No. 244
May 2003
NAMES
America’s place names have a history of their own. Willamette River came from
Lewis’ question of William Clark: “Will am it a river?” Wisconsin, an
Indian word meaning “the long river” was originally spelled Mesconsing, Mt.
McKinley (Alaska) was previously named Denali, and a British Sea Captain who
caught codfish in 1602 of the Massachusetts coast named Cape Cod. Historically,
for obvious reasons, there have been name changes, such as Whorehouse Meadow to
Naughty Girl Meadow, Jap Creek to Japanese Creek, and Nigger Ben Spring to Negro
Ben Mountain. All these, and other
official U. S. geographic place names of cities, towns, mountains, valleys,
streams, creeks, etc. are found on the U.S. Geological Survey Maps. U. S.
Geographic place names came from foreign countries (provinces, cities, counties,
etc.), foreign people, circumstances, prejudices, American Indian names,
animals, words, and misspellings. From
the naming of Cape Code in1602 to the closing of the U.S. frontier when the
entire United States for “all the places” to have names, America’s places
names had conflicts which were causing mapmakers problems.
Mapmakers require enough standardization of place names to make maps and
atlases useful. Even though Claudius
Ptolemy (Rome 200s A.D.) had the first idea of standardizing place names, it
wasn’t until 1890 that President Grover Cleveland created the United States
Board on Geographic Names (the Board), the first such agency in the world.
Since 1890 it has been reviewing place names, name conflicts, changes,
issues, and problems, now setting the standards for place names on a worldwide
basis. In 1990, the Board celebrated
its 100th birthday by sponsoring an exhibition which was recorded in A
World of Names, Celebrating the Centennial, United States Board on Geographic
Names. Published in 1990 and
sent to Depository Libraries in 1993, its 24 pages of text identify the maps,
journals, case files, books, photographs, t-shirts, sheet music, whisky bottles,
and etc. which are the sources of America’s and the world’s place names. The
history of America’s names and misnames is fascinating.
Mark Wexler’s “The Naming (and misnaming) of America” National
Wildlife, V. 16, August-September, 1978, pages 12-16, which was issued as a
Reprint: The Naming (and misnaming) of
WEIGHT-LOSS
& NUTRITION MYTHS It’s fact, fad diets don’t work for permanent weight
loss. Also, you can eat anything you want and lose weight, only if you use more
USE MORE than you TAKE IN. Eating lean red meat is not bad for your health, if
eaten in small amounts as part of a healthy weight-loss plan.
That nuts are fattening and should be avoided is another myth. The nuts
high in saturated fats should be avoided, but nuts provide protein and fiber and
do not have cholesterol. Some nuts,
eaten in small amounts can be part of a health weight-loss p program. Eating
after
BEE
COUNTS & BARCODES A few years
ago, I heard a popular song that included lyrics about Winnie the Pooh’s daily
work of “counting the bees in the
hive.” This may seem like a
trivial, endless and confusing, if not impossible task of differentiating any
one bee from all the others. This
job has all those qualities, even if you knew exactly how many bees were in the
hive. As American ingenuity has
built the biggest buildings and dams, it has found a way to
“count all the bees in the hive.” The entomologist with the bee count
solution is Dr. Stephen L Buchmann, an entomologist working at the USDA Carl
Hayden Bee Research Center, Tucson Arizona http://gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov/
who said in 1988 that if you “Can’t Tell Your Bees Apart? Bar Code ‘Em!”
He has glued nine-stripe bar codes to the hairs on the bees’ backs and an
electronic bar code reader at the doorway of the beehives monitors them.
Now not only can each and every bee be identified, but each tagged bee
has a dossier on its activities. It
seems the bees are unaware of their bar code because the bar-code paper and glue
weigh about one-twentieth as much as the nectar and pollen they carry on each
trip from flowers back to their hives. Dennis
Senft, “Can’t Tell Your Bees Apart? Bar Code ‘Em,” Agricultural
Research, V. 37, No. 1, January, 1989 page 7, (A 77.12:37/1) 1989 Year of
the Bee, page 5 (an Agricultural Research Reprint) A 77.12/a: B39.
A brief article “Honey Bees and Bar Codes: The Closing of the Tucson
Bee Laboratory” in APIS, Apicultural Information and Issues, V. 19, No. 2
February, 2001 http://apis.ifas.ufl.edu/apis_2001/apfeb_2001.htm#3
This short article in APIS updates our honey bee bar code history and
electronic links to the latest information about bees and bar codes.
The APIS newsletter website (http://apis.ifas.ufl.edu/),
which is at the
PARACHUTE
FOR AIRPLANES In 1495, Leonardo Da Vinci sketched the first parachute and in
1785 the first emergency parachute was used by man jumping from a balloon. In
1911 or 1912, an American aviator made the first use of a parachute to jump from
an airplane. In October 2002, about 500 years after the invention of a parachute
for people, NASA has provided the funding for Ballistic Recovery Systems, (BRS)
Inc. of St Paul Minnesota to develop and perfect a parachute for airplanes.
“In October, 2002, a pilot released his Cirrus SR-22 aircraft’s
parachute and landed safely in a Texas Mesquite tree grove.”
“The BRS Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) is included as
standard equipment on the Cirrus four-seat SR20 and SR22 aircraft.”
“NASA Helps Create a Parachute to Save Lives” is found in Aerospace
Technology Innovation, V. 11, No. 1, Spring, 2003, page 20 which is found on
the NASA web site at http://nctn.hq.nasa.gov/innovation/.
Until there is more information about the further developments of the
airplane’s parachute, read about the events in the 500 year Historical
Review of man’s parachute which is a five page excerpt from Sandia Report
SAND85-1180 An Introduction to Deployable Systems by Jan Meyer, August
1985 http://www.parachutehistory.com/eng/drs.html.
BAR
CODES FOR A FLY/MOSQUITO COUNT AND IDENTIFICATION
Generally speaking, flies, mosquitoes, and similar creatures (i.e.
Terrestrial Arthropods) are the most numerous creatures on Earth, and
entomologists have the job of identifying them.
The work of observing specimen and recoding data is called entomology.
They find a specimen, examine it, record the data observed, and store the
specimen(s) for future reference. The
data is recorded within a database and the specimen stored in the museum’s
existing collection. Yet, objective, systematic entomology scientific results
require that observations be repeated. When a new specimen is examined, the new
data and specimen may have to be compared to the old data and specimen to insure
accuracy as to being a new specimen. Thus the storage and retrieval of older
specimens is a problem that is solved if each specimen has a unique identifying
number. Numbering systems for specimens have been used, but number systems
require revision and may not be easily computerized.
With the creation of bar codes, scientists are now bar-coding the
specimens, as they are collected. The bar coding of newer specimens does not
solve the problem of the large numbers of specimens in older collections such as
the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History.
There are large collections of specimens that do not have bar codes or
unique numbers. On the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s The Diptera Site, Bar
Codes for Specimen Data Management (http://www.sel.barc.usda.gov/Diptera/barcodes.htm)
is a reprint of an article by F. Christian Thompson from Insect Collection
News, V. 9, 1994, pages 2-4. F.
Christian Thompson, of the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Systematic
Entomology Laboratory explains how bar codes can be used on the flies and
mosquitoes housed in some of
STUDY
GUIDES: 21st CENTURY SHERLOCK HOLMES In spite of his being limited to
the use of a magnifying glass, it is still quite fascinating to watch Sherlock
Holmes exercise his powers of observation and deductive abilities. Sherlock was
selective about the crimes he would investigate, choosing only those he saw as
sufficiently challenging and worthy of his expertise.
Is it possible he would have found some 21st century electronic crime a
sufficient challenge? To recognizing
and analyzing the electronic evidence, he would need more than a magnifying
glass. Whether the crime
involves illegal entry into a computer system, information theft or destruction,
electronic theft of funds, or traditional crimes such as murder and money
laundering, electronic evidence is a 21st century problem for law
enforcement and criminal justice officials.
Electronic evidence is a major part of the investigation and prosecution
of many crimes. How would a 21st century Sherlock handle the
electronic evidence, how would he observe it, what would he see/look for, what
would be his deductive theories, and how would he reach his conclusion(s) to
solve the case? The Technical
Working Group for Electronic Crime Scene Investigation (TWGECSI) is a group of
about 50 experts who are compiling a series of six guides for handling the
electronic crime scene evidence. The
electronic crime scene investigator will have to recognize, collect, document,
and package the electronic evidence that will be used in the prosecution of the
offender. Electronic Crime Scene
Investigation, A Guide for First Responders, by the TWGECSI is the first of
six guides covering (1) first responders, (2) the examination of digital
evidence, (3) investigative uses of technology, (4) investigating electronic
technology crimes, (5) creating a digital evidence forensic unit, and (6)
courtroom presentation of digital evidence. The Guide for First Responders was
issued in July 2001 in paper (J 28.8/3:EL 1) and is also a pdf file at http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS14094.
The National Institute of Justice Electronic Crimes Publications
web site (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/sciencetech/text/tecrime_pub.htm)
includes an A - Z Electronic Crime Publications and lead to the NIJ
ECRIME (Electronic Crimes) Program http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/sciencetech/text/tecrime.htm.
http://www.nku.edu/~yannarella/news0305.html