Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Ohalo II, the Upper Paleolithic Site on the Sea of Galilee

Ohalo II, the Upper Paleolithic Site on the Sea of Galilee Ohalo II is the name of a submerged late Upper Paleolithic (Kebaran) site located on the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) in the Rift Valley of Israel. The site was discovered in 1989 when the level of the lake plummeted. The site is 9 kilometers (5.5 miles) south of the modern city of Tiberias. The site covers an area of 2,000 square meters (about a half an acre), and the remains are of an extremely well-preserved hunter-gatherer-fisher camp. The site is typical of Kebaran sites, containing the floors and wall bases of six oval brush huts, six open-air hearths  and a human grave. The site was occupied during the Last Glacial Maximum, and has an occupation date between 18,000-21,000 RCYBP, or between 22,500 and 23,500 cal BP. Animal and Plant Remains Ohalo II is remarkable in that  since it had been submerged, the preservation of organic materials was excellent, providing very rare evidence of food sources for late Upper Paleolithic/Epipaleolithic communities. Animals represented by bones in the faunal assemblage include fish, tortoise, birds, hare, fox, gazelle, and deer. Polished bone points and several enigmatic bone tools were recovered, as were tens of thousands of seeds and fruits representing almost 100 taxa from the living surface. Plants include an assortment of herbs, low shrubs, flowers, and grasses, including wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum), mallow (Malva parviflora), groundsel (Senecio glaucus), thistle (Silybum marianum(), Melilotus indicus and a slew of others too numerous to mention here. The flowers at Ohalo II represent the earliest known use of flowers by Anatomically Modern Humans. Some may have been used for medicinal purposes. The edible remains are dominated by seeds from small-grained grasses and wild cereals, although nuts, fruits, and legumes are also present. Ohalos collections include over 100,000 seeds, including the earliest identification of emmer wheats [Triticum dicoccoides or T. turgidum ssp. dicoccoides (kà ¶rn.) Thell], in the form of several charred seeds. Other plants include wild almond (Amygdalus communis), wild olive (Olea europaea var sylvestris), wild pistachio (Pistacia atlantica), and wild grape (Vitis vinifera spp sylvestris). Three fragments of twisted and plied fibers were discovered at Ohalo; they are the oldest evidence of string-making discovered yet. Living at Ohalo II The floors of the six brush huts were oval in shape, with an area of between 5-12 square meters (54-130 square feet), and the entrance-way from at least two was from the east. The largest hut was built of tree branches (tamarisk and oak) and covered by grasses. The floors of the huts were shallowly excavated prior to their construction. All of the huts were burned. The working surface of a grinding stone found at the site was covered with barley starch grains, indicating that at least some of the plants were processed for food or medicine. Plants in evidence on the stones surface include wheat, barley, and oats. But the majority of the plants are believed to represent the brush used for housing. Flint, bone and wooden tools, basalt net sinkers, and hundreds of shell beads made from mollusks brought from the Mediterranean Sea were also identified. The single grave at Ohalo II is an adult male, who had a disabled hand and a penetrating wound to his rib cage. A bone tool found near the skull is a piece of gazelle long bone incised with parallel markings. Ohalo II was discovered in 1989 when lake levels dropped. Excavations organized by the Israeli Antiquities Authority have continued at the site when lake levels permit, led by Dani Nadel. Sources Allaby RG, Fuller DQ, and Brown TA. 2008. The genetic expectations of a protracted model for the origins of domesticated crops. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(37):13982-13986. Kislev ME, Nadel D, and Carmi I. 1992. Epipalaeolithic (19,000 BP) cereal and fruit diet at Ohalo II, Sea of Galilee, Israel. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 73(1-4):161-166. Nadel D, Grinberg U, Boaretto E, and Werke E. 2006. Wooden objects from Ohalo II (23,000 cal BP), Jordan Valley, Israel. Journal of Human Evolution 50(6):644-662. Nadel D, Piperno DR, Holst I, Snir A, and Weiss E. 2012. New evidence for the processing of wild cereal grains at Ohalo II, a 23 000-year-old campsite on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel . Antiquity 86(334):990-1003. Rosen AM, and Rivera-Collazo I. 2012. Climate change, adaptive cycles, and the persistence of foraging economies during the late Pleistocene/Holocene transition in the Levant. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(10):3640-3645. Weiss E, Kislev ME, Simchoni O, Nadel D, and Tschauner H. 2008. Plant-food preparation area on an Upper Paleolithic brush hut floor at Ohalo II, Israel. Journal of Archaeological Science 35(8):2400-2414.

Sunday, March 1, 2020

Top 3 Supreme Court Cases Involving Japanese Internment

Top 3 Supreme Court Cases Involving Japanese Internment During World War II, not only did some Japanese Americans refuse to relocate to internment camps, they also fought federal orders to do so in court. These men rightfully argued that the government depriving them of the right to walk outside at night and live in their own homes violated their civil liberties. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S. government  forced more than 110,000 Japanese Americans into detention  camps, but Fred Korematsu, Minoru Yasui, and Gordon Hirabayashi  defied orders. For refusing to do what they’d been told, these courageous men were arrested and jailed. They eventually took their cases to the Supreme Court- and lost.​ Although the Supreme Court would rule in 1954 that the policy of â€Å"separate but equal† violated the Constitution, striking down Jim Crow in the South, it proved incredibly shortsighted in cases related to Japanese  American internment. As a result, Japanese Americans who argued before the high court that curfews and internment infringed upon their civil rights had to wait until the 1980s for vindication. Learn more about these men. Minoru Yasui v. the United States When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Minoru Yasui was no ordinary twenty-something. In fact, he had the distinction of being the first Japanese American lawyer admitted to the Oregon Bar. In 1940, he began working for the Consulate General of Japan in Chicago but promptly resigned after Pearl Harbor to return to his native Oregon. Shortly after Yasui’  arrived in Oregon, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942. The order authorized the military to bar Japanese Americans from entering certain regions, to impose curfews on them and to relocate them to internment camps. Yasui deliberately defied the curfew. â€Å"It was my feeling and belief, then and now, that no military authority has the right to subject any United States citizen to any requirement that does not equally apply to all other U.S. citizens,† he explained in the book And Justice For All. For walking the streets past curfew, Yasui was arrested. During his trial at the U.S. District Court in Portland, the presiding judge acknowledged that the curfew order violated the law but decided that Yasui had forsaken his U.S. citizenship by working for the Japanese Consulate and learning the Japanese language. The judge sentenced him to a year in Oregon’s Multnomah County Jail. In 1943, Yasui’s case appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that Yasui was still a U.S. citizen and that the curfew he’d violated was valid. Yasui eventually ended up at an internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho, where he was released in 1944. Four decades would pass before Yasui was exonerated. In the meantime, he would fight for civil rights and engage in activism on behalf of the Japanese American community. Hirabayashi v. the United States Gordon Hirabayashi was a University of Washington student when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. He initially obeyed the order but  after cutting a study session short to avoid violating the curfew, he questioned why he was being singled out in a way  his white classmates were not. Because he considered the curfew to be a violation of his Fifth Amendment rights, Hirabayashi decided to intentionally flout it. â€Å"I was not one of those angry young rebels, looking for a cause,† he said in a 2000 Associated Press interview. â€Å"I was one of those trying to make some sense of this, trying to come up with an explanation.† For defying Executive Order 9066 by missing curfew and failing to report to an internment camp, Hirabayashi was arrested and convicted in 1942. He ended up jailed for two years and did not win his case when it appeared before the Supreme Court. The high court argued that the executive order was not discriminatory because it was a military necessity. Like Yasui, Hirabayashi would have to wait until the 1980s before he saw justice. Despite this blow, Hirabayashi spent the years after World War II getting a master’s degree and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Washington. He went on to a career in academia. Korematsu v. the United States Love motivated Fred Korematsu, a 23-year-old shipyard welder, to defy orders to report to an internment camp. He simply did not want to leave his Italian  American girlfriend and internment would have separated him from her. After his arrest in May 1942 and subsequent conviction for violating military orders, Korematsu fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court. The court, however, sided against him, arguing that race did not factor into the internment of Japanese Americans and that internment was a military necessity. Four decades later, the luck of Korematsu, Yasui, and Hirabayashi changed when legal historian Peter Irons stumbled upon evidence that government officials had withheld several documents from the Supreme Court stating that Japanese Americans posed no military threat to the United States. With this information in hand, Korematsu’s attorneys appeared in 1983 before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco, which vacated his conviction. Yasui’s conviction was overturned in 1984 and Hirabayashi’s conviction was  two years later. In 1988, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which led to a formal government apology for internment and payment to of $20,000 to internment survivors. Yasui died in 1986, Korematsu in 2005 and Hirabayashi in 2012.

Friday, February 14, 2020

Working with Federal Reserves Publications Essay

Working with Federal Reserves Publications - Essay Example In the past Central Bankers have traditionally been close-mouthed and the Federal Reserve was often reluctant to state publicly what its current policy directive is; what its idea about future monetary policy actions including its predictions in relation to general economic conditions or interest rates (Ehrmann et al 2007). Hence periodic or regular publications may provide some detailed analysis of monetary policies for the preceding moths or years but does not divulge any information details regarding current of future polices. The conventional or common practice of the Federal Reserve in keeping quiet about present and future monetary policies have change recently becoming more transparent such that after meetings the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) publicly relates monetary policy decisions and central bank forecasts, which also includes justifications for any changes that were or are made (Ehrmann et al 2007). The justifications include considerations taken that resulted to the decision over the changes done on the said monetary policies. The trend of the economy and financial markets generally rely on the monetary policy standpoint and balance-of-risks appraisal of the Federal Reserves or Central Bank’s public statements in connection to inflation and other forms of economic circumstances. The transparency adopted by the Federal reserve lessens market uncertainty with respect to any future monetary policy. However, the Federal Reserve has an option to change its perception and views after making a public announcement regarding its policies. But even with the data or information made available on prior and future monetary policies, a precise determination of the effects of such policies on the general economy and its financial markets can be hard to identify mainly due to other economic factors that can change overtime. 2. Explain the Federal Reserve’s current view about inflation Inflation usually occurs when there is an excess demand, when prices rise when total spending made by consumers, business firms and the government go beyond the value of the total amount produced within a given economy (Roberts 2006). In relation to this, changes in monetary policies as well as fiscal policies contribute greatly to the level of demand which is affected by government purchases, total consumption and investments made (Roberts 2006). However, this has no actual connection to the price level that is similar to the actual price of a single commodity; especially if all other changeable factors are constant like income (wages) and the prices of other goods. The collective price level normally indicates that all other prices are shifting as well. Therefore, incomes usually rise and fall with the level of prices because income is obtained from the price and quantity of goods sold (Roberts 2006). Issues regarding shifts or changes in the economy are quite complicated sine in real terms output in answer to demand cannot increase bey ond the full level of employment which triggers an increase in spending that can merely be attained at higher prices. This can be illustrated in the Philips curve where total demand can be slimmed down or increased in tandem with supply in order to attain full employment output with supply in order to attain full employment output with stable prices. Reality wise, demand is affected by difference in government spending and taxation (fiscal policy) or by the variation s in monetary factors that affects business investment spending. As a whole, it is difficult for the Federal Reser

Saturday, February 1, 2020

Trying to "get tough" on gun crimes, especially through Essay

Trying to "get tough" on gun crimes, especially through mandatory prison sentences, will not reduce gun related crime - Essay Example In 2012 FBI statistics showed that a total of 8855 homicides were caused by firearms and from the total, 6371 were committed using handguns. On the contrary, 40% of the deaths were also attributed to gun related suicides. Last year, gun related violence accumulated to 16,829 (Webster and Jon 76). Usually the gun related violence is common in the poor-urban areas and is mostly linked with gang violence. Majority of the violence is frequently caused by the youths commonly attributed by the males. Several legislations have been instituted at the state, federal and the local level in an effort to prevent gun violence. Gun purchasing restrictions, law enforcement systems, prison sentencing, community-outreach and education programs are some of the many measures to prevent guns possession. Over the past decades the common prison sentencing has not yielded much in the prevention of gun related crimes. The crimes continue to happen even with frequent arrests of the criminals due to their easy acquisition of firearms. The main idea is to stop the gun possession at inception in order to prevent gun related crimes in the nation. Hence, among the strategies to be used will be the use of gun control mechanism to prevent crime (Webster and Jon 34). During the 19th century, firearms violence contributed a big part in the civil disorders for example the Haymarket riots. During this period, the gun related homicide rates in the cities were much lower than in the current times. Between the periods of 1980 and 1990, homicides caused by the use of handguns during this period increased significantly while the usage of other weapons declined proportionately. The firearms homicides were mostly associated with the unemployed male persons who had low incomes. The majority of the offenders include the youths and the African American US citizens where the deaths and injuries numbers tripled in the black

Friday, January 24, 2020

Underground Economy :: essays papers

Underground Economy The author of the article describe the illicit CD market that is taking place in Ukraine. He explains that 95% of the CDs shipped out the Ukraine are illicit, the producers of those CDs are not just burning low quality CDs, they are even producing their own polycarbonate discs with their own logos as a mark of quality. The International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which is actively looking for pirates that counterfeit CDs, seems to be desperate regarding fighting piracy in Ukraine as the law are inadequate and the Ukrainians have little or no knowledge of intellectual property. Those Ukrainians producing illegal copies of CDs are involved in the Ukrainian and European underground economy as they are making profit out of an illegal activity. The author give the example of a copy of Microsoft Office XP CD which cost $ 2.20 in Kiev and the original copy cost $ 580.00 in the USA. Those huge differences in prices are diminishing the profit of companies selling their products on CDs and they are therefore paying less taxes to the government where they are operating. The author of the article conclude by saying that Ukrainian government doesn’t have the will to terminate the illegal copies of CDs as the manufacturer employ lobbyists that exploit the unstable political environment to derail any move from the government to terminate their activities. Furthermore it seems to be very difficult to stop the counterfeiting of CDs as they are on the market before the legitimate versions are released. The author compare the battle against piracy like the war on drugs, one of the similitude is probably the shadowy organized-crime customers that both activities have in common. I believe like the author that it is quite impossible for international companies to sue any of the CD counterfeiter if the Ukrainian government doesn’t take an active part in the banishment of those factories. I also don’t believe that it is the government number one matter of problem, as we know that it is a country that has been going through the communist year and just got out of it, and there are many other important issues that are challenging the country and its government. Underground Economy :: essays papers Underground Economy The author of the article describe the illicit CD market that is taking place in Ukraine. He explains that 95% of the CDs shipped out the Ukraine are illicit, the producers of those CDs are not just burning low quality CDs, they are even producing their own polycarbonate discs with their own logos as a mark of quality. The International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which is actively looking for pirates that counterfeit CDs, seems to be desperate regarding fighting piracy in Ukraine as the law are inadequate and the Ukrainians have little or no knowledge of intellectual property. Those Ukrainians producing illegal copies of CDs are involved in the Ukrainian and European underground economy as they are making profit out of an illegal activity. The author give the example of a copy of Microsoft Office XP CD which cost $ 2.20 in Kiev and the original copy cost $ 580.00 in the USA. Those huge differences in prices are diminishing the profit of companies selling their products on CDs and they are therefore paying less taxes to the government where they are operating. The author of the article conclude by saying that Ukrainian government doesn’t have the will to terminate the illegal copies of CDs as the manufacturer employ lobbyists that exploit the unstable political environment to derail any move from the government to terminate their activities. Furthermore it seems to be very difficult to stop the counterfeiting of CDs as they are on the market before the legitimate versions are released. The author compare the battle against piracy like the war on drugs, one of the similitude is probably the shadowy organized-crime customers that both activities have in common. I believe like the author that it is quite impossible for international companies to sue any of the CD counterfeiter if the Ukrainian government doesn’t take an active part in the banishment of those factories. I also don’t believe that it is the government number one matter of problem, as we know that it is a country that has been going through the communist year and just got out of it, and there are many other important issues that are challenging the country and its government.

Thursday, January 16, 2020

An analysis of the current activities of Cherwell District Council’s Environmental Services Department Essay

1.0 Background Cherwell District Council’s Environmental Services Department is made up of two sections (Environmental Services and Amenity Services), which deliver a wide range of diverse services (see Table 1). Table 1. Services offered by the Environmental Services Department. Environmental Services Amenity Services Food Safety/Health and Safety in businesses Waste Collection/Recycling Animal Welfare/Dog Warden Service Street Cleaning Pollution Control/Noise Nuisance Pest Control Service Health Promotion and Disability Issues Environmental Strategy/Agenda 21 This report looks at some of the services provided by the commercial team within environmental services who are responsible for food/health and safety law enforcement, infectious disease control, food/water sampling, licensing/registration, complaint investigation and offering information and training. 2.0 Introduction The majority of the activities of the commercial team are mandatory imposed on the Council by statute such as the Food Safety Act and the Health and Safety at Work etc Act. The section’s activities are also monitored through quarterly reports to the Chief Executive of the Council, the Food Standards Agency and The Health and Safety Executive. Despite the regulatory function of the section which is primarily the enforcement of the law, it none the less provides a service which is described as â€Å"the combination of outcomes and experiences delivered to and received by a customer† (Johnson & Clark, 2001 p9). Figure 1 lists some of the aspects of the service experience, which can be used when assessing the quality of the service provided. * the extent of personalisation of the process * the responsiveness of the service organisation * the flexibility of customer-facing staff * customer intimacy * the ease of access to service personnel or information systems * the extent to which the customer feels valued by the organisation * the courtesy

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Effectiveness And Efficacy Of The Healthcare Organization

Regulations are established to expand the effectiveness and efficacy of the healthcare organization. One of biggest health care issue among the system is Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) violations. It was passed by the Congress in 1996. Mandating this rule serves several purposes to all individuals for privacy and security. This includes all information that is verbal, written, or electronic. The Privacy Rule is the protection health information (PHI) of a patient and it cannot be disclosed without patient’s written authorization (Schulman, 2005). The Security Rule is emphasized on administrative, technical and physical safeguards specifically for electronic protection health information from unapproved access (Schulman, 2005). It is to authorize the process of patient’s demographics, medical records, and doctor visits for any form of mail or electronic payment/ claims. The False Claim Act applies to physicians whereas it is unlawful to submi t claims for expenses to Medicare or Medicaid (Hyman, 2002). So it’s vital for doctors to acknowledge HIPAA on not losing their medical license. Also, it decreases the provision of health care fraud and abuse. Department of Justice and the U.S. attorneys enforced the federal criminal law (Hyman, 2002). In criminal cases, offense can go up to life imprisonment. Punishments are $100 per failure and cannot exceed $25,000 per year (Schulman, 2005). For civil, violators are fined for the statutory penalty andShow MoreRelatedThe Impact Of Telemedicine On Health, A Systematic Literature Review1530 Words   |  7 Pagesoutcomes, efficacy, patient and provider satisfaction. Telemedicine as an emerging field can greatly improve the outcomes of healthcare thus resulting in decrease the delivery cost of healthcare. 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