শুক্রবার, ২ নভেম্বর, ২০১২

Let's give first-generation students a jumpstart on college

By Awo Admed, November guest blogger

We often hear in the news about first-generation, low-income students. The context of these discussions is always about American-born students. Rarely do we talk about immigrant students and the difficulties they face. In both cases, students don?t have a parent who attended or graduated from college to guide them through the challenges and steps necessary to get accepted to an accredited institution of higher education.

We need to develop strategies for working with low-income, first generation students. These strategies can come in many forms. The earlier students are exposed to the idea or connection between attending colleges and the possible careers they can pursue, the more engaged and active students will be.

The demographics of our state are changing drastically; first-generation Minnesotans will have a vital role to play as our population dynamics change. Unfortunately, research shows that low-income and first-generation students are less likely to complete college. We need to increase the retention rate for low-income, first generation students.

After I graduated from college, I joined College Possible as an AmeriCorps college coach for low-income, first-generation and immigrant students. One of the challenges these students face when they attend college is financial struggles. Low-income, first generation and immigrant students often work outside the campus and feel disconnected. If financial struggles overwhelm them, the student will more likely choose his/her job over their college education because they have a stronger connection with their job.

Colleges need to develop strategies to keep these students more engaged in campus activities. Finding a job on campus can help the student stay connected. Awarding institutional scholarships based on need can reduce the financial worries. As a college coach, I acted as a mentor to about 82 students and they benefited greatly. They would come and talk about their problems in class or in their family life and I would direct them to campus resources and staff and faculty who could help.

Low-income, first-generation students don?t seek support when they need it most. A lot of colleges have the TRiO program, where students meet with an academic adviser to talk about classes, career plans and so much more. This is a vibrant resource which promotes both academic success and campus engagement.

These student support services can help the student stay connected and increase student graduation rates across the board. When parents can?t help their child solve problems with school, students need guidance from their school in order to succeed. Colleges also need to get families involved early, discussing financial aid, the application process, scholarships and possible careers their child can pursue. This will enable families to get a basic understanding of how the system works and ways they can help motivate their child in the process.

Institutions of higher education also need to show their presence in high school career and college fairs. They can encourage the students to take AP classes, provide after school information nights for students and families, and arrange campus visits with high school counselors.

Getting the message out early and supporting them when they get to college ? will give these students a glimpse of hope.

Source: http://learnmoremnblog.typepad.com/blog/2012/11/lets-give-first-generation-students-a-jumpstart-on-college.html

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Understand How To Quit Smoking Beginning These days | Traffic ...

The health dangers involved with smoking are no secret, but that doesn?t often make it straightforward to quit. If you wish to cease smoking, you could just need an excellent push in the appropriate direction. These guidelines are designed to make beginning to quit a small less complicated.

Stay in non-smoking locations like your property, your perform, and restaurants and malls which forbid smoking indoors. Go see some films at low cost theaters or go to a museum with buddies. If you are taking your coffee break, steer clear of places where you used to smoke. Staying away from areas where people smoke, will assist with cravings.

Do study on the extremely significant effects that smoking can lead to. Check out candid photographs of smoking-associated gum disease and lung cancer. Also read obituaries of individuals who died from ailments resulting from smoking.

If you get the urge to light up, try utilizing a delay tactic. If you do one thing else and then re-evaluate your feelings immediately after a few minutes, you will find that the worst of the cravings are gone. Otherwise, let your self one more ten minute delay.

Some wonderful methods to get in shape, stay active and distract your self from smoking include participating in an exercise system, and signing up for the local fitness center. Physical exercise will aid you in anxiety relief as well. If you are out of shape, and have not exercised in a whilst, you can start off slowly by basically going for a stroll every single morning, or each other day. Speak to your doctor ahead of starting an exercising routine.

You may want to look into therapy to support with nicotine replacement. Withdrawal signs and symptoms contain depression, lethargy, and irritability. Cravings can be hard to ignore. Nicotine-replacement therapy will support diminish these feelings. Research has shown that men and women who make use of nicotine gum, lozenges, or patches can have twice the probabilities of quitting smoking effectively. Do not use these items if you are nevertheless smoking, though.

Prior to you quit, take an excellent look at your smoking routine. If you know which circumstances tempt you to smoke, it can make it simpler to operate out a program for quitting. Tackling the cravings for tobacco can place you in the greatest position to quit and stay away from cigarettes.

Partner up with people that are attempting to quit smoking. If you know a person who is also attempting to quit smoking, team up with them and create an assistance program. Not only can you all kind your personal help group, you may discover joint activities and habits to replace smoking. In addition, you can share with every single other the expertise you?ve each learned so that you can each quit.

Use multivitamins as a way to recover from the ravages of so much cigarette smoking. For optimum healing, appear for a formula with trace minerals as well. Years of smoking can ravage your entire physique, not just your lungs. It is in your greatest interest to promote fast healing.

Most folks find attempting to quit smoking to be very challenging, but a little guidance can go a lengthy way in assisting. If you follow this article?s advice, you?ll be capable to quit smoking in a reasonable fashion. Place these guidelines to function to shield your health and that of your household.

To check out more, please go to: official site

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Source: http://traffic-secrets.org/understand-how-to-quit-smoking-beginning-these-days

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A different kind of fantasy adventure?

This idea came to me in the middle of the night, and I really have no idea how exiting it may or may not be. But here it is anyway.

The setting: a fantasy world much like any other, with magic, mythical beasts, different races, adventure, heroes and villains.
The premise: a large roadside complex called "traveler's respite" (name pending), which offers an inn, recreational facilities, stores etc.

Yep, that's right. Rather than being the adventurers, characters would be craftsmen, barmaids, innkeepers etc., as in all those people who are usually just supporting NPCs. The RP would focus on their lives, while actual adventuring parties and heroes would be the NPCs...
Yeah, not sure how well this is gonna work out, but thought I'd give it a try.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/3-cY3ybEQso/viewtopic.php

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বৃহস্পতিবার, ১ নভেম্বর, ২০১২

New light on the genetic basis of inflammatory diseases

New light on the genetic basis of inflammatory diseases [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 1-Nov-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: William Raillant-Clark
w.raillant-clark@umontreal.ca
514-343-7593
University of Montreal

Study doubles genetic regions associated with these conditions

In one of the largest studies of its kind ever conducted, an international team of scientists has thrown new light on the genetic basis of the inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, the two most common forms of IBD, are chronic inflammatory digestive disorders affecting 230,000 Canadians. Dr. John Rioux, researcher at the Montreal Heart Institute and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Universit de Montral, is one of the researchers who have identified 71 genetic regions newly associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), increasing the total number discovered to date to 163, in one of the largest studies of its kind. Also, the study points out that these regions showed a striking overlap with those implicated in autoimmune diseases and in immune deficiencies. Even more surprising was the observation of a significant overlap with genetic regions controlling our response to microbial infections such as in the case of tuberculosis. These highlights were published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature today.

Moreover, these findings suggest that IBD results from overactive immune defence systems that evolved to fight off serious bacterial infections. In IBD, the body's immune system produces an ongoing inflammatory reaction in the intestinal tract that injures the intestinal wall, leading to diarrhea and abdominal pain. IBD patients typically require lifelong treatment with drug therapy, and often need surgery to repair tissue damage caused by the disease.

Common research

Up until this point, researchers have been studying Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis separately. This study was based on the fact that there seems to be a vast amount of genetic overlap between the two disorders.

In the first step of the study, the researchers conducted a "meta-analysis" of 15 previous genomic studies of either Crohn's disease (CD) or ulcerative colitis (UC), the two most common forms of IBD, creating a large dataset that combined genetic information from some 34,000 individuals who took part in those studies. The results then formed part of a second meta-analysis that included data from new genome-wide scans of more than 41,000 DNA samples from CD/UC patients and healthy comparison subjects collected at 11 centers around the world by the International IBD Genetics Consortium.

"We have greatly expanded the map of genetic regions that are associated with IBD", agreed Dr. John Rioux, co-lead author of this study and chair of the Consortium, with Jeffrey Barrett of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England, lead author of the study. "Each of these regions only increases a person's chance of developing IBD by a fraction of a per cent and even taken together they cannot tell us who will or will not develop the disease. But they each tell a small story about the biology of this disorder, and by combining them we find biological pathways that, if disrupted, can lead to IBD."

Immune system: a major factor

Dr. Rioux and the international team of researchers also studied the activity of genes in their IBD regions in hundreds of different types of cells involved in the immune system. They found that certain cells tended to produce more of these IBD genes, including many that are involved in the body's first line defence against invasion. This illustrates that an immune response seems to be a major factor in IBD: when a bacterium is detected, these cells are not just activated, but become overactive.

"We see a genetic balancing act between defending against bacterial infection and attacking the body's own cells," said Dr. Barrett. "Many of the regions we found are involved in sending out signals and responses to defend against bad bacteria. If these responses are over-activated, we found it can contribute to the inflammation that leads to IBD."

Nearly 100 scientists in 15 countries contributed to the new work, which "highlights the incredible power that working together in a large team can have," said Barrett. "This would not have been possible without the thousands of DNA samples from patients with these conditions assembled by the International IBD Genetics Consortium. Collectively, our findings have begun to uncover the biological mechanisms behind this disease."

About inflammatory bowel diseases

IBD results from inflammation in the digestive system and affects 2.5 million people worldwide. With over 230,000 cases, Canada has among the highest frequency of people with IBD in the world. Although it can affect any age group IBD is more likely to develop in teens and adults between 15 and 30 years of age. IBD is a lifelong debilitating condition. It can have a devastating impact on the physical and social lives of those affected.

###

About the Montreal Heart Institute: www.icm-mhi.org.

About the Universit de Montral: www.umontreal.ca

Notes to Editors:

Publication Details
Luke Jostins, Stephan Ripke, Rinse K Weersma, et al (2012). 'Host-microbe interactions have shaped the genetic architecture of inflammatory bowel disease'. DOI:

Published in Nature online November 1st, 2012.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


New light on the genetic basis of inflammatory diseases [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 1-Nov-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: William Raillant-Clark
w.raillant-clark@umontreal.ca
514-343-7593
University of Montreal

Study doubles genetic regions associated with these conditions

In one of the largest studies of its kind ever conducted, an international team of scientists has thrown new light on the genetic basis of the inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, the two most common forms of IBD, are chronic inflammatory digestive disorders affecting 230,000 Canadians. Dr. John Rioux, researcher at the Montreal Heart Institute and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Universit de Montral, is one of the researchers who have identified 71 genetic regions newly associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), increasing the total number discovered to date to 163, in one of the largest studies of its kind. Also, the study points out that these regions showed a striking overlap with those implicated in autoimmune diseases and in immune deficiencies. Even more surprising was the observation of a significant overlap with genetic regions controlling our response to microbial infections such as in the case of tuberculosis. These highlights were published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature today.

Moreover, these findings suggest that IBD results from overactive immune defence systems that evolved to fight off serious bacterial infections. In IBD, the body's immune system produces an ongoing inflammatory reaction in the intestinal tract that injures the intestinal wall, leading to diarrhea and abdominal pain. IBD patients typically require lifelong treatment with drug therapy, and often need surgery to repair tissue damage caused by the disease.

Common research

Up until this point, researchers have been studying Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis separately. This study was based on the fact that there seems to be a vast amount of genetic overlap between the two disorders.

In the first step of the study, the researchers conducted a "meta-analysis" of 15 previous genomic studies of either Crohn's disease (CD) or ulcerative colitis (UC), the two most common forms of IBD, creating a large dataset that combined genetic information from some 34,000 individuals who took part in those studies. The results then formed part of a second meta-analysis that included data from new genome-wide scans of more than 41,000 DNA samples from CD/UC patients and healthy comparison subjects collected at 11 centers around the world by the International IBD Genetics Consortium.

"We have greatly expanded the map of genetic regions that are associated with IBD", agreed Dr. John Rioux, co-lead author of this study and chair of the Consortium, with Jeffrey Barrett of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England, lead author of the study. "Each of these regions only increases a person's chance of developing IBD by a fraction of a per cent and even taken together they cannot tell us who will or will not develop the disease. But they each tell a small story about the biology of this disorder, and by combining them we find biological pathways that, if disrupted, can lead to IBD."

Immune system: a major factor

Dr. Rioux and the international team of researchers also studied the activity of genes in their IBD regions in hundreds of different types of cells involved in the immune system. They found that certain cells tended to produce more of these IBD genes, including many that are involved in the body's first line defence against invasion. This illustrates that an immune response seems to be a major factor in IBD: when a bacterium is detected, these cells are not just activated, but become overactive.

"We see a genetic balancing act between defending against bacterial infection and attacking the body's own cells," said Dr. Barrett. "Many of the regions we found are involved in sending out signals and responses to defend against bad bacteria. If these responses are over-activated, we found it can contribute to the inflammation that leads to IBD."

Nearly 100 scientists in 15 countries contributed to the new work, which "highlights the incredible power that working together in a large team can have," said Barrett. "This would not have been possible without the thousands of DNA samples from patients with these conditions assembled by the International IBD Genetics Consortium. Collectively, our findings have begun to uncover the biological mechanisms behind this disease."

About inflammatory bowel diseases

IBD results from inflammation in the digestive system and affects 2.5 million people worldwide. With over 230,000 cases, Canada has among the highest frequency of people with IBD in the world. Although it can affect any age group IBD is more likely to develop in teens and adults between 15 and 30 years of age. IBD is a lifelong debilitating condition. It can have a devastating impact on the physical and social lives of those affected.

###

About the Montreal Heart Institute: www.icm-mhi.org.

About the Universit de Montral: www.umontreal.ca

Notes to Editors:

Publication Details
Luke Jostins, Stephan Ripke, Rinse K Weersma, et al (2012). 'Host-microbe interactions have shaped the genetic architecture of inflammatory bowel disease'. DOI:

Published in Nature online November 1st, 2012.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-11/uom-nlo110112.php

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Can America Embrace Biking Like Denmark Has?

People ride bicycles on Oct. 2, 2010, in Copenhagen. The Danish capital is hoping 50 percent of commuters will get around by bike by 2015. People ride bicycles on Oct. 2, 2010, in Copenhagen. The Danish capital is hoping 50 percent of commuters will get around by bike by 2015.

Photo by Slim Allagui/AFP/Getty Images.

It?s a Monday morning in Copenhagen, and I?m tearing down a street called Rolighedsvej on my clunky steel rental bike, trying to make it to a meeting for which I?m nearly certain I?ll be late. As I zip along the beautifully maintained bike lanes, it strikes me that I?ve never had a city biking experience quite like this. Not only do I feel totally safe and secure, but I?m able to get to my destination faster and at a fraction of the difficulty and cost than if I were driving a car.

Ninety percent of Copenhageners own a bike. Only 53 percent of Copenhagen households own a car. Fifty-eight percent of Copenhageners use a bike on a daily basis for at least small trips, and 37 percent make their daily commute on bikes. (The city?s target is 50 percent by 2015.) Many government service providers now use bicycles, like postal workers and police officers. With a robust public transportation network to complement the biking routes, only 31 percent need to commute by car. The energy impacts of this are huge: Bicycles have displaced more than one-third of all transportation fossil fuel use in Copenhagen and, in the process, eliminated 90,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year.

The destination I was aiming for on my rental bike was the apartment of Mikael Colville-Andersen, known to many as Denmark?s unofficial ambassador of bicycle culture. In addition to being a journalist, filmmaker, and photographer, Colville-Andersen is a frequent consultant to the Copenhagen government on bicycle issues and author of the internationally famous bicycle blogs Copenhagenize.com and Cyclechic.com (the latter of which spawned an international movement of blogs documenting fashionably dressed people on bikes).

He explained to me that biking in Copenhagen is just a natural part of everyday life, not something people do to burn calories or make a statement. ?When I lecture I have four rules for promoting urban cycling. And rule No. 1 is what I call ?A to B-ism,? and that is, if you make it the quickest way to get around town, everyone and their dog will do it. Men in suits, mothers with children. ? The basic anthropology of encouraging people to ride is to make it easier.? Data back up his contention. A 2006 survey found that 54 percent of Copenhagen cyclists ride because it?s easy and fast. Nineteen percent do it for exercise and only 1 percent for environmental reasons.

Biking in Copenhagen is easy and fast partly because of the city?s amazing investment in bicycle infrastructure. With more than $10 million in annual investments (20 to 25 percent of the road budget), the results are stunning. In addition to 397 kilometers of combined cycle tracks, lanes, and greenways and almost 35,000 bike parking spaces on roads as of 2008, the city has implemented some innovations for bikes, such as the so-called ?green wave,? in which traffic lights on several main arteries into the city center are synchronized during rush hours for the benefit of bikes. This means that bikers can maintain a comfortable 20-km-per-hour cruising speed without putting a foot down to stop for a light for up to 6 kilometers. And on one of the busiest of those routes, they?ve closed down the road to car traffic.

Another perk for bicyclists is the ?pre-green? signalization in which bicycle traffic lights turn green a few seconds before car traffic lights do, giving cyclists time to avoid traffic while in intersections. There is also bright blue paint where bicycle lanes cross intersections, giving a clear sense of where bikes should be in the most dangerous areas. Further, car waiting lines have been pulled back 5 meters behind bike waiting lines in 120 intersections to give cyclists a head start. In the winter, bike lanes get priority in terms of snow clearance and salting.

Concerns about safety are a significant barrier to cycling in most places. Numerous surveys have found that one of the primary reasons people in North America avoid bike commuting is because they tend to see it as dangerous, largely because of car traffic. Bicycle fatality rates are nearly four times higher in the United States than in Denmark. One reason why cyclists in Denmark are safer than those in more car-dependent countries is that with bicycles, safety comes in numbers. According to studies conducted in America, Europe, and Australia, as the number of cyclists in a city goes up, the rate of injuries goes down. The explanation is that in cities where bicycle commuters are few, drivers do not expect them or adequately prepare for sharing the road.

No matter how safe, fast, convenient, and inexpensive bike commuting can be made, however, it won?t be adopted if it can?t at least partially out-compete cars. So, beyond the ?carrot? of incentivizing bicycle commuting, Copenhagen (and many other European cycling cities) also employs the ?stick? of policies designed to discourage car use. Some of these policies are actually national?for instance, Denmark imposes a tax of 180 percent on car sales (which is not as bad as it sounds, given the $20-per-hour minimum wage), and gas costs almost $10 per gallon. Every year 2 to 3 percent of parking spaces are removed to gradually wean residents from auto-dependency. In addition to being scarce, parking is expensive?about $5 an hour in the city center. And as the inconvenience and cost of parking increase, so, too, does the rate of bicycling.

The success of cycling in Denmark raises the question of why America, with all its massive resources, lags so far behind on something that could be so beneficial to cities and inexpensive to implement. In the United States as a whole, only 0.4 percent commute by bicycle. The highest rate in the country is found in Portland, Ore.?but at about 6 percent, it?s nowhere near Copenhagen?s 37 percent. This question of why cycling is not more common is particularly vexing for the American Sunbelt, where biking weather is often ideal for much of the year. Copenhagen, which is near the same latitude as Moscow, manages to keep 80 percent of the biking population during its long and difficult winters (even during snowstorms, that level only drops to 50 percent, thanks in part to the active plowing of bike lanes). Yet cities like Los Angeles or San Diego, with their minimal precipitation and moderate temperatures, can barely manage to break a 2 percent bicycle mode share.

It wasn?t always like this. According to Colville-Andersen, after the invention of the bicycle and before the onslaught of the car, it was commonly thought that bicycles would become dominant in Sunbelt cities. In a guest blog for the Los Angeles Times, he quotes an 1897 newspaper article: "There is no part of the world where cycling is in greater favor than in Southern California, and nowhere on the American continent are conditions so favorable the year round for wheeling." At the time, he points out, the world?s most impressive separated bike path was located not in Europe, but between Los Angeles and Pasadena. The Arroyo Seco Cycleway (also known as the Dobbins Veloway) was a wooden, elevated, multi-lane bike path replete with features like lighting and gazebo turnouts. Ironically, after its abandonment it became the right of way for the Arroyo Seco Freeway, the first in California.

Whether attitudes toward cars and bicycles are the cause or the consequence of the massive differences in transportation philosophy between these two countries, there?s no disputing that the gulf in these attitudes is as wide as the Atlantic. Coville-Andersen summed it up for me in this anecdote. ?I was in Washington ? and somebody asked me a question: ?you know in the States we go for bike rides on the weekend. What do you guys do?? And I said, ?we go for car drives.? And people laughed. We?ll get a car and drive out to see my mother-in-law, or somewhere we don?t normally go. Cars are for the weekend.?

This article was adapted from Chapter 7 of The Very Hungry City: Urban Energy Efficiency and the Economic Fate of Cities by Austin Troy, Yale University Press (2012).

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=7e45baef65e0ebc47c0514a799a84b3a

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The Reference Frame: Edward Teller's great H-day: 60 years ago

Ivy Mike released 188 times more energy than Hurricane Sandy

Hungarian-Jewish-American physicist Edward Teller had a great day exactly 60 years ago, on November 1st, 1952. For some years, he's been working on an idea originally due to the great physics guru Enrico Fermi (most likely, and one invented in Summer 1942) which totally fascinated him: a bomb getting its energy from thermonuclear fusion.

While fission only releases about \(0.001E=0.001mc^2\) from some mass, fusion is able to get to \(0.01E=0.01mc^2\), one percent of the total latent energy, and it may employ as omnipresent "fuels" as hydrogen.

See the explosion here ? the blast (the "Mike shot") takes place at 4:39 ? or here at 1:40. There's also a one-hour 1952 program where the explosion occurs at 40:47. Is it just me who feels that the 1950s Americans sound more British? ;-)

Ivy Mike, the pioneering device based on the Teller-Ulam design, was finally ready for detonation on the Enewetak Atoll (atoll = coral island encircling a lagoon) in the Pacific Ocean: Google Maps, crater (yes, the Elugelab [codenamed Flora] island in the the atoll ceased to exist and was filled with water; before, after, source).

This device was one of the main reasons we have had peace for many and many decades; Edward Teller should have clearly gotten the Peace Nobel Prize that was jokingly given to the "European Union". How strong was the explosion? And how did the device work?

At the center of the device, there was a cylindrical rod of plutonium, the "sparkplug", that had the task to ignite the fusion reaction. It was surrounded by a natural five-ton uranium "tamper". The external side of the tamper was made of a mixture of lead and polyethylene and these sheets were sending X-rays from the primary to the secondary. The X-rays acted by their huge pressure and temperature.

All the lead, plutonium, and uranium stuff was there just to help the primary actor that was being tested ? the cryogenic (=impractical for mobile bombs) liquid deuterium fuel at the very center (plus some tritium) ? to get a bit excited and warmed up.

The whole active object, also named "sausage", was encapsulated in 25-30 centimeter thick steel. This whole toy was 54 tons heavy, 619 cm tall, and 203 cm in diameter. With other external components, Ivy Mike weighed over 80 tons (again, that's why it was impractical for mobile weapons). When it exploded, it produced 10-12 megatons of TNT but 77% came from the fission of the uranium "temper" (about 450 kg out of 4.5 tons of the uranium was "burned" releasing the equivalent of almost 8 megatons of TNT) but the remaining 23% may be attributed to fusion. The fireball was 5 km wide and the mushroom went to 17 km altitude in 90 seconds and 30 km in 150 seconds.

Note that 10 megatons of TNT is about 41.84 petajoules i.e. \(41.84\times 10^{15}\,{\rm J}\). Via \(E=mc^2\), that's equivalent to the complete destruction of 0.47 kilograms of matter. Take one-quarter of it (for fusion) and multiply it by 100 to see that about a kilogram of hydrogen was turned mostly into helium or new tritium (and other things).

Via Nuclear Secrecy.COM.

Alexander A? told us about the energy stored in the otherwise mediocre Hurricane Sandy. His source states that Sandy "contained" ? whatever it exactly meant ? 0.222 petajoules of energy. It's only larger than the analogous numbers for other, stronger storms because Sandy's figure includes the wind energy from a larger area. If you know how to divide numbers, you can easily calculate that Ivy Mike released the same energy as 188 times the Hurricane Sandy. And it was pretty much produced by one right-wing physicist. That's a simple quantitative explanation why you shouldn't expect right-wing physicists to be overly impressed by the energy of the Hurricane Sandy. ;-)

But if the worshipers of the greenhouse effect and its hypothetical but indefensible effects on the weather events feel humiliated, and they surely should because they are, let me calm them down just a little bit. The research project initiated in 1951 that led to Ivy Mike had a nice name: the Greenhouse. :-D

(Yes, I needed Ivy Mike whose energy was equivalent to 750 Hiroshimas. Hiroshima wasn't enough to beat Sandy; it released about 1/4 of Sandy's energy. On the other hand, NYC rats are stronger than Sandy.)

The crater created by the blast was 3 km wide and 60 meters deep. 80 million tons of rocks were vaporized. The blast didn't proceed as expected ? it was two times better i.e. stronger. One pilot who was supposed to pick some air samples died when he ran out of fuel. All elements including Einsteinium and Fermium were produced. A 50-kilometer vicinity of the atoll was substantially radioactively contaminated. You don't want to play with similar toys in the New York City; Sandy is just fine.

Harry Truman who politically supervised the research wasn't the only one. At that time, the Soviets were already working on something similar although their research was arguably not quite independent. Sakharov's Third Idea ? the Slavic term for the Teller-Ulam design ? got tested in 1955, three years after Ivy Mike (6 times lower yield than Ivy Mike). But already in 1953, one year after Ivy Mike, the USSR tested Joe 4 (0.4 megatons of TNT, 25 times smaller than Ivy Mike) based on a different "Sloika" philosophy. The strongest (thermonuclear or otherwise) man-made explosion ever (so far?) was the Tsar Bomba in 1961. At 57 megatons of TNT, it was 5 times stronger than Ivy Mike and 1,000 times stronger than Hurricane Sandy. Take it, Yankees and weather alarmists. ;-)

Hat tip: Technet.iDNES.cz



P.S.: Just a comment on the energy vs world energy consumption. The Ivy Mike blast may look very large and you could think that it would be great to use it as a generator of energy. But I mentioned that the blast released \(4\times 10^{16}\) joules of energy. It's a lot but the world's annual energy consumption is around \(4\times 10^{20}\) joules so you would have to tame 10,000 Ivy-Mike-like blasts a year to replace the existing sources of energy! But you could imagine it's doable. Forget about peaceful thermonuclear power plants and use a blast to raise a lot of matter to some altitude, or heat it, or something like that. 30 such Ivy Mike blasts a day may produce the electricity for the whole mankind. ;-)

Source: http://motls.blogspot.com/2012/11/edward-tellers-great-h-day-60-years-ago.html

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