Attica Correctional Facility Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Attica Correctional Facility - Research Paper Example The Attica Correctional Facility maintains a large industrial operation producing a variety of textile items and metal products. There is also a large program of vocational and academic education. In addition, it maintains extensive programs in family service, mental health and youth assistance. Authors of the Prison Monitoring Report: Attica also stated that they were left with both positive and negative impressions about the facility. While some programs provide beneficial and productive opportunities for inmates to gain skills and confront difficult challenges, they were struck by a widespread sense of fear and intimidation among the inmates. Reports of staff physically abusing inmates and retaliation by officers against inmates who file complains about staff were extensive. Although inmates had positive impressions about Superintendent James Conway and his administration, they reported that he was unable to halt the pervasive violence and abuse by the officers. The four-day riot at the Attica Correctional Facility was reported by History.com as the bloodiest prison insurrection in US History. It was reported that on September 9, 1971 a group of inmates at the facility assaulted a prison guard and began rioting. They took prison employees hostage and gained control of portions of the facility. After which, negotiations between inmates and prison officials followed. The inmates demanded better living conditions at the overcrowded prison. However, an article on the American Express website reported some events essential to validating the purpose of the riot. It reported that inmates who were predominantly African American and Puerto Ricans were incensed at the deteriorating living conditions-among them, the fact that they were only allowed to shower once per week and were allowed one roll of toilet paper per month. Overcrowding had also

540 Week 5 Questions Essay Example for Free

540 Week 5 Questions Essay How does labeling cause deviance? What is the difference between primary and secondary deviance?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   According to the labeling theory that was developed and popularized by Howard S. Becker in conjunction with Frank Tannenbaum, the behavior of society to categorize persons into specific groups based on society’s perceptions about such people leads to deviance. As per this theory, society invents, selects, and manipulates the convictions that negatively view certain behaviors before placing the supposedly deviant people into such categories. The deviant person is thus regarded as being ethically inferior. Afterwards, deviants internalize such society-ascribed identities before ultimately beginning to act as per a certain label (Stark, 2007). Deviants then assume unexpected behaviors in a bid to obey the rules of the assigned label.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Primary deviance is evident when deviance demonstrates itself before society categorizes such behavior as constituting deviance. In addition, it is the deviance that is placed onto an individual via the acts of reporting or confession. Conversely, secondary deviance exhibits itself after one has committed a societal wrong, has attracted societal reaction by being categorized as a deviant, and has internalized the deviance. The deviant then adopts the behavior that made them to be classified as deviants. What are some examples of master status not in the text? What are traits associated with them? How do those assumed traits affect our perceptions of people with that status?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Some illustrations of master statuses include being unemployed, ethnicity, religion, and education. These master statuses have certain traits that are usually associated with them (Macionis, 2005). For instance, the unemployed master status has the common traits of always being in need of money, demonstrating anxiety, and being unhappy. Conversely, the ethnicity orientation master status is characterized by a shared heritage, common language, shared culture, as well as a shared ancestry. On the other hand, the education master status has the characteristics of being knowledgeable, having critical and analytical skills, and being free of common biases found among uneducated persons. In contrast, the religion master status has the traits of common beliefs, common deities, as well as shared religious practices.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The aforementioned traits lead society into having specific views about people depicting such statuses. For example, the characteristic of being knowledgeable among people with the education master status makes society to have respect for such people. Conversely, the needy trait among those exhibiting the master status of being unemployed makes society to view such people as being more likely to trouble society while begging for alms. What are decision-making types used by rational choice theory? How do these decisions apply to crime?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Two of the major decision-making types in rational choice theory include indifference and strict preference. These preference types have relationships with crime, whereby criminals apply them with regard to whether or not to engage in criminal behavior (Fernandez-Huerga, 2008). For example, in relation to strict preference, whereby a person demonstrates a preference for B to A, a criminal has the absolute choice of either committing a crime or not. The offender thus makes a clear choice to either commit an offense or desist from doing so. On the other hand, regarding the indifference type of preference, a criminal engages in unacceptable behavior not out of their own free and unbridled will, but rather as a result of prevailing circumstances. Since the offender does not demonstrate a clear inclination towards a certain action (of either enraging in lawbreaking acts or refraining from such an action), they do not prefer like one option or t he other. References Fernandez-Huerga (2008.) The economic behavior of human beings: The institutionalist post-Keynesian model. Journal of Economic Issues, 42, 3: 23-8. Macionis, J. J. (2005). Sociology, 10th Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Stark, R. (2007).  Sociology: Biological theories of deviance (Tenth edition). Belmont, CA. Thomson Wadsworth.

How the Pill Affects Your Body :: Birth Control Contraception Pregnancy Essays

How the Pill Affects Your Body Every night at 11 p.m., the alarm clock in 21-year-old Natacha’s* one-bedroom apartment goes off. It isn’t a signal to wake her up from a quick nap to write a paper or do some reading, but a reminder that it is time to take her birth control. As soon as it goes off her live-in boyfriend of three years, Julian, brings her a pill and a glass of water. â€Å"In the beginning Julian used to call me at 11 to remind me to take my pill,† said Natacha, who had a long distance relationship with him during the first two years they were dating. â€Å"Now he just brings it to me.† Natacha is just one of the many female students at Northeastern University who is currently taking the birth control pill. In a survey of 30 students, 56 percent indicated that they take the pill. â€Å"Oral contraception is the most common [contraceptive] among students,† said Leah McKinnon-Howe, a health care practitioner at Lane Health Center. â€Å"I write more prescriptions for the pill.† The birth control pill, which is used by over 16 million women nationwide, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960 and is available in 41 brands on the market. The pill comes in two different forms, combination pills and progestin-only pills. Although both are made form hormones that are naturally found in women’s bodies, the combination pill also contains estrogen, which is not found in the progestin-only pills. Combination pills prevent ovulation and thicken the cervical mucus that surrounds the egg, preventing the fusion of the egg and the sperm. Progestin-only pill also thicken the cervical mucus but usually don’t prevent ovulation. Estrogen and progestin are both steroids that are produced in the female body. Estrogen, the female sex hormone, is created by the ovaries, corpus luteum, and the placenta. It is responsible for the development of breasts and also controls the menstrual cycle. Progestin is also involved in the menstrual cycle. Produced f rom granulose cells, it is secreted during the second half of the menstrual cycle and assists in developing embryos if pregnancy occurs. According to McKinnon-Howe, there are many reasons why students choose to take the pill. â€Å"They usually take it for contraception, but some are not sexually active. They take it for dysmenorrheal, some for cycle regulation, or the improvement of acne† said McKinnon-Howe. The advantages that are linked to taking the birth control pill are numerous.

Explain how multi agency teams work together to support speech, language and communication. Essay

There are a number of professionals that come into contact with each other if a child has needs with speech, language and communication and require support from different areas. E.g. a social worker, SEN Officer, teacher and parent can work together to improve the life of a child or young person. They may come together to discuss a plan that is best for the child to progress effectively. Each child may have different professionals to tailor their individual needs. The people with specialist knowledge and skills will support the people that work with them on a daily basis and have regular meetings to remove barriers of achievement, agree strategies, provide training and identify, and sometimes provide resources. SENCO have the correct paper work in place and ensure appointments are up to date, this will make it easy to monitor development. This will help to co-ordinate with professionals who work with the child. The LEA decides between the school and external support services on how to support the child’s development and may arrange the intervention of a school action plus level to be provided. It also has a parent partnership so parents can be heard and understood with their views taken into account. Every child matters is a programme that covers all children in the school age 0-19. It has been set up so that schools and parents work together to give very child the best chance on life. It has a shared database of children containing information of every child so that all multi agencies, schools, police and voluntary groups can ensure the welfare of each child and can be assessed.

Buffalo ’66 (Directed by Vincent Gallo) Film Essay

Buffalo ‘66 (Directed by: Vincent Gallo) Buffalo ‘66 is Gallo’s ode to his childhood and hometown. Like most artists he writes from what he knows. Having moved to New York from an early age (around 17), for his directorial debut he went back to the city where he grew up, and even shot scenes in his real parents’ old house. Buffalo made him what he is, and still resonates deeply in him. He had enough emotional distance when he made the movie to be able to find the humor in it, but watching the movie it’s clear that his past still haunts him, â€Å"It’s an open wound†(1), as Roger Ebert describes it in his review. Spite, resentment, revenge and anger seem to fuel Gallo’s energy; they’re his motivation to create. He is infamous for his public antics, his idiosyncrasy and statements like â€Å"’I stopped painting in 1990 at the peak of my success just to deny people my beautiful paintings. And I did it out of spite.â₠¬â„¢Ã¢â‚¬  A one man army, nobody praises and hypes Gallo more than Gallo himself. He’s never short of bravado and macho, like a kid forever competing with everybody else to be the coolest, most hands-on and authentic. And yet in his art, his stories and songs, we see a fragile man, haunted by his past, broken by the hardships of love. He presents himself that way, his heart perennially broken and sad, looking for revenge or closure. He’s a bitter man, but he is sad in style, of course. His looks and sense of fashion and â€Å"cool† are integral to understanding what he does and where he is coming from. His cult of personality, gigantic ego and vanity inform his work a great deal; it’s his approach, what makes him different. Gallo is an artist that operates as an outsider, but looks like a rock star. He understands that to stand out, to be noticed, an artist has to create his own hype, his own legend; his persona is as much a creation as his work. Which is why he likes to keep people guessing, and building a mystery around him. Provoke people and they’ll pay attention, elaborate on your own past, make things up, and you’ll appear more interesting. Consider the scene in Buffalo ‘66 where Ben Gazzara’s character performs â€Å"Fools Rush In† for Layla (Christina Ricci). The voice we hear is actually an old recording of Vincent Gallo’s father singing the classic song. In 1998, after the release of the movie he told Village Voice journalist Jerry Talmer that he himself had recorded his father, praising his own engineering skills: â€Å"So 10 years ago,† says 36-year-old Vincent, â€Å"I’m drivin g across the country in a car with one hundred of my cassettes, and at the end of the B side of some punk-rock thing there’s this old, dirty, sun-baked tape, and I hear that â€Å"Fools Rush In† and I’m stunned at my father’s talent and my 13-year-old engineering skills. And that’s the inspiration for the whole movie†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (2) In 1992 though, he wrote an article for Sound Practices magazine where he tells a different story: â€Å"I remember my Grandma’s house. It was small and it had a smell, not a good smell or a bad smell just a certain smell. There was no TV, no radio – just this old wind up 78 machine with this big metal horn that had flowers painted on it. Underneath in a shelf, she had 9 records: three by Domenico Modugno- you know, the guy who wrote Volare, four Caruso records, and her two favorites – one by Dean Martin and one by my father singing â€Å"Fools Rush In†. Before my Pops went to prison, he was a nite club singer. He got to record one single.†(3) Wouldn’t he mention the fact that he recorded his father’s single at age 13 on an article for a DIY sound magazine if it was true? And if his grandmother was listening to it on vinyl, clearly it wasn’t a homemade recording. But even if he’s contrived, small minded and petty, he seems to be self aware enough to be able to not only talk about it straight, but to also make art out of it, and if a movie like Buffalo 66 ultimately works is because Gallo can find the humor in his own story and persona. He has to be poking fun at himself and anyone with his outrageous provocations and massive trolling. Just look at his website, where he offers himself for $50,000;(4) or his claims that he’s a republican, and that Bush is a great man. Through his work he can transcend himself and reach out to other people: â€Å"I’m clearly a small-minded person, with my own petty grievances. Hopefully, my work transcends my own petty grievances and small-minded nature. It’s best for me to remain small-minded on an emotional level and broad-minded on a conceptual level. It doesn’t matter whatever it is that makes me do my work. Neurosis, obsession, wanting people to like me, wanting my parents to feel bad for underrating me, making a lot of money, power, and social status, wanting girls to like me or just to meet one girl on a job. All of this doesn’t matter as long as the work that I do to achieve these small-minded needs is a lot more interesting than me and my reasons for making it.†(5) But if the starting point, the initial motivation to do art was revenge, he’s past that, he says: â€Å"One begins one’s adult life trying to conquer the voices and the demons and the hang-ups of one’s childhood emotional life. At a certain point for me, I became actually interested in what I was doing to take this revenge. I became more interested in the activity and the result and the objects I was making out of these motivations so I became more preoccupied with what I was doing than what he was thinking and that happened gradually. At about the age of 30 I was finally more preoccupied with my work than with what my father thought of my work. At this point I have very little interest in proving him wrong, I am more interested in the work.†(6) He is an artist who identifies himself as a working man, a â€Å"hustler†; he doesn’t want to be seen as some delicate poet: â€Å"I don’t identify myself as an artist in that way, like a pre conceived concept of what it means to be an artist. That’s what a bunch of TV actors who finally get a movie job like to think of themselves. I’ve done so many different things. I’ve done a million different things for money. I’ve done a million things to have impact into culture. I’ve done a million things for love and approval and social status. So when I said ‘I hustle’ I was trying to describe the basic premise of what motivates me to do all these different things, and it’s certainly not poetic and anybody who tells you that it is for themselves is full of shit.† â€Å"I’m not a young poet. I’m a working person.†(6) The Buffalo shown in the movie is the one Gallo remembers, the one he describes in interviews. â€Å"It’s miserable. It’s a failed city living in a delusion of grandeur. It’s a regressive unambitious fat ass city with a bunch of real pricks who are controlling things like the newspaper and things like that. Some peop le are very charming there, and I’ve banged a lot of cute girls there, but I would say that it’s an unpleasant place and it certainly has had impact into my personality hang-ups and my personality struggles.†(6) This resentment and unresolved issues with his past are all over the film. Was he looking for closure by making it? Did he find it? One of the central themes of the movie is the relationship the main character Billy Brown has with his parents. They don’t think much of his son, football is more important to his mom than his kid. She regrets having Billy, she lost a game the day she had Billy. According to Gallo, the character of the father (played by Ben Gazzara) is just like his own father.(2) Even though there’s plenty of humor in the scenes involving the parents, it’s evident that Gallo holds a great deal of resentment towards them and his whole upbringing. What is unclear though is the way he resolves it, the way he deals with it. Why would Billy Brown bother going to the lengths of kidnapping a girl and taking her home to his parents to try to impress them, when they couldn’t care less. Nothing in the movie makes much sense if you try to rationalize it, because the story is more about emotions than reason. But that’s what makes it feel urgent and alive, and how the moments of humor and fantasy make sense. We don’t get to know the other, real side of the story. Gallo went back to his hometown to make this movie, shot scenes in his own childhood house and used an old recording of his father singing. How is his relationship with his real parents, what did they think of the movie, what was it like when Gallo came home shoot it, how did that affect their relationship? What about his old neighborhood, old acquaintances, how did that all play out, and how did that ultimately affect Gallo himself? These are all questions we cannot answer, and of course you don’t have to know all the details of an artist’s personal life to understand his oeuvre, but in cases like Gallo, life and art are so intermingled that you’re always aware that you’re only seeing half the picture. He has a problem with people seeing Buffalo ‘66 as an autobiographical movie, for he feels that it takes credit away from all the work he did in it (writer, director, composer, star): â€Å"I feel that when you or anyone else refers to that film as â€Å"autobiographical† what you are really doing is creating a sense or an idea that I didn’t really write the script. It sort of wrote itself. And since I am playing myself, I’m not really acting and since I’m not really acting and the script wrote itself then the film sort of directs itself. Well, it wasn’t autobiographical, it’s a real screenplay and a real performance and a real soundtrack.†(5) He might have a point, but as a viewer it’s very difficult to separate the character of Billy Brown from the persona of Vincent Gallo, especially if you know anything about him. Billy Brown is just like the Vincent Gallo you read in interviews: jumpy, never relaxed, easily offended, perpetually at war with everybody, never hesitates to throw threats and snark, brag about his many talents or dismiss the work of others. Except of course Billy Brown is a pathetic nobody and Vincent Gallo a model and multidisciplinary artist. His movies and art are confessional, but in a very capricious way, we are always reminded that he does things his way. Everybody knows that film auteurs are the ones that do what they want and are stubborn enough to get complete control, it’s just that Vincent Gallo makes really sure you are aware of this at all times. In 2004, around the time his second movie The Brown Bunny was released in America, Gallo told Ebert that he’s an entertainer: â€Å"Film has a purpose. It’s not art. Real art is an esoteric thing done by somebody without purpose in mind. I’ve done that in my life and I’m not doing that making movies. I’m an entertainer. I love all movies. I don’t divide them up into art films, indie films.†(7) But he makes movies for himself. About himself, by himself, for himself. The obvious proof being Promises Written in Water, his third feature. Premiered in 2010 at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, it has not been showed since, and Gallo says he has no plans to release it to the public, so that it is â€Å"allowed to rest in peace, and stored without being exposed to the dark energies from the public.†(8) He was invited to screen it this year at the Whitney Biennial in New York, but he didn’t bother to show up. His movies are made from his very specific point of view, always just his. It’s all about finding sympathy for him the lead. The world revolves around him, everything transformed by his view. His female characters are concepts, fantasies, vague and elusive; we never really get to know who they are. Christina Ricci’s character in Buffalo 66 is more than willing to cooperate with him from the beginning. He doesn’t hold a gun against her, doesn’t need to use much violence (except verbally) to persuade her. By the end of the movie it’s her that’s begging him to return. It’s like Billy Brown is so used to antagonizing with everybody that he doesn’t even know how to deal with someone who actually likes him. A self-professed perfectionist, he wants to control as much as possible in his movies, equaling his directorial app roach to the carefully constructed classic Hollywood musicals: â€Å"When I made the movie, in my mind I was making a classic musical. So when Ben Gazzara sings, or when Christina Ricci does her tap dance, or in the bedroom scene where we kiss, it’s choreography. Those are musical numbers like in those old Hollywood musicals.†(2) He insisted director of photography and camera operator Lance Acord that the film be shot on 35mm reversal stock, a very rare old type of film stock that created many problems during production. Gallo got the idea from an Italian jeans commercial he had previously worked on with Acord. â€Å"The director wanted the spot to look like an old print of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 film Pierrot Le Fou†, recalls Acord, â€Å"With Vincent as the Belmondo character. I chose to shoot with reversal to obtain that faded look you see in older prints, while still maintaining strong saturation in the primaries.†(9) The other key visual references for the look of the film were the NFL Films feature presentation of the 1969 Jets Vs. Colts championship game, and the look of old pictures, according to Acord, â€Å"the kind you might find in a suitcase under a table at the flea market. Some were nudes of someoneâ €™s girlfriend, probably lit with Photofloods and shot on Kodachrome. The girl was reclining on an avocado couch, against a brown curtain and a dull orange rug. There is a sincerity and purity in the crudeness of the technique that somehow makes work like that very revealing and powerful. We tried to bring some of that to the movie.† As for the NFL movie, apparently Gallo was taken by his father as a kid to see its production. It was shot on high-contrast reversal Video News film, and made a strong impression on Gallo. (9) The visual components of the film include the use of the picture-in-picture technique, which consists of a small window of footage superimposed over a larger window at the same time(11) (in the beginning of the movie, after Billy is released from prison, he lays on a bench in the street while the screen fills with small windows with different scenes that show us his time in prison, and later on as he sits on the table with his parents, complimentary windows appear a couple of times to show us painful moments from Billy’s childhood); the use of Japanese filmmaker Yazujiro Ozu’s â€Å"Tatami shots† (Christina Ricci’s car plates read â€Å"OZU†(12)), in which the camera is placed at a low height, at the eye level of a person kneeling on a tatami mat, so that the audience is on the same visual level as the characters sitting, to place the viewer right into whatever conversation is going on(11) (the dinner sequence with Billy, his parents and Christina Ricci sitting at the table); and the striking 3D-like virtual pan in the moment where Billy enters the strip club and imagines killing the owner and then turning the gun on himself. Lance Acord got the idea from French director Michel Gondry, who had employed a technique where â€Å"A circular still-camera array was simultaneously triggered, â€Å"freezing† the subject from multiple angles. The resulting frames were then sequentially morphed and animated to create a virtual pan and 3-D effect†. Instead of using still cameras, Accord used a movie camera to produce the stills, moving the camera around the actors as they stood still holding their positions. Blown-glass pieces resembling splashing red liquid where attached to Gallo’s head so that they resembled blood coming out of his head to help achieve the effect of a moment frozen in time.(9) Somewhere between John Cassavetes (or that school of 60s-70s American realism) and art films, Buffalo ‘66 can feel overcrowded with visual motifs and ideas, at times style overcoming substance, but the overall mood and tone of the film are well maintained. The emotions and the urgency of Billy Brown’s character (and Gallo’s performance) feel real enough to go beyond the pose. He even has enough perspective to be able to laugh at himself. Roger Ebert argues that the movie doesn’t offer a payoff, a real resolution. â€Å"Buffalo ‘66 isn’t really about endings, anyway. Endings are about conclusions and statements, and Gallo is obviously too much in turmoil about this material to organize it into a payoff.†(1) But the movie actually ends on a positive note; he’s opting to be optimistic, embracing the possibility of love. After envisioning a fatal ending to his story, he backs out and chooses a happy ending, and that is a resolution. Bibliography 1) Ebert, Roger. â€Å"Buffalo ‘66†. Review. Chicago Sun-Times (Chicago) 7 Aug. 1998. Print/ Online. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19980807/REVIEWS/80807 0302/1023 2) Tallmer, Jerry. â€Å"Vincent Gallo and Buffalo ’66†. Interview with Vincent Gallo. New York City 1998. Online. http://www.siegelproductions.ca/filmfanatics/gallo.htm. 3) Gallo, Vincent. â€Å"Mono Mia†. Article. Sound Practices Magazine. Summer 1992. Print/Online. http://www.drowninginbrown.com/dib_sp.htm 4) Vincent Gallo’s website. http://www.vgmerchandise.com/store/home.php 5) Kaufman, Anthony. Vincent Gallo. Interview. Soma Magazine. November 2001. Print/ Online. http://www.vincentgallo.com/writing/AnthonyKaufman.html 6) Taylor, Lee. â€Å"The Cover Star: An Interview with Vincent Gallo†. Flux Magazine. UK, No.9, Oct/Nov 1998 Print/Online. http://www.galloappreciation.com/print/flux.html 7) Ebert, Roger. â€Å"The whole truth from Vincent Gallour†. Chicago Sun-Times (Chicago). August 29,2004. Print/ Online. http://www.galloappreciation.com/index2 .html 8) Lim, Dennis. â€Å"R.I.P. ‘Promises,’ It Was Nice Knowing You†. New York Times (New York Edition) June 8, 2012. Print/ Online. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/movies/vincent-gallo-keeps-promises-written-inwater-off-screens.html 9) Oppenheimer, Jean. â€Å"Playing a Risky Stock on Buffalo 66†. American Cinematographer. July 1998, Vol. 79 Issue 7, p32. Print/Online database Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson) 10) Video Glossary. Online. http://www.video-editing-made-easy.com/video-glossary-p.html 11) Criterion. â€Å"The Ozu Shot: Tokyo-ga and Late Spring† Criterion film essay. Online. http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2257-the-ozu-shot-tokyo-ga-and-late-spring 12) Internet Movie Data Base. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118789/trivia

Quotes About the Joys of Winter

Quotes About the Joys of Winter Come winter and the world is covered with a white sheet of snow. Kids welcome winter by catching the first few snowflakes in their mouth. For adults, winter brings a slew of festivities like skiing, snowboarding, sled dog racing, and many others. And then there is Christmas. Christmas on a wintry December night brings families closer as they cozy up around a warm hearth. Revel in the joys of winter while you sip your ale and read these winter quotes. Pietro AretinoLet us love winter, for it is the spring of genius. George HerbertEvery mile is two in winter. Mignon McLaughlinSpring, summer, and fall fill us with hope; winter alone reminds us of the human condition. William BlakeIn seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Edith SitwellWinter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home. Victor HugoWinter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. William BradfordAnd for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms. Boris PasternakIt snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned. Virginia WoolfNever are voices so beautiful as on a winters evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day. Charles DickensLooking up, she showed him quite a young face, but one whose bloom and promise were all swept away as if the haggard winter should unnaturally kill the spring. Elizabeth BowenAutumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day. HeraclitusGod is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger. Albert CamusIn the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. Robert FrostYou cant get too much winter in the winter. Sinclair LewisWinter is not a season, it’s an occupation.

Spent Mushroom Waste Essays - Biotechnology, Ecological Restoration

Spent Mushroom Waste Essays - Biotechnology, Ecological Restoration Spent Mushroom Waste as a Media Replacement for Peat Moss in Kai-Lan (Brassica oleracea var. Alboglabra) Production , Spent mushroom waste (SMW), otherwise known as spent mushroom substrate (SMS) or spent mushroom compost (SMC), is the leftover after different flushes of mushrooms have been harvested [6]. Normally, at the end of each production cycle, spent (used) mushroom substrates are left abandoned or discarded. One of the major environmental problems in the mushroom producing countries remains the treatment and disposal of SMW [7]. About 5kg of SMW are produced for each kilogram of mushroom [8]. The SMW contains nutrients which could be used for the growth of plants. These materials are generally nontoxic to plants and therefore, could be employed as soil amendment for different crops [6]. The SMW is claimed to be a source of humus formation, and humus provides plant micronutrients, improves soil water holding capacity, soil aeration, and helps maintain soil structure [9]. The S MW is already used in horticulture as a component of potting soil mixes, soil amendment to improve grass in wetlands for remediation of contaminated water, stabilizing severely disturbed soils, bedding for animals, and control plant diseases. Apart from that, SMW can be successfully used as medium for vermiculture, in agriculture or landscape to enrich soils and as a matrix for bioremediation of contaminated soils [2]. If spent mushroom waste is used in proper proportion, it can act as a peat substitute in a soilless culture [10]. In Malaysia, mushroom has been grown since early 1930 in Penang [26]. With the increasing production of mushroom, the massive amount of unused spent mushroom waste is of a huge concern. Since information on the use of spent mushroom waste as soil amendment or part of soilless media is still scarce in Malaysia, this study was deemed necessary. This present study was, therefore, designed with an ultimate aim to determine the feasibility of the replacement of peat moss by spent mushroom waste and to evaluate the effects of spent mushroom waste alone and in combination with commercial peat moss on the growth of Kai-lan (Brassica oleracea var. Alboglabra), a popular leafy vegetable in Malaysia. Special emphasis was given towards the feasibility of total replacement of peat moss by spent mushroom waste. H. Sendi,1 M. T. M. Mohamed,2,3 M. P. Anwar,3,4 and H. M. Saud Volume 2013. Effect of Different Levels of Mushroom Waste (Agaricus bisporus) with or without Probiotic on Growth Performance, Carcass Characteristics, and Breast Meat Quality in Broiler Chickens , In mushroom production units, large amounts of damaged, tiny, and deformed mushrooms as waste are obtained. Because this waste has a nutritional value, after drying, it can be used in the diet of broiler chickens. Mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) belongs to the kingdom of Fungi, which are considered as an important source of bioactive compounds possessing a medicinal value (Breen, 1990). The use of mushroom in poultry diet enhances growth performance and reduces gastrointestinal weight in poultry (Guo, 2003). Daneshmand et al. (2011) reported that adding mushroom to broiler diet improves feed conversion ratio but not body weight gain. Mushroom also contains considerable amounts of oligosaccharides, which have beneficial effects on the growth performance of broiler chickens (Falaki et al., 2011). It seems that the mechanism of action of fungi is similar to that of probiotic because fungi possess medicinal properties that can improve gastrointestinal function, which is due to the presence of polysaccharide compounds in the fungi (Cummings and Macfarlane, 2002). Mazaheri A1, Shams Shargh M 1, Dastar B1 & Zerehdaran S2 , 2014. Characterization of xylanase from Lentinus edodes M290 cultured on waste mushroom logs , Extracellular enzymes from Lentinus edodes M290 on normal woods (Quercus mongolica) and waste logs from oak mushroom production were comparatively investigated. Endoglucanase, cellobiohydrolase, beta-glucosidase, and xylanase activities were higher on waste mushroom logs than on normal woods after L. edodes M290 inoculation. Xylanase activity was especially different, with a three times higher activity on waste mushroom logs. When the waste mushroom logs were used as acarbon source, a new 35 kDa protein appeared. After the purification, the optimal pH and temperature for xylanase activity were determined to be 4.0 and 50 degrees C, respectively. More than 50% of the optimal xylanase activity was