Molybdenum is from the Greek word molybdos meaning “lead like.” It is directly mined and is a byproduct of copper mining. It was used very infrequently up until the 19th century when Schneider and Co decided to use Molybdenum as an alloying agent in steel. Today there are many uses of molybdenum.

Molybdenum is still used as an alloy agent in steel. All high strength steel contains from .25% to 8% molybdenum which contributes to the hardenability of the steel. It also improves the strength of steel under high temperatures and improves resistance to corrosion.

Steel with molybdenum is used in architectural applications near the ocean; and in environments where road salts are used and there is heavy industrial pollution. The Petrons Towers in Kuala Lumpur are a great example of the use of molybdenum stainless steel.

Nuclear energy applications also use molybdenum as do many aircraft parts and missile parts. It’s a catalyst in petroleum refining; in fact it is one of the most valuable. It is also used as a filament material in electrical applications and on electrodes for glass furnaces that are electrically heated. It is a good lubricant that will work in temperatures much higher than oil without decomposing.

Its uses are actually more in-depth than one might think. You’ll find it commonly used within the power industry, chemical processing industry, water industry, and wastewater industry. It is also used in construction, building, and architecture; which one might have guessed considering its association to steel. And you will find it in the food industry which seems a bit unusual.

Molybdenum is used to harden and strengthen cast iron. It accomplishes this by changing the pearlite temperature. The use of molybdenum eliminates the need for special heat treatments.

Molybdenum is also used in nickel based alloys, which includes jet engines. It strengthens the nickel alloy and extends the service temperature. This combination is considered a super alloy. Over 1/3 of a jet engine’s weight is made up of this super alloy.

Molybdenum is a silvery white metal that is very hard. However it is more ductile and softer than tungsten. It has a very high melting point. In fact the only other two metals that have a higher melting point are tantalum and tungsten. Its prime use is in the hardenability and tempering of metals such as steel. It is not a product most of us will ever have direct involvement with but we will likely encounter it in a more subtle manner.

Lucid dreaming means dreaming while you know that you are dreaming. The term was coined by Frederik van Eeden who used the word “lucid” in the sense of mental clarity. With practice nearly anyone can experience lucid dreams.

Lucidity is not the same as dream control. It is possible to be lucid and have little control over the dream. However, becoming lucid in a dream is likely to increase your ability to deliberately influence the events within the dream. With practice you may extend the amount of control that you have over dream events. Many lucid dreamers choose to do something permitted only by the extraordinary freedom of the dream state, such as flying.

Some people have objections to lucid dreams. They say that it is un-natural and could be harmful to the psyche. In my opinion this is not true at all. Perhaps if all of our dreams were lucid and controlled there may be some harm, but with our lucid dreams spread out among many “normal” dreams we have plenty of time for non-lucid dreaming.

While we are in a dream our mind accepts what we see and feel as reality. We often find ourselves in very unusual circumstances when compared to our waking life. You could be living in a different house or driving a different car. The sky could be green and the river yellow. In most cases we accept these things as being true. Why doesn’t the mind “think” ‘Hey! I don’t have this vehicle’ or ‘This isn’t where I live!’ or even ‘Hey! I know the sky isn’t supposed to be that color!’

This is what I call incongruities. Things in our dreams that are not “normal”. We must wonder, and many have, why our mind so readily accepts anything we experience within our dreams as being real. We know there are no monsters. We know the proper colors for things. We know our home and our daily life. While we are dreaming we often forget these things and we believe what we see in the dream.

Just knowing this and thinking about it can actually help you on your way to a lucid dream experience. An incongruity is one of the triggers to lucid dreaming. A trigger is that which inspires or begins lucidity.

Here is an example of this from one of my own lucid dreams:

I was driving a blue Ford Bronco down a dirt road. I think it was a late 70’s model. There was a young boy in the passenger seat. I was giving him a ride because his motorcycle had run out of gas. The bike was in the back. Suddenly I realized it. I did not own a blue Bronco! In the dream I slammed on the breaks and held my hands up. “I don’t own a Ford bronco!” I said, “I am dreaming!” from that point on I was lucid.

A recurring dream or nightmare can also be used as a trigger. If you have a recurring dream make a conscious effort to realize that you are dreaming the next time you are in that situation. If the dream involves a certain person or place try to think as you go to sleep, “The next time I see that house I will know that I am dreaming”. Since the dream is recurring it wont be long before you see that house, person, etc. This may take several attempts. Don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t work the very first time.

Another technique that works for a lot of people is asking yourself “Am I dreaming?” and leaving notes for yourself. Several times a day ask yourself the question aloud. Also write the question on a note and put it on the refrigerator. Put the same message in other places where you will see them throughout the day. Many people will find them self asking that question or seeing the question written on a note while they are actually dreaming. This will trigger a lucid dream.

My first lucid dream, that is the first one I had when I was trying to achieve lucidity, was triggered by a flying dream.

Try to go to sleep in the same place and around the same time as much as possible. It is best to sleep with silence as music or other sounds can affect your dreaming. If you do choose to listen to music while you are going to sleep choose soft and soothing music, preferably without vocals. Use the same music each time. Before you go to sleep concentrate on a trigger. My first time I said, “tonight I will fly”, aloud several times and I concentrated on it. The second night I had a flying dream but I did not become lucid. On the fourth night I had another flying dream and at that time I became lucid. I was then able to fly to wherever I wanted to!

The trigger or combination of triggers that you use will depend upon you. If you have a common dream theme this is a great trigger. Just concentrate on the next time that you see or experience that you will be dreaming. Think of it as often as you can while you are awake.

Lucid dreamers often comment to themselves in dreams. You may say aloud, “This is a dream! I know that I am dreaming.”

Make a list of questions that you have about dreams. Read the list often and look over it several times and concentrate on it before you go to bed.

Can you read text in a dream? Can you add numbers in a dream? These were some questions I had on my list at one time. I had read in a dream book that it was not possible to read text or to calculate numbers in a dream, but I didn’t believe it. I eventually found myself lucid in an office. I walked over to a calendar on the wall and I read the text describing a New England farm house. I turned to another man there and said, “You see? You can read text in a dream!” I turned back to the calendar to read again and found that the words had completely changed. That amazed me and I commented to the other man about it. Next I walked over to a desk and found a calculator. I added and subtracted numbers and came up with correct answers. Yes, you can read text and perform mathematics in a dream. I proved it to myself beyond any doubt and with more confidence than I ever could have by reading anything about dreams.

Keep a Dream Journal

Keeping a dream journal is one of the most effective tools to achieving lucid dreams. Try to write down your dreams as soon after you wake up as you can. Don’t just write a narrative of what took place in the dream. Record your thoughts and emotions felt. This will help you later on as you develop your dreaming research. Be sure to note all major elements, such as people, places, animals, etc.

Keeping a dream journal will also help you a great deal in understanding your non-lucid dreams. As you continue to write in your journal and re-read your previous entries you will begin to see parallels with your dreams and your life. Gradually you will be able to recognize what the symbols in your dreams are really saying to you.

Once lucid in a dream, people can often choose their actions and exert some deliberate control over the dream content. This ability has been utilized in the laboratory to study lucid dreaming and dream psychophysiology. For example, proof that lucid dreams occur in REM sleep was achieved by having subjects give a prearranged distinct signal with deliberate eye movements to mark the points in time when they realized they were dreaming. The dreamers’ reports of the eye movements they had made in the dreams corresponded exactly to their physical eye movements as recorded by means of electro-oculograms on a polygraph record. Reports from experiments conducted using eye movement signaling in lucid dreams can be found in the literature (Dane, 1984; Fenwick et al., 1984; Hearne, 1978; LaBerge, Nagel, Dement & Zarcone, 1981; Ogilvie, Hunt, Kushniruk, & Newman, 1983).

What Are The Benefits of Lucid Dreaming?

The scientific study of dreaming and REM sleep

A variety of psychological and recreational applications.

Lucid dreaming can be a powerful tool for overcoming nightmares

In therapy, lucid dreams appear to be promising for providing personal insight, assisting with integration, and as a safe environment for experimentation with new behaviors (LaBerge & Rheingold, 1990).

Many lay people are attracted to lucid dreaming because it offers an outlet for fantasy, an opportunity for adventure unfettered by the laws of physics or society, and free of risk. As such, lucid dreaming is for many a source of creative and inspiring recreation. Anecdotes indicate that lucid dreams are helpful for artistic creativity, problem-solving, and practicing skills for waking life (LaBerge & Rheingold, 1990).

Dreams hold the most vivid mental images attainable by most people. Lucid dreaming is probably the best method for achieving the benefits such as enhancing physical performance, learning, remembering and facilitating healing.

REFERENCES

Dane, J. (1984). An empirical evaluation of two techniques for lucid dream induction. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgia State Univ.

Fenwick, P., Schatzman, M., Worsley, A., Adams, J., Stone, S., & Baker, A. (1984). Lucid dreaming: Correspondence between dreamed and actual events in one subject during REM sleep. Biological Psychol, 18, 243-252.

Hearne, K. M. T. (1978). Lucid dreams: An electrophysiological and psychological study. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, U of Liverpool.

LaBerge, S., Nagel, L., Dement, W., & Zarcone, V. (1981). Lucid dreaming verified by volitional communication during REM sleep. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 52, 727-732.

Ogilvie, R., Hunt, H., Kushniruk, A. & Newman, J. (1983). Lucid dreams and the arousal continuum. Sleep Research, 12, 182.

LaBerge, S. & Rheingold, H. (1990). Exploring the world of lucid

dreaming. New York: Ballantine.

With all the paranoia of mind control and how Neuro Linguistic Probramming (NLP) can be (and is) used to “mess with peoples heads” it’s high time to pull the cat out of the bag and let people know exactly what is possible.

For example, can you create an addiction in someone using Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)?

Yes, you can.

Before you learn the steps to do it and how to protect yourself, let me give you two warnings.

First, don’t do this to people unless you are giving them a compulsion for something they want that will be good for them like exercize and healthy foods. Anything else and it may seem fun to think about but leave it at that. Only think about it, don’t do it. It’s just not a nice thing to do to people.

Second, To do this you have to be very good at NLP, report building and anchoring etc.

Start by eliciting what is called the NLP submodalities of a compulsion a person has. You can do this by asking what are some things they have compulsions for, like chocolate, and then asking “As you feel that complusion what sort of images is your mind making? Where do you see those pictures? How big are the images? Color or Black and White? ” and so on.

Then begin to describe what you want them to have a compulsion/addiction for in exactly the same way. Describe the new compulsion as being seen in the same place, etc.

I’m not going to give you any more detail than that. It’s more than enough to experiment with.

Using this pattern a person can create a compulsion for drugs, sex, money, perfection, driving fast, you name it, but you can also create compulsions for exercize, punctuality, orderlyness and many so-called “good” things.

There are ways to prevent someone from covertly creating a compulsion in you. First be aware of the mental and emotional states that people are asking you to describe and be on guard when they start to talk about compulsions.

If you suspect someone has helped covertly create an unwanted compulsion in you (good luck) the compulsion can be undone with what is called the meta yes/meta no process.

In Meta Yes/Meta No you’ll start by thinking of something unrelated to the compulsion that you would say “No” to. Think of that item and bring up the very strong feeling and repeatedly say “No” in a very firm and congruent manner. Practice it until the “No!” and the feeling are deeply linked to one another. The next step is to begin saying “No!” repeatedly to the compulsion and do it with the same energy and conviction as when you started the process.

The fastest way to build muscle is to be consistent, once you have learned what you need to know about diet and bodybuilding exercise. Provided you are following the right exercises in the right way, you will make faster gains the harder and more consistently you work out. As ever, it pays to learn what you are doing before you start, so here you will discover the fastest way to build muscle.

Step 1

If you are looking for the fastest way to build muscle, look first at your diet. You need to be taking in the right nutrients, and the right number of calories before you can expect your bodybuilding work to succeed. It is a very common error amongst newcomers to bodybuilding to over concentrate on protein. Protein is absolutely necessary, but it needs to be combined with an adequate amount of carbohydrate, or else the muscles will not have the fuel they need to use the protein and grow.

Step 2

Eat twice as much food. Of course this piece of advice presupposes that you have amended your diet to be taking in the correct balance of nutrients. If you are using diet as part of the fastest way to build muscle, eating double the amount of food will ensure that your muscles will be built, and that your hard work will pay off. Just be sure that your hunger is enough to warrant eating that much food.

Step 3

Keep a diary of when you work out. When exercises become habitual, it is easy to forget exactly how many reps you have performed, or how much weight you managed to lift at the time. Keep a record of everything you do, either on paper or by an electronic method, and you will be able to make sure that you are increasing both your number of reps and your weight at the right time. You need to be constantly increasing the demands on your body for the fastest way to build muscle.

Step 4

These four steps of the fastest ways to build muscle would not be complete without mentioning weight training technique. If your exercises are not being performed properly, you could be wasting a lot of the hard effort you are putting in. The lift phase needs to be performed with the weight under control, but as quickly and smoothly as possible, while exhaling your breath. The release is just the opposite, and needs to be executed as slowly as you can, taking at least twice as much time as you need . This may be difficult when you start, but it will soon become second nature &ndash correct weightlifting technique is an essential part of the fastest way to build muscle

The four tips in this guide have given you a good insight into the fastest way to build muscle. Use them, and they will serve you well.

Understanding the organizational skills used by children has become increasingly complex and important-and organizational differences among students play a large role in determining which children get the most out of their educational experience.

“Many second and third graders have difficulty with organization. It simply doesn’t come naturally to them,” says Judy McAlear, a special education teacher in Fernandina Beach, Fla.

Many seasoned teachers seem to prefer the use of folders to help teach organizational skills. For example, Nancy Boudon, who teaches first grade at Prospect Elementary School in Elyria, Ohio, has students carry a “Blue Dot Folder” in which they keep important papers and worksheets and a “Take Home Folder” with two pockets.

Another organizational tool used by teachers is Seat Sack™, a bright blue fabric storage bag that fits over the back of a student’s classroom chair and holds folders, papers and other items. By adding another storage area to a child’s desk area, teachers help eliminate “desk stuffing,” a sloppy practice that inevitably leads to confusion and lost time.

Tips For Parents

• Teach your child how to store and transport papers and other items to and from school;

• Consider using “To Do” lists and “Chore Charts”;

• Assign your child a specific time to study and do homework each day;

• Create a place for your child to complete homework. Be sure that location is stocked with appropriate supplies; and

• Offer plenty of praise when your child exhibits good organizational skills.

In addition, many teachers also agree that continual communication with parents is vital in teaching these and other skills. Face-to-face conferences, notes sent home with the students and, in Boudon’s case, a personal Web site allow parents to keep current with classroom activities.

Well into the eighteenth century, the only types of mental illness - then collectively known as “delirium” or “mania” - were depression (melancholy), psychoses, and delusions. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the French psychiatrist Pinel coined the phrase “manie sans delire” (insanity without delusions). He described patients who lacked impulse control, often raged when frustrated, and were prone to outbursts of violence. He noted that such patients were not subject to delusions. He was referring, of course, to psychopaths (subjects with the Antisocial Personality Disorder). Across the ocean, in the United States, Benjamin Rush made similar observations.

In 1835, the British J. C. Pritchard, working as senior Physician at the Bristol Infirmary (hospital), published a seminal work titled “Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorders of the Mind”. He, in turn, suggested the neologism “moral insanity”.

To quote him, moral insanity consisted of “a morbid perversion of the natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits, moral dispositions, and natural impulses without any remarkable disorder or defect of the intellect or knowing or reasoning faculties and in particular without any insane delusion or hallucination” (p. 6).

He then proceeded to elucidate the psychopathic (antisocial) personality in great detail:

“(A) propensity to theft is sometimes a feature of moral insanity and sometimes it is its leading if not sole characteristic.” (p. 27). “(E)ccentricity of conduct, singular and absurd habits, a propensity to perform the common actions of life in a different way from that usually practised, is a feature of many cases of moral insanity but can hardly be said to contribute sufficient evidence of its existence.” (p. 23).

“When however such phenomena are observed in connection with a wayward and intractable temper with a decay of social affections, an aversion to the nearest relatives and friends formerly beloved - in short, with a change in the moral character of the individual, the case becomes tolerably well marked.” (p. 23)

But the distinctions between personality, affective, and mood disorders were still murky.

Pritchard muddied it further:

“(A) considerable proportion among the most striking instances of moral insanity are those in which a tendency to gloom or sorrow is the predominant feature … (A) state of gloom or melancholy depression occasionally gives way … to the opposite condition of preternatural excitement.” (pp. 18-19)

Another half century were to pass before a system of classification emerged that offered differential diagnoses of mental illness without delusions (later known as personality disorders), affective disorders, schizophrenia, and depressive illnesses. Still, the term “moral insanity” was being widely used.

Henry Maudsley applied it in 1885 to a patient whom he described as:

“(Having) no capacity for true moral feeling - all his impulses and desires, to which he yields without check, are egoistic, his conduct appears to be governed by immoral motives, which are cherished and obeyed without any evident desire to resist them.” (”Responsibility in Mental Illness”, p. 171).

But Maudsley already belonged to a generation of physicians who felt increasingly uncomfortable with the vague and judgmental coinage “moral insanity” and sought to replace it with something a bit more scientific.

Maudsley bitterly criticized the ambiguous term “moral insanity”:

“(It is) a form of mental alienation which has so much the look of vice or crime that many people regard it as an unfounded medical invention (p. 170).

In his book “Die Psychopatischen Minderwertigkeiter”, published in 1891, the German doctor J. L. A. Koch tried to improve on the situation by suggesting the phrase “psychopathic inferiority”. He limited his diagnosis to people who are not retarded or mentally ill but still display a rigid pattern of misconduct and dysfunction throughout their increasingly disordered lives. In later editions, he replaced “inferiority” with “personality” to avoid sounding judgmental. Hence the “psychopathic personality”.

Twenty years of controversy later, the diagnosis found its way into the 8th edition of E. Kraepelin’s seminal “Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie” (”Clinical Psychiatry: a textbook for students and physicians”). By that time, it merited a whole lengthy chapter in which Kraepelin suggested six additional types of disturbed personalities: excitable, unstable, eccentric, liar, swindler, and quarrelsome.

Still, the focus was on antisocial behavior. If one’s conduct caused inconvenience or suffering or even merely annoyed someone or flaunted the norms of society, one was liable to be diagnosed as “psychopathic”.

In his influential books, “The Psychopathic Personality” (9th edition, 1950) and “Clinical Psychopathology” (1959), another German psychiatrist, K. Schneider sought to expand the diagnosis to include people who harm and inconvenience themselves as well as others. Patients who are depressed, socially anxious, excessively shy and insecure were all deemed by him to be “psychopaths” (in another word, abnormal).

This broadening of the definition of psychopathy directly challenged the earlier work of Scottish psychiatrist, Sir David Henderson. In 1939, Henderson published “Psychopathic States”, a book that was to become an instant classic. In it, he postulated that, though not mentally subnormal, psychopaths are people who:

“(T)hroughout their lives or from a comparatively early age, have exhibited disorders of conduct of an antisocial or asocial nature, usually of a recurrent episodic type which in many instances have proved difficult to influence by methods of social, penal and medical care or for whom we have no adequate provision of a preventative or curative nature.”

But Henderson went a lot further than that and transcended the narrow view of psychopathy (the German school) then prevailing throughout Europe.

In his work (1939), Henderson described three types of psychopaths. Aggressive psychopaths were violent, suicidal, and prone to substance abuse. Passive and inadequate psychopaths were over-sensitive, unstable and hypochondriacal. They were also introverts (schizoid) and pathological liars. Creative psychopaths were all dysfunctional people who managed to become famous or infamous.

Twenty years later, in the 1959 Mental Health Act for England and Wales, “psychopathic disorder” was defined thus, in section 4(4):

“(A) persistent disorder or disability of mind (whether or not including subnormality of intelligence) which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the patient, and requires or is susceptible to medical treatment.”

This definition reverted to the minimalist and cyclical (tautological) approach: abnormal behavior is that which causes harm, suffering, or discomfort to others. Such behavior is, ipso facto, aggressive or irresponsible. Additionally it failed to tackle and even excluded manifestly abnormal behavior that does not require or is not susceptible to medical treatment.

Thus, “psychopathic personality” came to mean both “abnormal” and “antisocial”. This confusion persists to this very day. Scholarly debate still rages between those, such as the Canadian Robert, Hare, who distinguish the psychopath from the patient with mere antisocial personality disorder and those (the orthodoxy) who wish to avoid ambiguity by using only the latter term.

Moreover, these nebulous constructs resulted in co-morbidity. Patients were frequently diagnosed with multiple and largely overlapping personality disorders, traits, and styles. As early as 1950, Schneider wrote:

“Any clinician would be greatly embarrassed if asked to classify into appropriate types the psychopaths (that is abnormal personalities) encountered in any one year.”

Today, most practitioners rely on either the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), now in its fourth, revised text, edition or on the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), now in its tenth edition.

The two tomes disagree on some issues but, by and large, conform to each other.

A preoccupation with gambling may cause some people to risk more than money. They may be gambling their health, happiness and their family’s welfare.

That’s the opinion of experts who define problem gambling as gambling behavior that causes a disruption in any major area of a person’s life. It’s estimated that 2 to 3 percent of the U.S. population suffers from a gambling problem. It can affect men or women of any age, race or religion, regardless of their social status.

Some of the warning signs to watch out for include:

• Preoccupied with gambling and unable to stop

• Gambling to win back what you’ve lost

• Lying to hide time spent gambling or unpaid debts.

Fortunately, an organization is working to ensure help is available. The National Council on Problem Gambling is the national advocate for programs and services to assist problem gamblers and their families.

Its mission is to increase public awareness of pathological gambling and to ensure the widespread availability of treatment for problem gamblers and their families. It also operates the Problem Gambling Helpline Network, a nationwide link to resources.

“A problem gambler doesn’t need to wait to ‘hit bottom’ before asking for help,” says Keith Whyte, executive director, the National Council on Problem Gambling. “Our Helpline can be used by anyone. When their problem is your problem, you as a loved one can call the Helpline to learn what help is available.”

One self-described problem gambler who turned to the Helpline for help characterized its services as being invaluable. According to Sandy Yakim, a 55-year-old teacher whose gambling increased after several personal setbacks, the Helpline provided her with emotional support and information, counseling and advice on how to get help.

Said Yakim, “I have now been clean for over a year. I have money in my savings account. I can shop a little bit. Life is good, I am happy, I have found my joy once again. The Helpline is invaluable. They provide a shoulder to cry on, but more importantly advice on help.”

Adults use rounding and estimation in their everyday lives. They approximate the temperature, the cost of items, the time, and even their age. Consider this conversation:

“How much did it cost to fix your car?”

“Six hundred bucks!”

Without any words such as: about, approximately, around, roughly, or nearly, it can be assumed that the second person rounded the actual cost. Before they had their car fixed, they probably received an estimated cost of the repair from the shop. Adults experience rounding and estimation skills in their daily lives. Children need to learn these important skills partly because they often hear estimation and use estimation, but more importantly, it helps to solidify math learning by teaching them the idea of reasonableness.

Even though rounding and estimating are related, there is a significant difference. Rounding involves converting a known number into a number that is easier to use. Estimation is an educated guess of what a number should be without knowing the actual number. In the conversation above, it is unlikely that the second person remembered the actual price of the bill; they likely rounded the number at the time, so they could better remember it.

Children usually learn rounding as an explicit skill, often with the purpose of estimating the answers to math questions. They commonly use estimation to check the reasonableness of an answer by either estimating ahead of time or after they have completed the question. Students run into difficulty when estimating because they don’t have the intuitive sense that adults do to break the rules.

For the uninitiated, the idea of rounding is fairly simple - decide where to round the number (e.g. the hundreds place), either keep the digit at the rounding place the same or round it up, and replace the digits to the right with zeros. The decision to keep the digit the same or to round it up is based on everything that comes after the digit. If it is less than half, the digit remains the same; if it is greater than half, the digit is increased by one; if it is exactly half, the digit remains the same if it is even and increases by one if it is odd. For example, to round 638 to the nearest hundred, you would base your decision on the “38″ portion of the number. Since it is less than half (50), the digit in the hundreds place remains the same, and the 38 is changed to zeros, so the rounded number is 600. If the question is to round 7500 to the nearest thousand, you would round up to 8000. 8500 also rounds to 8000, but 8501 rounds to 9000. Hopefully, this illustrates that rounding follows a strict set of rules that often cause difficulties for children in estimation.

To give you an idea of how following the rounding rules can be problematic in estimation, consider the question 7359 divided by 82. The first difficulty is deciding what place to round to. Let’s say that the student decides to round to the nearest hundred in the first number and the nearest ten in the second number, thus the question is now 7400 divided by 80. At this point some students might resort to a calculator, others to long division, and others might stare confusedly at their paper. An adult with more intuitive sense might look at the numbers and recognize that if she rounded 7359 to 7200, it would be fairly simple to divide by 80 (because 72 divided by 8 is easy).

Many people develop an ability to estimate both by following the rules and by breaking the rules of rounding. Many children need to be taught these skills, so there is a genuine purpose to their estimation rather than just another question to answer. Estimation should be thought of as a tool to quickly determine whether an answer is reasonable or not. One way of teaching estimation for this purpose is by allowing students to break the rounding rules and find an easy question that they can do in their head. In the question 3564 - 2801, rounding to the nearest hundred results in 3600 - 2800, but 3700 - 2700 is much easier to handle, and it is not so far off the real answer. If the purpose of estimating was to get as close to the real answer as possible, you might as well use a calculator to check your answer instead.

Parents can help develop students’ estimation skills by regularly asking real questions. For instance, ask them how long they think it will take to get to hockey practice (time), have them add up the cost of the groceries as you are shopping (money), get them to count the number of people in one area of the mall and have them estimate how many people are in the whole mall (multiplication or addition). Educators should make estimation a regular part of the problem solving process. In a science investigation, students make hypotheses and predictions, so why not make an estimate in a math problem? Students can develop their estimation skills by answering questions on worksheets and comparing their estimated answers to the actual answers. .math-drills.com has thousands of worksheets with answer keys that you could use for this purpose.

Remember these rules for estimation: (i) KISS - keep it simple silly, (ii) break the rounding rules if necessary, (iii) ensure students see a purpose for estimation, (iv) give students a lot of practice and experience with estimation and rounding, (v) include estimation in problem solving and other daily math work. The main rule for parents and teachers: support your students and be flexible!

China is eager to address one of the primary culprits behind its alarming coal mining fatalities, as evidenced by the Pre-Mining Degasification Symposium held in South China’s Guizhou province on March 31st and April 1st. Sponsored by the province’s Coal Mines Administration Bureau and the Coal Mine Safety Inspection and Supervision Bureau, coal mining executives gathered in Guiyang, a modest-sized city (by China’s standards) of more than three million people, to discuss how the latest foreign technologies could help degasify China’s 2,000 coal mines, both improving mine safety and reducing China’s global output of air pollution. More than 80 representatives from 40 coal mines attended in China’s second largest coal-producing province to find out about the latest foreign technology transfers, which might help reduce coal mining deaths.

Over the centuries as organic matter is converted to coal, methane, also known as CH4 and the primary constituent in natural gas, is produced during this process and stored in pockets within a coal seam. For every ton of coal produced, during the “coalification” process, more than 5000 cubic feet of methane is created. Coal mining releases this methane into the atmosphere. Over 90 percent of methane emissions come from underground coal mining. Because gas content is greater with depth, safety hazards increase during the underground coal mining process. Degasifying coal mines has been proven to help make those underground coal mines safer for miners.

Volatile gases produced during the coal mining process reportedly kill more than 15 miners every day in China, about 80 percent of the world’s coal mining deaths. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, a mining engineer by training, has demanded China improve conditions for Chinese coal miners. Critics, such as the Chinaworker.org, say the “underlying cause is a lack of investment in degasification equipment.” The website claims, “Managers calculate that it’s cheaper to pay out meager death benefits to miners’ families than (to) raise investment.” The Economist magazine reported that Chinese coal miners make as little as $60/monthly.

China is also concerned about its air emissions from coal mining. Worldwide, the coal mining industry released over 436 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2000. That accounted for about 8 percent of the total industrial methane emissions that year. China, Russia, Poland and the United States account for over 77 percent of coal mining methane emissions. Through the year 2020, China’s share of worldwide emissions will jump to 45 percent. These emissions could be severely reduced if Chinese coal mines captured the methane gas for use in meeting its soaring energy needs, rather than vented into the atmosphere each time a new coal tunnel is opened.

One of the major draws at the Guiyang Pre-Mining Degasification Symposium were presentations about the latest coalbed methane drilling innovation by Tunaye Sai, Director of China Operations for Pacific Asia China Energy (TSX: PCE; Other OTC: PCEEF), and Nathan Mitchell of Mitchell Drilling Company (MDC) in Brisbane, Australia. Coal mining companies opened discussions with PCE after their presentation. “Executives from fifty mines showed interest in the Dymaxion

Robots as we all know are considered as friendly creature created by human beings as we are created by God. They are created for human being to simplify life even more basically for our daily chores with the specified sequence and even by military for the purpose of doing things which has the danger to life of human beings and thus they are developed over years to substitute human beings in all the fields.

Many of us are not that qualified to make a robot by ourselves and that why we all are anxious to know how to make a robot and even depends upon the task we want to create it for. We all have the tendencies of exploring whatever new comes in the field of science and hence a basic prototype robot can be created knowing few basic high end programming stuffs.

Robots are almost 30% programming and hence if we target one specific purpose and program it well enough then it serves our purpose and the program mostly used for this is Unix and for beginner’s Lego Mindstorms series is the best and how complicated your robot might turn up to be depends upon your technical acumen.

While learning how to make a robot we should always keep in mind that fewer the moving parts be of the robot better it is for the beginner’s as for startup we might just want it to move from here and there or hold something and sort of stuff. We should link if-then statement well and it should be taken care of that battery is never less then 50% and if so happens it should be re charged.

Thus we now understand that knowing how to make robot can never be known as there is no limit to what can be achieved with the knowledge of science and development of robots can never end.