temperature at which water boils.

Conversion:
 * To Fahrenheit: Tc * 9/5 +32
 * To Kelvin: Tc + 273,15

Kelvin
Kelvin is a temperature scale with one defined temperature: 0 Kelvin is the lowest possible temperature, which is about -273,15 °C. An increase of 1 Kelvin has the same size as an increase of 1 °C. The Kelvin (note it's not degrees Kelvin) temperature scale is used in science and engineering, most formulas containing temperature require Kelvin, unless it involves temperature differences, then one can use both Celsius and Kelvin as the difference between 10 and 20 Kelvin and between 10 and 20°Celsius are equal.

Conversion:
 * To Fahrenheit: Tk *9/5 -459,67
 * To Celsius: Tk - 273,15

Fahrenheit
This scale uses the lowest temperate that could be measured at the time when this scale was developed and the temperature of the human body. The first temperature is defined as 0 °F the latter as 100 °F. This places 0 °C at 32 °F and 100 °C at 212 °F. A difference of 1 °F isn't the same size as a difference of 1 °C.

Conversion:
 * To Kelvin: (Tf + 459,67) * 5/9
 * To Celsius: (Tf - 32) * 5/9

Non-electric methods
Are any of these non-electric methods useful for robotics?

The old fashioned way to measure temperature uses the expansion of mercury in a glass capillary tube. Newer thermometers use other liquids like alcohol. Other methods use two thin metal strips with different thermal expansion rates fused together and are called bimetal or bimetallic.

Yet another way uses the expansion of gas or liquid or a gas-liquid combination in a closed metal capillary tube system, called gas thermometers and filled systems. Other ways use the change of phase of some materials, such as paints and pastes whereby their reflectivity or color changes permanently when a specific temperature is reached. These are often called temperature or thermal paints and labels.

Another method uses the variation in reflectivity of certain liquid crystals with temperature. One of the original thermometers, named after Galileo, uses several precision weights in labeled small glass globes, of known volume, all placed in a vertical cylinder of liquid like water, sufficient in size to allow all the globes to fit and with sufficient width to enable the globes to move freely past one another. As the temperature of the assembly changes, the density of the water changes and the globes assume differing heights in the cylinder according to their density with the globe in the highest position indicating the temperature to be at or below its labeled value.

Thermocouples
Thermocouples consist of a pair of wires of different metals connected together at both ends and insulated but kept thermally close to each other over their length. When they encounter a temperature gradient form one end to the other, an electrical current flows through the circuit due to the Seebeck Effect. If one of the wires is opened and the voltage between the open ends is measured with a suitably high impedance voltmeter, a voltage nearly equal to the average relative Seebeck coefficient times the temperature difference between the hot and cold ends will be measured.

Thermoelectric properties of many material combinations have been developed over the past hundred years or so and also have been standardized for several of them, more commonly known by their ISA letter designations, as standard. Their electrical outputs for cold end reference temperature at 32 Deg F and 0 deg C are widely published in ASTM Standard E230. Many sources on the web provide these tabular values including the National Institute for Science & Technology (NIST) in the USA.

Temperature sensitive resistors
Many electrically conductive materials have a resistance that varies with temperature—they are temperature sensitive resistors.

There are two generic types of temperature sensitive resistors: Positive Temperature Coefficient (PTC) devices and Negative Temperature Coefficient (NTC) devices.

Usually the PTC devices, if made of metal, are termed Resistance Temperature Detectors or RTDs. Ones made from other materials are usually called Thermistors, short for Thermal Resistors.

RTDs are a highly developed technology worldwide and several international standards exist for the most widely used type, those made of pure Platinum. They are usually called Platinum Resistance Thermometers, or simple PRTs. Very special PRTs are used as interpolating devices in the International Temperature Scale of 1990 (ITS-90), these and similar devices sold commercially are often known as Standard Platinum Resistance Thermometers, or SPRTs.

Tables for the most commonly used RTD materials, Platinum, Nickel and Copper, can be found in several International and national standards as well as many locations on the Web.

Thermistors are also very highly developed, but there are no uniform standards for their properties. Each supplier makes their own products and provide their own calibration tables. Some of these tables have been cataloged on the measurement database website.

Many popular thermistors are manufactured using material with a B of 3300 K or a material with a B of 5133 K or some other material with an intermediate value.

Independent of the material, most thermistors are manufactured such that the resistance at room temperature (298.15 K = 25 °C) is one of these preferred values: 1 kΩ, 2 kΩ, 5 kΩ, 10 kΩ, 20 kΩ, 50 kΩ, 100 kΩ, 200 kΩ, 500 kΩ, 1 MΩ.

 * PBASIC Programming/RCTIME and "RepRap: ExtruderIO" have more details on measuring the RC time constant of a capacitor + thermistor circuit; then from that time calculating the temperature.
 * Embedded Systems/Low-Voltage Circuits and "RepRap: Thermistor" have more details on measuring the output voltage of a "resistor divider" resistor + thermistor circuit; then from that voltage calculating the temperature.

Semiconductor
Semiconductors, such as diodes and transistors have properties that vary greatly with the temperature. This arises from the temperature sensitivity of the bandgap in such devices which is highly repeatable and very stable, especially in Silicon semiconductors.

Several Integrated Circuit (IC) manufacturers, such as Analog Devices, Dallas Semiconductors and National Semiconductors manufacture many variants of the basic diode temperature sensors with additional circuitry to scale the output for use with simple digital display meters.

Radiation Thermometer & Optical Pyrometer
The popular ear thermometer and low cost "laser" thermometer of today are variants of the radiation thermometer (pyrometer) that began its development in the 19th Century. The devices are all based on the thermal radiation properties of literally everything in nature, whether it be gas, liquid or solid. The physical processes at work inside all materials includes emission of electromagnetic radiation that is a function of the temperature and optical properties of an object.

The physical emission of thermal radiation was first described correctly by Max Planck in the last year of the 19th Century. His theory led to the quantum revolution in Physics. It has stood the test of time as an accurate and reliable theory of thermal emission of radiation and enables instrument designers to develop instruments that can measure temperature without contacting the object that is being measured with remarkable levels of accuracy and repeatability. There are very few standards for such devices.

title: Robotics/Sensors/Thermal Sensors


text:
Robotics/Sensors/Pressure Sensors

The ability to measure pressure is very beneficial to the subject of robotics. The density of the atmosphere changes with altitude. If the air pressure is known then the altitude can then be established. If the robot contains fluids under pressure (for example, hydraulic systems), pressure sensors can be used to detect faults in the system. Pressure sensors can also be installed in a compressed tank of gas to measure the amount of gas left.

Analogue Methods
A Bourdon gauge uses a coiled tube which causes a rotation of an arm connected to the tube as it expands due to pressure increase. However, this is not particularly useful in Robotics unless you design a way to get voltage to vary with respect to needle displacement.

Electric Methods

 * Resistive (Strain Gauge) - As the object is deformed, the foil is deformed, causing its electrical resistance to change. This resistance change, usually measured using a Wheatstone bridge, is related to the strain by the quantity known as the gauge factor. Foil strain gauges are only useful to detect large pressure changes and are not very precise over small changes.

 * Capacitive - The deflection of the piston is often one half of a capacitor, so that when the piston moves, the capacitance of the device changes. This is a common way (with proper calibrations) to get a very precise, electronic reading from a manometer, and this configuration is called a capacitive manometer vacuum gauge.

 * Piezoelectric/Piezoresistive - For measurements of small strain, semiconductor strain gauges, called piezoresistors, are often preferred over foil gauges. A semiconductor gauge usually has a larger gauge factor than a foil gauge. Semiconductor gauges tend to be more expensive, more sensitive to temperature changes, and are more fragile than foil gauges.

title: Robotics/Sensors/Pressure Sensors


text:
Talk:Pascal Programming

If you are going to write a book on Borland Pascal, can you at least mention the fact that it is Borland Pascal ? The first programs I looked at here were not valid Pascal.--67.180.160.45 4 July 2005 17:35 (UTC)

Disregarding the date, all of the code looks relatively fine - everything should compile with Free Pascal 2.2.2. Lostvoid (talk) 03:18, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Um...
I plan on adding a category regarding Units and I plan to elaborate the 'Getting Started' section with the basic format (program, type, const, var, begin, end.) My experience is limited so I do not understand Units very well - I only have 'Essential Pascal' to rely on as a source.

Also, I personally do not yet understand the following code: I presume the export refers to DLL's (which is another subject I'm unfamiliar with.) Lostvoid (talk) 07:11, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Content

 * Discuss each of the three main compilers more. Provide basic install assistance?
 * Beginning: Basic structure, Comments, Code Clarity.
 * Variables and Constants: should include data types. Include custom data types?
 * External Libraries: DLL's, etc.
 * Units: Structure, Usings, Makings.
 * Control Structures: Include label..goto?

Organization
Lostvoid (talk) 12:24, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Split Syntax from Function/Procedures? Place syntax near the beginning?
 * Keep arrays and pointers seperate? Elaborate each.

Different dialect of Pascal (Object Pascal)
As pascal programming languages are improved beyond its standard, there are different dialect of pascal programming language, Delphi, Free Pascal and GNU Pascal have differences in their implementation. As an example Delphi supports Interfaces from version 7 and has for each loop from Delphi 2006 and these are not developed in Free pascal or as another example GNU Pascal has some result definition syntax which is not implemented in other pascals. I think it should be mentioned in this book about different dialects and If a specified implementation is going to be used.

title: Talk:Pascal Programming


text:
Cookbook:Fish Sauce (Vegan)

| Basic Foodstuffs | Vegan Substitutions

This vegan fish sauce imitation is intended to mimic the umami flavor of the original, which is derived from anchovies.

Ingredients

 * 1 ½ cup shredded dried seaweed
 * 4 cups water
 * 3 very large cloves garlic, crushed but not peeled
 * 1 ½ tbsp black peppercorns
 * ½ cup dark Chinese soy sauce
 * Extra boiling water as needed

Procedure

 * 1) Place the seaweed in a pot and add 4 cups of water.
 * 2) Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to keep it bubbling along.
 * 3) Cook for 20 minutes.
 * 4) Add the rest of the ingredients and enough water to make about 6 cups total in the pot.
 * 5) Bring back to a boil, then boil fairly high for at least ½ hour.
 * 6) At that point, begin to taste (just a little, though—it's strong).
 * 7) When the stock is reduced by about half, it will be almost too salty to eat, and that means it is ready.
 * 8) Strain through fine mesh or a coffee filter and allow to cool.

title: Cookbook:Fish Sauce (Vegan)


text:
Cookbook:Rice in Fish Broth (Sayyadieh)

Ingredients

 * 1 large (~2 lbs / 1 kg) whole fish, cleaned
 * 1 cup olive oil
 * 2 cups uncooked rice
 * 1 ½ cups chopped onion
 * Salt
 * Lemon juice
 * Water

Procedure

 * 1) Fry fish in olive oil until well cooked. Remove the fish and allow to cool.
 * 2) Fry the chopped onions in the same oil until well browned. Meanwhile, debone the fried fish, reserving the cooked fillets to be served over the rice.
 * 3) Add the head, bones and skin of the fish to the fried onions and cook with 4 cups of water in a pressure cooker for 15 minutes, or for a longer time in an open pan.
 * 4) Strain the broth and boil the rice in it using 1–4 cups of broth for each cup of rice (this will depend on the absorbency of the rice you use).
 * 5) Simmer the rice on low heat so that most of the broth is absorbed.

Notes, tips, and variations

 * Some of the broth may be flavored with a few drops of lemon and served on the side as a sauce for this dish.

title: Cookbook:Rice in Fish Broth (Sayyadieh)


text:
User:Tysto

Please refer to my page on Commons.

title: User:Tysto