View allAll Photos Tagged Moderate
Using data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra satellite, scientists and data visualizers stitched together a full year’s worth of monthly observations of the land surface, coastal oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, photo-like mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet.
Credit: NASA
Go here to read more about this image: www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/features/blue_marble.html
or here: earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble/BlueMarble.php
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Find us on Instagram
The Trace Too (249, 179, 14) - Moderate
MUSIC: Distant Shores, by Chad & Jeremy (1966)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWncV2vQabs
POEM: Kubla Khan, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
April 14, 2017- North of Elm Creek Nebraska
*** Like | Follow | Subscribe | NebraskaSC ***
Prints Available...Click Here
3nd Chase of 2017...
Another early April moderate risk day in South Central Nebraska. Which would turn out to a bust. Storm really didn't fire till after sunset.
Waiting for the instability to fire the storms. Was in the right place, just mother nature had other plans. This particular cell was just building and didn't produce anything but a scenic updraft.
Some nice Nebraska Storm Eye Candy to tide me over till the storms that evening.
*** Please NOTE and RESPECT the Copyright ***
Copyright 2017
Dale Kaminski @ NebraskaSC Photography
All Rights Reserved
This image may not be copied, reproduced, published or distributed in any medium without the expressed written permission of the copyright holder.
#ForeverChasing
#NebraskaSC
Abandoned Land, Koryo (222, 37, 51) - Moderate
SOUND:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3kUHCpF7VI
POEM:
A Desert Dream Of Wind And Sand
Christian Bixler Nov 2014
I sit and hear the desert wind, sand hissing past,
winging by on the desert's breath. The moon hangs
still above the earth, enshrined in vaults of darkest
black, an infinity of stars to frost the sky. I sit here,
on the shifting crest of a tall and windswept dune,
contemplating the majesty of starry sky, and the silence
of the desert winds. My mind empty, wanders, and I
seem to hear, in the howling of the desert wind, the yipping
cries of jackals, and a strain of music, faint and thin, riding, on
the whisper of the desert winds. I look and see, a palace, light
shining from many windows, and colored pennants whipping
in the desert breeze, spices seeming, rich and dry, waft around me, caught, in the twisting zephyrs of the desert's breath. I stare, and slowly, the sounds of the palace reach my ears, women laughing, singing, and the lilting tones of music strange and wonderful, lift me from the desert sand, and set me forward, stumbling from fatigue and thirst, towards that place of light and sound, a refuge surely from the stinging sands, and the whispering voice of the desert, dry in its susurrations, as an empty skull, bleached and hollow, sockets set to the contemplation of the desert winds, desiccated remnant of mortal man, till wind and sand consign it to the deserts breath. I stumble forwards, eyes locked on that vision held before me, and I, with all remaining strength and speed, run towards that desert's dream, and in my folly, I strive for speed, even exceeding the desert wind. At last, I halt, and in my weariness, stumble against a mighty gate, set with gold and jade and onyx, moonstone high, and amber low. I set my hands to wondrous gate, but lo! the gates are fast and strong. They do not yield to the feeble push of weary traveler, nor to the entreaty of dry and sand parched throat, imploring it to stand aside. I fall at last, defeated, and thought, to die here, before these gates of opulent splendour, would not be so tragic a fate, as the deaths of thousands, lost as I in the immeasurable vastness of the desert sands. But yea! There in the darkness of night as I made my peace with God and his angels and consigned myself to the inevitable fate of eternal rest, that near unnoticed, the gates swung voicelessly open, and through it, I inhaled weakly, the scents of anise and cumin and cinnamon and allspice, all mixed with the intoxicating perfume of the daughters of the desert, scented waters and mulled wine. I reeled, dazed by the glory of light and sound and scent. I was lifted then by gentle hands, soft and cool, with the featherlight touch of sweet virginity. I fell, spinning, into the cool dark of grey oblivion. I awaken, rested, in the dark. Birdsong wafts in through arched windows. Below, I can hear the women singing, talking, as their needles clack in unrelenting harmony. And yet, this all seems to fade, to become less real. I listen harder, and yet, I hear instead of the singing harmony of before, the lonely song of the desert wind, faint and yet as if it had ever been, and this all some fantasy, imagined dream more true than life? I open my eyes. I lie there, back pressed to chill stone, jutting up into the heavens. The scents of man dissipate and are gone, replaced by the dry and whispering aura of the lonely desert, faint sage upon the wind. I close my eyes. falling, I slide to the cold sands and lie there, waiting only for death to take me, that I might once more approach that vision of holy beauty that awaits those that live and die in piety, and with the grace of heaven. A hand touches my shoulder. I do not look up. The hand remains, insistent in its immovability. I rise, slowly, turning, so I might see my unknown companion, with me, in the heart of the windsept sands of the great expanse. A man stands there, robed in white, black veil obscuring all save for dark eyes, set deep in his weathered brow, like jewels of onyx, set in a dark and seasoned stone, left to the desert, in years gone by. "Come. It is time" The man whispers through the desert wind. He beckons me, fingers set with jewels and stones, gold thread belts his waist. He turns and walks silently, out, towards the eastern sky. I follow him, seeming vision of guidance, sent to set my feet on the path of life. I follow him and yet, gradually he fades and is gone, vanished, beside a weathered stone, lonely in the great expanse. I fall to my knees, head bowed, strength gone from soul and body. I hear dimly through the haze of weary enervation, even as death enshrouds me, the trickle of falling water. I lift my eyes. water pools before me, gift of life, sent by spirit of guiding thirst. I drink and life within me lifts its head, water streams down wind partched throat, and even as I fall into cool oblivion, knowing that that vison of heaven awaits me, water soothes me, as I fall at last into darkness, and the shining vision of heaven around me, I close my eyes, darkness enshrouding, as I perish beneath the moon and frosted sky.
Thank you to "Invite-only SL For your Eyes Only - Moderated " for choosing my pic for your cover.
To see more great works, follow this URL and support this group of wonderful artists ...
Dream On Bay (129, 127, 23) - Moderate
SOUNDS: (Right click to open in a browser tab)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar9C2PA9-Bo
POEM: Mid October, By The Lake (J.M. Romig)
Afterward,
I asked “Where to?”
“The beach?” She replied
“Too cold.” I said.
“Fine, whatever. Take me home, I guess.”
She’s too much like you.
Even now, ten years later,
she still swims in my old hoodie.
The pink and blue butterflies on her fingernails
barely escape the sleeves.
We’re sitting in the sand
she is looking at the water
as if searching for something far out in the distance.
Remember when we babysat
all those years ago?
She stole my hoodie
called it her “Cloak of Invincibility”.
She meant Invisibility,
we were watching Harry Potter.
Today, I wish it were the former.
“Are you going to tell my mom?” She asked.
“No.” I said “But you should.”
I wanted to tell her about what happened in ‘92
about her mother’s battle with depression
after a similar thing happened with her
but that’s your sister’s story to tell
so I did what you always say I should
and let the quiet between us be.
I watched the waves roll in
and crash against the shore.
I noticed heavy grey clouds heading toward us
“It’s going to rain” I said
“Let it.” she replied, with a calm acceptance.
She’s too much like you.
She’s grown up so much
since the cancer took you from us.
You wouldn’t even recognize her.
She looks nothing like her mother
Or her father, for that matter
She looks
…well, she looks like you.
The spitting image.
“Why the beach?” I asked
after a long while of listening to the waves.
“This is where it happened.”
I felt an anger rise up through me
and I was already clenching my fists
before I realized there was no direction
for that aggression to go.
I took a deep belly breath,
and refocused.
“Why come back here?”
“to see if it felt different.”
“Does it?”
“…a little.”
More silence.
I watched her writing things in the sand
with a broken stick she found
and then pushing her palm across the words,
wiping the letters into each other,
cleaning the slate,
and again, writing in the sand.
“You know…” She said, finally,
“I was thinking for a while,
about keeping it.
if I had,
if it were a girl,
I would have named it after her."
she didn't have to say your name out loud
for me to know
“I miss her,” she added
"Me too".
The waves kept hitting the shore
and eventually, the rain came.
I drove her home,
she offered to give back my hoodie
“Keep it.” I said, smiling
she shrugged and took it with her.
On the way home,
I drove passed our old house
the new owners are letting the grass grow
too long for my taste.
It seems everything has been growing in your absence.
Except me.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite captured this stunning view of Japan’ four largest islands on February 20, 2004. The snow-covered southern arm of Hokkaido extends into the upper left corner. Honshu, Japan’s largest island, curves across the center of the image. Shikoku, right, and Kyushu, left, form the southern tip of the group. Japan is mostly mountainous, and, as the dusting of snow in this image shows, is cold in the north and more tropical in the south. A single red dot marks the location of an active fire.
Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Find us on Instagram
If moderate to large-sized, gaudy lawn decorations are your thing, Rural King's got you covered! As you might imagine, this outdoor seasonal stuff was located on the left side of the store - more or less where it would be found in the large majority of Kmart stores.
____________________________________
Rural King (former Kmart), 1975(?)-built, Hwy. 43/72 and E. 6th St., Muscle Shoals, AL
Photographed from our running bus.
My first experience about YNP
We entered Yellowstone NP through the eastern entrance using U.S. Route 14. It had been a moderate snow fall in the end of the first week of October, 2017. From few kilometers before reaching Yellowstone Lake, remnants of devastating wild fire were being evident. It was a shocking sight for me at the beginning and could not perceive how fire had devastated hundreds of acres of alpine forests in the valleys and atop the hills. But when I had a closer look to the floor of the forests, I was amazed by the facts how nature maintains its ecological balance! Numerous tiny siblings are growing besides the burnt and decaying logs. The future forests of the park are coming alive.
The park seemed to me the world’s finest natural laboratory and archive to study and understand all the faculties of human intellect.
The qualities of the photographs are not satisfactory, because they were taken so fast through the glass windows of our running bus. But I didn’t want to miss such life time opportunities. The overall beauties were essentially more important than technicalities, as I always believe.
Our luck didn’t favor anyway in this park trip, when our tour guide had declared a forecast for heavy snowfall next day since morning. He therefore decided to visit as many spots as possible in a single day, and not to wait for day-2. I hurried through the trails taking as many snaps as possible.
The next day heavy snowfall started since 9 am, and our guide cancelled the day-2 trip. Thanks God…we covered somehow all the spots on the first day.
I hope, you may like my Yellowstone series…
A quick overview of YNP
Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Approximately 96 percent of the land area of Yellowstone National Park is located within the state of Wyoming. The Park spans an area of 8,983 km2 comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is the most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests eco-region.
It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. Native Americans have lived in the Yellowstone region for at least 11,000 years. Aside from visits by mountain -men during the early to mid-19th century, organized exploration did not begin until the late 1860s.
The park contains the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name. Although it is commonly believed that the river was named for the yellow rocks seen in the ‘Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone’, the Native American name source is unclear.
Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-elevation lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent. The caldera is considered as an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million year. The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America. It has been termed a "supervolcano" because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions. The magma chamber that lies under Yellowstone is estimated to be a single connected chamber, about 60 km long, 29 km wide, and 5 to 12 km deep. Yellowstone Lake is up to 400 feet deep and has 180 km of shoreline.The lake is at an elevation of 7,733 feet above sea levels. Half of the world's geysers and hydrothermal features are there in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism. Lava and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover most of the land area of Yellowstone. The park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining nearly-intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone. In 1978, Yellowstone was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In May 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey, Yellowstone National Park, and the University of Utah created the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), a partnership for long-term monitoring of the geological processes of the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field, for disseminating information concerning the potential hazards of this geologically active region.
Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles have been documented, including several that are either endangered or threatened. The vast forests and grasslands also include unique species of plants. Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous mega fauna location in the contiguous United States. Grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in this park. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States.
Forest fires occur in the park each year. In the largest forest fires of 1988, nearly one third of the park was burnt.
Yellowstone has numerous recreational opportunities, including hiking, camping, boating, fishing and sightseeing. Paved roads provide close access to the major geothermal areas as well as some of the lakes and waterfalls. During the winter, visitors often access the park by way of guided tours that use either snow coaches or snowmobiles.
Fire in Yellowstone NP:
Causes of wildfire in Yellowstone NP
Wildfire has had a role in the dynamics of Yellowstone’s ecosystems for thousands of years. Although many fires were caused by human activities, most ignitions were natural. The term "natural ignition" usually refers to a lightning strike. Afternoon thunderstorms occur frequently in the northern Rocky Mountains but release little precipitation, a condition known as ‘dry lightning’. In a typical season there are thousands of lightning strikes in Yellowstone. Lightning strikes are powerful enough to rip strips of bark off of a tree in a shower of sparks and blow the pieces up to 100 feet away. However, most lightning strikes do not result in a wildfire because fuels are not in a combustible state.
The great fire incidence of 1988
The Yellowstone fires of 1988 collectively formed the largest wildfire in the recorded history of Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Starting as many smaller individual fires, the flames quickly spread out of control due to drought conditions and increasing winds, combining into one large conflagration which burned for several months. The fires almost destroyed two major visitor destinations and, on September 8, 1988, the entire park closed to all non-emergency personnel for the first time in its history. Only the arrival of cool and moist weather in the late autumn brought the fires to an end. A total of 793,880 acres, or 36 percent of the park was affected by the wildfires.
Fire incidence, 2016
As of September 21, 2016, 22 fires (human and lightning-caused) have burned more than 62,000 acres in Yellowstone National Park, making it the highest number of acres burned since the historic 1988 fire.
Heritage and Research Center
The Heritage and Research Center is located at Gardiner, Montana, near the north entrance to the park. The center is home to the Yellowstone National Park's museum collection, archives, research library, historian, archeology lab, and herbarium. The Yellowstone National Park Archives maintain collections of historical records of Yellowstone and the National Park Service. The collection includes the administrative records of Yellowstone, as well as resource management records, records from major projects, and donated manuscripts and personal papers. The archives are affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration.
Geothermal features of Yellowstone NP- A brief note:
There are four geothermal features found in the park – Hot springs, Geysers, Fumaroles , and Mud volcanoes/pots.
What is a Hot spring?
Hot spring, also called thermal spring, spring with water at temperatures substantially higher than the air temperature of the surrounding region. Most hot springs discharge groundwater that is heated by shallow intrusions of magma (molten rock) in volcanic areas.
Some thermal springs, however, are not related to volcanic activity. In general, the temperature of rocks within the earth increases with depth. The rate of temperature increase with depth is known as the geothermal gradient. In such cases, the water is heated by convective circulation: groundwater percolating downward reaches depths of a kilometre or more where the temperature of rocks is high because of the normal temperature gradient of the Earth’s crust—about 30 °C / kilometer in the first 10 km. The water from hot springs in non-volcanic areas is heated in this manner.
But in active volcanic zones such as Yellowstone National Park, water may be heated by coming into contact with magma (molten rock). The high temperature gradient near magma may cause water to be heated enough that it boils or becomes superheated. If the water becomes so hot that it builds steam pressure and erupts in a jet above the surface of the Earth, it is called a geyser.
[ Warm springs are sometimes the result of hot and cold springs mixing. They may occur within a volcanic area or outside of one. One example of a non-volcanic warm spring is Warm Springs, Georgia (frequented for its therapeutic effects by paraplegic U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who built the Little White House there) ].
List of hot springs:
[ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hot_springs ]
The science of colors of a hot spring:
[ ttps://www.britannica.com/science/hot-spring]
Many of the colours in hot springs are caused by thermophilic (heat-loving) microorganisms, which include certain types of bacteria, such as cyanobacteria, and species of archaea and algae. Many thermophilic organisms grow in huge colonies called mats that form the colourful scums and slimes on the sides of hot springs. The microorganisms that grow in hot springs derive their energy from various chemicals and metals; potential energy sources include molecular hydrogen, dissolved sulfides, methane, iron, ammonia, and arsenic. In addition to geochemistry, the temperature and pH of hot springs play a central role in determining which organisms inhabit them.
Examples of thermophilic microorganisms found in hot springs include bacteria in the genera Sulfolobus, which can grow at temperatures of up to 90 °C (194 °F), Hydrogenobacter, which grow optimally at temperatures of 85 °C (185 °F), and Thermocrinis, which grow optimally at temperatures of 80 °C (176 °F). Thermophilic algae in hot springs are most abundant at temperatures of 55 °C (131 °F) or below.
What is a Geyser?
A geyser is formed when water collecting below the surface is heated by a magma source. When the water boils, it rises to the surface. If the water has an unobstructed path, it will pool on the surface in the form of a steaming hot springs. If the passage of the water is imposed upon, the pressure will increase. When the pressure becomes too great, the water converts into to steam. Steam takes up 1,500 times the volume of water, and at this point, the pressure becomes so intense that the steam and surrounding water droplets shoot out of the ground in geyser form, erupting until the pressure has abated and the process starts all over again.
What is a fumarole?
It’s a vent in the Earth’s surface from which steam and volcanic gases are emitted. The major source of the water vapour emitted by fumaroles is groundwater heated by bodies of magma lying relatively close to the surface. Carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide are usually emitted directly from the magma. Fumaroles are often present on active volcanoes during periods of relative quiet between eruptions.
Fumaroles are closely related to hot springs and geysers. In areas where the water table rises near the surface, fumaroles can become hot springs. A fumarole rich in sulfur gases is called a solfatara; a fumarole rich in carbon dioxide is called a mofette. If the hot water of a spring only reaches the surface in the form of steam, it is called a fumarole. [ www.britannica.com/science/fumarole ]
What is a mud volcano/ mud pot/ paint pot?-
Usually mud volcanoes are created by hot-spring activity where large amounts of gas and small amounts of water react chemically with the surrounding rocks and form a boiling mud.
Geo-chemistry of mud volcano: Hydrogen sulfide gas rising from magma chamber, as in Yellowstone’s, causes the rotten-egg smell. Microorganisms, or thermophiles, use this gas as a source of energy, and then help turn the gas into sulfuric acid. The acid then breaks down the rocks and soil into mud. Many of the colors seen are vast communities of thermophiles, but some of the yellow is pure sulfur. When iron mixes with sulfur to form iron sulfide, gray and black swirls sometimes appear in the mud (From description of the display board in the park).
If the water of a hot spring is mixed with mud and clay, it is called a mud pot. Variations are the porridge pot (a basin of boiling mud that erodes chunks of the surrounding rock) and the paint pot (a basin of boiling mud that is tinted yellow, green, or blue by minerals from the surrounding rocks).
There are other mud volcanoes, entirely of a nonigneous origin, occur only in oil-field regions that are relatively young and have soft, unconsolidated formations.
Sources: [ www.britannica.com/science/mud-volcano ], and display boards of the YNP.
A Quick Overview Map of Yellowstone
(www.yellowstonepark.com/park/overview-map-yellowstone)
Free Yellowstone Trip Planner:
( www.yellowstonepark.com/travel-guides/yellowstone-trip-pl...)
8 Best Yellowstone Geyser Basins and Map
( www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/yellowstone-geyser-b... )
National Park Maps
( www.yellowstonepark.com/park/national-park-maps )
Interactive map of ALL Yellowstone thermal features at the Yellowstone Research Coordination Network
This true-color Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image from December 21, 2002, shows the onset of Southern Hemisphere summer across Argentina (left), Uruguay (center), and southern Brazil (upper right.) From the flat grasslands of Argentina, known as the Pampas, the terrain transitions to gently rolling hills in Uruguay. The terrain rises still more in southern Brazil. The Parana River makes a wide, dark green swath running through eastern Argentina before joining with the Uruguay River along the western border of Uruguay and emptying into the Rio de la Plata Estuary. At the mouth of the Rio de la Plata (south side) a gray patch indicates the location of Buenos Aires.
Credit Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the nation's largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe.
Follow us on Twitter
Join us on Facebook
Moderate light pollution, even with the lighting restrictions of Tucson. Thirty seconds with a Samyang 14mm lens and Canon T3i.
Moderate thunderstorms nearby produced several waves over a 1 hour period of rare for this area [central Ohio] of Asperatus Clouds on Oct 25, 2024. I took 2 videos and took dozens of photos from all 3 waves of these odd clouds.
Second round of moderate to heavy thunderstorms rolling thru western Ohio, March 5, 2024. It was mild 64 before these storms hit, and dropped 20 degrees right after the first batch/round of thunderstorms rolled thru this area of western Ohio. Then, the temperatures rose a bit and more thunderstorms hit about 5 hours later in the mid-afternoon. Not severe thunderstorms, but pretty heavy storms with heavy rain, brief high winds and quite a bit of lightning. Not much else to write about with these thunderstorms.
A moderate size and heavy insulator known as a cable insulator produced for power distribution and nickname the "Eared Jumbo" insulator. This insulator was also catalogued in early 1900's electrical supply catalogues as the "New Jumbo," which was an upgrade from the earlier CD 140 side wire groove Jumbo insulators.
Two glass companies produced this style of insulator, Oakman Manufacturing Company at Boston, Massachusetts, and the Brookfield Glass Company at Old Bridge, New Jersey, from the 1890's and the decade of 1900's. This style became popular for use on street railways, trolley lines, and elevated railway structures where a heavy direct current (DC) feeder cable was used. This style was also used quite extensively in the eastern states on the high voltage lines at industrial mill sites.
This particular Jumbo insulator was produced by the Brookfield Glass Company at Old Bridge, New Jersey. Large quantities of these Jumbo insulators were used on the elevated railway structure in Boston, also known as the "Boston EL."
This link shows a picture taken in 1898 of the "Boston EL" showing many of the CD 269 Jumbo insulators servicing the large cables.
www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=313944703
This link shows a picture taken in 1957 of the "Boston EL" showing a lot less CD 269 Jumbos insulators servicing the large cables.
www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=320884380
Embossing (F-Skirt) JUMBO
Index # 010
Considering the parish is only a moderate size (pop: ~600), All Saints', Hitcham is a large church. It dates from the 14th century although the Domesday record describes an earlier church. In 1984, a site in a field behind The White Horse Inn was excavated, revealing an ancient burial ground with a number of well preserved skeletons and the foundations of what might have been a church. Fragments of pottery found suggested a date of 10th or 11th century.
All Saints' is constructed of flint and stone and is almost all Perpendicular in style. The chancel was largely rebuilt in 1878. The nave and aisles are 14th century, with castellated parapets and chequer work on the nave and stone on the aisles. The west tower is 15th century, with angle buttresses and chequer work on the faces, castellated parapet and a stair turret. The impressive south porch has flush work panelling, set back buttresses and 3 open niches. It closely resembles that of other nearby churches, such as neighbouring Bildeston, Preston St. Mary and Felsham.
The nave roof has double-hammer beams with shields with royal emblems at the lower ends. There are monograms of James I and Charles I. The interior fittings include the mainly 15th century benches with poppy head bench ends and an 18th century octagonal pulpit.
“This is moderate resolution frame number 117 taken on August 25, 1966. The photograph is the second of two taken of the earth and moon from lunar orbit. When viewing the photograph, with the identification number in the upper right-hand border, north is approximately at the top and the Sun is on the left. The portion of the Moon shown is the eastern limb and backside.”
Context for my comment/image below:
www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/lunarorbiter/frame/?1117
Credit: LPI website
A moderate auroral display in North East Scotland captured on Sunday 27th of February on arrival of a small CME. We were not expecting to see anything and had been content to photograph the stars as the sky was amazingly clear however it appeared about 11pm and the display was visible until the clouds came over around midnight.
The Kp was only 1 (rising to 4 through the night) and no aurorawatch (UK) alerts were triggered.
This is a remake of the previous timelapse. When I got in from shooting my hard drive died when copying over the files. I created the original film on my back up windows but photoshop was set to adobe RGB colour space. I have converted to sRGB and increased the exposure slightly on all files to make things a bit clearer.
It is also worth mentioning that the aurora wasn't clearly visible to the naked eye. The intensity wasn't sufficient enough to detect much in the way of colour with only a mild green tinge. A weak aurora will not always trigger the cone receptors at the back of the eye (which are responsible for detecting colour) as they are less sensitive than the rods (which detect B+W) .
Settings - 71 images, 30 seconds exposure, f1.4, ISO 500, 24mm
some images on my website
Pigeon river West Fork from the triple arch bridge on NC 215, Pisgah National Forest, Haywood county, North Carolina.
Argent resting on a cooling disc on the bed while wearing a tunic to stay warm (Hokkaido summers are very short and the seasons surrounding the summers are cool) at night in July of 2019.
well, thank you very much, _____. my account has been deemed 'moderate'. so, what, now i'm moderately closer to being deleted? who goes around sizing up people here? you know, if parents would spend some quality time with their kids–nurturing them, teaching them how to make 'good' decisions and use sound judgment where necessary–they wouldn't have to worry so damned much about what web pages they're surfing while their backs are turned. fuck this censorship business. how are america's 'peer' countries on this matter?
did i offend anybody?
Eupeodes luniger is a moderate sized (average of 8mm length) Syrphid hoverfly with characteristic wasp-like yellow markings on the abdomen. In the case of E. Luniger these are obviously comma shaped and usually do not meet at the centre line of the abdomen, although in this variable species some individuals show markings that do meet and form spectacle shaped yellow patches. These markings do not reach the lateral edges.
Fish, any of approximately 34,000 species of vertebrate animals (phylum Chordata) found in the fresh and salt waters of the world. Living species range from the primitive jawless lampreys and hagfishes through the cartilaginous sharks, skates, and rays to the abundant and diverse bony fishes. Most fish species are cold-blooded; however, one species, the opah (Lampris guttatus), is warm-blooded.
The term fish is applied to a variety of vertebrates of several evolutionary lines. It describes a life-form rather than a taxonomic group. As members of the phylum Chordata, fish share certain features with other vertebrates. These features are gill slits at some point in the life cycle, a notochord, or skeletal supporting rod, a dorsal hollow nerve cord, and a tail. Living fishes represent some five classes, which are as distinct from one another as are the four classes of familiar air-breathing animals—amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. For example, the jawless fishes (Agnatha) have gills in pouches and lack limb girdles. Extant agnathans are the lampreys and the hagfishes. As the name implies, the skeletons of fishes of the class Chondrichthyes (from chondr, “cartilage,” and ichthyes, “fish”) are made entirely of cartilage. Modern fish of this class lack a swim bladder, and their scales and teeth are made up of the same placoid material. Sharks, skates, and rays are examples of cartilaginous fishes. The bony fishes are by far the largest class. Examples range from the tiny seahorse to the 450-kg (1,000-pound) blue marlin, from the flattened soles and flounders to the boxy puffers and ocean sunfishes. Unlike the scales of the cartilaginous fishes, those of bony fishes, when present, grow throughout life and are made up of thin overlapping plates of bone. Bony fishes also have an operculum that covers the gill slits.
The study of fishes, the science of ichthyology, is of broad importance. Fishes are of interest to humans for many reasons, the most important being their relationship with and dependence on the environment. A more obvious reason for interest in fishes is their role as a moderate but important part of the world’s food supply. This resource, once thought unlimited, is now realized to be finite and in delicate balance with the biological, chemical, and physical factors of the aquatic environment. Overfishing, pollution, and alteration of the environment are the chief enemies of proper fisheries management, both in fresh waters and in the ocean. (For a detailed discussion of the technology and economics of fisheries, see commercial fishing.) Another practical reason for studying fishes is their use in disease control. As predators on mosquito larvae, they help curb malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.
Fishes are valuable laboratory animals in many aspects of medical and biological research. For example, the readiness of many fishes to acclimate to captivity has allowed biologists to study behaviour, physiology, and even ecology under relatively natural conditions. Fishes have been especially important in the study of animal behaviour, where research on fishes has provided a broad base for the understanding of the more flexible behaviour of the higher vertebrates. The zebra fish is used as a model in studies of gene expression.
There are aesthetic and recreational reasons for an interest in fishes. Millions of people keep live fishes in home aquariums for the simple pleasure of observing the beauty and behaviour of animals otherwise unfamiliar to them. Aquarium fishes provide a personal challenge to many aquarists, allowing them to test their ability to keep a small section of the natural environment in their homes. Sportfishing is another way of enjoying the natural environment, also indulged in by millions of people every year. Interest in aquarium fishes and sportfishing supports multimillion-dollar industries throughout the world.
Fishes have been in existence for more than 450 million years, during which time they have evolved repeatedly to fit into almost every conceivable type of aquatic habitat. In a sense, land vertebrates are simply highly modified fishes: when fishes colonized the land habitat, they became tetrapod (four-legged) land vertebrates. The popular conception of a fish as a slippery, streamlined aquatic animal that possesses fins and breathes by gills applies to many fishes, but far more fishes deviate from that conception than conform to it. For example, the body is elongate in many forms and greatly shortened in others; the body is flattened in some (principally in bottom-dwelling fishes) and laterally compressed in many others; the fins may be elaborately extended, forming intricate shapes, or they may be reduced or even lost; and the positions of the mouth, eyes, nostrils, and gill openings vary widely. Air breathers have appeared in several evolutionary lines.
Many fishes are cryptically coloured and shaped, closely matching their respective environments; others are among the most brilliantly coloured of all organisms, with a wide range of hues, often of striking intensity, on a single individual. The brilliance of pigments may be enhanced by the surface structure of the fish, so that it almost seems to glow. A number of unrelated fishes have actual light-producing organs. Many fishes are able to alter their coloration—some for the purpose of camouflage, others for the enhancement of behavioral signals.
Fishes range in adult length from less than 10 mm (0.4 inch) to more than 20 metres (60 feet) and in weight from about 1.5 grams (less than 0.06 ounce) to many thousands of kilograms. Some live in shallow thermal springs at temperatures slightly above 42 °C (100 °F), others in cold Arctic seas a few degrees below 0 °C (32 °F) or in cold deep waters more than 4,000 metres (13,100 feet) beneath the ocean surface. The structural and, especially, the physiological adaptations for life at such extremes are relatively poorly known and provide the scientifically curious with great incentive for study.
Almost all natural bodies of water bear fish life, the exceptions being very hot thermal ponds and extremely salt-alkaline lakes, such as the Dead Sea in Asia and the Great Salt Lake in North America. The present distribution of fishes is a result of the geological history and development of Earth as well as the ability of fishes to undergo evolutionary change and to adapt to the available habitats. Fishes may be seen to be distributed according to habitat and according to geographical area. Major habitat differences are marine and freshwater. For the most part, the fishes in a marine habitat differ from those in a freshwater habitat, even in adjacent areas, but some, such as the salmon, migrate from one to the other. The freshwater habitats may be seen to be of many kinds. Fishes found in mountain torrents, Arctic lakes, tropical lakes, temperate streams, and tropical rivers will all differ from each other, both in obvious gross structure and in physiological attributes. Even in closely adjacent habitats where, for example, a tropical mountain torrent enters a lowland stream, the fish fauna will differ. The marine habitats can be divided into deep ocean floors (benthic), mid-water oceanic (bathypelagic), surface oceanic (pelagic), rocky coast, sandy coast, muddy shores, bays, estuaries, and others. Also, for example, rocky coastal shores in tropical and temperate regions will have different fish faunas, even when such habitats occur along the same coastline.
Although much is known about the present geographical distribution of fishes, far less is known about how that distribution came about. Many parts of the fish fauna of the fresh waters of North America and Eurasia are related and undoubtedly have a common origin. The faunas of Africa and South America are related, extremely old, and probably an expression of the drifting apart of the two continents. The fauna of southern Asia is related to that of Central Asia, and some of it appears to have entered Africa. The extremely large shore-fish faunas of the Indian and tropical Pacific oceans comprise a related complex, but the tropical shore fauna of the Atlantic, although containing Indo-Pacific components, is relatively limited and probably younger. The Arctic and Antarctic marine faunas are quite different from each other. The shore fauna of the North Pacific is quite distinct, and that of the North Atlantic more limited and probably younger. Pelagic oceanic fishes, especially those in deep waters, are similar the world over, showing little geographical isolation in terms of family groups. The deep oceanic habitat is very much the same throughout the world, but species differences do exist, showing geographical areas determined by oceanic currents and water masses.
All aspects of the life of a fish are closely correlated with adaptation to the total environment, physical, chemical, and biological. In studies, all the interdependent aspects of fish, such as behaviour, locomotion, reproduction, and physical and physiological characteristics, must be taken into account.
Correlated with their adaptation to an extremely wide variety of habitats is the extremely wide variety of life cycles that fishes display. The great majority hatch from relatively small eggs a few days to several weeks or more after the eggs are scattered in the water. Newly hatched young are still partially undeveloped and are called larvae until body structures such as fins, skeleton, and some organs are fully formed. Larval life is often very short, usually less than a few weeks, but it can be very long, some lampreys continuing as larvae for at least five years. Young and larval fishes, before reaching sexual maturity, must grow considerably, and their small size and other factors often dictate that they live in a habitat different than that of the adults. For example, most tropical marine shore fishes have pelagic larvae. Larval food also is different, and larval fishes often live in shallow waters, where they may be less exposed to predators.
After a fish reaches adult size, the length of its life is subject to many factors, such as innate rates of aging, predation pressure, and the nature of the local climate. The longevity of a species in the protected environment of an aquarium may have nothing to do with how long members of that species live in the wild. Many small fishes live only one to three years at the most. In some species, however, individuals may live as long as 10 or 20 or even 100 years.
Fish behaviour is a complicated and varied subject. As in almost all animals with a central nervous system, the nature of a response of an individual fish to stimuli from its environment depends upon the inherited characteristics of its nervous system, on what it has learned from past experience, and on the nature of the stimuli. Compared with the variety of human responses, however, that of a fish is stereotyped, not subject to much modification by “thought” or learning, and investigators must guard against anthropomorphic interpretations of fish behaviour.
Fishes perceive the world around them by the usual senses of sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste and by special lateral line water-current detectors. In the few fishes that generate electric fields, a process that might best be called electrolocation aids in perception. One or another of these senses often is emphasized at the expense of others, depending upon the fish’s other adaptations. In fishes with large eyes, the sense of smell may be reduced; others, with small eyes, hunt and feed primarily by smell (such as some eels).
Specialized behaviour is primarily concerned with the three most important activities in the fish’s life: feeding, reproduction, and escape from enemies. Schooling behaviour of sardines on the high seas, for instance, is largely a protective device to avoid enemies, but it is also associated with and modified by their breeding and feeding requirements. Predatory fishes are often solitary, lying in wait to dart suddenly after their prey, a kind of locomotion impossible for beaked parrot fishes, which feed on coral, swimming in small groups from one coral head to the next. In addition, some predatory fishes that inhabit pelagic environments, such as tunas, often school.
Sleep in fishes, all of which lack true eyelids, consists of a seemingly listless state in which the fish maintains its balance but moves slowly. If attacked or disturbed, most can dart away. A few kinds of fishes lie on the bottom to sleep. Most catfishes, some loaches, and some eels and electric fishes are strictly nocturnal, being active and hunting for food during the night and retiring during the day to holes, thick vegetation, or other protective parts of the environment.
Communication between members of a species or between members of two or more species often is extremely important, especially in breeding behaviour (see below Reproduction). The mode of communication may be visual, as between the small so-called cleaner fish and a large fish of a very different species. The larger fish often allows the cleaner to enter its mouth to remove gill parasites. The cleaner is recognized by its distinctive colour and actions and therefore is not eaten, even if the larger fish is normally a predator. Communication is often chemical, signals being sent by specific chemicals called pheromones.
Many fishes have a streamlined body and swim freely in open water. Fish locomotion is closely correlated with habitat and ecological niche (the general position of the animal to its environment).
Many fishes in both marine and fresh waters swim at the surface and have mouths adapted to feed best (and sometimes only) at the surface. Often such fishes are long and slender, able to dart at surface insects or at other surface fishes and in turn to dart away from predators; needlefishes, halfbeaks, and topminnows (such as killifish and mosquito fish) are good examples. Oceanic flying fishes escape their predators by gathering speed above the water surface, with the lower lobe of the tail providing thrust in the water. They then glide hundreds of yards on enlarged, winglike pectoral and pelvic fins. South American freshwater flying fishes escape their enemies by jumping and propelling their strongly keeled bodies out of the water.
So-called mid-water swimmers, the most common type of fish, are of many kinds and live in many habitats. The powerful fusiform tunas and the trouts, for example, are adapted for strong, fast swimming, the tunas to capture prey speedily in the open ocean and the trouts to cope with the swift currents of streams and rivers. The trout body form is well adapted to many habitats. Fishes that live in relatively quiet waters such as bays or lake shores or slow rivers usually are not strong, fast swimmers but are capable of short, quick bursts of speed to escape a predator. Many of these fishes have their sides flattened, examples being the sunfish and the freshwater angelfish of aquarists. Fish associated with the bottom or substrate usually are slow swimmers. Open-water plankton-feeding fishes almost always remain fusiform and are capable of rapid, strong movement (for example, sardines and herrings of the open ocean and also many small minnows of streams and lakes).
Bottom-living fishes are of many kinds and have undergone many types of modification of their body shape and swimming habits. Rays, which evolved from strong-swimming mid-water sharks, usually stay close to the bottom and move by undulating their large pectoral fins. Flounders live in a similar habitat and move over the bottom by undulating the entire body. Many bottom fishes dart from place to place, resting on the bottom between movements, a motion common in gobies. One goby relative, the mudskipper, has taken to living at the edge of pools along the shore of muddy mangrove swamps. It escapes its enemies by flipping rapidly over the mud, out of the water. Some catfishes, synbranchid eels, the so-called climbing perch, and a few other fishes venture out over damp ground to find more promising waters than those that they left. They move by wriggling their bodies, sometimes using strong pectoral fins; most have accessory air-breathing organs. Many bottom-dwelling fishes live in mud holes or rocky crevices. Marine eels and gobies commonly are found in such habitats and for the most part venture far beyond their cavelike homes. Some bottom dwellers, such as the clingfishes (Gobiesocidae), have developed powerful adhesive disks that enable them to remain in place on the substrate in areas such as rocky coasts, where the action of the waves is great.
The methods of reproduction in fishes are varied, but most fishes lay a large number of small eggs, fertilized and scattered outside of the body. The eggs of pelagic fishes usually remain suspended in the open water. Many shore and freshwater fishes lay eggs on the bottom or among plants. Some have adhesive eggs. The mortality of the young and especially of the eggs is very high, and often only a few individuals grow to maturity out of hundreds, thousands, and in some cases millions of eggs laid.
Males produce sperm, usually as a milky white substance called milt, in two (sometimes one) testes within the body cavity. In bony fishes a sperm duct leads from each testis to a urogenital opening behind the vent or anus. In sharks and rays and in cyclostomes the duct leads to a cloaca. Sometimes the pelvic fins are modified to help transmit the milt to the eggs at the female’s vent or on the substrate where the female has placed them. Sometimes accessory organs are used to fertilize females internally—for example, the claspers of many sharks and rays.
In the females the eggs are formed in two ovaries (sometimes only one) and pass through the ovaries to the urogenital opening and to the outside. In some fishes the eggs are fertilized internally but are shed before development takes place. Members of about a dozen families each of bony fishes (teleosts) and sharks bear live young. Many skates and rays also bear live young. In some bony fishes the eggs simply develop within the female, the young emerging when the eggs hatch (ovoviviparous). Others develop within the ovary and are nourished by ovarian tissues after hatching (viviparous). There are also other methods utilized by fishes to nourish young within the female. In all live-bearers the young are born at a relatively large size and are few in number. In one family of primarily marine fishes, the surfperches from the Pacific coast of North America, Japan, and Korea, the males of at least one species are born sexually mature, although they are not fully grown.
Some fishes are hermaphroditic—an individual producing both sperm and eggs, usually at different stages of its life. Self-fertilization, however, is probably rare.
Successful reproduction and, in many cases, defense of the eggs and the young are assured by rather stereotypical but often elaborate courtship and parental behaviour, either by the male or the female or both. Some fishes prepare nests by hollowing out depressions in the sand bottom (cichlids, for example), build nests with plant materials and sticky threads excreted by the kidneys (sticklebacks), or blow a cluster of mucus-covered bubbles at the water surface (gouramis). The eggs are laid in these structures. Some varieties of cichlids and catfishes incubate eggs in their mouths.
Some fishes, such as salmon, undergo long migrations from the ocean and up large rivers to spawn in the gravel beds where they themselves hatched (anadromous fishes). Some, such as the freshwater eels (family Anguillidae), live and grow to maturity in fresh water and migrate to the sea to spawn (catadromous fishes). Other fishes undertake shorter migrations from lakes into streams, within the ocean, or enter spawning habitats that they do not ordinarily occupy in other ways.
The basic structure and function of the fish body are similar to those of all other vertebrates. The usual four types of tissues are present: surface or epithelial, connective (bone, cartilage, and fibrous tissues, as well as their derivative, blood), nerve, and muscle tissues. In addition, the fish’s organs and organ systems parallel those of other vertebrates.
The typical fish body is streamlined and spindle-shaped, with an anterior head, a gill apparatus, and a heart, the latter lying in the midline just below the gill chamber. The body cavity, containing the vital organs, is situated behind the head in the lower anterior part of the body. The anus usually marks the posterior termination of the body cavity and most often occurs just in front of the base of the anal fin. The spinal cord and vertebral column continue from the posterior part of the head to the base of the tail fin, passing dorsal to the body cavity and through the caudal (tail) region behind the body cavity. Most of the body is of muscular tissue, a high proportion of which is necessitated by swimming. In the course of evolution this basic body plan has been modified repeatedly into the many varieties of fish shapes that exist today.
The skeleton forms an integral part of the fish’s locomotion system, as well as serving to protect vital parts. The internal skeleton consists of the skull bones (except for the roofing bones of the head, which are really part of the external skeleton), the vertebral column, and the fin supports (fin rays). The fin supports are derived from the external skeleton but will be treated here because of their close functional relationship to the internal skeleton. The internal skeleton of cyclostomes, sharks, and rays is of cartilage; that of many fossil groups and some primitive living fishes is mostly of cartilage but may include some bone. In place of the vertebral column, the earliest vertebrates had a fully developed notochord, a flexible stiff rod of viscous cells surrounded by a strong fibrous sheath. During the evolution of modern fishes the rod was replaced in part by cartilage and then by ossified cartilage. Sharks and rays retain a cartilaginous vertebral column; bony fishes have spool-shaped vertebrae that in the more primitive living forms only partially replace the notochord. The skull, including the gill arches and jaws of bony fishes, is fully, or at least partially, ossified. That of sharks and rays remains cartilaginous, at times partially replaced by calcium deposits but never by true bone.
The supportive elements of the fins (basal or radial bones or both) have changed greatly during fish evolution. Some of these changes are described in the section below (Evolution and paleontology). Most fishes possess a single dorsal fin on the midline of the back. Many have two and a few have three dorsal fins. The other fins are the single tail and anal fins and paired pelvic and pectoral fins. A small fin, the adipose fin, with hairlike fin rays, occurs in many of the relatively primitive teleosts (such as trout) on the back near the base of the caudal fin.
The skin of a fish must serve many functions. It aids in maintaining the osmotic balance, provides physical protection for the body, is the site of coloration, contains sensory receptors, and, in some fishes, functions in respiration. Mucous glands, which aid in maintaining the water balance and offer protection from bacteria, are extremely numerous in fish skin, especially in cyclostomes and teleosts. Since mucous glands are present in the modern lampreys, it is reasonable to assume that they were present in primitive fishes, such as the ancient Silurian and Devonian agnathans. Protection from abrasion and predation is another function of the fish skin, and dermal (skin) bone arose early in fish evolution in response to this need. It is thought that bone first evolved in skin and only later invaded the cartilaginous areas of the fish’s body, to provide additional support and protection. There is some argument as to which came first, cartilage or bone, and fossil evidence does not settle the question. In any event, dermal bone has played an important part in fish evolution and has different characteristics in different groups of fishes. Several groups are characterized at least in part by the kind of bony scales they possess.
Scales have played an important part in the evolution of fishes. Primitive fishes usually had thick bony plates or thick scales in several layers of bone, enamel, and related substances. Modern teleost fishes have scales of bone, which, while still protective, allow much more freedom of motion in the body. A few modern teleosts (some catfishes, sticklebacks, and others) have secondarily acquired bony plates in the skin. Modern and early sharks possessed placoid scales, a relatively primitive type of scale with a toothlike structure, consisting of an outside layer of enamel-like substance (vitrodentine), an inner layer of dentine, and a pulp cavity containing nerves and blood vessels. Primitive bony fishes had thick scales of either the ganoid or the cosmoid type. Cosmoid scales have a hard, enamel-like outer layer, an inner layer of cosmine (a form of dentine), and then a layer of vascular bone (isopedine). In ganoid scales the hard outer layer is different chemically and is called ganoin. Under this is a cosminelike layer and then a vascular bony layer. The thin, translucent bony scales of modern fishes, called cycloid and ctenoid (the latter distinguished by serrations at the edges), lack enameloid and dentine layers.
Skin has several other functions in fishes. It is well supplied with nerve endings and presumably receives tactile, thermal, and pain stimuli. Skin is also well supplied with blood vessels. Some fishes breathe in part through the skin, by the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide between the surrounding water and numerous small blood vessels near the skin surface.
Skin serves as protection through the control of coloration. Fishes exhibit an almost limitless range of colours. The colours often blend closely with the surroundings, effectively hiding the animal. Many fishes use bright colours for territorial advertisement or as recognition marks for other members of their own species, or sometimes for members of other species. Many fishes can change their colour to a greater or lesser degree, by movement of pigment within the pigment cells (chromatophores). Black pigment cells (melanophores), of almost universal occurrence in fishes, are often juxtaposed with other pigment cells. When placed beneath iridocytes or leucophores (bearing the silvery or white pigment guanine), melanophores produce structural colours of blue and green. These colours are often extremely intense, because they are formed by refraction of light through the needlelike crystals of guanine. The blue and green refracted colours are often relatively pure, lacking the red and yellow rays, which have been absorbed by the black pigment (melanin) of the melanophores. Yellow, orange, and red colours are produced by erythrophores, cells containing the appropriate carotenoid pigments. Other colours are produced by combinations of melanophores, erythrophores, and iridocytes.
The major portion of the body of most fishes consists of muscles. Most of the mass is trunk musculature, the fin muscles usually being relatively small. The caudal fin is usually the most powerful fin, being moved by the trunk musculature. The body musculature is usually arranged in rows of chevron-shaped segments on each side. Contractions of these segments, each attached to adjacent vertebrae and vertebral processes, bends the body on the vertebral joint, producing successive undulations of the body, passing from the head to the tail, and producing driving strokes of the tail. It is the latter that provides the strong forward movement for most fishes.
The digestive system, in a functional sense, starts at the mouth, with the teeth used to capture prey or collect plant foods. Mouth shape and tooth structure vary greatly in fishes, depending on the kind of food normally eaten. Most fishes are predacious, feeding on small invertebrates or other fishes and have simple conical teeth on the jaws, on at least some of the bones of the roof of the mouth, and on special gill arch structures just in front of the esophagus. The latter are throat teeth. Most predacious fishes swallow their prey whole, and the teeth are used for grasping and holding prey, for orienting prey to be swallowed (head first) and for working the prey toward the esophagus. There are a variety of tooth types in fishes. Some fishes, such as sharks and piranhas, have cutting teeth for biting chunks out of their victims. A shark’s tooth, although superficially like that of a piranha, appears in many respects to be a modified scale, while that of the piranha is like that of other bony fishes, consisting of dentine and enamel. Parrot fishes have beaklike mouths with short incisor-like teeth for breaking off coral and have heavy pavementlike throat teeth for crushing the coral. Some catfishes have small brushlike teeth, arranged in rows on the jaws, for scraping plant and animal growth from rocks. Many fishes (such as the Cyprinidae or minnows) have no jaw teeth at all but have very strong throat teeth.
Some fishes gather planktonic food by straining it from their gill cavities with numerous elongate stiff rods (gill rakers) anchored by one end to the gill bars. The food collected on these rods is passed to the throat, where it is swallowed. Most fishes have only short gill rakers that help keep food particles from escaping out the mouth cavity into the gill chamber.
Once reaching the throat, food enters a short, often greatly distensible esophagus, a simple tube with a muscular wall leading into a stomach. The stomach varies greatly in fishes, depending upon the diet. In most predacious fishes it is a simple straight or curved tube or pouch with a muscular wall and a glandular lining. Food is largely digested there and leaves the stomach in liquid form.
Between the stomach and the intestine, ducts enter the digestive tube from the liver and pancreas. The liver is a large, clearly defined organ. The pancreas may be embedded in it, diffused through it, or broken into small parts spread along some of the intestine. The junction between the stomach and the intestine is marked by a muscular valve. Pyloric ceca (blind sacs) occur in some fishes at this junction and have a digestive or absorptive function or both.
The intestine itself is quite variable in length, depending upon the fish’s diet. It is short in predacious forms, sometimes no longer than the body cavity, but long in herbivorous forms, being coiled and several times longer than the entire length of the fish in some species of South American catfishes. The intestine is primarily an organ for absorbing nutrients into the bloodstream. The larger its internal surface, the greater its absorptive efficiency, and a spiral valve is one method of increasing its absorption surface.
Sharks, rays, chimaeras, lungfishes, surviving chondrosteans, holosteans, and even a few of the more primitive teleosts have a spiral valve or at least traces of it in the intestine. Most modern teleosts have increased the area of the intestinal walls by having numerous folds and villi (fingerlike projections) somewhat like those in humans. Undigested substances are passed to the exterior through the anus in most teleost fishes. In lungfishes, sharks, and rays, it is first passed through the cloaca, a common cavity receiving the intestinal opening and the ducts from the urogenital system.
Oxygen and carbon dioxide dissolve in water, and most fishes exchange dissolved oxygen and carbon dioxide in water by means of the gills. The gills lie behind and to the side of the mouth cavity and consist of fleshy filaments supported by the gill arches and filled with blood vessels, which give gills a bright red colour. Water taken in continuously through the mouth passes backward between the gill bars and over the gill filaments, where the exchange of gases takes place. The gills are protected by a gill cover in teleosts and many other fishes but by flaps of skin in sharks, rays, and some of the older fossil fish groups. The blood capillaries in the gill filaments are close to the gill surface to take up oxygen from the water and to give up excess carbon dioxide to the water.
Most modern fishes have a hydrostatic (ballast) organ, called the swim bladder, that lies in the body cavity just below the kidney and above the stomach and intestine. It originated as a diverticulum of the digestive canal. In advanced teleosts, especially the acanthopterygians, the bladder has lost its connection with the digestive tract, a condition called physoclistic. The connection has been retained (physostomous) by many relatively primitive teleosts. In several unrelated lines of fishes, the bladder has become specialized as a lung or, at least, as a highly vascularized accessory breathing organ. Some fishes with such accessory organs are obligate air breathers and will drown if denied access to the surface, even in well-oxygenated water. Fishes with a hydrostatic form of swim bladder can control their depth by regulating the amount of gas in the bladder. The gas, mostly oxygen, is secreted into the bladder by special glands, rendering the fish more buoyant; the gas is absorbed into the bloodstream by another special organ, reducing the overall buoyancy and allowing the fish to sink. Some deep-sea fishes may have oils, rather than gas, in the bladder. Other deep-sea and some bottom-living forms have much-reduced swim bladders or have lost the organ entirely.
The swim bladder of fishes follows the same developmental pattern as the lungs of land vertebrates. There is no doubt that the two structures have the same historical origin in primitive fishes. More or less intermediate forms still survive among the more primitive types of fishes, such as the lungfishes Lepidosiren and Protopterus.
The circulatory, or blood vascular, system consists of the heart, the arteries, the capillaries, and the veins. It is in the capillaries that the interchange of oxygen, carbon dioxide, nutrients, and other substances such as hormones and waste products takes place. The capillaries lead to the veins, which return the venous blood with its waste products to the heart, kidneys, and gills. There are two kinds of capillary beds: those in the gills and those in the rest of the body. The heart, a folded continuous muscular tube with three or four saclike enlargements, undergoes rhythmic contractions and receives venous blood in a sinus venosus. It passes the blood to an auricle and then into a thick muscular pump, the ventricle. From the ventricle the blood goes to a bulbous structure at the base of a ventral aorta just below the gills. The blood passes to the afferent (receiving) arteries of the gill arches and then to the gill capillaries. There waste gases are given off to the environment, and oxygen is absorbed. The oxygenated blood enters efferent (exuant) arteries of the gill arches and then flows into the dorsal aorta. From there blood is distributed to the tissues and organs of the body. One-way valves prevent backflow. The circulation of fishes thus differs from that of the reptiles, birds, and mammals in that oxygenated blood is not returned to the heart prior to distribution to the other parts of the body.
The primary excretory organ in fishes, as in other vertebrates, is the kidney. In fishes some excretion also takes place in the digestive tract, skin, and especially the gills (where ammonia is given off). Compared with land vertebrates, fishes have a special problem in maintaining their internal environment at a constant concentration of water and dissolved substances, such as salts. Proper balance of the internal environment (homeostasis) of a fish is in a great part maintained by the excretory system, especially the kidney.
The kidney, gills, and skin play an important role in maintaining a fish’s internal environment and checking the effects of osmosis. Marine fishes live in an environment in which the water around them has a greater concentration of salts than they can have inside their body and still maintain life. Freshwater fishes, on the other hand, live in water with a much lower concentration of salts than they require inside their bodies. Osmosis tends to promote the loss of water from the body of a marine fish and absorption of water by that of a freshwater fish. Mucus in the skin tends to slow the process but is not a sufficient barrier to prevent the movement of fluids through the permeable skin. When solutions on two sides of a permeable membrane have different concentrations of dissolved substances, water will pass through the membrane into the more concentrated solution, while the dissolved chemicals move into the area of lower concentration (diffusion).
The kidney of freshwater fishes is often larger in relation to body weight than that of marine fishes. In both groups the kidney excretes wastes from the body, but the kidney of freshwater fishes also excretes large amounts of water, counteracting the water absorbed through the skin. Freshwater fishes tend to lose salt to the environment and must replace it. They get some salt from their food, but the gills and skin inside the mouth actively absorb salt from water passed through the mouth. This absorption is performed by special cells capable of moving salts against the diffusion gradient. Freshwater fishes drink very little water and take in little water with their food.
Marine fishes must conserve water, and therefore their kidneys excrete little water. To maintain their water balance, marine fishes drink large quantities of seawater, retaining most of the water and excreting the salt. Most nitrogenous waste in marine fishes appears to be secreted by the gills as ammonia. Marine fishes can excrete salt by clusters of special cells (chloride cells) in the gills.
There are several teleosts—for example, the salmon—that travel between fresh water and seawater and must adjust to the reversal of osmotic gradients. They adjust their physiological processes by spending time (often surprisingly little time) in the intermediate brackish environment.
Marine hagfishes, sharks, and rays have osmotic concentrations in their blood about equal to that of seawater and so do not have to drink water nor perform much physiological work to maintain their osmotic balance. In sharks and rays the osmotic concentration is kept high by retention of urea in the blood. Freshwater sharks have a lowered concentration of urea in the blood.
Endocrine glands secrete their products into the bloodstream and body tissues and, along with the central nervous system, control and regulate many kinds of body functions. Cyclostomes have a well-developed endocrine system, and presumably it was well developed in the early Agnatha, ancestral to modern fishes. Although the endocrine system in fishes is similar to that of higher vertebrates, there are numerous differences in detail. The pituitary, the thyroid, the suprarenals, the adrenals, the pancreatic islets, the sex glands (ovaries and testes), the inner wall of the intestine, and the bodies of the ultimobranchial gland make up the endocrine system in fishes. There are some others whose function is not well understood. These organs regulate sexual activity and reproduction, growth, osmotic pressure, general metabolic activities such as the storage of fat and the utilization of foodstuffs, blood pressure, and certain aspects of skin colour. Many of these activities are also controlled in part by the central nervous system, which works with the endocrine system in maintaining the life of a fish. Some parts of the endocrine system are developmentally, and undoubtedly evolutionarily, derived from the nervous system.
As in all vertebrates, the nervous system of fishes is the primary mechanism coordinating body activities, as well as integrating these activities in the appropriate manner with stimuli from the environment. The central nervous system, consisting of the brain and spinal cord, is the primary integrating mechanism. The peripheral nervous system, consisting of nerves that connect the brain and spinal cord to various body organs, carries sensory information from special receptor organs such as the eyes, internal ears, nares (sense of smell), taste glands, and others to the integrating centres of the brain and spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system also carries information via different nerve cells from the integrating centres of the brain and spinal cord. This coded information is carried to the various organs and body systems, such as the skeletal muscular system, for appropriate action in response to the original external or internal stimulus. Another branch of the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, helps to coordinate the activities of many glands and organs and is itself closely connected to the integrating centres of the brain.
The brain of the fish is divided into several anatomical and functional parts, all closely interconnected but each serving as the primary centre of integrating particular kinds of responses and activities. Several of these centres or parts are primarily associated with one type of sensory perception, such as sight, hearing, or smell (olfaction).
The sense of smell is important in almost all fishes. Certain eels with tiny eyes depend mostly on smell for location of food. The olfactory, or nasal, organ of fishes is located on the dorsal surface of the snout. The lining of the nasal organ has special sensory cells that perceive chemicals dissolved in the water, such as substances from food material, and send sensory information to the brain by way of the first cranial nerve. Odour also serves as an alarm system. Many fishes, especially various species of freshwater minnows, react with alarm to a chemical released from the skin of an injured member of their own species.
Many fishes have a well-developed sense of taste, and tiny pitlike taste buds or organs are located not only within their mouth cavities but also over their heads and parts of their body. Catfishes, which often have poor vision, have barbels (“whiskers”) that serve as supplementary taste organs, those around the mouth being actively used to search out food on the bottom. Some species of naturally blind cave fishes are especially well supplied with taste buds, which often cover most of their body surface.
Sight is extremely important in most fishes. The eye of a fish is basically like that of all other vertebrates, but the eyes of fishes are extremely varied in structure and adaptation. In general, fishes living in dark and dim water habitats have large eyes, unless they have specialized in some compensatory way so that another sense (such as smell) is dominant, in which case the eyes will often be reduced. Fishes living in brightly lighted shallow waters often will have relatively small but efficient eyes. Cyclostomes have somewhat less elaborate eyes than other fishes, with skin stretched over the eyeball perhaps making their vision somewhat less effective. Most fishes have a spherical lens and accommodate their vision to far or near subjects by moving the lens within the eyeball. A few sharks accommodate by changing the shape of the lens, as in land vertebrates. Those fishes that are heavily dependent upon the eyes have especially strong muscles for accommodation. Most fishes see well, despite the restrictions imposed by frequent turbidity of the water and by light refraction.
Fossil evidence suggests that colour vision evolved in fishes more than 300 million years ago, but not all living fishes have retained this ability. Experimental evidence indicates that many shallow-water fishes, if not all, have colour vision and see some colours especially well, but some bottom-dwelling shore fishes live in areas where the water is sufficiently deep to filter out most if not all colours, and these fishes apparently never see colours. When tested in shallow water, they apparently are unable to respond to colour differences.
Sound perception and balance are intimately associated senses in a fish. The organs of hearing are entirely internal, located within the skull, on each side of the brain and somewhat behind the eyes. Sound waves, especially those of low frequencies, travel readily through water and impinge directly upon the bones and fluids of the head and body, to be transmitted to the hearing organs. Fishes readily respond to sound; for example, a trout conditioned to escape by the approach of fishermen will take flight upon perceiving footsteps on a stream bank even if it cannot see a fisherman. Compared with humans, however, the range of sound frequencies heard by fishes is greatly restricted. Many fishes communicate with each other by producing sounds in their swim bladders, in their throats by rasping their teeth, and in other ways.
A fish or other vertebrate seldom has to rely on a single type of sensory information to determine the nature of the environment around it. A catfish uses taste and touch when examining a food object with its oral barbels. Like most other animals, fishes have many touch receptors over their body surface. Pain and temperature receptors also are present in fishes and presumably produce the same kind of information to a fish as to humans. Fishes react in a negative fashion to stimuli that would be painful to human beings, suggesting that they feel a sensation of pain.
An important sensory system in fishes that is absent in other vertebrates (except some amphibians) is the lateral line system. This consists of a series of heavily innervated small canals located in the skin and bone around the eyes, along the lower jaw, over the head, and down the mid-side of the body, where it is associated with the scales. Intermittently along these canals are located tiny sensory organs (pit organs) that apparently detect changes in pressure. The system allows a fish to sense changes in water currents and pressure, thereby helping the fish to orient itself to the various changes that occur in the physical environment.
Although a great many fossil fishes have been found and described, they represent a tiny portion of the long and complex evolution of fishes, and knowledge of fish evolution remains relatively fragmentary. In the classification presented in this article, fishlike vertebrates are divided into seven categories, the members of each having a different basic structural organization and different physical and physiological adaptations for the problems presented by the environment. The broad basic pattern has been one of successive replacement of older groups by newer, better-adapted groups. One or a few members of a group evolved a basically more efficient means of feeding, breathing, or swimming or several better ways of living. These better-adapted groups then forced the extinction of members of the older group with which they competed for available food, breeding places, or other necessities of life. As the new fishes became well established, some of them evolved further and adapted to other habitats, where they continued to replace members of the old group already there. The process was repeated until all or almost all members of the old group in a variety of habitats had been replaced by members of the newer evolutionary line.
The earliest vertebrate fossils of certain relationships are fragments of dermal armour of jawless fishes (superclass Agnatha, order Heterostraci) from the Upper Ordovician Period in North America, about 450 million years in age. Early Ordovician toothlike fragments from the former Soviet Union are less certainly remains of agnathans. It is uncertain whether the North American jawless fishes inhabited shallow coastal marine waters, where their remains became fossilized, or were freshwater vertebrates washed into coastal deposits by stream action.
Jawless fishes probably arose from ancient, small, soft-bodied filter-feeding organisms much like and probably also ancestral to the modern sand-dwelling filter feeders, the Cephalochordata (Amphioxus and its relatives). The body in the ancestral animals was probably stiffened by a notochord. Although a vertebrate origin in fresh water is much debated by paleontologists, it is possible that mobility of the body and protection provided by dermal armour arose in response to streamflow in the freshwater environment and to the need to escape from and resist the clawed invertebrate eurypterids that lived in the same waters. Because of the marine distribution of the surviving primitive chordates, however, many paleontologists doubt that the vertebrates arose in fresh water.
Heterostracan remains are next found in what appear to be delta deposits in two North American localities of Silurian age. By the close of the Silurian, about 416 million years ago, European heterostracan remains are found in what appear to be delta or coastal deposits. In the Late Silurian of the Baltic area, lagoon or freshwater deposits yield jawless fishes of the order Osteostraci. Somewhat later in the Silurian from the same region, layers contain fragments of jawed acanthodians, the earliest group of jawed vertebrates, and of jawless fishes. These layers lie between marine beds but appear to be washed out from fresh waters of a coastal region.
It is evident, therefore, that by the end of the Silurian both jawed and jawless vertebrates were well established and already must have had a long history of development. Yet paleontologists have remains only of specialized forms that cannot have been the ancestors of the placoderms and bony fishes that appear in the next period, the Devonian. No fossils are known of the more primitive ancestors of the agnathans and acanthodians. The extensive marine beds of the Silurian and those of the Ordovician are essentially void of vertebrate history. It is believed that the ancestors of fishlike vertebrates evolved in upland fresh waters, where whatever few and relatively small fossil beds were made probably have been long since eroded away. Remains of the earliest vertebrates may never be found.
By the close of the Silurian, all known orders of jawless vertebrates had evolved, except perhaps the modern cyclostomes, which are without the hard parts that ordinarily are preserved as fossils. Cyclostomes were unknown as fossils until 1968, when a lamprey of modern body structure was reported from the Middle Pennsylvanian of Illinois, in deposits more than 300 million years old. Fossil evidence of the four orders of armoured jawless vertebrates is absent from deposits later than the Devonian. Presumably, these vertebrates became extinct at that time, being replaced by the more efficient and probably more aggressive placoderms, acanthodians, selachians (sharks and relatives), and by early bony fishes. Cyclostomes survived probably because early on they evolved from anaspid agnathans and developed a rasping tonguelike structure and a sucking mouth, enabling them to prey on other fishes. With this way of life they apparently had no competition from other fish groups. Cyclostomes, the hagfishes and lampreys, were once thought to be closely related because of the similarity in their suctorial mouths, but it is now understood that the hagfishes, order Myxiniformes, are the most primitive living chordates, and they are classified separately from the lampreys, order Petromyzontiformes.
Early jawless vertebrates probably fed on tiny organisms by filter feeding, as do the larvae of their descendants, the modern lampreys. The gill cavity of the early agnathans was large. It is thought that small organisms taken from the bottom by a nibbling action of the mouth, or more certainly by a sucking action through the mouth, were passed into the gill cavity along with water for breathing. Small organisms then were strained out by the gill apparatus and directed to the food canal. The gill apparatus thus evolved as a feeding, as well as a breathing, structure. The head and gills in the agnathans were protected by a heavy dermal armour; the tail region was free, allowing motion for swimming.
Most important for the evolution of fishes and vertebrates in general was the early appearance of bone, cartilage, and enamel-like substance. These materials became modified in later fishes, enabling them to adapt to many aquatic environments and finally even to land. Other basic organs and tissues of the vertebrates—such as the central nervous system, heart, liver, digestive tract, kidney, and circulatory system— undoubtedly were present in the ancestors of the agnathans. In many ways, bone, both external and internal, was the key to vertebrate evolution.
The next class of fishes to appear was the Acanthodii, containing the earliest known jawed vertebrates, which arose in the Late Silurian, more than 416 million years ago. The acanthodians declined after the Devonian but lasted into the Early Permian, a little less than 280 million years ago. The first complete specimens appear in Lower Devonian freshwater deposits, but later in the Devonian and Permian some members appear to have been marine. Most were small fishes, not more than 75 cm (approximately 30 inches) in length.
We know nothing of the ancestors of the acanthodians. They must have arisen from some jawless vertebrate, probably in fresh water. They appear to have been active swimmers with almost no head armour but with large eyes, indicating that they depended heavily on vision. Perhaps they preyed on invertebrates. The rows of spines and spinelike fins between the pectoral and pelvic fins give some credence to the idea that paired fins arose from “fin folds” along the body sides.
The relationships of the acanthodians to other jawed vertebrates are obscure. They possess features found in both sharks and bony fishes. They are like early bony fishes in possessing ganoidlike scales and a partially ossified internal skeleton. Certain aspects of the jaw appear to be more like those of bony fishes than sharks, but the bony fin spines and certain aspects of the gill apparatus would seem to favour relationships with early sharks. Acanthodians do not seem particularly close to the Placodermi, although, like the placoderms, they apparently possessed less efficient tooth replacement and tooth structure than the sharks and the bony fishes, possibly one reason for their subsequent extinction.
Moderate breeze with rough seas, mostly sunny. Heading south to Hawaii on the Holland America cruise ship Zaandam.
On March 29, 2017, the Center on Children and Families at Brookings released its fifth annual Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI)—a ranking of school choice in the nation’s 100 largest school districts. Following a presentation of the research by Brookings Senior Fellow Russ Whitehurst, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos gave keynote remarks. After her remarks, the secretary participated in a moderated Q&A with Whitehurst and took questions from the audience.
Photo credit: Ralph Alswang
After 4 years chasing, finally have this bird in my photo album!
Jerdon's baza (Aviceda jerdoni)
Jerdon's baza (Aviceda jerdoni) is a moderate sized brown hawk with a thin white-tipped black crest usually held erect. It is found in South-east Asia. It inhabits foothills in the terai and is rarer in evergreen forests and tea estates.
The common name and Latin binomial commemorate the surgeon-naturalist Thomas C. Jerdon.
Description
It is about 46 cm long. It is confusable with crested goshawk or the crested hawk-eagle in flight, but can be distinguished by the longer upright crest, very broad and rounded paddle-shaped wings and mostly plain and pale underparts. It has a white chin and a bold black mesial stripe.
Several subspecies are recognized within its large distribution range. These include:
A. j. jerdoni (Blyth, 1842) - Sikkum to Assam, Burma, Sumatra
A. j. ceylonensis (Legge, 1876) - South India and Sri Lanka
A. j. borneensis (Sharpe, 1893) - Borneo
A. j. magnirostris (Kaup, 1847) - Luzon, Mindanao
A. j. leucopias (Sharpe, 1888) - Romblon, Samar, Palawan
A. j. celebensis (Schlegel, 1873)
Habits
The bird is typically seen in pairs making aerial sallies; crest held erect. Occasionally, the birds may be seen in small family parties of 3 to 5 seen in flight near edge of forests. The birds indulge in 'soaring and undulating' display flights near the nest. Breeding season varies locally but the bird is known to breed almost the entire year with the exception of a few months around April and May. Food includes lizards, grasshoppers and other large insects. The stomach contents of a specimen collected in present-day Kurseong included agamid lizard, Japalura variegata, several longicorn beetles and mantises.
[Credit: en.wikipedia.org]
This poster is a call for Americans to start working together instead of arguing. In this case, "moderate" doesn't mean middle-of-the-road. Instead, it's the opposite of "extremist" --someone who will actually be willing to listen to others and work for solutions. The rancor in Washington is slowing our progress to a standstill. Be sure to take a look at our other posters. Be sure to download the large size and post them.
Update: By popular demand this poster now available on t-shirts and other swag.
Panel moderated by Betty Liu of Bloomberg TV. Panelists include: Richard W. Fisher, Former President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; Alan Greenspan, Former Chairman, Federal Reserve Board; and Lawrence B. Lindsey, Former Director of the NEC under Pres. George W. Bush and Former Governor of the Federal Reserve Board.
basta censure! liberi di esprimersi!
NO CENSURA!!!
flickr sperrt uns aus! Und auch dich!
Seit gestern werden für deutsche Nutzer keine Bilder mehr angezeigt, die als 'moderate' oder 'restricted' markiert sind! Es gibt keine Moeglichkeit das umzustellen - das ist eine grobe Unverschämtheit und Frechheit von flickr!
Füge das Bild zu deinen Favoriten hinzu und poste es!
English:
If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off.
In other words that means, that german users can not access photos on flickr that are not flaged "safe" ... only flowers and landscapes for the germans ...
We will not let this happen! Copy and upload this picture to your account - show flickr who we are!
Español:
No sé cuando, pero muy recientemente a las cuentas de Alemania, Hong Kong, Corea y Singapur les han prohibido ver las fotos que están en el Safe Search, las mismas en las que a nosotros nos dan la opcíón de ver o no ver. A ellos simplemente se lo prohiben. Chale no? Para más información ver el grupo: www.flickr.com/groups/againstcensorship/
Francais:
Si votre compte Yahoo! est basé à Singapour, à Hong Kong, en Corée ou en Allemagne, vous ne pourrez voir que les photos qui n'ont pas été marquées comme ayant un contenu qui peut choquer. Toutes les autres ne vous seront pas accessibles. Vous serez donc condamnés à ne voir que des paysages et des fleurs. Il ne faut pas laisser faire ça. Envoyez cette photo sur votre compte pour montrer à Flickr que nous savons nous mobiliser contre la censure !
Em português:
Se você tem uma Yahoo! ID de Cingapura, Alemanha, Hong Kong ou Coréia você apenas será capaz de ver fotos classificadas como seguras e segundo seu termo de serviços não poderá desligar esta função.
Em outras palavras: alemães, coreanos, cingapurenses e os habitantes de Hong Kong não podem visualizar fotos no flickr que estejam classificadas como restritas ou moderadas.... apenas flores e paisagens para eles.
Nós não vamos deixar isto acontecer! Copie e faça upload desta foto - mostre ao flickr quem somos!
Italiano:
se il tuo ID yahoo è localizzato a Singapore, in Germania oppure ad Hong Kong o in Korea potrai vedere solo foto dal contenuto che è in accordo con il locale
accordo dei termini di servizio per cui gli utenti flickr di quelle nazioni non potranno cambiare da SafeSearch on in SafeSearch off.
In altre parole ciò significa che gli utenti tedeschi e delle altre nazioni citate non potranno accedere a foto su flickr che non sono flaggate "safe" e quindi solo fiori e paesaggi per i tedeschi.
Copia e uploada quest' immagine sul tuo account - mostra a flickr chi siamo!
Libertà non è uno spazio libero.
Libertà è partecipazione
This image of the ash plume from the Pavlof volcano in Alaska was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument that flies aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite. The image was taken on May 19 at 23:55 UTC (7:55 p.m. EDT). The red outline indicates the heat coming from the volcano, and the dark brown plume of ash is blowing in a northeasterly direction.
Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team
---
Alaska’s Pavlof Volcano: NASA’s View from Space
The Pavlof volcano, located in the Alaska Peninsula National Wildlife Refuge has been producing steam and gas plumes since May 13. The volcano's plumes were captured by NASA satellite imagery and photographs taken by the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The Pavlof volcano is located about 625 miles (1,000 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage, Alaska.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured stunning photos of Pavlof’s eruption on May 18, and the next day, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites captured different views of the ash plume. The ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) instrument that also flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite, provided a look at the temperatures and lava flow from the eruption.
The Terra MODIS image was taken on May 19 at 2:10 p.m. AKDT local time (6:10 p.m. EDT) and showed the area of heat from the volcano as well as the ash plume. The ash plume appeared as a dark brown color, blowing in a northerly direction for about 30 miles. At that time the ash cloud was about 20,000 feet above sea level.
The ASTER instrument is a high resolution imaging instrument that is flying on the Terra satellite. ASTER captured a visible and near infrared image of Pavlof Volcano at 2:10 p.m. AKDT local time (6:10 p.m. EDT). The maximum brightness temperature in the ASTER image was near 900 degrees Celsius (1,600 Fahrenheit) at the volcano’s vent, and the lava flow appeared to be 4.8 kilometers (3 miles) long.
On Thursday, May 23 at 10:39 a.m. AKDT local time (2:39 p.m. EDT), the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) reported that the Pavlof continued erupting at low levels. At that time, the Pavlof Volcano is under a “Watch” and the current aviation color code is “Orange.”
There are four levels of eruption: Green, Yellow, Orange and Red. Green is a non-eruptive state. Yellow means the volcano is exhibiting signs of elevated unrest. According to the AVO website, an Orange aviation code means that the volcano is exhibiting heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption, timeframe uncertain, or, the eruption is underway with no or minor volcanic-ash emissions. Red means and eruption is imminent or underway.
Small discrete events, likely indicative of small explosions continue to be detected on seismic and pressure sensor networks over the past 24 hours. According to the AVO website, imagery and pilot reports from May 23 showed a very weak steam and gas plume with little to no ash issuing from the vent. Imagery from the ASTER instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite indicated heightened surface temperatures through cloud cover, which is a sign that the activity continues.
So far, the Pavlof’s activity has been characterized by relatively low-energy lava fountaining and ash emission, but the AVO cautions that “more energetic explosions could occur without warning that could place ash clouds above 20,000 feet.” For future updates, visit the Alaska Volcano Observatory Daily Update web page: www.avo.alaska.edu/ or volcanoes.usgs.gov/
The Alaska Volcano Observatory is a cooperative program of the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, and the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.
Text credit: the Alaska Volcano Observatory/ Rob Gutro, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center